Auzisem (sau citisem) pe undeva ca William Weaver, traducatorul lui Eco in limba engleza, a scris o carte despre pataniile lui cand a tradus Insula din ziua de ieri. Ma asteptam sa fie ditamai cartea, cu discutii pe text, diferite versiuni, greutati pe care le-a intampinat la tradus etc. Eram innebunit sa pun mana pe cartea asta, mai ales pentru ca parea atat de greu de gasit. Nu dupa putine stradanii am reusit sa-i dau de capat, si sa o gasesc. Nu e o carte, e un articol publicat de William Weaver in New York Times Book Review din 19 Noiembrie 1995, intitulat: “In Other Words: A Translator’s Journal”.
Am sa-l reproduc in totalitate aici. Daca vor fi probleme cu copyrightu, sa ma contactati si-l sterg. Pana una alta il bag aici, cei cat de cat pasionati de Insula, cred ca vor fi incantati sa-l citeasca:
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In Other Words: A Translator’s Journal
by William Weaver
New York Times Book Review 19 Nov. 1995: 16-20.
IN mid-December 1993, I telephoned Umberto Eco to wish him a good Christmas and asked him, casually, about his plans for the holiday. He and his family would be going to their country house at Montecerignone, in the mountainous Alto Montefeltro region of central Italy. “And I’ll write the next to last chapter of the novel,” he said, adding: “I’ve already written the last chapter.”
The novel — whose title I did not yet know — had been in progress for several years, and I had had some tantalizing foretastes of it; but still, I was surprised to learn it was so near completion. For me, it was momentous news, for, once completed, the book would become the central concern of my waking life for many months.
As it turned out, it was April before I finally had my hands on a nearly final draft of the novel. As I had when translating “Foucault’s Pendulum,” I kept a kind of log, recording some of the problems and some of my chosen solutions.
What follows is more a sample of my translating life than a true record of it. But even some excerpts from these disjointed pages can still give an idea of the quotidian slog and the private satisfactions that are a part of it.
Monte San Savino, 9 April ‘94. Saturday.
Today, by courier, I received the printout of Eco’s new novel, an impressive stack of unbound pages. Now (and definitively) it is called “L’Isola del Giorno Prima.” When I was lent an earlier version to read, last month, in New York, there was no title page; but Umberto, on the phone, mentioned two possibilities. He (and I) favored “La Colomba Color Arancio” — “The Orange Dove.” Our editor, Drenka Willen, also liked that, but everybody else — notably the other, foreign publishers — preferred “L’Isola,” and so it shall be. Fortunately it translates easily: “The Island of the Day Before.”
At 3 o’clock I opened a file (“Eco/Island 1″) and began translating. A few minutes ago, at 6:30, I knocked off for the day, having drafted over five pages. A very good half-day’s work. I know from experience that I won’t be able to keep up this pace; still I am fairly confident that, by 20 August, when I have to leave Italy for Bard, I will have finished a first rough draft.
Meanwhile, I plan to go on for a bit, without reading ahead. I know more or less what happens, since Um told me the story last fall, over a long lunch in Milan. As he talked, I tried to imagine what translating the book would be like. When Um would make a throwaway remark, like “this is where all of 17th-century astronomy comes in,” I knew that, in a brief sentence, he was mentioning pages and pages that would take up many days of my life and cause plenty of headaches.
The pages I worked on today, for that matter, were crammed with mysterious nautical terms — and 17th-century terms, at that. A brief explosion of erudition about the fluyt, or flyboat. Not quite one of what Um calls his “arias,” but at least a cadenza.
My pages produced today aren’t a translation. Not yet, anyway. They’re a skeleton, with much fleshing-out to be done. With the printout, Um also sent a set of his “instructions for translators.” We are not to use words that came into existence after the 17th century. But I don’t think this will be a particularly great problem, no more than the vocabulary of “The Name of the Rose.”
Monte San Savino, Tuesday 10 May.
A good day’s work. About 10 of Um’s pages. Very rough, of course, but I am getting a grip on the style and the story. Um’s advice to me at our lunch last year — “Read Donne!” — seems unnecessary. Rather like saying: develop a sense of style. If a translator doesn’t have that, he might as well change professions in any case.
Monte San Savino, Monday 16 May.
Um makes a big point about avoiding anachronisms. But were words like eliminare and liquidare — meaning to kill — used in the seicento? I will check, but they sound wrong to me.
Problem with collidere. Um uses it in an old sense to mean something like “collate” or place side by side. It has a similar, obsolete meaning in English, but whereas in Italian collidere is a rare word in whatever sense, in English we use “collide” frequently in the modern meaning. So if I use it to mean what Um wants it to mean, I risk seeming simply incorrect. The ideal would be to find a different, rare English word — not in normal use in another meaning — that would be close.
I’m worrying about Harcourt. I still have no contract, and hence no advance.
Monte San Savino, Saturday 18 June.
Excellent day. Roughed out nearly 15 pages. Now, as I was finding Padre Emanuele tedious the other day (tedious to translate, not tedious as a character), today I realized how fond I have become of the delightful Saint-Savin. Already I think I have caught some of the bite in his speech, and will be able to sharpen it fairly easily in the next phase.
When the narrator intervenes Um uses regularly — or, rather, irregularly — the pluperfect (“he had gone”), when in English, it seems to me, the past (“he went”) is more likely. As always in translating Italian narrative, and especially Eco’s, the various layers of the past have to be rethought. Just as some of the future verbs have to be altered, usually to conditional.
