Pub Date : 2023-12-22DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2024.a916067
Will H. Corral
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Pub Date : 2023-12-01Epub Date: 2022-03-24DOI: 10.1097/WNO.0000000000001585
Ryung Lee, Peter Mortensen, Subahari Raviskanthan, Saeed Sadrameli, Nagham Al-Zubidi, Andrew G Lee
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910276
Anna Learn
Reviewed by: Tali Girls: A Novel of Afghanistan by Siamak Herawi Anna Learn Siamak Herawi Tali Girls: A Novel of Afghanistan Trans. Sara Khalili. New York. Archipelago Books. 2023. 340 pages. TALI GIRLS, Afghan author Siamak Herawi's first novel to be translated into English (melodically, by Sara Khalili), is a propulsive and sprawling debut. At the heart of Tali Girls is Kowsar. When the novel opens, Kowsar is a child, and her world is enchanted. Her family's house in the Afghan village of Tali rests on one side of a valley, next to a riverbank. "Our valley is green and lush," Kowsar says, "drunk with springs, waterfalls, and streams that intricately weave their way to where they meet and create a roaring mountain river." At night, the moon showers this river in its "creamy glow," while frogs and crickets sing, and "poplars' leaves sway like dangling earrings." Outsiders from the nearby provincial capital of Qala-e-Naw call Tali "heaven," imagining that modernity's sullying fingers have yet to touch the valley. It is shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan, and there is no electricity, television, or education for the children in Tali. But then, in 2006, the government sends funds to build a school in the mountainous community, which is to change the course of Kowsar's life. It is immediately apparent that Kowsar is a prodigy. She has a photographic memory and is elated by the process of learning. Hungry for knowledge of the world around her, she memorizes entire textbooks in mere weeks and can recite the poetry of Hanzalah Badghisi after hearing the local poet's verses just once. Kowsar is unique in other, more grim ways, too. She suffers from convulsive syncope, moments when she goes out of her body or loses consciousness due to overwhelming emotion. To herself, Kowsar thinks of this as "going gray," a time when her world drains of color. Indeed, there are many dark moments in Tali Girls. As Kowsar grows older, the town around her begins to change; heaven turns to hell. The Taliban arrive in the area and burn the school to the ground. The liberal schoolteachers are publicly humiliated for "corrupting and perverting children"—that is, for teaching them to read. The Taliban (partnering strategically with the provincial government) strongarm the people of Tali into replacing their traditional crops of wheat, peas, and mung beans with the more profitable cash crop of opium. Soon, many young men in the community become addicted to the drug, their speech slowed and their once-muscular bodies turned frail. Kowsar is saddened to see them and thinks to herself that the village youth are like "black skeletons in the hands of the wind, the poppy farms soon to be their graveyard." Suffering is particularly acute for the women and girls of Tali. One of Kowsar's friends, the beautiful Simin, is married off at nine years old to a lecherous older man to save her family from destitution (I hate this fetid silo of filth, Simin thinks to herself of her new
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910252
