Translating Grief: One Year and Three Months by Luis García Montero

Abstract

As a universal human experience, grief transcends translation. But writing well about grief, like writing about love and sex, requires special skill and subtlety to avoid the maudlin and the banal. Translating grief increases the complexity of the task with cultural and stylistic choices that accurately recreate the expressions of loss. Grief was the trigger for Un año y tres meses (One Year and Three Months), a new collection of poems by Luis García Montero, director of Spain’s Cervantes Institute and one of the Spanishspeaking world’s premier poets, who lost his beloved wife and literary partner, Almudena Grandes, to cancer in November 2021, in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The title refers to the time lapse between her diagnosis and her death. García Montero’s grief in these poems is raw, profound, and palpable. His tremendous poetic skill and stylistic integrity allow the reader to connect with those emotions, but at a remove, to feel them but also perceive them intellectually. This combination makes the verses even more powerful, triggering responses in the reader of: “I get that,” “I’ve felt like that,” “I know exactly what you mean.” It’s as if García Montero has poured his molten pain into a solid poetic mold that is able to hold and connect readers and make them complicit in an understanding of how grief is experienced, and what it means. García Montero translates grief into words. In speaking publicly about this book since its release in September 2022, García Montero frankly acknowledges the pain in his personal life but explains that this volume of poetry, like all of his poetry, deploys a “yo, poético,” not a “yo, biográfico.” This fictionalized autobiography is a hallmark of García Montero’s signature style called the poetry of experience. This effect is best described by the poet himself in his poem called “Espejo, dime” (“Mirror, Speak to Me”) from Rimado de ciudad: “Déjame que responda, lector, a tus preguntas / mirándote a los ojos, con amistad fingida / porque esto es la poesía: dos soledades juntas.” [“Let me answer, dear reader, your questions / looking you in the eye, with feigned friendship / because this is what poetry is: a shared solitude”]. This style also deploys deceptively simple descriptions of day-to-day acts and objects that communicate the richness of the human experience while also challenging the reader with unexpected imagery and comparisons. I have been translating García Montero’s poetry and prose since the early 2000s, beginning with the title poem from his most famous book of love poetry, Completamente viernes (Completely Friday), and including his poetic essays Una forma de resistencia (A Form of Resistance) and his novel Alguien dice tu nombre (Someone Speaks Your Name). His work is a joy to translate because of its consistency and loyalty to his stylistic vision, which crosses generic boundaries. But his excellence in emotive simplicity, the perfect word or image or sound to evoke both the concept and the feeling, is always challenging to replicate in English. The most important thing to realize in translating the poems in One Year and Three Months, is that while fueled by grief and pain, the verses are in fact love poems, an extension of, and closure to, a love story that he began to tell with Completely Friday. The title refers to the couple’s early courtship when she lived in Madrid and he in Granada and they would travel on the weekends to be together, with a nod to Grandes’ novel Te llamaré Viernes (I Will Call You Friday). The poem “Completely Friday” evokes a day vibrant with joy, anticipating the beloved’s arrival by listing the quotidian items in a home that her presence brings to life: dish soap and broom, tidy tables and clean windows. By describing a city that sparkles with life, food and drink, and flowers. By describing a restless body that anticipates her arrival. By fiddling TRANSLATION REVIEW 2023, VOL. 116, NO. 1, 13–15 https://doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2023.2194790