Category: Latest Post

A Boost and Patience

I applied for and received an IU Presidential Arts and Humanities Fellowship for my Sea of Intimacy for the coming year. These are year-long awards with monthly meetings of the small group of awardees and the Associate VP in charge of the program (in the coming year there are eight of us), a week’s worth… Continue reading A Boost and Patience

Translating Atrocity

When I told my friend Mira Rosenthal that I’d taken on a translation job for a book on Jasenovac, she didn’t miss a beat. “And how are you protecting yourself?” she asked. Naive me hadn’t even considered this, even though I know the words and the scenes always seep inside you when you’re translating them,… Continue reading Translating Atrocity

Predicting Shoe Sizes in Higher Education

When I was a graduate student, I studied in the USSR as Gorbachev was beginning his first reforms, and I had the opportunity to witness first-hand the shortcomings of the command economy. This was the top-down model by which Soviet planners tried to provide for the needs of everyone equitably and without waste. It worked… Continue reading Predicting Shoe Sizes in Higher Education

Where Donkeys Go

Sea of Intimacy keeps surprising me. Sometimes it seems to be about more than what I thought. Other times, it zeros in on something narrow, specific, which then turns out to be more than what I thought. For instance, donkeys. I discovered the names of islands derived from donkeys in the Adriatic last summer while… Continue reading Where Donkeys Go

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