Lauren K. Watel
Ruins Lauren K. Watel (bio) "Ruins give us this beautiful idea," writes the author, "that you could make something, something wonderful and strange, as pleasing as you could, imbuing it with something of yourself." Yet even the self, subject to time, must evanesce. Click for larger view View full resolution Photos courtesy of the author [End Page 20] I Today the wind churns up, as if on some terrible errand of vengeance; trees uprooted all over the city, parks closed for damage assessment. But I'm out in the weather, on a day trip to a site that was once an ancient port city at the mouth of the river, where women had their ecstatic visions, where pirates kidnapped senators, where residents and visitors thronged the theater and the public baths. The port city now mostly foundations and rubble, arrayed in the rough shapes of houses and apartments and shops and baths and temples, columns jutting up now and then like the first weeds growing back after a fire. Acres of ruins sit exposed to the elements, cragging and crumbling even further into ruin. I roam among the cypresses and umbrella pines and the ancient, weathered stones, placed there by the wealthy and the ambitious for purposes, noble and ignoble, that have always moved men to build things, and still do. Here a headless statue, there fragments of frescoes—one depicting a pair of human legs, painted in the faded pastels of time passing. Marvelous mosaics appear underfoot, naked men posed in warlike stances and holding spears, horses with the hindquarters of a serpent, fanciful fish, leafy patterns. In moments like this, when coming upon a fragment of a fresco with a pair of legs, legs not unlike my own, I feel a sense of astonished recognition, though of what, or whom, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just the dumb luck of those legs having survived. And the tenaciousness of art, which is moving in part because utterly useless—against time, against loss. Moving also because nonetheless hopeful, a recognition of our shared humanity, our shared mortality. Those ancient legs, which seem capable of stepping off that chunk of wall, so alive do they seem. Each discovery miraculous, these ancient hints of human making, the impulse to beautify, to decorate, to tell stories. We are gifted with it, compelled by it, this impulse, and we feel that kinship of makers, which easily stretches its arm across centuries and oceans, and in that stretching allows us an acquaintance, as if we were standing across from each other and shaking hands. We need know nothing about the artist's particulars—those details denied us by the erasures of time, even if we sought them—to feel the thrill of connection. We need know nothing at all, not even the artist's name. The ruins give us this beautiful idea: that you could make something, something wonderful and strange, as pleasing as you could, imbuing it with something of yourself. And if you managed to send it out into the world and it managed to last, even as a ruin, it could spe
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910248
Veronica Esposito
