SOURCE: Moldaw, Carol. Review of If Not, Winter, translated by Anne Carson. Antioch Review 61, no. 2 (spring 2003): 374.

In the following review, Moldaw praises Carson's translations in If Not, Winter, arguing that Carson succeeds in “giving us a Sappho whose voice dazzles like an iceskater's blade.”

Without knowing the original language in which a poem is written, one can judge a translation of it only against other translations and against one's sense—formed by hearsay, by intuition, by default—of how the poet should sound. A poet's voice is like a fingerprint, and the ability of voice to maintain its individuality in translation, as the layers of its language are peeled away, is a mystery, a miracle. Enacting that miracle, Carson's new translation of Sappho [If Not, Winter] must be considered the definitive edition of Sappho for our age, both in its inclusive breadth and the spare beauty of its...