The misanthrope (1817)

The tradition of the poet-translator is as old as English literature. Chaucer made a version of Le Roman de la Rose; Pope, of Homer; Longfellow, of Dante. Richard Wilbur, one of America's most distinguished young poets, has followed in this tradition. Moreover, in Molier̀e he has chosen a dramatist whose subtle and translucent verse has qualities in common with his own. He has translated Molier̀e's great neoclassic comedy into rhymed couplets of epigrammatic brilliance. The Misanthrope, which has always been one of Molier̀e's most popular plays, tells the story of a man whose conscience and sincerity were too rigorous for his age. It is a searching comic study of falsity, of shallowness, and-in the hero's case-of self-righteousness. This masterpiece of seventeenth-century drama, whose theme is wholly and meaningfully contemporary, has now received full justice in its finest English translation.