The Dog and the Fever

First full publication of translation and commentary by famed American modernist

The legendary modernist poet William Carlos Williams described this seventeenth-century book as ＂far more ’modern’ than ever Hemingway or even Gertie ever thought of being＂ and ＂hot as hell besides.＂ Williams translated this Spanish novella, originally published in 1625, with the help of Raquel Hélène Williams, his Puerto Rican mother. Williams recalled that its biting satire targeting the corruption of the court, the church, and society and driven by comic double entendre made them laugh out loud and amused them tremendously as they worked on the translation. In Williams’s hands, the novella becomes a daring modernist experiment with the poetry of prose and the American idiom. This edition includes Williams’s as-yet unpublished running commentary on the narrative, and an illuminating introduction from editor Jonathan Cohen that contextualizes the work in Williams’s canon.

Hardcover is un-jacketed.

PEDRO ESPINOSA (1578-;1650) was a Golden Age Spanish poet and fiction writer whose works include a famed 1605 anthology of contemporary poets called Las flores de poetas ilustres de España (＂Flowers of Spain’s Illustrious Poets＂). WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-;1963) is widely recognized as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century and as an influential founder of literary modernism. In addition to poetry, he authored works of fiction, criticism, drama, and translation. Among his most celebrated books are Spring and All, In the American Grain, Paterson, and Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems for which he posthumously received the Pulitzer Prize. All told, Williams published some twenty books of poetry as well as seventeen books of prose. JONATHAN COHEN is an award-winning translator of Latin American poetry and scholar of inter-American literature. He is the compiler and editor of William Carlos Williams’s By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, 1916-;1959 and editor of the centennial edition of his Al Que Quiere!, both published by New Directions.