how best to carry over, unbroken and undiminished, the colors and contours of the right side. We are attached to the idea that we have given as much to the originals as we took from them. Adherence to metrical and rhythmical structure was possible, owing to the essential likeness between the two languages with regard to versification. In matters of imagery and the finer aspects of technique there was also an attempt to be as faithful as the linguistic media allow. But juggling is a fine art, not unworthy of the service of Notre Dame, and the three bright balls of substance, form, and spirit were not always easy to keep in the air at once. What we continually sought was to produce, in the end, a poem.
The personality of each poet is brought out in a note preceding the selection from his work, and the filiation of poetic movements is briefly indicated in the introductory essay.
And finally a word pro domo nostra. While it may be difficult to single out each collaborator's part in the work, it is possible, and perhaps interesting, to define the attitude of each. The one, native to Russian literature, brought to the task all the prejudices and privileges of long intimacy. The other, a stranger, saw it with the fresh vision and untaught caprice of a foreigner, making a less practised and a more personal approach. The one was aware, the other persuaded of the gold in the Scythian earth. The two labored together to wrest it, like the one-eyed Arimaspi, from the guardian gryphons.
Babette Deutsch.
Avrahm Yarmolinsky.
New York, June 28, 1921.
