Simply stated, Dreams of Waking has much to offer. The volume contains a compilation of verses by poets of the Iberian Peninsula, from the Marqués de Santillana (b. 1398) to Francesc Fontanella (d. ca. 1682), with additional poems by three New World writers (Gregório de Matos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Juan del Valle y Caviedes) who died in the last years of the seventeenth century. The juxtaposition itself is commendable, and the reader may note the progression and continuity of poetic structures and the interplay of topics, motifs, and forms of expression.

The twenty-page introduction covers a range of elements, with emphasis on what may be termed the dialectical itinerary of poetry in the Iberian Peninsula. The authors point out that the literary output, while highly metapoetic, never loses touch with quotidian reality. Poets are, of course, citizens, and life quite literally intrudes upon art. The fascinating personal histories of the poets are often bound to military service, to imperial policies, and to economic survival. The introduction emphasizes the importance of interrelations among poets, as, for example, the Baroque stylist Francisco de Quevedo’s debt to his Portuguese predecessor Luís Vaz de Camões. The rhetoric and the politics of poetry are everywhere on display: in debates regarding composition in Catalan, the mixed allegiances of Portuguese artists who wrote in Castilian during the period in which Portugal was ruled by the Spanish Habsburgs (1580 to 1640), the consequences of censorship under the Inquisition, and so forth. In addition to providing information on types of verses, the syllable count, and distinctions among Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese linguistic and poetic conventions, the opening section addresses questions of how texts are preserved and edited, and how theorists and practitioners have commented on the art and craft of translation. Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” (Illuminations) is perhaps the most prominent of the acknowledged guides.

The anthology is divided into three sections, arranged chronologically and titled “Janus,” “Venus,” and “Bacchus.” One might propose the labels of Renaissance, mannerist, and Baroque, as well. The text includes the original poems with translations on facing pages. The selections encompass thirty-four individual poets (including four women) and one group designated as aljamiado, reflecting the Arabic script used by Moriscos, converts from the Muslim faith. With respect to the choice of poems, the authors generally have picked some of the best known and most representative and polished works of a given poet, together with others that seem to reflect more random choices. Italian-influenced poems alternate with more traditionally Spanish verse forms, such as the eight-syllable romance.

The translations are faithfully rendered and readily comprehensible. Nothing about them suggests an attempt to intrude unnecessarily on the primary texts. It is exceptionally difficult for a translator to capture the meaning, the spirit, and the linguistic essence of poetry. To say that something always is lost in translation, then, is by no means a negative critique. The effort here is successful because of the care, evident throughout, taken by the translators to maintain a direct route from the original poems to their refashioning. The English versions have a clean and solid feel. The reader will probably be unable to sense, in full measure, the nuances of the rhetorical and conceptual overload (culteranismo and conceptisimo) associated, respectively, with Luis de Góngora and Quevedo. Baroque excess separates these poets from their precursors, but it is challenging (and problematic) to try to build wordplay and inscrutability into translations, even when the poet appears to be willing to sacrifice clarity and easy access.

The introductions to the poets are concise and valuable, and they are complemented by notes, a substantial bibliography, and an index of first lines. One may quibble over details — after all, everyone is a critic, and, to an extent, every critic is a translator — but, on the whole, the results are praiseworthy, and more so in this instance because of the impressive breadth and compactness of the presentation. Those familiar with early modern peninsular poetry should enjoy scrutinizing the translations of long-admired poetic treasures and finding pleasant surprises — among them, in my case, the selections by Luisa Sigea de Velasco, Francesc Vicenç Garcia i Torres, and Francisco Rodrigues Lobo.