Schlemiel & Schlimazel Veronica Esposito (bio) Coming into existence sometime in the Middle Ages, as the Jewish communities throughout Europe grappled with continual dislocation and mistreatment by the dominant culture, the notion of the schlemiel was destined for a long and interesting literary life—continuing to this day. In order to offer its translation, I will need to pair it with the Yiddish word schlimazel, as these words often go together; their most succinct English translation is commonly stated as follows: a schlemiel is somebody who tends to spill his soup, and a schlimazel is the person it lands on. Both words begin with sch, which is common in Yiddish, often indicating derision; English speakers will recognize it from the from oft-used formation such as "problems schmoblems—I'll show you real problems," or the word schmuck. Schlimazel derives from the Yiddish phrase schlim mazel, which means "rotten luck" (the mazel of course coming from the celebratory Hebrew toast mazel tov). The derivation of schlemiel is less clear, although there is agreement that the word was popularized by Adelbert von Chamisso's 1813 novella Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl), which stars one Peter Schlemihl, who makes a deal with the devil and ends up losing his shadow. Yiddish literature scholar Ruth R. Wisse locates the schlemiel, schlimazel, and associated types as emerging from the figure of the Jewish fool, which developed in the Middle Ages as a way of mediating the encounters of Jewish people with dominant European cultures. She goes on to conjecture that the figures of the schlemiel, schlimazel, and others were likely valuable to a people living a precarious existence, without a land to call home, and subject to frequent persecution. Yiddish is believed to have originated around the tenth century, as Jewish speakers of Romance languages who were conversant in Hebrew or Aramaic for religious purposes arrived in the Rhine Valley, interacting with other Jewish people who spoke German. From this mixture of languages and culture the Yiddish language was born. Utilizing Hebrew script, the first written Yiddish is typically dated to 1272, with a blessing that someone jotted in a Hebrew prayer book. Yiddish began to develop its own literary works around the fourteenth century, and by the late nineteenth century it had emerged as a major language among Jewish people in eastern Europe, seen as a force that could hold the community together, be a source of shared cultural heritage, and help resist assimilation. It was at this point that the language began to develop a collection of writers and intellectuals working in it; the language remains a relative outlier in the sense that it has developed a rich literature in spite of not being a national language. In the early twentieth century, as Yiddish peaked in cultural significance, the number of Yiddish speakers also peaked, numbering around eleven million. That num
在中世纪的某个时候，整个欧洲的犹太社区都在与主流文化的持续错位和虐待作斗争，Schlemiel的概念注定了一个漫长而有趣的文学生活——一直持续到今天。为了提供它的翻译，我需要将它与意第绪语单词schlimazel配对，因为这些单词经常一起出现;他们最简洁的英文翻译通常是这样的:schlemiel是一个容易把汤洒出来的人，schlimazel是被汤洒到的人。这两个词都以sch开头，这在意第绪语中很常见，通常表示嘲笑;说英语的人会从经常使用的形式中认出它，比如“problem schmoblems-I 'll show you real problems”，或者“schmuck”这个词。Schlimazel源自意第绪语短语schlim mazel，意思是“倒霉的运气”(mazel当然来自庆祝的希伯来土司mazel tov)。schlemiel的来历不太清楚，不过大家一致认为，这个词是由阿德尔伯特·冯·查米索1813年的中篇小说《彼得·施莱米尔的奇妙历史》(Peter Schlemihl The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl)普及起来的，书中彼得·施莱米尔(Peter Schlemihl)与魔鬼做了一笔交易，最终失去了他的影子。意第绪文学学者Ruth R. Wisse认为schlemiel, schlimazel和相关类型是从犹太傻瓜的形象中出现的，这种形象在中世纪发展起来，是犹太人与欧洲主流文化相遇的一种调解方式。她继续推测，施莱米埃尔、施莱玛泽尔和其他人的形象可能对一个生活不稳定、没有家园、经常受到迫害的民族很有价值。意第绪语被认为起源于10世纪左右，当时说罗曼语的犹太人出于宗教目的精通希伯来语或阿拉姆语，他们来到莱茵河流域，与其他说德语的犹太人交流。在这种语言和文化的混合中，意第绪语诞生了。利用希伯来文字，第一个写出来的意第绪语通常可以追溯到1272年，有人在希伯来祈祷书中草草写下了祝福。