Summer Reads

Abstract

WORLDLIT.ORG 13 It’s not about being literal. I try to be as literal as possible, but what has to be changed has to be changed. I’m not re-creating a different text. Sometimes one can do that with translations, and they become their own animal. I’m rendering the work into English, so it does transform, it does become a new text. But I’m not choosing to change things to fit my own personal view. However, with my own work, I felt freer. And so in a couple of poems or lines here and there, I decided to say something else in French or in English. It was fine because it was my choice to do that. I was only accountable to myself. Williams: I did notice these differences in the texts. As a person who is just beginning in translation myself, I was very curious as to how those choices were made. They mean different things in each language, which seems not the way of the work of translating in general. Cardona: And this is because I preferred it one way in one language and the other way in the other. I felt that I could get away with it because it was my own. But I wouldn’t necessarily do it with someone else’s work. Williams: You’ve done a lot of work as a translator. Would you say you think of yourself more as a translator or as a poet? Or as a poet who translates? Or does it really matter? Cardona: It doesn’t matter. I’m a poet who translates. And an actress as well. They are different hats I wear. If I’m writing poetry, I’m writing poetry; if I’m translating , I’m translating. If I’m performing in a movie or recording voices for a movie, I’m just doing that. They are different aspects of me that get to be expressed at different times, or maybe sometimes at the same time. Williams: As an artist . . . Cardona: Yes, as an artist. When you have more than one interest and don’t specialize in only one from the outset, your path is a bit slower until everything comes together. I’ve spent my life doing all these different things and feel I’m in the best place I’ve ever been. Everything takes time. There are no shortcuts. I’m more at peace with that now. There was also so much financial struggle, having to provide for myself. I’ve spent all these hours that add up to days and years working just to support myself, not necessarily in artistic fields. But those With a wealth of fiction, nonfiction, and verse stacking up in his office, Book Review Editor Rob Vollmar has narrowed his reading ambitions for the summer down to these three worthy titles. Ghareeb Iskander Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems Trans. John Glenday & Ghareeb Iskander Syracuse University Press The 2015 winner of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award, Gilgamesh’s Snake is a haunting meditation on the Epic of Gilgamesh and how its themes of upheaval and a search for meaning continue to resonate some four thousand years later. Fang Qi Elegy of a River Shaman Trans. Norman Harry Rothschild & Meng Fanjun MerwinAsia (University of Hawai‘i Press, distr.) Combining folklore, history, and fiction into one potent bundle in this ambitious novel, Fang Qi traces the slow transformation of a people tied to the Yangzi River that has sustained them for generations. Harry Rothschild and Meng Fanjun have done Englishlanguage readers curious about the deep culture of China an enormous service with their work in translating this challenging but essential novel. George Prochnik Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem Other Press Prochnik finds the perfect intersection of history and innovation in the life of Gershom Scholem, the man responsible for the revival of Kabbalah as a living mystical tradition in the twentieth century. Scholem’s journey begins in pre–World War II Germany, passes through the turbulent birth of the state of Israel, and extends into the present, now thirty years after his...