I have a contemporary reaction to the life of Charles Baudelaire. I am reminded of Bob Dylan's "Yonder stands your orphan with his gun/Crying like a fire in the sun." Or of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Or I think of the joke between a friend and me that to "follow your bliss" may lead to homelessness. An adolescent genius, Baudelaire sometimes, like most adolescents, felt weary beyond his years. Seemingly willful and contrary—undoubtedly to protect his role as the soul in revolt—the poet setting out to make great demands on language was intently committed, it seemed, to a certain internal journey. While his biography has romantic connections with various women, you may read in his poetry that his essential nature was that of the poet, a life essentially of solitude, resisting the world.
In the process of translating, one finally walks into the poem as if into a house or a forest and looks around from the inside, because you cannot make the final transition from literal translation to new poem if you are not drenched in the presence and feeling of the original. (Perhaps my inflated language about this only expresses the joy I feel whenever pieces in the English counterpart little by little fall into place.) What a kick to have a dialogue with someone speaking a different language—in the case of Baudelaire, a dialogue across time. We hear Baudelaire colored by the style of English translation during each era since his death, and those past translations lose effect for me, and so I am motivated, as well, to let Baudelaire go on speaking as fresh as in his original by "refreshing" the way he is translated. (James McColley Eilers)
Aleksey Khomyakov (1804–1860) was a Russian religious philosopher, historian, economist, poet, painter, engineer, and inventor. He was the leader of the Slavophiles and promoted the idea of Pan-Slavism based on the principles of Orthodoxy. His early poems, created within the framework of romanticism, are concerned with the inner unity between the spirit and nature. Later he drew the most important source of his poetry from Orthodox Christianity. His theological writings influenced Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Solovyov. Khomyakov’s poetry remains largely untranslated.
Catalan | Novel (excerpt) | Spain
April, 2010Mill Town Memories is a captivating novel that holds the reader's attention with a skillful non-linear narrative technique. It immerses the reader in an industrial era, depicting life in one of the textile colonies that were such a vital part of Catalonia in the 1950s (the author lived in the Colonia Vidal from the age of six months until she was 20). It is a portrait of the heartland of Catalonia: its traditions, customs, and pressures to conform.
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).