David Bellemare-Gosselin (translator)

(3)

You can crush the flowers, but you cannot delay spring

Intense passion for languages and literature, most notably poetry.

My passion for poetry is what lead me to the discovery of new and diverse language cultures along with a deeper understanding of my own. Having stumbled upon an article about the Islamic Renaissance one day, I learned about the rich oral tradition of the Arab bards. From that moment on I felt compelled to learn the language in order to unearth the treasure of those desert dunes. Simply by the beautyof the language the Arab bard could command, one of the lowliest denizens of a tribe or city could be elevated to virtual royal status. I think this is the hallmark of a culture which seeks to unfold the music of its own soul.

We see in all classical poetic traditions, the mortal tongue becomes something of a tongue of angels; a kind of a divine interpretor between earth and heaven.

Having been provoked by some of the poetry in Arabic, I simply said "I guess I need to learn Arabic now". The same can be said of Italian, where being able to hear Dante Alighieri's voice in its rightful Italian became primordial.

I have written my own poetry and through this have aquired a passion for rendering the poetic works of Dante's Italian, Schiller's German into original English poems.

Native language: English
Translates from: French, Italian
Translates into: English


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