Dear Edith Grossman,
After giving it much thought, you are my favorite woman of literature.
I find it startling that my favorite authors are men, but to broaden my list, ha ha, specifically to include women--I find such a thing offensive to the desire that women ought to be on the list in the first place. My favorite list of poets is more of a snapshot of humanity, genderwise, though clearly I have a bias toward the work of men, or the culture of our literature world has set it up for me to have such a bias.
But let's back it up, because some of my favorite--my very favorite--authors/works are provided by you and your fidelity to the original work in its original language. Thank you for bridging that gap. While laughing in the pages of Don Quixote and also delighting in the works of Gabriel García Márquez, I am not blind to my current inability to enjoy them as they were originally penned by the author. Thanks to your scholarship, I enjoy those words available to me in my language.
Your work and having brought these literary jewels to non-hispanophones like me has another effect, because it inspires me (and others I am sure) to study language if for no other purposes than to further enjoy the literature you have translated. Your work is so delightful, even as a translation, that I cannot help but be greedy for more. And your work, rich and pure as it seems to be, will be one of my go-to resources in comparing and understanding the translation of ideas between Spanish and English.
In today's world, not enough attention and gratitude goes to the intermediary. Individual ordinary readers like me present no significance in critiquing the work of translators or even much in the demand for translated works, except, I suppose, that we ordinary readers add up and in some way create the aggregate demand of economics. But let's be serious, the measure of literary treasures doesn't have much to do with supply and demand. Anyway, thank you for your delivery of the goods across the cultural barriers that otherwise exist. And thank you to your enhancement of literature.
Sincerely,
Troy Becker
Since writing this I have had the opportunity to read more Spanish works in English thanks to Edith Grossman, and have been impressed with more authors who carry no Y chromosome: Mayra Montero for one, and for another, the author of the classic Nada--Carmen Laforet.
ReplyDeleteAlso, more than eight years later, I have developed a more balanced literary palate, adding to my most favorite novelists Barbara Kingsolver, Geraldine Brooks, Toni Morrison.
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