Poetry review – GOYA AS DOG: Jennifer Johnson appreciates the work of both authors in Donald Gardner’s translations of poems by Stefan Hertmans
Goya as Dog
Selected Poems by Stefan Hertmans
translated by Donald Gardner
Shearsman Books
ISBN 978-1-84861-977-7
120 pp £12.95/$20
Donald Gardner is a London-born poet and translator who has lived much of his life in the Netherlands. He has had published eight collections of his own poems and has previously translated several Dutch-language poets including Remco Campert, the collection In Those Days winning him the Vondel prize in 2014. Stefan Hertmans, who writes poetry in Flemish, is best known for War and Turpentine, a memoir based on his grandfather’s experience in WW1.
In a book of translations, the question arises as to the relationship between the translation and the original poem. In this case the poet and translator know each other personally. Gardner writes in the Preface that Hertmans’ “fluency in English, as well as his knowledge of English literature has meant that I could avoid any pitfalls and, so I hope, arrive at versions that accurately reflect their Flemish originals”.
Gardner describes Hertmans’ poetry as “both layered and transparent”. The style is for the most part transparent but a reader familiar with the painters, writers and music that appear in these poems may also appreciate their layers. The personal experience expressed can be assumed to be that of Hertmans as this is mentioned by both poet and translator. Sadly, space allows me to only consider a few of the riches in this collection.
The cover shows a reproduction of Francisco de Goya’s El Perro (The Dog), one of the Black Paintings Goya painted on his wall as his health declined. The title poem ‘Goya as Dog’ explores the questions this painting raises. Hertmans writes that Goya “shudders at what he knows and sees a dog’s head emerge/out of Bordeaux’s oceanic blueness”. At one point Hertmans relates some relevant personal experience.
I could touch the smoke-blackened ceiling –
a young lad exhausted with self-pity,
the kind who, sinking into a glaze, still succeeds
in irritating the viewer with his painfully precious princely soul
in the sublime emptiness of portraits.
The “smoke-blackened ceiling” echoes the “black” in Goya’s Black Paintings. The “self-pity” of the “young lad” is linked with Goya’s painting by the “sublime emptiness of portraits”. The artistic concept of “sublime emptiness” in which the traditional sublime has been transferred from that of a wild landscape to that of a portrait surrounded by an empty space representing an internal state. “The sublime emptiness of portraits” may also refer to a young, relatively empty face. The alliteration in the fourth line in Gardner’s version emphasises the irritation the lad gives by not understanding the suffering behind Goya’s “shudders”.
‘For Ashraf Fayadh’ concerns the suffering of a poet and artist of Palestinian origin living in Saudi Arabia. The poem begins
Ashraf,
how come your voice so suddenly
has become a stick
with which the torturer
batters your words to pulp?
The connection between the poet’s voice and the torturer’s stick is powerful. Both the voice and the words have become physical objects. It is such connections that enable the reader to see things in an interesting new way. In ‘With Invisible Ink’ Hertmans explains “that the potential of poetry is displayed at its most forceful” in “obscure openings in the tissue of meaning”.
Another unexpected connection occurs in ‘Three Apples and a Mountain’ which refers to both Cézanne’s ‘Basket of Apples’ and his ‘Mont St. Victoire’ series. These represent the miniature and grand aspects of his art. The epigraph states “La principal dans un tableau c’est la distance”. Instead of using traditional techniques of perspective Cézanne achieved depth by using warm colours for objects close by and cool ones for those more distant. The following lines describing Cézanne’s studio plays with this idea using a modern image.
But against the high wall
of distant opacity
things took on form and grey
became the colour of colours.
“Distant opacity” refers to the cloudiness on a CT scan which is some distance from an object being scanned.
By contrast, Hertmans often uses simple, transparent language as in his spiritual poem ‘The Jerónimos Monastery in Belém’ which begins
You can start your life all over
any minute by wanting nothing
other than this now:
This expresses the theme of possible transformation. Later there is a more direct expression of spiritual renewal with the exhortation to “Be still as ancient stones” where the alliteration in the English version adds to the music of the line. Another spiritual poem is ‘Conference of the Birds’ which refers to the twelfth century Persian Sufi poem by Attar of Nishapur in which a group of birds embark on a spiritual journey. In Hertmans’ poem the birds are given the famous names “Bash?, Borges, Maimonides,/Dionysus the Areopagite”.
Not only is a there a musical quality to the poetry, poems such as ‘Goldberg Variations’ are about music. In the English version the poet writes of “exalting in the variations/ over the passing years”, the “variations” referring both to the musical variations but also the varying responses a listener may have over the years.
Death is central to many of the poems. One example is ‘Cavafy, 1933’ which begins
He died from writing poems
in which art triumphs over life.
Antony abandoned by his god.
The reference to Cavafy’s famous poem ‘The God Abandons Antony’ emphasises Cavafy’s own powerlessness against the throat cancer that was to kill him in 1933. We are told that “Old texts store up a memory/of youth” but later “he had just set some thoughts aside/to deal with later, if he had the breath”.
Another poem on the subject of mortality is the longer ‘The Last Game’.
Leave-taking is a game
with strict rules;
the first move decides the final one,
though you don’t know that yet.
There is an uneasy and unsettling contrast between the definite statement “the first move decides the final one” and the indefinite not knowing what that final move is.
I highly recommend this collection.. Many of the poems are what Gardner describes as “both transparent and layered” and the unusual connections made within them enable the reader to see things in fresh and stimulating ways.
