Links: Margaret Jull Costa, Leonid Tsypkin, Vasily Grossman

A few links I wanted to pass on...

An interview with Margaret Jull Costa at The White Review

What is one to make of ‘a solidão de esparguete da girafa’ on page one? Should I have translated that as ‘the spaghetti solitude of the giraffe’ rather than ‘the lofty, long-drawn-out solitude of the giraffe’, which was my final version? Does ‘spaghetti solitude’ mean anything in English? But then does ‘solidão de esparguete’ mean anything in Portuguese? Am I committing the translator’s cardinal sin of domesticating and explaining?

...

There are always new translations being made of these classic texts, but they are not necessarily improvements. Having said that, I have done ‘fresh’ translations myself, of Eça de Queiroz, and, inevitably and arrogantly, I feel that they are an improvement!

I've been looking forward to the release of The Bridge Over the Neroch: And Other Works by Leonid Tsypkin for a few months now. Michael Stein has a review of it in the current issue of Asymptote.

With the novella Norartakir, written in 1976, Tsypkin offers his most anguished and masterful treatment of the "insulted and the injured", though with explicit deference to a people for whom Dostoevsky would not have reserved the term. Then again, Dostoevsky didn't live to see the Holocaust, as a crucified Christ does in one memorable sequence here, being able to see inside the gas chambers of the future as the guards outside celebrate his birthday with Christmas carols and a decorated fir branch in place of a tree.

Mentioning Asymptote again, there are two articles on the upcoming release of Vasily Grossman's An Armenian Sketchbook. One is an essay by translator Robert Chandler, part introduction to Grossman (and Andrey Platonov) and part introduction to an excerpt from An Armenian Sketchbook.


Thanks to the Korretiv blog for understanding my love of "marketable horrible."

The Last Few Kilometres

1973 Moscow subway map
Picture source: Old Russian Tram Maps

Trevor at The Mookse and the Gripes posted on the short story by Leonid Tsypkin: "The Last Few Kilometers" in the September 17, 2012 edition of The New Yorker. Since I enjoyed Summer in Baden-Baden so much, I stopped by the library this weekend and read the story. I enjoyed it and was happy to see that the remaining writings of Tsypkin will be released at the end of this year by New Directions: The Bridge Over the Neroch: And Other Works. Just what I needed...another preordered book (yay!).

Be sure to click to Trevor's post for more of a write-up on the story. And if you haven't read Summer in Baden-Baden, I highly recommend adding it to your overflowing TBR stack. I have been wanting to revisit it, and hopefully will soon.

Update (19 Sep 2012): literalab has more on Leonid Tsypkin’s last few kilometers. Their directive is much stronger than my suggestion: "And if you haven’t read Summer in Baden Baden, stop whatever supposedly “important” thing it is you’re doing now and go read it."