意第绪语在14世纪左右开始发展自己的文学作品，到19世纪后期，它已经成为东欧犹太人的主要语言，被视为一种可以将社区团结在一起的力量，是共享文化遗产的来源，并有助于抵抗同化。正是在这个时候，一群作家和知识分子开始用这种语言工作;从某种意义上说，这种语言仍然是一个相对的异类，尽管它不是一种民族语言，但它已经发展了丰富的文学。20世纪初，意第绪语在文化上的重要性达到顶峰，说意第绪语的人数也达到顶峰，大约有1100万人。在大屠杀期间，这个数字急剧下降，在第二次世界大战后的几十年里，意第绪语继续下降。如今，该语言约有50万人使用，根据联合国教科文组织的《世界濒危语言地图集》，这一数字低到足以被视为“脆弱”语言。也许意第语文学中最著名的施勒米尔角色的创造者是肖勒姆·阿莱契姆(他笔下的奶牛场老板特维后来因《屋顶上的提琴手》的灵感而名声大噪)。阿莱奇姆被称为意第绪文学中的马克·吐温，他在自己的角色梅纳赫姆·孟德尔身上体现了这种schlemiel，他通过1892年至1913年写的故事发展了这个角色。阿莱契姆笔下的孟德尔是意第绪文学的典型人物:一个贫穷、不幸的人，他致富的计划不断失败。意第绪书中心将孟德尔描述为“总是在寻找生计，而不是在可以找到生计的地方寻找生计。”他那恼怒的妻子没能使他冷静下来。”尽管施莱米尔的无能，但这个角色有一种力量，一种坚持，一种必胜的信念，许多人注意到，正是这种力量让孟德尔变得重要，把他从一个失败者变成了一个英雄。阿莱奇姆于1916年在布朗克斯去世，在那里……
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910277
J. R. Patterson
Reviewed by: Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia J. R. Patterson ANA PAULA MAIA Of Cattle and Men Trans. Zoë Perry. Edinburgh. Charco Press. 2023. 104 pages. OF CATTLE AND MEN is an excellent book of many dark, quiet questions. What does death mean to men who work in a slaughterhouse, who manually dispatch one hundred heifers and steers a day, six days a week? Their hands and face are accustomed to the feel of blood, their noses to its ferrous smell. As soon as one beast is dispatched, another appears. From beast to meat, over and over again. Ana Paula Maia's is a world where meat reigns supreme, where prostitutes are paid with it by the kilo, where so much blood flows into the rivers they turn salty. "In those places where blood mixes with soil and water, it's difficult to make any sort of distinction between man and animal." The murder of a man is casually overlooked. Why not? If he is replaceable, just one of the herd, what loss was it really? Prey and pray is the juxtaposition that Maia posits. If meat-eating is natural, then the argument is atheistic: why shouldn't we eat meat, made as we are for such a diet, with our pointed teeth and predator-like cunning? However, if the meat we eat is sacrificial, a choice of believing we should do so, our attitude toward the animals we slaughter is more agnostic than devout; we skip grace and go straight for the feast. Edgar Wilson, the central character, is a sensitive soul who "cares about ordaining the souls of each ruminant that crosses his path." He prays for the salvation of the souls of the cattle he slays. The lime cross he draws on their foreheads evokes baptism, repentance, death-bed conversion. It also marks the location where he drives his killing mallet home. A believer, he feels there will be no salvation, that his violent work will keep him from heaven. For him, "there will be no dawn, nor the emergence of the Creator. . . . He's not proud of what he does, but if someone has to do it, then let it be him, who has pity on those irrational beasts." Eating meat carries an element of the Catholic sacrament; the blood and body of a sacrifice eaten to become one with the greater whole. An abandoned slaughterhouse is a defiled church, raided and sacked. A broken statue of São Roque, the Catholic saint invoked to protect against diseases afflicting cattle and dogs, alludes to some broken pact with, if not a higher power, then our better nature. Nature, in this sense, covers two contrasting things: the way we choose to act, and the way we are naturally bound to act. Technology, urbanization, and consideration of animal rights have drastically altered our relationship with animals. Whether that has been a good change is indeterminate, but it has caused our desires to become unaligned with our needs. How much of our animal selves (our animal desires) can we retain and remain human? If you crave the taste of meat, are you truly opposed to murder? We are a reflection of our actions as a society as much
