Ginster, the Critical Idiot? Siegfried Kracauer’s “Ginster,” translated from German by Carl Skoggard
One does not think of fiction when one hears of Siegfried Kracauer, which is a shame. Most Americans who know of the man are acquainted with the two books on cinema he produced after escaping Nazi Europe for New York: the highly influential “From Caligari to Hitler” (1947) and the tome that is “Theory of Film” (1960). But Kracauer also wrote two novels, “Ginster” (1928) and “Georg” (1973, posthumous), and a handful of novellas and short stories, all of which have so far evaded the readerly radar on this side of the Atlantic.
An Italian-Irish scholar, translator, teacher, and writer, Enrica Ferrara is a Renaissance woman. In this energetic conversation with Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, Enrica Ferrara recounts the story of her debut novel in Italian, “Mia madre aveva una cinquecento gialla” (Fazi, 2024), and discusses some of its major themes and plot elements.
Vladimir Veniaminovich Bibikhin (1938-2004) was a philosopher, translator, and philologist. During the 1970s and 1980s, Bibikhin established himself as a prominent translator of the most complex philosophical, theological, and literary texts, and as a widely respected humanitarian scholar of a rare and extensive erudition. His translations were remarkable not only as philological, but also as philosophical achievements, as they aggressively revised the principles of text interpretation, typical of the Russian tradition of philosophical translation—something that made many of his contemporaries suspicious of his theoretical and ideological proclivities.
To the extent to which translation is a new re-play, a re-shaping of the given material according to the universal language rules, it is, in principle, just as independent as the original. It is simply that same original, only re-cast in a new form, and continuing to live in that new form. The original appears to be original only outwardly, in a temporal sense. In essence, that is, in its relation to the possibilities of human speech, it is not more original than the translation. The original is lost, imprisoned in its private form. Translatability rescues it from those constraints.
Kercheval and Pitas’s translation of this career-spanning selection of poems marks the first appearance of Silvia Guerra’s work in English. Let me just say that it’s about time. The poems are dense without being claustrophobic, innovative without being gimmicky, and truly, refreshingly strange.
Bodor’s prose, in Sherwood’s translation, retains its casual and conversational tone, almost inviting readers to have the text read out loud to enjoy its aural pleasures. That said, the translation also successfully negotiates the nuances of a complex text, and excels at conveying its dark and subversive humour. Most importantly, the translation resists explicitating the original’s ambivalence, in an attempt to refrain from patronizing readers and intrusively helping them navigate Bodor’s frequently disorienting prose.
The English title of Israeli author Savyon Liebrecht’s latest work, “The Bridesman,” translated by Gilah Kahn-Hoffman, is a clever rendering of the Hebrew term “shoshbeen,” denoting the close friend or relative of either sex who accompanies bride and groom (one each) to the wedding canopy. The book, set within an Iranian Jewish family in Israel at the end of the 20th century, revolves around the relationship of two young people. It ends in a startling reveal of abuse, paradoxically conducted in the name of family values.
This novel skillfully explores the blurred lines between the sacred and the profane. In 1592, half a year after St. John’s death, a bailiff and his two assistants, Ferrán and Diego, are hired to transport the body of St. John from Úbeda to Segovia. The journey of the secret transfer is long and challenging.
“Taming the Devine Heron” is Henson’s sixth translation of books by Pitol. It’s also the second of his trilogy “The Love Parade.” The novel is a major work exhibiting Pitol’s cosmopolitan sensibilities. It’s also a meta-narrative that highlights the self-reflection so evident throughout his oeuvre. Pitol’s literary works are grounded in a type of hybridity that combines fiction, memoir, travel narrative, and biography, to name a few genres. In fact, the entire novel could be read as an exercise in literary imagination, which knows no borders and whose boundary is exclusively contained by the human capacity to wonder.
Originally published in 1987, “The Lady of Elche” is Berenguer’s fourteenth book of poetry. It combines her characteristic intellectual curiosity with a meditation on the harsh political reality that her country had just lived through.
Melinda Mátyus’ novel in verse “MyLifeandMyLife” is one of the most original pieces of experimental fiction published in Hungarian in recent years. We are grateful to Ugly Duckling Presse for allowing us to publish here Jozefina Komporaly’s translator’s note in which she discusses Mátyus’ unique sense of grammar and syntax, and her own approach to translating it.
Gini Alhadeff is a prize-winning translator, curator, and author, including of fiction, with the novel “Diary of a Djinn,” and of non-fiction, with a multitude of articles and her memoir “The Sun at Midday: Tales of a Mediterranean Family.” She grew up in Egypt, Sudan, Italy, and Japan. She studied fine art and photography at Harrow in England and at Pratt Institute in New York. She recently translated Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Road to the City” for the distinctive series, Storybook ND, that she curates for New Directions. This interview was conducted over zoom on October 6th, 2023 with Gini Alhadeff in New York City and Saskia Ziolkowski in Durham, NC.
A new translation of “The Road to the City” (New Directions, 2023) extends the book’s afterlife and illuminates Ginzburg’s distinctive style. The translator, Gini Alhadeff, gives in to Ginzburg’s spare and concise narration without ever losing sight of the novella’s subtle meaning making.
Haitian writer Kettly Mars confronts readers with the silence surrounding mental illness in her novel “I Am Alive,” translated by Nathan H. Dize. Set in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and told from multiple viewpoints, the novel plunges us into the secluded world of the Berniers, a bourgeois family living in Fleur-de-Chêne.
Andrea Abreu’s writing hand is neither soft nor measured. It punches through the film of language and lands, hard, on concrete. Julia Sanches’ translation of Abreu’s novel “Dogs of Summer” (Panza de burro, in the original Spanish) does not stop or stifle the forcefulness of this punch. It responds to it with equal parts fervor and frenzy, preserving the cuts and bruises that Abreu takes care to point us toward with the book’s narrator, affectionately called Shit. How can one possibly reveal this punch in English, save for getting out of the way?