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 All
reviews are available for download in PDF format. |
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May 28, 2010 |
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Article on
An Evening in
Honour of J.M. Coetzee |
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So it was for
the South African-born writer and Nobel
laureate J.M. Coetzee, as an audience at The
American University in Paris learned
recently when he spoke of his experiences to
students, faculty members... |
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May 27, 2010 |
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Review of
The Cahiers Series |
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These booklets
(or, well, cahiers) are around 36-48 pages,
are absolutely gorgeous and revolve around
issues of translation. The first one was
published back in 2006, and the 14th is on
its way. [...] One thing I can't emphasize
enough is just how beautiful these books are... |
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March 2, 2010 |
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Article on
Lost and Found
by Alison Leslie Gold |
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The notion of
Holocaust fatigue was broached during a
recent talk at the wonderful Joseph's
bookstore in north London. Alison Leslie
Gold was the speaker, reading from Lost
and Found, her autobiographical
contribution to the Cahiers series (Dan
Gunn's modestly sumptuous publishing project
dedicated to fine writing, translation and
illustration in pamphlet form)... |
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October 16, 2009 |
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Review of
When the Pie
Was Opened
by Paul Muldoon |
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When the Pie
Was Opened, a pamphlet of verses and
translations beautifully produced by Sylph
Editions, is another reminder of Muldoon's
extraordinary versatility. [...] This
is a delightful production, full of resonant
cross-references, as if no poem were an
island; and the whole crossed by Quadrio's
impersonal wingscapes, as if to remind us of
other flights and falls. |
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Summer 2009 Issue |
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Article on
Sylph Editions |
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Sylph Editions
sees itself primarily as a literary
publisher and its work with illustrations
began in earnest with the publication of
Jila Peacock's Ten Poem from Hafez in
2006. This book epitomized Rotem's
philosophy of the relationship between text
and image. [...] This willingness to
experiment with illustration is common to
his other publications, including the
Cahiers Series... |
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| Translation and Literature |
Issue 18 (2009) |
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Review of
When the Pie
Was Opened
by Paul Muldoon |
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This is a
beautifully produced pamphlet, but it's also
a most revealing one. In amongst the
exquisite drawings of Lanfranco Quadrio
[...] are four original Muldoon poems and
five new translations by him, shuffled into
an order most of us would find reminiscent
of his poem "Something Else" or the patent
dream-logic of To Ireland, I, those
lectures of a dazzling grasshopper... |
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| PN Review |
PN Review 184 (2008) |
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Review of
The Cahiers Series |
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A new series of
Cahiers - in themselves works of art
in their beauty of design - from Paris
prompts us to think anew about translation,
translation not only from one language to
another but also in the rather more inchoate
sense of conveying or introducing ideas from
one art-form to another. |
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October 2008 |
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Review of
The Cahiers Series |
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When Keats
wrote that 'a thing of beauty is a joy
forever', he might very well have been
anticipating the pamphlet publications of
the Cahiers Series, the first of
which is now complete and represents an
achievement that will 'never pass into
nothingness' ... |
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October 2008 |
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Review of
The Cahiers Series |
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There are seven
of this Cahiers to date, and the eighth, by
Paul Muldoon, proves no less compelling.
Immaculate editing, production of high
quality, and an original subject matter -
translation in all senses of the word - make
for short books that are beautiful to look
at and stimulating to read. |
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September 2008 |
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Review of
The Cahiers Series |
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A collaboration
between a publisher and a university in
Paris has resulted in a wonderful series of
books about translation. [...] The
volumes in the series are works of art in
their own right. Set in Monotype Dante on
two weights of paper, the cahiers are
elegant examples of how to publish properly.
None of them is more than 50 pages long, but
the texts are as fascinating and varied as
the authors who have written them. |
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Review of
Proust,
Blanchot, and a Woman in Red by Lydia
Davis |
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Davis is a
translator's translator. This is both
a compliment and a warning. [...]
Davis maintains as much as she can of syntax
and word order, and follows her usual
practice of trying to end a long sentence
with the same word as Proust. Even if,
in this case, "son trottoir éclairé par la
lune" turns into the decidedly American
"sidewalk lit by the moon", it draws our
attention, justifiably, to Proust's sentence
strategy, instead of seeking to cut him up
for easier consumption. |
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| Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers |
September 2008 |
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Review of
Text on Textile
by Isabella Ducrot |
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This
exquisitely produced book explores the
importance of textiles and the symbolism of
weaving in our culture. [...] Although
this book discusses metaphysical concepts,
there is no doubt the writer is a skilled
practitioner as well as a theorist.
[...] It is beautifully illustrated with
images of Ducrot's colourful work and
prefaced with a translation of Patrizia
Cavalli's poem 'To weave is human'. |
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June 2008 |
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Review of
Translating
Music by Richard Pevear |
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I love reading
translated works; I devour them. There's a
whole other world of literature outside the
U.S. waiting to be read, and I mean to
discover as much of it as I can.
