The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Kaitlyn Brady on Jorge Volpi’s In Spite of the Dark Silence, which is translated from the Spanish by Olivia Maciel and available from Swan Isle Press.

Kaitlyn was in my “Introduction to Literary Publishing/Open Letter Internship” class last semester, which included an assignment to write a book review of a work in translation. Kaitlyn’s in my “Translation and World Literature” class this semester, so expect to read another of her reviews in the not-too-distant future . . .

This is the third book of Jorge’s to be translated and published in English. Scribner did In Search of Klingsor, a while back, and one of our first titles was Season of Ash. As Kaitlyn mentions in the review, Jorge is mostly associated with the “Crack Movement,” which was founded by a group of friends and resulted in this manifesto and a number of interesting works. (The most recent one to be translated into English is Eloy Urroz’s Friction.)

Here’s the opening of Kaitlyn’s review:

With In Spite of the Dark Silence, Jorge Volpi puts a new spin on a classic tale of obsession, following the fictional narrator who is consumed with his research of actual Mexican poet and chemist, Jorge Cuesta. The fictionalized biography, in its slightly bizarre nature, weaves the narrator’s research of Cuesta with the downward spiral of his personal life, and will quickly envelop its readers, leaving them with memorable lyrical prose and fragmented sentence structures.

Jorge Volpi is one of the founders of the Crack Movement, a literary movement in Mexico that aimed to break from the cynical, superficial, and outdated movements of the past. The members wished to rupture the contemporary literary conventions of Latin America, such as the expected “magical realism,” creating their own style, and encouraging others to do so as well. Their works reflect a sense of disillusionment and disappointment with the progress of civilization and the modern societal systems, which they contrast with the infinite possibilities inherent in fiction. In Spite of Dark Silence is one of the predecessors of this movement.

“His name was Jorge, like mine, and for that his life hurts me twice,” opens Volpi, as the narrator introduces his growing obsession with Jorge Cuesta. Cuesta, an actual Mexican figure, was a member of Los Contemporánoes, a Mexican literary movement in the twentieth century, who eventually committed suicide in a mental ward. His writing is both overtly and subtly woven into Volpi’s narrative as Jorge compulsively researches the poet, diving deeper and deeper into his life and oeuvre, and blurring the boundaries between the two Jorges.

Click here to read the full piece.

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Thanks to Edwin Gentzler, the font of knowledge for all things translation, I just found out about a new journal called, simply, Translation.

With this publication, the editors present the new international peer-reviewed journal translation, which from January 2012 will be published twice a year. The journal—a collaborative initiative of the Nida School of Translation Studies—takes as its main mission the collection and representation of the ways in which translation as a fundamental element of culture transforms our contemporary world. Our ambition is to create a new forum for the discussion of translation, offering an open space for debate and reflection on what we call post-translation studies, moving beyond disciplinary boundaries towards wider transdisciplinary discourses on the translational nature of societies which are increasingly hybrid, diasporic, border-crossing, intercultural, multilingual, and global.

This publication suggests new routes for rethinking translation. Prominent scholars, representing different disciplines and areas of interest, have accepted our invitation to support our project and joined translation’s advisory board. We thank and acknowledge them by letting their words represent our initial steps. These texts, either written explicitly for this journal or taken from previously published writings, reflect suggestions, directions, and even programs for the journal’s future issues.

The physical layout, design and structure of the journal are rhizomatic patterns that also illustrate our approach for future issues of the journal, both on the content level and the formal level. The metaphor of the rhizome well describes the journal and its program as it seeks, in a transdisciplinary fashion, to create a new space for academic thinking and writing.

Translation is published both as print and electronically, with the two versions conceived together, in constant dialogue, stimulating reflection, discussion, and debate in an open intersemiotic space where all forms and channels of communication are welcome.

The inaugural issue looks pretty solid, with pieces by Kwame Anthony Appiah (who will actually be here at the University of Rochester later this week), Rosemary Arrojo, Lawrence Venuti, Emily Apter, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, David Damrosch, Suzanne Jill Levine, and many others.

Hopefully I’ll get my hands on a copy soon and can post about some of the actual contents . . .

