The Book and Beyond

You want your author to be appreciated, to be read. Yes, why not, to be respected. As a writer at least, if not as a person. And the author’s image, not just the work, is in your hands. That’s the way it works in English at least, where translation tends to be decentralized. I’m not referring to commissions obviously. In that sense translation is like any kind of creative writing – you choose your project, you shape it, you develop it, you pitch and promote it, and you pitch and promote the image of the author that goes with it. So the question: what to do when your author is not an especially attractive character, not a good person, a bad husband, for instance, a bad father?For instance, Eligio Zanini was a bad husband and a bad father. He abandoned his family when two children were small and a third was on the way. He never contacted them again, though he lived just down the road. When his son died in a car accident at the age of seventeen and the parents were supposed to go down to ...

Carol i Robert Norris bili su stari prijatelji Nickove žene Joanne. Upoznali su se davno, mnogo prije nego što je ona upoznala Nicka. Poznavali su je kada je bila udana za Billa Dalyja. U ono vrijeme njih četvero – Carol i Robert, Joanne i Bill – friško oženjeni studenti na zadnjoj godini povijesti umjetnosti – živjeli su u istoj kući, velikoj kući na Seattleovoj verziji Capitol Hilla, dijelili stanarinu i kupaonicu. Često su zajedno jeli i sjedili do sitnih sati, pili vino i razgovarali. Jedni su drugima pregledavali i komentirali radove. Tijekom te zadnje godine zajedničkog života – prije nego što se pojavio Nick – čak su kupili jeftin brodić kojim su ljeti zajedno plovili jezerom Washington. “Kakva su to vremena bila, i dobra i loša, puna uspona i padova”, rekao je Robert drugi put toga jutra osmjehujući se i promatrajući lica prijatelja za stolom. Bila je nedjelja ujutro, a oni su sjedili za stolom u kuhinji Nicka i Joanne u Aberdeenu i jeli dimljeni losos, kajganu i peciva sa sirn...

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The Croatian poet Augustin (Tin) Ujević (1891–1955) is one of the finest Southern Slav lyric poets and one of the great poets of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. What follows is a sketch of some of the qualities of his lyrical poems, from the particular perspective of an English poet who has translated some of them. My intention is to introduce a poet who, so far, has scarcely been registered at all in the English-speaking world, by prefacing translations of twelve poems. The idea here is to pick out strands and suggest possible entry points. I also want to explore some of the reasons why I think he merits the appellation ‘great poet’, one that is easy enough to bestow, perhaps too easy, but less so to justify. The procedure I shall adopt in the notes that follow will be suggestive and glancing rather than direct and expository. While the notes will of course move into and around some of Tin’s lyrical poems and suggest paths for critical analysis and interpretative discuss...

Kako se približavalo doba Škorpiona, postajalo je sve vjetrovitije, tamno i kišovito. Mokri, tekući grad, koji je vjetrom udarao u stakla iza nezaštićenih samačkih prozora bez zavjesa, iza sirnog namaza skrivenog u hladnoći između prozorskih stakala, nalikovao je na podlu Petrovu nakanu, na grad gorostasnog, buljavog cara tesara razjapljene gubice i oštrog jezika, koji u noćnim morama, s mornarskom sjekirom u podignutoj šaci, sustiže svoje onemoćale, prestrašene podanike. Rijeke su se, dotekavši do nabujalog, zastrašujućeg mora, bacale natrag te šišteći probijale okanca od lijevanog željeza i brzinski podizale razinu vode u podrumima muzeja, oblizujući krhke kolekcije koje su se raspršivale u vlažni pijesak, šamanske maske od pijetlova perja, zakrivljene inozemne mačeve, ogrtače opšivene biserima, žilave noge srditih zaposlenika probuđenih usred noći. Na takve dane, kada se iz kiše, mraka i vjetra koji je savijao stakla ocrtavao bijeli sirasti lik samoće, Simeonov je na rubu postojanja...

Due to their self-reflexive propensity, postmodern fiction and metafiction, in particular, have been relentlessly criticized of solipsism and of an indifference to relate to the extralinguistic world. While the novel is deemed to pause in its trajectory to examine itself, to examine its conventions and rejections of them, to address its future uncertainties and its at-present struggles, it has become a misprision that all it can bestow to its readers is an understanding of itself. The basic argument unravels as follows: language is devoid of reality, therefore, literature does not contain reality either; now more than ever, fiction recognizes that it is a self-contained artifact which can only engage in a representation of itself, having no interest in proffering its readers anything but an understanding of itself. The novel in the postmodern period has faced the crisis of representation, when linguists and theorists alike unmask the insufficiency of language and its inability to repre...