Robert Browning

Abstract

Criticism 50, no. 1 [154] [2021]: 76–94), Brigitte Rath elaborates a theoretical grounding for postmonolingual lit er a ture. The example she uses draws from Wolf and Hawkey’s work, which recasts EBB’s Sonnets from the Portuguese and translations of these sonnets by Rainer Maria Rilke by erasing or eliminating most of their texts. While the article says little about EBB’s sonnet sequence or its individual components, it establishes the illuminating theory that meaning inheres not only in the words used but also in the biographical materials and literary mechanics such as rhyme and line breaks that we bring to bear on EBB’s work as well as on the versions created by poets who practice a poetry of “erasure” that relies on a “postlingual idiom” (abstract). The “translation” of EBB’s sonnet sequence created by “erasing” most of her words suggests the significant presence of EBB in con temporary lit er a ture, for it depends on our knowing what has been erased as much as what has been retained. In a sense, the reworking of EBB’s poetry by Wolf and Hawkey documents that she can no longer be “erased” from lit er a ture or from literary history. She is a “ there” who remains “ there” even when critics and artists literally erase her words.