Author: russellv

Just Out at Bandcamp

Still love the name Bandcamp for a music streaming site. Anyway, pieces from the past couple of years that seem to go together: Squint Eye Specifically: Squint Eye (title piece 3:38), Prelude and Strut (5:23), Bolero Boogie (5:02), Samba Sailin (3:16), Exi Maxi (4:18), and Bells of Trieste (3:58). Just under 25 minutes all together.… Continue reading Just Out at Bandcamp

An Unpopular Passion

Earlier this week, I took part in an evening event called “On the Humanities in Dark Times.” There were about eight or nine of us, all humanities faculty at Indiana University. We’d been meeting to discuss the challenges of our moment, and someone suggested we read Hannah Arendt’s “On Humanity in Dark Times.” There was… Continue reading An Unpopular Passion

A Bit of Rudy Panko

While teaching this semester’s graduate seminar on Nikolai Gogol/Mykola Hohol, I noticed how inadequate all the existing translations of the earlier works are. The author’s distinctive style barely peeks through what often feels like basically explanatory prose in all the English versions. I also came to the conclusion that Gogol’s very first book is his… Continue reading A Bit of Rudy Panko

Over on Bluesky and Bandcamp

I discontinued my TwiXter account many months ago, but when people on FB mentioned joining Bluesky, I decided to give it a try. So I’m over there @russellv.bsky.social. I post occasionally. It’s fine. But I did notice quite a few writers and musicians, and writers includes translators and musicians includes amateur composers. That part is… Continue reading Over on Bluesky and Bandcamp

Translating “meanwhile”

I put that in quotes because it’s a silly idea really, for translators at least. Translating is always its own thing, you concentrate on it, do it almost for its own sake. Or rather, strike the almost. This is my experience anyway, even when one is just trying something out, it turns out to be… Continue reading Translating “meanwhile”

Adriatic book

The title has shifted here just a bit, but not the main one, which is still Sea of Intimacy, still from the same Predrag Matvejević line in his (I think more and more exquisite) Mediterranean Breviary: “The Atlantic and Pacific are seas of distance, the Mediterranean a sea of propinquity, the Adriatic a sea of… Continue reading Adriatic book

A Cover for Propp

It’s been a whole summer (a glorious one) and a bit of a fall (also pretty glorious) since I last posted, and there are too many things to write now, so I’ll need to pace myself. First, Propp is coming! At last the book is finished and entering the production process at Indiana University Press.… Continue reading A Cover for Propp

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