书评:《牛与人》作者:安娜·葆拉·迈亚j·r·帕特森安娜·葆拉·迈亚《牛与人》佐伊佩里。爱丁堡。Charco出版社，2023。104页。《牛与人》是一本优秀的书，提出了许多阴暗而安静的问题。对于那些在屠宰场工作的人来说，死亡意味着什么?他们每周工作6天，每天手工宰杀100头小母牛和阉牛。他们的手和脸习惯了血的感觉，他们的鼻子习惯了铁的气味。一只野兽刚被打发，另一只就出现了。从野兽到肉，一遍又一遍。Ana Paula Maia的世界里，肉是至高无上的，妓女的报酬是按公斤计算的，大量的血液流入河流，河水变咸了。“在那些血液与土壤和水混合的地方，很难区分人和动物。”谋杀一名男子的案件被随意忽视了。为什么不呢?如果他是可替代的，只是羊群中的一员，那又有什么损失呢?捕食和祈祷是Maia假设的并置。如果吃肉是自然的，那么这个论点就是无神论的:为什么我们不应该吃肉，因为我们是为了这样的饮食而生的，我们的尖牙和捕食者一样的狡猾?然而，如果我们吃的肉是祭品，选择相信我们应该这样做，我们对待我们屠杀的动物的态度与其说是虔诚，不如说是不可知论;我们不做祷告，直接去参加宴会。主人公埃德加·威尔逊(Edgar Wilson)是一个敏感的人，他“关心每一个遇到他的反刍动物的灵魂”。他为他宰杀的牛的灵魂得救而祈祷。他画在他们额头上的石灰十字架唤起了洗礼、忏悔和临终前的皈依。这也标志着他把杀人锤开回家的地方。一个信徒，他觉得没有救赎，他的暴力行为会使他远离天堂。对他来说，“不会有黎明，也不会有造物主的出现. . . .他对自己的所作所为并不感到自豪，但如果必须有人做这件事，那就由他来做吧，因为他同情那些失去理智的野兽。”吃肉是天主教圣礼的一个元素;吃祭品的血和身体，使之与更大的整体合而为一。一个废弃的屠宰场就像一个被玷污的教堂，被洗劫一空。天主教圣人罗克(o Roque)的雕像被打碎了，他被用来保护牛和狗免受疾病的折磨。雕像暗示着，如果不是与更高的力量，那就是与我们更善良的本性的某种契约被破坏了。从这个意义上说，自然涵盖了两种截然不同的东西:我们选择的行为方式，以及我们自然注定要采取的行为方式。科技、城市化和对动物权利的考虑已经彻底改变了我们与动物的关系。这是否是一个好的改变是不确定的，但它已经导致我们的欲望变得与我们的需求不一致。我们能保留多少我们的动物自我(我们的动物欲望)并保持人性?如果你渴望肉的味道，你真的反对谋杀吗?我们不仅是个人，也是社会行为的反映。我们也许不会夺走人的生命，但当涉及到动物时，只要还有其他人来进行杀戮，我们就会很高兴地让它继续下去。威尔逊的任务是每周杀死600条生命，他在那些被他击晕的野兽“深不可测”的眼睛里看到了自己的影子。当一个人死于自己的装置时，他的形象就消失了。“食物是吸引动物的东西，”玛雅写道，“是食物让它们变得温顺。”除了我们所要求和谴责的流血事件之外，她还很优雅。最后一点:对许多人来说，牛很难被解读，但它们是可以观察到的。我生活在他们周围，也生活在牧牛人周围，这让我对这样的说法保持警惕:“每一头牛都在北方吃草，因为它们能感受到地球的磁力。很少有人知道这背后的原因，但是每天和牛一起工作的人……
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910266
Karlos K. Hill
Prophetic Witness in the American EmpireA Conversation with Cornel West Karlos K. Hill (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Stacey Reynolds In his ongoing column, Karlos K. Hill highlights the efforts of cultural figures doing works of essential good around issues of social justice. Cornel West, who recently retired from Princeton University as the Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies, visited the University of Oklahoma in August 2023. He was on campus to take part in OU's Presidential Speaker Series in a point/counterpoint discussion, "Saving America: Conflicting Views in Civil Dialogue," with his Princeton colleague Robert P. George. Dr. West graciously sat down with me before that conversation to take part in the following exchange for World Literature Today. [End Page 49] Karlos K. Hill: Brother West, I've been wanting to tell you that the title of my "Bearing Witness" column comes directly from you. It's inspired by you. Cornel West: That's fascinating. Hill: Of all my framings, I use bearing witness the most because I've heard you talk about it the most: we've got to bear witness to injustice. So, this column in World Literature Today is definitely inspired by you. And I've made bearing witness, because of you, the cornerstone of how I organize my academic life. It's not just about teaching, it's about bearing witness. You know, there's a profound difference between teaching and bearing witness as you teach. I've learned to center that—not only the scholarship but just being in the world—because you centered it as a Black studies scholar, very publicly and unabashedly. This column is really an homage to you. I just want you to know that. Click for larger view View full resolution Photo courtesy of AAE Speakers. West: That's beautiful. I