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As you likely know, we’re going to be hosting the ALTA 2012 Conference up here in Rochester this fall. Although that may seem like a ways off, it’s really not that long in conference planning time, so if you would like to propose a panel, follow the instructions below and send it my way . . . (And if you’re not a member of ALTA, you should be. You can sign up here.)

Oh, and the theme for this year’s conference is: “The Translation of Humor, or, the Humor of Translation.” (“The Unquestionable Importance of the Hyphellipses” came in a close second.)

Dear Fellow ALTA Members,

We’re now accepting panel proposals for the ALTA 2012 Conference, which will take place October 3-6 in Rochester, NY at the Strathallan Hotel and the Memorial Art Gallery. We welcome panels on all topics related to literary translation; however, we’re especially interested in proposals that touch on the translation of humor, publishing, translation in academia, translation and music, and new voices from around the world.

Proposals should include the following:

1. Title of the panel or roundtable.
2. 50-100 word description outlining the focus and nature of the panel.
3. Name and contact information of the panel organizer.
4. Name and contact information of the other members of the panel.
5. If you are open to additional panelists, please state how many; if you have been unable to recruit any panelists but would like to propose a topic, please indicate.

Panels are generally 75 minutes long, and there must be time for general discussion and audience responses (we suggest 20 minutes at least). Each panelist should therefore be allotted 10-15 minutes for his or her presentation, depending on the number of panelists (3-4 is ideal). Panelists should not read papers, but rather prepare talking points and examples from which to deliver an engaging talk.

The deadline for proposals is April 10, 2012. Panelists will be notified of acceptance by May 1st, 2012. Proposals should be sent in the body of an email to Chad W. Post, Conference Organizer, at: chad.post@rochester.edu.

Please also send any questions concerning the conference panels and events to the same address.

I look forward to welcoming you here in Rochester!

Best,
Chad

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This week’s podcast is a special feature on Kaija Straumanis, who recently received her MA in literary translation from the University of Rochester. Although our conversation is a bit rangy (and if you think this is random, you should visit Plüb sometime), we focus mainly on Kaija’s translation of Latvian author Inga Ābele’s Paisums (High Tide).

High Tide is a somewhat fractured novel that tells the story of three main characters: Ieva, a deeply depressed screenwriter; Aksels, her former lover; and Andrejs, her husband, who was imprisoned for murdering Aksels. Structurally, this novel is pretty interesting as well. It opens with a dream, then inhabits the minds of the main characters in a series of “present day” chapters. After we see where these characters are post-jail, post-murder, etc., the book starts counting backwards, with sections about the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, to fill in certain aspects of the plot and characterization.

To help make this podcast make more sense, I’d highly recommend reading this fairly long sample that covers a lot of the bits that we talk about.

For more information about the University of Rochester’s Translation Programs, just click here.

And in terms of Kaija, in addition to translating from Latvian and German (on occasion), she’s a very good photographer. Oh, and she’s obsessed with Moby-Dick (in a way), which maybe explains the title of this podcast, and the reason why we’re using Yellow Ostrich’s Whale as this week’s intro/outro music.

As always you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes by clicking here. To subscribe with other podcast downloading software, such as Google’s Listen, copy the following link.

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The sample below is from Kaija Straumanis’s translation of Latvian author Inga Ābele’s Paisums (High Tide) which we discuss in this week’s podcast. Even if you don’t listen to the podcast (and if you don’t, why not?), you should take a look at this—it’s a really interesting book.

In the Beginning

God didn’t create words.

In the beginning there was a dream.

And at the end there was again nothing but a dream.

God appeared to a woman in a dream that was like death.

God found the woman within the dream and said to her:

“If you agree to live your life in reverse, you’ll have the power to give life back to your lover, who died young. Just don’t get your hopes up—your meeting at that crossroads will last about twenty minutes, no more. Then he’ll continue on toward old age, but you, back to childhood.”

The woman agreed immediately.

God said:

“How strange. Do you really value your own life and experiences so little that you’re willing to undo it all without a second thought?”

The woman said nothing.

She remembered this dream when she awoke.

