The Book and Beyond

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...

World literature’s natural home is comparative literature, a discipline born from and shaped by, as Vilashini Cooppan elegantly puts it, “scholarly engagements with the categories of migration, exile, diaspora, and globalization” (15). However, world literature has frequently been framed as a problem for the discipline, in large part because of its dependence on the ever-vexing and still mistrusted specter of translation. In light of the long-standing anxiety toward both world literature and translation, I propose here that comparatists do ourselves a terrible disservice if we do not urgently take up the questions raised by this disciplinary tension. Translation – in all of its attendant struggles with ethics, aesthetics, appropriation, authority – is not the problem, but, rather, should be understood as a key critical lens for comparative and world literature.In order to establish academia’s frustration with this subject, one need look no further than the “Three Reports to the America...

The idea expressed in the quotation above, by a hostage-poet in 1960s Beirut that appears in Don DeLillo’s novel MAO II, suggests the importance of writing as a way to produce new space. The narrative examines the difficult and necessary relationship between the writer, the written word, and the production of social change. In focusing attention specifically on the power of text to influence systems of oppression on a large cultural scale, MAO II provides examples of the ways in which texts record and respond to unique oppressive situations. In this way, the text functions more complexly within the space of the larger social dialectic than simply as a record of social failings. By presenting the violence of oppressive space back to the society that created it, the novel becomes an object of social protest. An examination of two other novels of social protest, John Edgar Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire and Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer, further illustrates the way that the book is used as ...

Krajem 2009. godine pisac i urednik Roman Simić Bodrožić kontaktirao me s prijedlogom da napravim nekoliko prijevoda i pošaljem ih kao moguće priloge za antologiju pod nazivom Best European Fiction 2012 u izdanju američke izdavačke kuće Dalkey Archive Press. Prijedlog sam, naravno, prihvatio premda mi ovo nije bilo prvi put da šaljem prijevode za spomenutu antologiju. Međutim, moji prijašnji prijevodi nažalost nisu prošli uredničku selekciju te nisu bili uvršteni u prethodna izdanja antologije, odnosno serije antologija čije je prvo izdanje objavljeno 2010. godine, a čiji je urednik priznati američki pisac bosanskog porijekla, Aleksandar Hemon. U njenim prijašnjim izdanjima našli su se tekstovi Nevena Ušumovića, Mime Simić, Igora Štiksa te nekolicine autora s područja bivše Jugoslavije poput Davida Albaharija, Andreja Blatnika, Vladimira Arsenijevića ili Gorana Samardžića, drugim riječima, tekstovi istaknutijih suvremenih pisaca s prostora bivše Jugoslavije koji zajedno s tekstovima dr...

Rad će postaviti pitanje nudi li danas Mreža alat za “osnaživanje čitatelja”, kako je najavljivala hipertekstualna teorija devedesetih. Interaktivnost kao “prirodan” oblik pismenosti postala je ideologem razumijevanja elektroničke pismenosti. No je li danas uistinu riječ o demokratizaciji čitanja-pisanja putem odabira smjera, “kretanja” virtualnim prostorom teksta? Rad će naglasiti razliku između Web 2.0 žanrova i koncepcije hiperteksta te razliku tekstualne i vizualne pismenosti. Ono što ćemo ovdje nazvati “topografskom proizvodnošću” bitno se razlikuje od “distributivne proizvodnosti” kakvu danas susrećemo na Mreži. Mreža nije orijentirana isključivo na proizvodnju virtualnog dérivea, trodimenzionalnog prostora kretanja, već je riječ prvenstveno o komunikacijskom kanalu. Umjesto topografije, za Mrežu će biti ključno povezivanje bilo kojih dviju točaka i uspostavljanje kanala “distribucije”. Temelj distributivne strukture jesu mrežni protokoli, prvenstveno TCP/IP protokol koji omoguća...

“America is now wholly given over to a d – d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied by their trash…” (Hawthorne 304). However Nathaniel Hawthorne chose to voice his frustration with the American female writer, she did play a significant social role in nineteenth-century American cultural history. Formally removed from the political discourse of their generation, women activists turned to other means for disseminating opinions and disapproval. The rising genre of the novel was one of the most effective and visible forms available to American women. Viewed as an historical artifact, the novel was steeped in social convention and cultural ideology. Therefore, when women turned to it to voice opposition to Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, they did so by embracing the traditionally-accepted methodology of the novel, but altering it through subversive language and plots to suit their critical needs. The goal of this paper is to ...