Boethius / Glassgold, Peter (tr.): The Poems from On the Consolation of Philosophy

World Poetry, paperback

Publication Date: November 7, 2024

Translated by: Peter Glassgold

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Boethius' ancient Latin classic has been translated into every stage of the English language, from Old to Middle to Modern, and Peter Glassgold's collaged renderings of the poems reflect its history as much as they make it new. Since Boethius (480-524 C.E.) wrote his On the Consolation of Philosophy imprisoned and in chains, he has been regarded as a consummate martyr of conscience who, fallen from political grace, rose above his personal agony to an impersonal magnanimity that shamed his murderers by its example. Chief among the text's many translators are King Alfred the Great, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Elizabeth I. Glassgold's startlingly original Boethius includes his collage translations along with the original Latin, an informative Preface, a Note on Texts, Method, and Pronunciation, as well as a thorough Glossary of Early English words. This new, expanded edition adds a Foreword by Charles Bernstein and an Afterword by Glassgold.

Glassgold's luminous layerings of Boethius launch us deep into the stratospheres of English. What a consolation to have these ancestral strains back in print. —RICHARD SIEBURTH

"Writing in prison, Boethius—a philosopher of late antiquity who had served the king of the Ostrogoths—explores why bad things happen to good people. The universal resonance of the question provided On the Consolation of Philosophy with an unmatched translation pedigree. Peter Glassgold's gorgeous translingual renderings of the Latin poetry from the book refashion the originals and their English rephrasings into a composition of 'lower limit speech, upper limit music,' letting the reader overhear, in snatches, how Boethius was received over the ages. Sometimes intimately near and clear, sometimes estranged and distanced by older linguistic forms, Glassgold's experiment shows that the sound poetry of the avantgarde can be re-conceived historically, as philology." —EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY

"The project Glassgold undertakes is linguistic and poetic, a tribute to the literary history of the Consolation in English that conflates and combines quotations from familiar texts, specimens of language, and evidence of the concept of change itself." —KENNETH C. HAWLEY, Director, Brian S. Donaghey Center for Boethian Studies