Turns Out—We’ve Lived

She doesn’t need any more advice—patterns, examples. Maybe it’s just a whole new level, but right now she doesn’t need it. She doesn’t read books, newspapers or magazines, doesn’t use the Internet or watch TV, doesn’t go—God forbid—to the theater. It’s like being wrapped in a blanket up to your chin: you see and hear everything, but can’t move a muscle. Everything is right there around you, within arms’ reach. She wanders the house and now and then picks up something, grabs onto something, touches on something. A sentence from a newspaper, a phrase from a Mexican soap opera, an idea from Proust. They’re all always going to be right.

On her walks, Ieva goes around the forest in circles. Then on her birthday she asks herself a question—why do I walk in circles, like a dog chained to a post? Because of my fears? Only because of my harsh, bitter fears? I can walk in a straight line, she tells herself—and whenever I want. So when she does finally walk straight she only feels like she’s actually getting anywhere. Her surroundings change, but the content doesn’t. Big cities are all essentially the same, and every country has farmers wearing plaid, made-in-China shirts. Any new place that she ends up, she eventually has a close group of friends a lot like the last. The group will always have a mentor, a lover, someone she’ll betray, someone who’ll betray her, an enemy, and friends she can talk to and find spiritual healing with, saving money on therapy.

Once in a while she breaks from the campaigns, the marathons, the expeditions, and returns to the doghouse and sits next to her chain. Sits absolutely still, like a Bedouin gazing into the distance, and then writes. Script writing is usually complicated, but all of her scripts are about the same thing. All very clichéd, and when she tries to make excuses to the director he tells her: I need you precisely for the clichés. Because the ending needs to be something predictable.

Her scripts are about how nothing happens because nothing can ever happen. Not a single molecule is lost in the eternal cycle between the earth and the heavens. Only a pure soul can hope to break free from the carousel of life and death, into the cosmos through the tunnel of light and at a speed that makes everything down to the smallest particle feel simultaneously heavy and weightless. Everything shrinks until it disappears, until it’s erased from the memory of the world along with its time. But to live your life until your soul is pure—don’t laugh, it’s not that easy—you have to become a Buddha, a Christ or a Mohammed. You have to become light itself, a pure soul. Then you can be on your way. But it’s a long way and you’ll be scrubbed, doused, and wrung clean until then. Those few mistakes that will haunt you, jolt you awake at night, and force you to keep going on, these mistakes that you carry with you your entire life—in the end they’ll destroy you. But keep thinking about them, keep thinking. It’s gratifying to keep picking away at them. It will heal you.

Eventually she doesn’t even write the scripts herself anymore, just touches up those written by others and sends them in. She takes the finished product and objectively embellishes them. She’s done work like that before—adding details to bulletin posters in her school days, a pioneer in the last generation of an aggressive Soviet empire. Her homeroom teacher called it “giving life” to something. “Take it to Ieva,” the teacher often said, “she’ll give it some life.” And Ieva would take her black marker and give the dull pencil sketches some life, be it Lenin or the Easter Bunny. A wavering shadow in the distance, a gleam in Lenin’s eye, and the tense muscles in his jaw, something she’d seen in her father’s face when he shaved in the morning. And Lenin would come to life. The Easter Bunny would, too.

Everything is proof of it—this forced gift of existence—even the tired face of a small-town bus driver in the early morning; it speaks of longing, the endless patience you have when scrutinizing good fortune that has unexpectedly dropped into your lap. And what does life offer in return…the quiet hum inside the bus where you can warm up, a change from the frozen and bleak winter landscape… What does it offer in return? A kiss goodbye from your wife before you head out, and the mildly bitter taste of coffee with cream? The early morning fog and a dead moose on the side of a road? Like an Indian who gets glass beads in return for gold, you trade the suffering of existence in return for the smell of baking bread. The feel of a dog’s wet nose against your hand. The look in your children’s eyes. A bird feeder. May it all bring you joy, says this opposing, unwanted, huge opportunity—Life. Truth everywhere, like rows and rows of weeds that need only a bit of rain to grow: a handful of TV shows, a handful of philosophical essays, a handful of tight-lipped snobs, a handful of bartering vendors.

