Two Voices: Events from the Center for the Art of Translation

Prompted by the forthcoming publication of Italo Calvino and rsquo;s Letters 1941-1985, hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito embark on a discussion of literary lives and letters. They touch upon the marvelous correspondences of Thomas Bernhard and William Gaddis, and look forward to the lectures collected in Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature. Reiner Stach and rsquo;s Kafka: The Years of Insight, technically the final volume in a biographical trilogy, represents a welcome addition to English-language Kafka scholarship. Curzio Malaparte and rsquo;s The Skin, a grotesque and haunting semi-autobiographical tale of the Second World War, returns after many years out of print. The introduction closes with a plea from the hosts to Anglophone publishers not to ignore biographies produced elsewhere: Michel Winock and rsquo;s Flaubert and Madame de Staël, among many others, they argue, deserve a broader readership. Daniel Medin is then joined by Esther Kinsky, a poet and translator from Polish, Russian, and English into German. Her speciality is Polish literature from the First World War to the 1960 and rsquo;s, and she offers wonderful introductions to some of her favorite writers of that period, including Zygmunt Haupt, who lived in the United States and continued to write in Polish even though his own children did not speak the language, Wies and #322;aw My and #347;liwski, whose Stone Upon Stone recently appeared in English, and Joanna Bator, whose poetic works Kinsky is currently translating.

Mikhail Shishkin, the only Russian writer ever to win all three of his country's major book awards, joined Two Voices for his first ever U.S. appearance to discuss his novel Maidenhair. Widely praised from London to Paris to Berlin, Maidenhair finally reached the United States in 2012 by way of Open Letter Books. In this event Shishkin was joined by his translator, Marian Schwartz, for a wide-ranging conversation with the Center's Scott Esposito. They began by discussing the Russian critical response to Maidenhair (with one critic vowing to eat his underwear in public if the book sold more than 50,000 copies - ;it did) before talking about Shishkin's relationship with his home country, the benefit of his years living in Switzerland, and why he claims he "hates" the Russian language.

At the beginning of this episode, Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito are happy, along with the rest of the Anglosphere, to be rediscovering Nikolai Leskov and rsquo;s The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories, newly translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They also look forward to a recent success from the Netherlands that and rsquo;s been making waves abroad, Arnon Grunberg and rsquo;s Tirza, and take an anecdote-filled trip through modernity in Roberto Calasso and rsquo;s La Folie Baudelaire. They continue to be impressed by Karl Ove Knausgaard and rsquo;s My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love, the second volume in a hugely ambitious series that describes (albeit amid a number of digressions) how the author fell in love with his wife. Scott Esposito then sits down with Ethan Nosowsky, a former Editor-at-Large at Graywolf Press who has recently been named Editorial Director at McSweeney and rsquo;s. Nosowsky discusses his early career and several of his experiences with editing translations at Graywolf, most notably with regard to Daniel Sada and rsquo;s Almost Never.

Hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito return in the new year enthralled by the and ldquo;absolutely insane and rdquo; game of literary telephone in the latest issue of McSweeney and rsquo;s, in which texts are translated in and out of English and by, among others, J.M. Coetzee, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Lydia Davis. They look forward to games of a slightly different nature in several forthcoming Oulipian works: the 65th anniversary edition of Raymond Queneau and rsquo;s Exercises in Style; Georges Perec and rsquo;s La Boutique Obscure, the dream journal that inspired much of his fiction; and Scott Esposito and rsquo;s own The End of Oulipo?, a critical examination of the movement co-written with Lauren Elkin. Pierre Michon and rsquo;s The Eleven promises to be one of the author and rsquo;s best since his widely-respected Small Lives; Yasutaka Tsutsui and rsquo;s Paprika is story of clinical dream-invaders from one of Japan and rsquo;s premier science fiction writers. Daniel Medin also announces the launch of the eighteenth volume in The Cahiers Series, Elfriede Jelinek and rsquo;s Her Not All Her, next month at the Goethe-Institut in Paris. Daniel Medin then interviews Nick Barley, the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the largest and perhaps best-known literary festival in the world. He gives a lively account of Edinburgh and rsquo;s literary heritage and the influence it still exerts on the atmosphere of the festival, and testifies to the continuing importance of such festivals for both authors and readers.

