Robert Peters wrote:

>Steve Schwartz wrote:
>
>>...  The images seem sharper than in most German poetry, perhaps because
>>the poems are translations from the Chinese (another language I don't
>>speak).  I'd be interested to know (since I thought enough of them to do
>>a "literary" translation of them) what makes them so bad in your eyes.
>
>The whole stuff is translated and you can notice it.  The language is dry
>and old-fashioned, all poems are too elaborate.  Bethge wants to be poetic
>but it all sounds (without the music!) banal and proselike.  Compare this
>with the brevity and density of Brecht's "East-Asian" poetry and you know
>what I mean.  (And Mahler's three last verses show that he was a composer
>and no poet.)

This is very subjective so for you, it's right.  But Mahler provided
the texts -- or modified them -- for a number of his songs and symphonic
movements.  In fact, I bet a careful study of his wordsmithing skills as
reflected in his works would be very illuminating.

Mitch Friedfeld