Her mother’s mother, Gran, used to say: you’ll never know where you’ll lose something or where you’ll find it, and, if you knew where you’d fall, you’d put a pillow down first. In many ways Gran hadn’t outgrown childhood, had never experienced passion, never been disillusioned. She remained an innocent; that was her destiny. Her cheerful daily greetings were proof she had never discovered herself, her own anger, or her deeply hidden doubts. Doing so would mean being sent into freedom, out of the Garden of Eden. She had stayed in Eden, playing in rows of sun ripened, wild strawberries. And among the bustle were all life’s sentences—her parents’ deaths, her husband and children, the people she loved. But she never said “love” because she didn’t know the word, hadn’t evolved to words. Gran had been her parents’ pride and joy, a helper at the dairy farm with her white apron and silky ash-blonde hair, someone who never grew to know hatred. More precisely, she was oblivious to any daggers of hatred aimed at her. Instead, they went through her like she was nothing because she didn’t believe in bad people—just people. Her only sins were her pride and self-reliance. She always had tickets for sugar and bread, but also always had more for extra things. A kind word and a helping hand, the sense to put others before herself; she believed it was her choice and responsibility. She didn’t need anything from the Lord God, just some nice Lutheran Christmas songs and spiritual peace. She hadn’t unlocked that little door in her heart that led to spite. She stayed in her bud; her entire life spent in it and as a child. God and humanity attack these kinds of people more than anyone else because there’s something obnoxious about them. But neither God, nor humanity can use their endless recipes for disaster on these people because these people lack any trace of hate—and God can take a vacation since there’s no one to peddle vices to. Having fulfilled her duty to everyone she loved, Gran quickly retreated to her inner child, back into that bud. A small, polite girl who always walked on the sunny side of the street. And that’s how she ended her journey. She was stuck in her bud, in her helpless innocence, and then all the world’s charges were piled on top of her. Stay helpless as a baby, an animal, a prisoner, a fool, an alcoholic, a one-legged bum in a tunnel—and the world will quickly chafe you until you bleed, and you’ll understand why you’ve always needed God. You put Heaven on a pedestal while you still have the strength. And when you grow weak you see the devil. Not the one with horns and a tail, but the devil in the hurried compassion of the fast-paced world, the one that will kill you with kindness. [. . .]

Mother

Mother tries to remember where she’s seen it before.

Faces peering at her from a glaring brightness.

Big eyes. Lips that are saying something, smiling, cooing, scolding. Faces that pull her from the comforting darkness and into the light.

An avenue.

For a moment she sees her father; he points out the leaves overhead. She is a child in her stroller, a child absorbing every single detail. She sees the leaves and becomes them, submerges herself in them and their silky movement.

The faces in this narrow room are like the leaves. They form a canopy high overhead, full of rustling movement and a teasing wind. The faces look at her as she lies there like a dried-up worm, wedged between the body pillow and the wall. A pair of hands throw open the curtains—a window fills with light.

“Good morning! Time to get up,” a light voice says.

The face leans in very close—it’s a woman’s face.

Mother opens an eye. The other is crusted over with pus. She looks at the faces and her toothless mouth whispers a few syllables in greeting. Mother is afraid of the daytime, afraid of the daily routine. She’ll be rolled over, picked up, moved, washed—it hurts and it makes her uneasy. Mother wants to tell them she doesn’t understand why she needs to get up anymore. She’s tired, but they won’t leave her alone.

“And the worst is she somehow gets in there with her left hand. She grabs and tears at the diaper and then smears shit all over the place. She’s out of her mind. I’ve got to change the bedding twice a day—all of it.”

Mother closes the one eye and pretends this talk isn’t about her. For several years now her good eye has been covered by a film, a rapidly swirling fog with tiny black spots.

“You have to figure something out. I’m sure you can do something like tie a shirt over her chest,” says a second voice that’s lower, infused with darkness.

Mother likes that voice better.

“She doesn’t get in from the top, but from the bottom along her thigh. The entire bed is flooded by morning. She pees so, so much. And if there’s shit I can’t even come in here without gagging. You wouldn’t believe the smell,” the first voice complains, white and clear as a ray of light.

You can’t hide from that voice, so Mother just shuts her eye tighter.

“Maybe like something for a baby. A onesie that buttons up the sides.”