appreciate that, brother, I really do. I'm touched by it, man, because we're all cracked vessels, you know? We are trying to do the best that we can do. Bearing witness is all about trying to be true to the best that's been poured into us by those who came before, who set such high standards, and we all fall short. Samuel Beckett is right: you try again, fail again, fail better, in that beautiful line in his last prose fiction. And yet, even in failing better, we are able to at least be forces for good, in John Coltrane's language. That's really what it's all about. Whatever the context is—it could be in the classroom, could be in the street, could be in the cell, could be in the suite; it could be in the church, the mosque, the synagogue; it could be on the corner, could be in the nightclub—we all can bear witness. Now, of course, it's also biblical, which is to say it's about kenosis, you see? It's about emptying yourself. It's about resisting the compartmentalization and the specialization that goes with professionalization. When you professionalize, you undergo a certain kind of process and set of protocols where you can become a master and th
美国帝国的先知见证与康奈尔·韦斯特的对话卡洛斯·k·希尔(传记)点击查看大图查看全分辨率斯泰西·雷诺兹照片在他正在进行的专栏中，卡洛斯·k·希尔强调了文化人物在社会正义问题上所做的重要工作。康奈尔·韦斯特(cornell West)最近从普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)退休，担任1943届非裔美国人研究中心(Center for African American Studies)的大学教授。他于2023年8月访问了俄克拉何马大学。他在校园内参加了公开大学的总统演讲系列，与普林斯顿大学的同事罗伯特·p·乔治(Robert P. George)进行了一场观点/对位讨论，主题是“拯救美国:公民对话中的冲突观点”。在那次谈话之前，韦斯特博士很有风度地和我坐下来，参加了下面的“今日世界文学”交流活动。[End Page 49] Karlos K. Hill: West兄弟，我一直想告诉你，我的“见证”专栏的标题直接来自你。是你给了我灵感。康奈尔·韦斯特:这很有意思。希尔:在我所有的框架中，我用的最多的是见证，因为我听你说得最多:我们必须见证不公正。所以，《今日世界文学》的这个专栏绝对是受到了你的启发。因为你们，我把见证作为我安排学术生活的基石。这不仅仅是教学，也是见证。你知道，教书和当你教书的时候见证是有很大区别的。我学会了把它作为中心——不仅是奖学金，而且是生活在这个世界上——因为你以黑人研究学者的身份为中心，非常公开，毫不掩饰。这篇专栏真的是在向您致敬。我只是想让你知道。点击查看大图查看全分辨率图片由AAE扬声器提供。韦斯特:真漂亮。我很感激，兄弟，真的。我很感动，伙计，因为我们都是破碎的血管，你知道吗?我们正在尽力做到最好。做见证就是努力做到最好，这是前人灌输给我们的，他们设定了如此高的标准，但我们都达不到。塞缪尔·贝克特(Samuel Beckett)在他最后一部散文小说中说得对:你再试一次，再失败一次，失败得更好。然而，即使在做得更好的过程中，我们至少能够成为向善的力量，用约翰·科尔特兰的话说。这才是真正的意义所在。无论环境是什么——可能是在教室里，可能是在街上，可能是在牢房里，可能是在套房里;可能是在教堂，清真寺，犹太教堂;可能在街角，可能在夜总会——我们都可以作证。当然，它也是圣经的，也就是说，它是关于克诺西斯的，明白吗?这是关于清空自己。它是关于抵制与职业化相伴而来的分区化和专业化。当你专业化的时候，你经历了一种特定的过程和一套协议，你可以同时成为主人和受害者。而当你做见证的时候，你会全身心地投入到你所做的事情中，思想，灵魂，身体，记忆，历史。对你们来说，作为教师，作为教学人员，见证意味着把你的整个自我投入其中，而作为一个专业人士，有你的数据、你的论点、你的证据等等，并与其他这样做的人联系在一起是很好的。这很好。这就是你要传授的技能。但这种技能并不一定体现在学生的整个自我身上。这样你就不只是把技能传授给学生，而是让学生看到一个诚实、正直、有使命感的人的榜样。还有一份职业。你看，没有召唤和挑衅就没有职业。每一次召唤都伴随着回忆。黑人同胞们，我们有一个传统，我们的国歌是“举起每一个……”
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910249
C. Luke Soucy
Retranslations C. Luke Soucy (bio) The Consuming Fire: The Complete Priestly Source, from Creation to the Promised Land Trans. Liane M. Feldman University of California Press, 2023 The Aeneid: Revised and Expanded Edition Trans. Sarah Ruden Yale University Press, 2021 Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Author Trans. Sophus Helle Yale University Press, 2023 While working on a new verse translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, I discovered that skepticism toward my project tended to follow a specific trajectory. People who began with perhaps too much faith in translators' ability to vault language barriers ("but hasn't that been translated already?") would grow uncomfortable when shown how dissimilar two translations can be ("but they say different things!"). To be sure, variations sometimes do stem from a lack of translatorial