Translating Music, first of The
Cahier Series published by Sylph
Editions, is written by translator Richard
Pevear, putting a whole new slant and
appreciation on the way I perceive
translated literature. |
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Review of
Walking on Air
by Muriel Spark |
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Walking on
Air features a few images of the
author’s handwritten pages, complete with
scribblings and rewrites, which was of
particular interest to me. Most of my
reviews and other writings are first
handwritten (as is this one) with many such
scratched out and reworded phrases. To see
the written notes of someone of Spark’s
caliber is certainly fascinating to any
writerly mind. |
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June 2008 |
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Review of
Days Bygone
by Rachel Shihor |
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"Days
Bygone" is made up of four excerpts from
Rachel Shihor's second novel "Yankinton",
narrated by a woman reminiscing on her youth
in Tel Aviv in the 1940s and 50s.
[...] "Days Bygone" is a beautifully
designed volume, illustrated by David
Hendler. The title of each excerpt is given
in Hebrew, in a large calligraphic typeface,
as a reminder that each story has been
translated. |
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May 7, 2008 |
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Introduction to
When the Pie
Was Opened
by Paul Muldoon |
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"When the Pie
Was Opened" offers a taste of [Paul
Muldoon's] latest collection of poems and
translations from Latin, Welsh and Irish, to
be published later this month in the
enterprising "Cahiers" series from the
American University in Paris. |
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Spring 2008 |
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Review of
Drunken Boats
by Alan Jenkins |
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Alan Jenkins'
translation of Le Bateau Ivre was, as
he tells us in the preface, fifteen years in
the making. At the launch of this
pamphlet in December, he described how he
has "tinkered away" at it, his editors
gradually teasing more and more from him.
That this translation was not driven by
contractual time, but rather born of
admiration for Rimbaud and a profound
engagement with the text, over many years,
shows in the poem we have here. |
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January 19, 2008 |
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Review of
Drunken Boats
by Alan Jenkins |
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There are as many ways to
translate poetry as there are to skin the
proverbial cat: which is to say, fewer than one
might think. All well-handled translations can
introduce poetry in a language the reader
doesn't know. But at their best, as here, they
can afford even readers versed in the original a
fresh poetic experience. |
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January 17, 2008 |
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Review of
Proust,
Blanchot, and a Woman in Red by Lydia
Davis |
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I've been carrying around Lydia
Davis' recent cahier, released through Sylph
Editions, that was talked about a few sites late
last year. After reading her recent Varieties of
Disturbance I've resolved to track down her
other work; her writing is the most precise I've
seen. Each piece is, to borrow a phrase, an
extraordinary machine. |
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December 17, 2007 |
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Review of
Drunken Boats
by Alan Jenkins |
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Just occasionally, in a life
full of words, there are words that you think
you should have heard before, known before, felt
before. If you're editor of the TLS ( OK, no
'ifs'), you think (I think) you (I) should even
have published them before. Alan Jenkins has an
office next to mine at the TLS. [...] I've known
for some time that he was writing a poem, maybe
more than one poem, about boats and water. His
new little book, Drunken Boats, has
already been published and purchasable for a few
weeks. Our diarist JC, not one to promote a
colleague's book beyond its merit (that is not
how we do things here) has already praised its
renderings of Rimbaud (above), an achievement
that is beyond this classicist's power to judge.
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December 2, 2007 |
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Review of
Drunken Boats
by Alan Jenkins |
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The translator
of Rimbaud's twenty-five quatrains, composed
of twelve-syllable lines, takes on the
challenge not only of Rimbaud, as Jenkins
knows, but Samuel Beckett, who translated
the poem in 1930, Robert Lowell (1961), as
well as Wallace Fowlie (1996) and most
recently Jeremy Harding (2004).
Jenkins, who is deputy director of the
TLS, decided that the best way to
approach this difficult task was to make it
more difficult [...]. Jenkins has gone
for a Rimbaldian, twelve syllable ABAB. |
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July/August 2007 |
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Review of
Walking on Air
by Muriel Spark |
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Coming as the
second in a series of Cahiers that
make available new explorations in writing
and translating’, Walking on Air was
published in April 2007 to coincide with the
concert given at London’s Wigmore Hall to
mark the first anniversary of Spark’s death
[...]. As a physical object too,
Walking on Air is delightful.
Aesthetically very pleasing, it is
beautifully made, a sewn paperback with
dustjacket and orange and green endpapers.
Seven colour photographs complement the
texts, including one taken by Spark herself,
a surreal study of four pairs of legs and
feet, which her companion Penelope Jardine
describes most loyally as ‘original’. |
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