“Won’t work. Since the last treatment she’s completely lost it. Look at how small she is—but she’s heavy, as heavy as a rock. She’s dead weight, ten times heavier than me. I make her stand up so her legs won’t totally atrophy. A few minutes a day. When I come home from work I have her sit up. You can’t believe how hard it is. I’ve sprained my back—it hurts. No, no, no. No onesies, no pants. She can’t even lift her legs. It would just mean extra clothes for me to wash. No, no, no. I had an idea yesterday—I’ll secure the diaper with electrical tape. Or a wide strip of duct tape. What do you think?”

“You can’t do that, Mom. Her skin will get infected.”

“You think so? Well, then I don’t know.”

Mother pretends she is dead. Pretends this stupid conversation isn’t about her. People only talk like that about children who misbehave. She’s not a bad child, never has been. No, no, no. [. . .]


Andrejs’s Religion

Andrejs very carefully took two fragile champagne flutes in his calloused hands and handed them to the woman. Then he took the card leaning against the wall behind the glasses and sat on a stool next to the small table. He studied the yellowed paper as intensely as a war refugee who’s been pulled from the water and given a passport, and who can’t believe this thing could save his life.

The card was drawn with lead pencil on regular notebook paper and then glued to cardboard. Its edges were decorated with barbed wire, which connected at the top in a knot around a red rose. The lettering For Ludmila—Ruslans was separated by a date, in which the number two looked like a swan with a proudly curving neck. The drawing also had the North Star and the aurora borealis. Small lettering at the bottom read: She dreamt that in the Caucasus steppe…

So she wasn’t an accountant! So that’s where he’d seen that handwriting and date before! How could he forget?

Andrejs asked:

“Ludmila?”

“Yes.”

She sat on the opposite stool at the table and twirled a strand of hair around her finger. Like she was flustered, clueless. When she lifted her eyes to meet his, they were bright with tears.

“That’s the last card my husband sent me.”

She wanted to tell him more, but he silenced her with an impatient gesture. He still couldn’t decide if he should go home right away or later. If he started to talk now, it would mean he wouldn’t go home until later.

But he started to talk. He hadn’t become a heartless monster yet.

“You don’t need to tell me. I drew this.”

The expressions on the woman’s face changed as quick as the wind, chasing after one another like the shadows of falling leaves—while she sat very stiff and straight, her eyes searching his face to figure out what his words could mean.

“Ruslans and I met at the Central Prison Hospital. He was already admitted when I was brought in. We were together for a week, or less, I don’t remember. In any case no more than a week. I was there when he died.”

The woman let out a weak scream, and the tears finally overflowed. She wiped the wetness across her cheeks with the back of her hand. Andrejs handed her a towel, which she immediately bundled up into a kind of squirrel’s nest and hid her face in it. He waited patiently for her to look up again.

“You could say I was the prison artist. I framed photographs by sewing plastic wires around the edges, drew on materials using safety pins and colored thread, etched wood, sketched. Ruslans found out and showed me your handwriting. Asked me to draw a card and write the words like you did. He really liked your handwriting. I recognized it right away, but thought that you worked at the prison as an accountant.”

The woman nodded feebly. She rummaged in a drawer without looking away from him and placed a candle on the table. She burned her fingers with the first match.

“Tell me how he died,” she said, her voice somber.

“He died at night. I was writing a letter to my wife, he was lying down. I thought he’d fallen sleep. Then he suddenly started coughing, ran to the door and banged on it like crazy. All at once, about a bucket of blood spewed from his mouth. And then he fell over. I lifted him a bit and held him, but he had already started with the death shakes. The guards came and took him away.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Don’t worry, it happened quickly. He didn’t suffer. It was over the second he ran to the door. Later the nurses said one of his pulmonary veins had burst.”

More silence.

“But he managed to send the card out. When’s your birthday? Sometime in May, right?”

“May second.”

“And what’s this about the Caucasus, if it’s not a secret?”

“He was a really good person,” she finally said.

“I know. So what about the Caucasus?”

The woman thought for a bit.

“She dreamt that in the Caucasus steppe—
He lay still, a bullet in his breast . . .
And yet, I am Ruslan’s now,
And will be faithful to my vow.”

Andrejs propped the card against the windowpane so its edges were surrounded by the reflection of the candlelight.

The woman said:

“We liked poetry, like Pushkin’s ‘Ruslan and Ludmila.’ I’d read it to him when our kids were still little. Before he got mixed up in that damn gang and robbed that gas station… He was so surprised that there was a poem like that—about us, he said—just imagine! About us!”