scruples, but more often they arise from the literary truth that a single text can mean multiple things, particularly when it has had millennia to accrue, adjust, and slough off those meanings. The more ancient, foreign, complex, lyrical, or fragmentary a work is, the more dispute there will be over how best to translate it into a form meaningful to modern readers of modern languages in a modern culture. As the saying goes, every translation is an interpretation—yet this is not all that makes retranslation worthwhile. With new times come not only new interpreters but new priorities regarding both what gets translated and who gets to do the translating. In my case, since Ovid's importance to the canon was only reestablished through the political shifts of the late twentieth century, the insights resulting from that renewed attention have become available just recently, when I found myself among the first crop of Ovidian translators who are not straight or white, let alone over thirty. As the field of classics diversifies its study and students alike, translations continue to bring new things to light in even the oldest and most seemingly settled texts. The three books recommended below are among the latest to typify this exciting trend. Two decades in the making, Robert Alter's majestic and magisterial rendering of the Hebrew Bible is undoubtedly among the most impressive translations in recent memory. Yet a mere five years later, Liane M. Feldman's The Consuming Fire demonstrates how even the best translations involve curatorial choices that open alternate paths for others. Scholars have long recognized the five books of the Torah as an interweaving of earlier sources, largely distinct from each other in style, diction, and theme. But Alter's approach—primarily treating the Bible as a work of literature—necessarily and laudably smoothed over these differences, harmonizing the disjunct voices to stunning effect. By translating only the Priestly Source, however, Feldman takes precisely the opposite tack, isolating the most divergent of those voices in a spare, hypnotic idiom that emphasizes the source's cohesion as
C.卢克·苏西(传记)《消耗之火:完整的祭司来源，从创世到应许之地》译。Liane M. Feldman加利福尼亚大学出版社，2023《埃涅阿斯纪:修订版和扩充版》译。莎拉·鲁登耶鲁大学出版社，2021年Enheduana:世界第一作者的诗歌全集翻译。在翻译奥维德的《变形记》时，我发现对我的项目的怀疑倾向于遵循一个特定的轨迹。一开始，人们可能对译者跨越语言障碍的能力过于信任(“但那个不是已经被翻译过了吗?”)，但当看到两种翻译的差异如此之大(“但他们说的是不同的东西!”)时，他们会感到不舒服。可以肯定的是，这些变化有时确实是由于缺乏翻译上的顾虑，但更多的时候，它们源于文学真理，即一篇文章可以有多种含义，特别是当它有几千年的时间积累、调整和抛弃这些含义时。一部作品越古老、越陌生、越复杂、越抒情、越残破，在如何最好地将其翻译成一种对现代文化中使用现代语言的现代读者有意义的形式方面，争论就越多。俗话说，每一种翻译都是一种解释，但这并不是重新翻译的全部价值。随着新时代的到来，不仅出现了新的口译员，而且在翻译内容和翻译人员方面也出现了新的优先事项。就我而言，由于奥维德对正典的重要性是通过20世纪后期的政治转变才重新确立的，这种重新关注所产生的见解直到最近才得以实现，当时我发现自己是第一批奥维德译者中的一员，他们既不是异性恋，也不是白人，更不用说超过30岁了。随着经典领域的研究和学生的多样化，翻译继续在最古老和最看似固定的文本中带来新的东西。下面推荐的三本书是这一令人兴奋的趋势的最新代表。经过二十年的努力，罗伯特·阿尔特对希伯来圣经的庄严和权威的翻译无疑是最近记忆中最令人印象深刻的翻译之一。然而仅仅五年之后，莉安·m·费尔德曼(Liane M. Feldman)的《燃烧的火焰》(The Consuming Fire)表明，即使是最好的翻译也涉及到策展人的选择，为其他人开辟了另一条道路。学者们早就认识到《托拉》的五卷书是早期资料的交织，在风格、措辞和主题上很大程度上彼此不同。但阿尔特的方法——主要是把《圣经》当作一部文学作品来对待——必然且值得称赞地消除了这些差异，调和了不一致的声音，产生了惊人的效果。然而，费尔德曼通过只翻译《祭司源》，采取了完全相反的策略，用一种多余的、催眠的成语，把那些最不同的声音隔离开来，强调源的凝聚力，作为对自身的完整叙述。在重读这些古老的故事时，没有了其他来源的著名特征，我遇到了一个熟悉与陌生的怪异混合体:这里是没有伊甸园的亚当，没有十诫的摩西，旧约中的上帝既没有无处不在，也没有愤怒。通过这种学术分离的行为，费尔德曼创造了一种奇迹，让观众在世界上最古老、最常被重新翻译的书之一中读到一个全新的故事。本世纪很少有经典译著能像艾米丽·威尔逊的《奥德赛》那样引起如此大的轰动。她一行一行的抑扬格五音步的翻译成功地将高度的语言保真度与诗歌的严谨性结合在一起——这一壮举通过这首诗的第一个由女性翻译的令人震惊的事实而进一步突出。然而，随着威尔逊的《伊利亚特》于今年秋天出版，我觉得自己希望莎拉•鲁登的《埃涅伊德》也能取得类似的成就。首次出版于2008年，鲁登的翻译经历了实质性的修订，第二版值得称赞。现在，鲁登的作品配备了令人印象深刻的介绍和注释，遵循了与威尔逊非常相似的程序，以文学和学术精度的平衡来处理一部重要的经典史诗，这在她的男性作品中很少见到……
