Typos turned me off Michelangelo’s poems

I am often very loathe to give negative criticism of any published book, since a book takes an awful lot of work to become a reality. It’s hard work, and much of that hard work is invisible to the reader. You do not experience the years of study and effort, writing and rewriting, editing and rewriting, and debating of concepts and structure. The author, in their echo chamber of one, does this legwork that no-one sees, but which, once it has been published, can be felt in hundreds of different ways. Every word is the result of the long creation process.

So, what would utterly spoil that reception? What could totally ruin a book, by the time it gets to the reader?

Two words: Bad publishing. And don’t think that it will never happen to you. The final packaging and presentation of your product, whether it’s an illustration, painting, photo, design, novel, poem, or song, can be ruined by a careless and disrespectful publisher. And believe me, it happens a lot.

Ruined by typos

A while back I ordered a hard cover copy of Michelangelo – Poems of Love, translated and Introduced by James Cowan. Michelangelo is the High Renaissance artist, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, and these are the love poems that he had written. I had seen a different book of Michelangelo’s translated poems in an Instagram post, and since I didn’t know that Michelangelo, apart from being a painter, sculptor, and architect, was also a prolific poet, I bought James Cowan’s version.

I specifically bought this edition since other works and versions were apparently not idiomatic or poetical translations of his poems, but literal translations. Literal translations of poems remove the very things that make a poem, a poem – the metaphors and the form. The translator has to be as good a poet as the original writer, in order for poems to be appreciated for the beauty of the words. There is a thin line between the voice of the original poet, and the voice of the translator. Ideally, that line should be invisible.

James Cowan (9 April 1942 – 6 October 2018), was an Australian author and translator. In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal for his novel, A Mapmaker’s Dream. Cowan is the author of many books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and philosophy. He held a Ph.D. for his biography Hamlet’s Ghost. His work has been translated into seventeen languages.

(Quote by Cowan in the header image from The Metaphysical Vision of James Cowan, By Kingsley Dennis, in New Dawn Magazine, issue New Dawn # 197, Mar. – Apr. 2023, retrieved Nov. 11, 2024)

So, at the time that he wrote this, James Cowan was a reputable and skilled writer, poet and translator of ancient prose and poetry. Michelangelo – Poems of Love, was written in 2017, a year before his death, and published in 2021, posthumously, by Balgo Hills Publishing. Exactly where or what Balgo Hills Publishing is, I have not been able to find out – only that it’s Australian.

The Introduction is interesting, explaining how and why Michelangelo wrote these poems that express his passion for Vittoria Colonna, the Marchioness of Pescara (1492 – 1547).

Did anyone proofread this?

What utterly ruined the book for me, and made me not want to read the poems, is the fact that the text is absolutely rife with typos:- misspellings, grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes, paragraphing, incomplete sentences, redundancies, kerning (!)…you name the mistake, there seems to be a couple on every page. It’s ridiculous, as though the publisher simply took a draft and printed it just like that.

I am measuring this publication against the only acceptable criterion: that it should contain no typos of any kind. Even one mistake in a published book is one mistake too many. Two may indicate carelessness. Three may show incompetence. More than that… well, it simply won’t do.

The book has a small black and white image of the painting, below, on the title page. It is so blurry that I could only trace it through the reference. At the very least, they would have reproduced it larger and in colour, considering that it depicts the two subjects of the book.

It made me wonder, would the same mistakes be in the poems, or are the bad lines, and bad word choices as they were written by Michelangelo?

Frankly, as a reputable academic, Cowan must be spinning in his grave about this.

Sample pages (pp. 1 – 11)

And so goes the rest of the Introduction. So many small mistakes, it drove me crazy. But, I had bought the book to read Michelangelo’s poetry in English. So, are there any poems that stand out for me? Bear in mind that the ability to write in verse was very much a sign of being educated and upper class, in most cultures, right up to the 20th century. So, he was just doing what gentlemen of the time did. Cowan points out that that it was quite unusual for an artisan, someone who worked with his hands, to spend time on poetry. He must’ve been quite smitten with the object of his affections, Vittoria Colonna.

A love poem to love

At the same time, the images, metaphors and emotions in the poems are fairly typical of the age and the genre. They only become memorable when the poet allows some real emotion, like anger, to come through. You can see that Cowan translated the poems into modern English, complete with contractions. The capitalization at the start of each line is suspect, since it excludes the last line, and doesn’t make sense, grammatically. But here is one that I like: – how’s that for a wonderful line: “…he who gains much by losing, learns”.

“V

As your fury grows, my love, I’m not able
Nor do I wish to hold myself back
From saying to you, and swearing:
However harsh or indifferent you are
The more you guide and spur my soul
To Virtue. If sometimes you pity
My death, and my anguished laments
As of one who is dying, I feel my heart
Slowly break within me as my torments
Grow weaker. From your bright and
Holy eyes what meager grace I’ve
Received is dear and sweet to me:
he who gains much by losing, learns.”

(Cowan, James. Michelangelo – Poems of Love, p. 99 – verbatim reproduction)

I hope that you do yourself a favour and read Michelangelo’s poems in your own language, since they give us insight into his mind and his art. And I hope that you do not have the experience ruined by typos.

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