The woman stood and opened the refrigerator. She pushed the champagne toward Andrejs, having suddenly grown very calm. He opened the bottle just as calmly and poured the chilled liquid into the glasses. In the reflection of the flame, the bubbles dancing in the sparkling wine seemed like lonely planets.

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OK, this took place a few months back, but because of Apple updates, program incompatibilities, forgetfulness, and other excuses Nate generated, it took until now to produce the video from the Reading the World Conversation Series event with Sergio Chejfec and Margaret Carson, and moderated by E.J. Van Lanen.

Sergio’s My Two Worlds came out last summer to a good deal of critical acclaim. And Margaret’s translation was hailed by Publishers Weekly as “magnificent” and “should be treated as a significant event.”

For fans of Chejfec, we’re bringing out his next book, The Planets, this June . . . You can preorder by clicking here, or you could simply but an Open Letter subscription and get this, Children in Reindeer Woods, My First Suicide and more . . . (End promotional plug.)

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I suspect most people reading this blog are familiar with Ira Silverberg already, either from his days at Serpent’s Tail, his role at CLMP, his stylish dressing and giving of great quote, or his time as an agent at Sterling Lord Literalistic. And I’m sure most everyone knows that he was recently named as the new literature director at the NEA. Regardless (or irregardless), the NEA posted an interview with Ira that’s definitely worth checking out:

NEA: What do you hope to accomplish while you’re at the NEA?

SILVERBERG: My goal is make sure our grantees in literary publishing—the non-profit presses and journals—are set up for the new digital age. There is a great deal of technical assistance needed to be a good publisher these days. Many of our grantees have grown up more as curators of great art—but getting it out in a difficult and changing publishing environment is a new part of the challenge. I hope that’s where the literature department can make a difference in the next few years.

NEA: What are you most proud of accomplishing in your career to date?

SILVERBERG: Seeing the first copy of a book I’ve edited or represented as an agent always provokes a feeling of great pride. Working with great writers for so many years still provides a great thrill. What could be better than helping get their words out into the world? Having three clients—Adam Haslett, Christopher Sorrentino, and René Steinke—nominated for the National Book Award in fiction has been a thrill; seeing former child soldier Ishmael Beah hit number one on The New York Times bestseller list was one of the most emotionally satisfying moments in my life; and helping to secure publication in The New Yorker for clients like Gabe Hudson, David Bezmozgis, and Sam Lipsyte always makes me feel triumphant.

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I don’t read a lot of critical/academic books, but I can’t wait to get my hands on Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, which is coming out from Harvard University Press next month:

What sort of society could bind together Jacques Roubaud, Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp, and Raymond Queneau—and Daniel Levin Becker, a young American obsessed with language play? Only the Oulipo, the Paris-based experimental collective founded in 1960 and fated to become one of literature’s quirkiest movements.

An international organization of writers, artists, and scientists who embrace formal and procedural constraints to achieve literature’s possibilities, the Oulipo (the French acronym stands for “workshop for potential literature”) is perhaps best known as the cradle of Georges Perec’s novel A Void, which does not contain the letter e. Drawn to the Oulipo’s mystique, Levin Becker secured a Fulbright grant to study the organization and traveled to Paris. He was eventually offered membership, becoming only the second American to be admitted to the group. From the perspective of a young initiate, the Oulipians and their projects are at once bizarre and utterly compelling. Levin Becker’s love for games, puzzles, and language play is infectious, calling to mind Elif Batuman’s delight in Russian literature in The Possessed.

And with Jacques Roubaud’s Mathematics coming out from Dalkey Archive coming out this spring as well, it’s as good a time as any to go on an Oulipian bender. . . .

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I have to thank Daniel Medin for bringing to my attention Cynthia Haven’s post about a small French publisher focused on literature in translation:

Translation is the poor stepchild of literature – academics get more applause for producing their own books, not for translating the writing of others; for writers, it’s a distraction from their own work and not terribly well remunerated. Hence, a welter of books never appear on the international stage the way they deserve.

