Month: May 2024

The Promise of Translation

I was reading Peter Brooks’ review of two new Proust translations in the NYRB for March 21, 2024 (“In Search of His Vocation”) and came across a passage quoted from Le Temps retrouvé that Brooks calls the book’s “titular claim”: ‘I slowly became aware that the essential book, the only true book, was not something… Continue reading The Promise of Translation

Words and the World

[This post also available as a podcast.] I’m always a bit more secure on the territory of words and their transfer across the supposed boundaries among languages. Maybe this is inevitable, given my expertise and how I have spent most of my time in the world. So in reading two books recommended to me as… Continue reading Words and the World