Sep 25 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Stefan Hertmans
Poetry review – GOYA AS DOG: Jennifer Johnson appreciates the work of both authors in Donald Gardner’s translations of poems by Stefan Hertmans
Goya as Dog
Selected Poems by Stefan Hertmans
translated by Donald Gardner
Shearsman Books
ISBN 978-1-84861-977-7
120 pp £12.95/$20
Donald Gardner is a London-born poet and translator who has lived much of his life in the Netherlands. He has had published eight collections of his own poems and has previously translated several Dutch-language poets including Remco Campert, the collection In Those Days winning him the Vondel prize in 2014. Stefan Hertmans, who writes poetry in Flemish, is best known for War and Turpentine, a memoir based on his grandfather’s experience in WW1.
In a book of translations, the question arises as to the relationship between the translation and the original poem. In this case the poet and translator know each other personally. Gardner writes in the Preface that Hertmans’ “fluency in English, as well as his knowledge of English literature has meant that I could avoid any pitfalls and, so I hope, arrive at versions that accurately reflect their Flemish originals”.
Gardner describes Hertmans’ poetry as “both layered and transparent”. The style is for the most part transparent but a reader familiar with the painters, writers and music that appear in these poems may also appreciate their layers. The personal experience expressed can be assumed to be that of Hertmans as this is mentioned by both poet and translator. Sadly, space allows me to only consider a few of the riches in this collection.
The cover shows a reproduction of Francisco de Goya’s El Perro (The Dog), one of the Black Paintings Goya painted on his wall as his health declined. The title poem ‘Goya as Dog’ explores the questions this painting raises. Hertmans writes that Goya “shudders at what he knows and sees a dog’s head emerge/out of Bordeaux’s oceanic blueness”. At one point Hertmans relates some relevant personal experience.
I could touch the smoke-blackened ceiling –
a young lad exhausted with self-pity,
the kind who, sinking into a glaze, still succeeds
in irritating the viewer with his painfully precious princely soul
in the sublime emptiness of portraits.
The “smoke-blackened ceiling” echoes the “black” in Goya’s Black Paintings. The “self-pity” of the “young lad” is linked with Goya’s painting by the “sublime emptiness of portraits”. The artistic concept of “sublime emptiness” in which the traditional sublime has been transferred from that of a wild landscape to that of a portrait surrounded by an empty space representing an internal state. “The sublime emptiness of portraits” may also refer to a young, relatively empty face. The alliteration in the fourth line in Gardner’s version emphasises the irritation the lad gives by not understanding the suffering behind Goya’s “shudders”.
‘For Ashraf Fayadh’ concerns the suffering of a poet and artist of Palestinian origin living in Saudi Arabia. The poem begins
Ashraf,
how come your voice so suddenly
has become a stick
with which the torturer
batters your words to pulp?
The connection between the poet’s voice and the torturer’s stick is powerful. Both the voice and the words have become physical objects. It is such connections that enable the reader to see things in an interesting new way. In ‘With Invisible Ink’ Hertmans explains “that the potential of poetry is displayed at its most forceful” in “obscure openings in the tissue of meaning”.
Another unexpected connection occurs in ‘Three Apples and a Mountain’ which refers to both Cézanne’s ‘Basket of Apples’ and his ‘Mont St. Victoire’ series. These represent the miniature and grand aspects of his art. The epigraph states “La principal dans un tableau c’est la distance”. Instead of using traditional techniques of perspective Cézanne achieved depth by using warm colours for objects close by and cool ones for those more distant. The following lines describing Cézanne’s studio plays with this idea using a modern image.
But against the high wall
of distant opacity
things took on form and grey
became the colour of colours.
“Distant opacity” refers to the cloudiness on a CT scan which is some distance from an object being scanned.
By contrast, Hertmans often uses simple, transparent language as in his spiritual poem ‘The Jerónimos Monastery in Belém’ which begins
You can start your life all over
any minute by wanting nothing
other than this now:
This expresses the theme of possible transformation. Later there is a more direct expression of spiritual renewal with the exhortation to “Be still as ancient stones” where the alliteration in the English version adds to the music of the line. Another spiritual poem is ‘Conference of the Birds’ which refers to the twelfth century Persian Sufi poem by Attar of Nishapur in which a group of birds embark on a spiritual journey. In Hertmans’ poem the birds are given the famous names “Bash?, Borges, Maimonides,/Dionysus the Areopagite”.
Not only is a there a musical quality to the poetry, poems such as ‘Goldberg Variations’ are about music. In the English version the poet writes of “exalting in the variations/ over the passing years”, the “variations” referring both to the musical variations but also the varying responses a listener may have over the years.
Death is central to many of the poems. One example is ‘Cavafy, 1933’ which begins
He died from writing poems
in which art triumphs over life.
Antony abandoned by his god.
The reference to Cavafy’s famous poem ‘The God Abandons Antony’ emphasises Cavafy’s own powerlessness against the throat cancer that was to kill him in 1933. We are told that “Old texts store up a memory/of youth” but later “he had just set some thoughts aside/to deal with later, if he had the breath”.
Another poem on the subject of mortality is the longer ‘The Last Game’.
Leave-taking is a game
with strict rules;
the first move decides the final one,
though you don’t know that yet.
There is an uneasy and unsettling contrast between the definite statement “the first move decides the final one” and the indefinite not knowing what that final move is.
I highly recommend this collection.. Many of the poems are what Gardner describes as “both transparent and layered” and the unusual connections made within them enable the reader to see things in fresh and stimulating ways.