So it’s cheering to see a venture like the Paris-based Le Bruit du Temps, a publishing house crowded in one large room in one of the more picturesque neighborhoods in a city that has plenty of them. Founder and director Antoine Jaccottet has a desk in one corner; his collaborator, Cécile Meissonnier, has a desk on the other side. Pictures of Osip Mandelstam, Isaac Babel, and others are stuffed into the edges of a large mirror – they are the real masters here. The window next to it gives a clear view on a plaque indicates that James Joyce finished Ulysses across the street here, on rue du Cardinal Lemoine in the Latin Quarter.

Antoine Jaccottet, son of the poet and translator Philippe Jaccottet (who translated Goethe, Hölderlin, Mann, Mandelstam, Góngora, Leopardi, Musil, Rilke, Ungaretti, and Homer into French), worked for 15 years at the famous French publisher Gallimard, publishing classics, before he broke out on his own for a shoestring enterprise in 2008. The tight-budge endeavor, however, produces elegantly designed, finely crafted volumes.

Masterpieces don’t die, he says, but they can get lost in the noise of time. It’s the job of publishers to rediscover them for the public, and what better place than the small adventurous publishers who have a freedom and esprit not usually tapped by large publishing houses. [. . .]

bq. Mandelstam is, in a sense, the reason for the place. The title of the publishing house itself – “the noise of time” – is taken from the title of Mandelstam’s prose collection, which includes perhaps his most autobiographical writing. Antoine had been taken with the Russian poet in the 90s, and the translations and biography by the eminent scholar Clarence Brown. One of the first books the house published was Le Timbre égyptien (The Egyptian Stamp). The Ralph Dutli biography will be published this month. (The house published Dutli’s poems in 2009). [. . .]

Literary journalism, apparently, is as much in a crisis in France as it is here – the media often publishes book blurbs intact, and critics are famous for not reading the books they review. So how do people hear about books? Often, they don’t, he says.

Le Bruit du Temps’ publications do look really elegant (and really French), and it’s always nice to find out about interesting publishers. Especially ones with a solid, respectable mission ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ that also seems very French, and similar to nobel American presses like Dalkey Archive and New Directions. That bit about the literary journalism and critics being “famous for not reading the books they review” is pretty damn shocking. If the book review culture is janky in France, then the philistines have won.

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This review actually appeared online a couple months ago, but National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s piece on Merce Rodoreda’s Death in Spring made it onto “All Things Considered” last night.

I personally think Death in Spring is one of the most unique, and interesting books that we’ve published, and it’s fantastic that this is getting such great publicity. This is available at better bookstores everywhere, and through our website.

Additionally, this is part of our First 25, a collection of the first 25 titles we published, available for $200 $175. (Just enter “FIRST25” at checkout to receive the $25 discount.)

And to whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt from Death in Spring:

I removed my clothes and dropped them at the foot of the hackberry tree, beside the madman’s rock. Before entering the river, I stopped to observe the color left behind by the sky. The sun-dappled light was different now that spring had arrived, reborn after living beneath the earth and within branches. I lowered myself gently into the water, hardly daring to breathe, always with the fear that, as I entered the water world, the air—finally emptied of my nuisance—would begin to rage and be transformed into wind that blew furiously, like the winter wind that nearly carried away houses, trees, and people. I had sought the broadest part of the river, the farthest from the village, a place where no one ever came. I didn’t want to be seen. The water flowed, sure of itself, confident with the weight that descended from mountains, snow and fountains escaping the shadows through holes in rocks. All the waters joined together for the delirium of joining and flowed endlessly, the land on both sides. As soon as I had passed the stables and the horse enclosure, I realized I was being followed by a bee, as well as by the stench of manure and the honey scent of wisteria that was beginning to blossom. The water was cold as I cut through it with my arms and kicked it with my feet; I stopped from time to time to drink some. The sun, filled with the desire to fly, was rising on the other side of Pedres Altes, streaking the white winter water. To trick the bee that was following me, I ducked under the water so it would lose me and not know what to do. I knew about
the obstinate, seven-year-old bees that possessed a sense of understanding. It was turbid under the water, like a glass cloud that reminded me of the glass balls in the courtyards beneath the strong wisteria vines, the wisteria that over the years upwrenched houses.

