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
Author: russellv
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
Baseline of Bones
This post exists only as a podcast at this point. The writing will come, though maybe not for this blog.
Thinking with the Wind (podcast)
This is a podcast version, a bit elaborated and updated, from the blog post of the same name, which you can find here.
Writing as Gift (podcast)
This is a podcast version, a bit elaborated and updated, from the blog post of the same name, which you can find here.
Prospero in the Adriatic
This is a podcast version of the earlier “prospero in the adriatic” blog post, which you can find here. ###
Two Grammars
This is a podcast version of the earlier “grammar of animacy and grammar of intimacy” blogpost, which you can find here.
Two Islands
This is a podcast version, a bit elaborated and updated, from the blog post of the same name, which you can find here.
A Prize for Kin
My translation of Miljenko Jergović’s Kin was awarded the prize for “Best Literary/Scholarly Translation into English” by the American Association for Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) at its just completely conference in Las Vegas. They don’t seem to have updated their website yet, but here’s the link for all the long- and… Continue reading A Prize for Kin
The Grammar of Animacy and the Grammar of Intimacy
I think my first section is finished. It is Me Bastard, You Bastard, an extension of and enrichment (I sincerely hope) upon an essay David Hamilton published many years ago in The Iowa Review. It was after I read the kernel of that essay aloud to a small group of poets and writers I had… Continue reading The Grammar of Animacy and the Grammar of Intimacy