{"title":"Retranslations","authors":"C. Luke Soucy","doi":"10.1353/wlt.2023.a910249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2023.a910249","url":null,"abstract":"Retranslations C. Luke Soucy (bio) The Consuming Fire: The Complete Priestly Source, from Creation to the Promised Land Trans. Liane M. Feldman University of California Press, 2023 The Aeneid: Revised and Expanded Edition Trans. Sarah Ruden Yale University Press, 2021 Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Author Trans. Sophus Helle Yale University Press, 2023 While working on a new verse translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, I discovered that skepticism toward my project tended to follow a specific trajectory. People who began with perhaps too much faith in translators' ability to vault language barriers (\"but hasn't that been translated already?\") would grow uncomfortable when shown how dissimilar two translations can be (\"but they say different things!\"). To be sure, variations sometimes do stem from a lack of translatorial scruples, but more often they arise from the literary truth that a single text can mean multiple things, particularly when it has had millennia to accrue, adjust, and slough off those meanings. The more ancient, foreign, complex, lyrical, or fragmentary a work is, the more dispute there will be over how best to translate it into a form meaningful to modern readers of modern languages in a modern culture. As the saying goes, every translation is an interpretation—yet this is not all that makes retranslation worthwhile. With new times come not only new interpreters but new priorities regarding both what gets translated and who gets to do the translating. In my case, since Ovid's importance to the canon was only reestablished through the political shifts of the late twentieth century, the insights resulting from that renewed attention have become available just recently, when I found myself among the first crop of Ovidian translators who are not straight or white, let alone over thirty. As the field of classics diversifies its study and students alike, translations continue to bring new things to light in even the oldest and most seemingly settled texts. The three books recommended below are among the latest to typify this exciting trend. Two decades in the making, Robert Alter's majestic and magisterial rendering of the Hebrew Bible is undoubtedly among the most impressive translations in recent memory. Yet a mere five years later, Liane M. Feldman's The Consuming Fire demonstrates how even the best translations involve curatorial choices that open alternate paths for others. Scholars have long recognized the five books of the Torah as an interweaving of earlier sources, largely distinct from each other in style, diction, and theme. But Alter's approach—primarily treating the Bible as a work of literature—necessarily and laudably smoothed over these differences, harmonizing the disjunct voices to stunning effect. By translating only the Priestly Source, however, Feldman takes precisely the opposite tack, isolating the most divergent of those voices in a spare, hypnotic idiom that emphasizes the source's cohesion as","PeriodicalId":23833,"journal":{"name":"World Literature Today","volume":"149 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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