The houses in the village were all rose-colored. We painted them every spring and maybe for that reason the light was different. It captured the pink from the houses, the same way it took on the color of leaves and sun by the river. Shut inside in winter, we made paintbrushes from horsetails with handles of wood and wire, and when we had finished them, we put them away in the shed in the Plaça and waited for good weather. Then all of us, men and boys, would go to the cave on Maraldina in search of the red powder we needed for the pink paint . . . When we returned to the village, we would mix the red powder with water to make pink paint that winter would erase. In spring—bees buzzing about, blooming wisteria hanging from houses—we painted. And suddenly the light was different. [. . .]

I decided to stroll through the soft grass, up the incline; at the end of the slope the tree nursery appeared from behind some shrubs. The seedlings had tender trunks and no leaves; but all of them would carry death inside them when they were transplanted in the forest and grew tall. I walked among them, and they looked like objects you only see when asleep. I stopped at the entrance to the forest, at the divide between sun and shadow. I had seen the cloud of butterflies earlier. The trees in the forest were very tall, full of leaves—five-point leaves—and, just as the blacksmith had often told me, a plaque and a ring were attached to the foot of each tree. There were thousands of butterflies, all white. They fluttered around anxiously; many of them looked like half-opened flowers, the white slightly streaked with green. The ground was carpeted with old, dry leaves and a rotten odor rose from beneath them . . . I lay down under a tree and watched the cloud of butterflies bubble among the leaves. I looked at them through a web of leaf nerves until I was tired, and as soon as I let it fall, I heard footsteps. [. . .]

The steps stopped. Everything was quiet. As I strained to listen, I thought I could hear someone breathing. I felt a weight in the middle of my chest from listening and thinking I heard something: the same ill feeling as when they locked me in the cupboard for hours, the village deserted, and I would wait. This was the same. Nothing had changed: the leaves were the same, and the trees and butterflies, and the sense that time inside the shadow was dead. But everything had changed. [. . .]

The man who was approaching carried an axe on his shoulder and a pitchfork in his hand. He was naked from the waist up, his forehead smashed in. His face had been disfigured by the rushing river, and he was unable to close his eyes because the skin on his forehead was poorly attached. His red, shrunken skin was pulled tight, always leaving a slit in his eyes. He had patches of black hair on his chest, his was body sunburned. [. . .]

With his axe he began making a cross on a tree trunk; he had marked it with a stone, top to bottom and side to side. He worked mechanically, and after a while he dropped to his knees and began to cry. I held my breath. Still crying, he stood up, spit in his hands, and rubbed them together. The bee buzzed in and out of the flower. As the axe cut the trunk, you could see the line begin to emerge . . . The tree was as wide and as tall as a man, and I noticed the seedcase inside. It looked slightly green in the green light of the forest, the same color as the tree trunks in the nursery. The man poked the seedcase with the pitchfork, first on one side, then the other, until it fell to the ground. Smoke rose from the gap left in the tree. The man put down the pitchfork, wiped the sweat from his neck and rolled the seedcase to the foot of another tree . . . Then he sat on the ground and looked in the direction of the setting sun, at the butterflies.

Many of the leaves on the low branches were partially eaten away, others merely pierced by little holes. The caterpillars never stopped chewing, as they prepared to become butterflies. The man looked up with eyes he could not completely close. The air became wind. The man turned around, picked up the iron plaque, and looked at it as if he had never seen it before. He rubbed a finger over it, following the letters, one by one, until finally he stood up, seized the pitchfork and axe and headed toward the entrance to the forest, the axe on his shoulder flashing from time to time between the low-lying leaves. He came back empty-handed; and as if everything were going to begin again, the bee returned and entered the flower and the man approached his tree. He was weeping. He entered the tree backwards. . . . I was frightened. Frightened about the resin bubbling all alone, the ceiling of light hidden by leaves, and so many white wings flapping. I left, slowly at first, backing away, then I started to run, as if pursued by the man, the pitchfork, and the axe. I stopped by the edge of the river and covered my ears with my open hands so I wouldn’t hear the quiet. I crossed the river again. On the other side I left behind the odor of caterpillar-gorged leaves and encountered the fragrance of wisteria and the stench of manure. Death in spring. I threw myself on the ground, on top of the pebbles, my heart drained of blood, my hands icy. I was fourteen years old, and the man who had entered the tree to die was my father.

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