adult. We find out that Mademoiselle hid her true origins from the boy (and from his family) because of the political tensions leading up to 1939 and to the outbreak of World War II. Mademoiselle claimed to be French and hid her German or Alsatian birth. She presumably gained a French family name through marriage to a soldier who died in the Battle of Verdun in World War I (1914–1918). Mademoiselle could let no one know she was German for fear of losing her job and her employers' trust. This explains the fact that Merrill's own French, learned in imitation of his governess, was always spoken with a slight German accent. The poem includes several secondary narratives that involve the adult Merrill. A scene years later in which a mentalist determines that the contents of a sealed box is a single wooden jigsaw puzzle piece. The discovery of Mademoiselle's hidden history after a chance conversation with Mademoiselle's grown nephew, a United Nations interpreter, who tells him the story of the governess's true origins. The futile search in Athens for Rilke's German translation of Valéry's French poem "Palme." "Palme," which describes the slow growth of a date palm in a desert as an image of nobility of character is referenced repeatedly in "Lost in Translation". External links additional commentary on "Lost in Translation" Denisa Comanescu: "Translation and her Retinue" Leon Nadel: "Replacing the Waste Land: James Merrill's Quest for Transcendent Authority" American poems Narrative poems Poetry by James Merrill 1974 poems Works originally published in The New Yorker Interpreting and translation in fiction