Aron Aji began his presentation on Bilge Karasu's A Long Day's Evening with a substantial statement: he called Karasu's project as an author both an attempt to develop a new Turkish literary language and an attempt to develop a readership for this language. However large a claim this was, by the end of this event Aji had borne it out. Aji noted that in order to even begin translating Long Day's Evening, which he said took him 6 years to complete, he had to first immerse himself in Karasu's work, translating two of his other novels, The Garden of the Departed Cats and Death in Troy. To give some idea of the complexity of the task of translating Karasu, Aji stated that for the graet Turkish author "literature is the memory of language." He went on to reinforce the great importance of A Long Day's Evening to Turkish literature . . .

Scott Esposito speaks to Stephen Henighan, a novelist, critic, and translator from Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. Since 2006, Henighan has been general editor for the International Translation Series at the Canadian-based press Biblioasis. He talks about immigrant experiences in Canada and his own and ldquo;deeply-rooted rootlessness, and rdquo; the Canadian relationship to English and translation, and the challenges of procuring and producing translations for the Canadian market. He discusses Mia Couto and rsquo;s and ldquo;rural modernism, and rdquo; his literary influences, and why the author travels well, despite being essentially and ldquo;untranslatable. and rdquo; Finally, Henighan tells the comical and haphazard story of how he came to learn Romanian, and describes the process of translating and trying to publish Mihail Sebastian and rsquo;s The Accident.

In this audio, lauded translator Bill Johnston talks about his translation of Stone Upon Stone by Wieslaw Mysliwski, which received both the 2012 PEN Translation Award and the 2012 Best Translated Book Award. As Johnston mentions in the question-and-answer session at the end of this audio recording, it was a dream project for him, a book he had long wanted to translate and finally got the opportunity to do, once he found a publisher "crazy enough" to take a risk on it.For his own part, Johnston called it one of the greatest novels to come out of Europe in the past century.

In this episode, Daniel Medin and Scott Eposito revisit Robert Walser and rsquo;s Microscripts in its new illustrated paperback edition, and look forward to another take on that author and rsquo;s work, the strange and musical and ldquo;monologue for multiple voices and rdquo; that is Elfriede Jelinek and rsquo;s Her Not All Her: On/With Robert Walser. They discuss the reconstructed romances in Jacqueline Raoul-Duval and rsquo;s Kafka In Love and the well-earned praise for Stig Sæterbakken and rsquo;s Self-Control. They hope that Dalkey Archive Press and rsquo; Arvo Pärt in Conversation will bring about a resurgence in the genre of conversations, and tip their hats to Seagull Books for publishing two works by the 2012 Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, Change and the forthcoming Pow! Daniel Medin then speaks to two booksellers in Paris about introducing and promoting literature in translation, challenges to bookselling in the age of Amazon, and the idea of the bookshop as community center.

In this audio, the Center welcomes translators and poets Mary Jo Bang and Graham Foust to read from their latest projects. Foust began by reading from his translations of Ernst Meister, a 20th century German philosopher (co-translated with Samuel Frederick). Meister and rsquo;s poems, Foust notes in the introduction to the book are like Emily Dickinson and rsquo;s in that they and ldquo;at once entice and irritate the mouth and the mind. and rdquo; Translator and poet Mary Jo Bang then took the stage to discuss the genesis of her new translation of The Inferno: she read a poem that consisted of 47 previous translations of three lines from Dante. She began to think about how she would translate the lines, which led her to ponder the idea of what a full translation of Dante would look like. Bang than read her rendition of the famous meeting scene between Dante and the poet Virgil, moving on to Dante's account of how he left limbo.

Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito return to the second season of That Other Word energized by the translators and rsquo; duels at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the great work being done at the UK-based press And Other Stories. They look forward to new works in translation this fall, including Antonio Tabucci and rsquo;s The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico, Basque author and Edinburgh guest Bernardo Atxaga and rsquo;s Seven Hours in France, and the latest from César Aira, The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira. Daniel Medin hopes that several novels generating interest in Germany and France - ; Jenny Erpenbeck and rsquo;s Aller Tage Abend, Clemens J. Setz and rsquo;s Indigo, and Jean Echenoz and rsquo;s 14 - ; will soon be translated as well. Afterward, Scott Esposito sits down with Margaret Jull Costa, a distinguished translator from Spanish and Portuguese who has brought Javier Marías, José Saramago, and Eça de Queiroz into English.

On August 13, Margaret Jull Costa joined the Center to discuss her work with some of the greatest authors to emerge from Spain and Portugal in the 20th century. Translator of Javier Marias, Antonio Lobo Antunes, and Nobel laureate Jose Saramago, among many others, Costa gave an insightful overview of Saramago's long career while discussing his perculiar, beautiful, and wholly original prose style. Costa began her presentation by giving some idea of Saramago's context as a writer, developing a sense of his literary roots.

This episode and rsquo;s opening conversation celebrates literature from Eastern Europe: Daniel Medin, speaking from Book Expo America in New York City, is impressed with Mikhail Shishkin and rsquo;s forthcoming novel Maidenhair, and Scott Esposito loves Marek Bie and #324;czyk and rsquo;s genre-bending Transparency. They hope that Julius Margolin and rsquo;s memoir from the Gulag, Voyage au pays des Ze-Ka will make its way into English soon, and in the meantime they enjoy the biting humor of Éric Chevillard and rsquo;s Prehistoric Times and Demolishing Nisard. Finally, Contemporary Georgian Fiction, the latest in Dalkey Archive Press and rsquo; series of regional anthologies, provides a welcome introduction to writing from an often-overlooked country. Daniel Medin then speaks to Antoine Jaccottet, who founded the Paris-based press Le Bruit du Temps in 2008 and has since brought out an admirable collection of works in translation, collected works, memoirs, poetry, and philosophy.

This Two Voices audio brings you a panel on the unique role fairy tales play in international literature. Acclaimed writer Kate Bernheimer, widely praised poet Ilya Kaminsky, and folklore and mythology expert Maria Tatar discuss the tales and rsquo; role in literature, and how they function in translation. It begins, of course, with a reading of a fairy tale. Tatar introduces the tale as the French and ldquo;Story of the Grandmother, and rdquo; though any audience would immediately recognize it as one we know by the name of its protagonist, Little Red Riding Hood. Brief though it is, this version includes every detail American audiences know about the tale while still being remarkably unsettling; each familiar line is presented with an eerily sexual undertone, the threat seeming that much more dire. In the story and rsquo;s conclusion, Little Red becomes a trickster herself . . .

In this audio from the Center for the Art of Translation's Two Voices events series we present four deliciously dark fairy tales. Author Kate Bernheimer is joined by fairy tale expert Maria Tatar and poet/translator Ilya Kaminsky. Plus, the Center's own Managing Editor and Literary Programs Manager CJ Evans shares a fairy tale that was much too dark for his infant daughter.

In this rather German conversation, Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito discuss the melancholy and pleasure in the most recent collection of W.G. Sebald and rsquo;s poetry to appear in English, Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1964-2001. History is a found object in Sebald, and also in December, a wintry advent calendar of thirty-nine short stories by Alexander Kluge and thirty-nine photographs by Gerhard Richter. Robert Walser and rsquo;s The Walk may induce laughing out loud at the wilderness, and the thirtieth anniversary of Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop and rsquo;s Autonauts of the Cosmoroute should inspire some very leisurely drives from Paris to Marseilles. In the second half of the episode, Scott Esposito interviews Benjamin Moser, author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector. Moser has recently re-translated Lispector and rsquo;s last novel, The Hour of the Star, and is currently editing a series of four of her earlier works for New Directions (Near to the Wild Heart, A Breath of Life, Agua Viva, and The Passion According to G.H.).