Excerpt:
Telling
stories
It´s not easy being successful. Not only is Javier Marías a bestselling author here in Spain, he is also one of the very select band of contemporary Spanish authors whose work appears and sells well in English translation too: All Souls, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, A Heart So White and When I Was Mortal are available from all good bookshops.
But herein lies the problem. Some critics in Spain have described him as an ´English writer in translation´ in what I take to be a kind of slur on his Spanishness. Does he take this as an insult?
"It was meant entirely as an insult and came not only from critics but also from fellow writers. I could never take it as such, though, because one of the most admirable things a writer can achieve is to incorporate the general wealth of other languages into his own. But I do mean "into his own", not awkwardly, in a mere transposition of terms or through unnatural syntax. Rather an assimilation of things which theoretically do not exist in your language though they may become part of it after your work. In fact, that is probably the way literature has developed everywhere ever since Homer...
"It´s actually "castiza" literature which ages the most rapidly. And in Spain there is still an official admiration, not a real liking on the part of readers, for the stiff, old-fashioned writing we have endured for too long"....
[Ah,another "writer in translation!" As I previously quoted about Primo Levi on 'translation' and life:
An author who is confronted by one of his own pages translated into a language he knows, feels in turns - or at one and the same time - flattered, betrayed, ennobled, x-rayed, castrated, planed down, violated, embellished, killed. One rarely remains indifferent to a translator, known or unknown who has poked his nose and his fingers into your viscera; you would willingly send him, by turns or at the same time, your heart - suitably wrapped - a cheque, a crown of laurel or one's seconds.' He said that the main danger lay in the words the translator thought he knew. [On Primo Levi and his translating of Kafka…]
Your Face Tomorrow: Shadow, and Farewell, Javier Marías...has startled me into continuing the 'path' of exploring, which is all I feebly can do, the 'take over' [I keep looking for the right word!] in these 'dimensions of alienation.']
No comments:
Post a Comment