A nice peaceful day, but phone calls announce presences in Tuscany, friends arriving from the U.S. And all want/expect to come for lunch, that hated meal, destroyer of my days.
Monte San Savino, 23 June ‘94. Thursday.
Twelve pages. Tomorrow I’ll pass the halfway point — rather like rounding the Horn (into the tumultuous Pacific).
Today Dr. Byrd was prominent. He has a habit of dropping English words into his (Italian) speech. This creates a problem for the translator (into English; the French translator can relax). The old-fashioned solution was an asterisk and a note, “in English in the original.” Um hates this, and so do I. It is an intrusive reminder to the reader that what he is reading is not the original. If the purpose of the interjection is simply to show the cosmopolite nature of the character, the English can be translated into French, but Byrd is English. Therefore to translate his English into French would make no sense at all.
So the obvious solution is to leave the English in English, let it blend into the translation, which thus loses a bit of flavor.
But there is another, important consideration: the English bits in Eco’s Italian are spelled in 17th-century style (“windes” for “winds”). I can’t have Byrd speaking English in 20th-century spelling most of the time, with an occasional Jacobean sentence. So we lose that touch of erudite humor, too.
Reminder to myself, for the revision: Byrd (and the other Englishmen) will speak modern or, at least, not archaic English, but I must be careful not to make them American.
Monte San Savino, 28 June.
Words indicating sounds. Bouncing (as of a ball) in Italian is punfete. Or, as Father Caspar says, “tumpf.” Do we have as good a word in English?
Monte San Savino, 14 July ‘94. 6:30 P.M.
Very good day, also because I was working on one of the most beautiful chapters of the book: the voyage of Ferrante and Lilia, the meeting with Judas, all of Roberto’s delirium (a wonderful pretext for Um to let his imagination soar freely).
Monte San Savino, 16 July ‘94. Saturday.
Finished! (6:15 P.M.) Extremely hot* afternoon. Too exhausted to write now.
* And water running low in the well!
Monte San Savino, 17 July ‘94. Sunday.
Treated myself to a whisky before dinner last night, then to a fair amount of wine. I was reluctant to overcelebrate, because there wasn’t that much cause for rejoicing. I still have a long, long slog ahead of me — which I’ll begin in a few days.
The final pages of the “Island” went fast, partly because — not having read them before — I was swept along by the power and fantasy of the prose. And the bravery! Imagine any writer, and especially an Italian, daring to invent an Inferno. Um’s is like a contemporary, 21st-century comment on Dante (and Dore). And the finale, with Tasman and Captain Bligh!
It is strange working on a book that has not yet been published anywhere. As a rule I have read not only the book, but also the Italian reviews of the book. While I don’t necessarily agree with them, I get some idea of the public’s reaction to the work, and also some idea of the nature of that public. This time, I am alone with Eco. My relationship with the text is intensified, as if I were also alone with the characters, an intruder on the wrecked ship.
Monte San Savino, 25 July ‘94. Monday.
I have gone over Chapters 1 and 2, which in a way establish the main problems. The first chapter involved the Daphne and all the difficult vocabulary of 17th-century shipbuilding. Chap. 2 involves the siege of Casale and the vocabulary of fortification. What, for example, is a glacis? That’s my dictionaries’ translation of terrapieno; but the Webster definition of glacis doesn’t make much sense in the novel’s context. And fortino? The Italian-English dictionary gives three meanings. To me they sound quite wrong.
How to make old Pozzo talk? Contractions help, and perhaps a few rough words. But terms like “blockhead” and “scoundrel” always sound Victorian to me. And yet anything more modern would be intolerable.
Monte San Savino, 27 July. Wednesday.
In the O.E.D. I discover that the word “sapper” was used in the early 1600’s. What a relief (I had associated it with World War I). So much more vivid than “miner” or “digger.” More military.
Should I use French words (I’m in Chap. 6, back at the siege of Casale)? Contretemps, rendez-vous? Many of the characters in this part are French. For the moment I say: Oui.
“Loyal”? Or “faithful”? Saint-Savin says he is “fedele agli amici.” I have crossed out faithful (too often used in a physical, sexual sense) and put loyal.
Monte San Savino, 4 August ‘94. Thursday.
Another hot day (and shortage of water).
Worked on the difficult Chap. 16 (“Powder of Sympathy”). This is largely based on a work by Kenelm Digby, in Latin, but extant also in a contemporary English translation. God grant I can lay my hands on it. Meanwhile I have tried to sound as much like a 17th-century scientist as possible.
Monte San Savino, 8 August ‘94. Monday.
Tomorrow to Montecerignone, where we will stay a couple of days. As usual, I’m excited about the trip — and, also as usual, a bit intimidated, because whenever I work with Um, I feel constantly that I am exposing my ignorance. Not that he so much as raises an eyebrow when I ask who Regiomontanus was, but I am convinced I should simply know.
Today’s chapters — I have reached the point where Roberto is beginning to learn to swim — have several delightful Eco-ian (Eco-lalic?) “arias.” I left them only half polished. It will be such a joy to give them shape and rhythm later, at the next stage.
I keep thinking of my comparison of translator and sculptor. Now I have in front of me the mass of wet clay. Little by little, I am molding it. The material is all there, but I have to bring it to life.
Montecerignone, 10 August ‘94. Wednesday. 7:30 A.M.
Left Monte S.S. at 8 A.M. yesterday, got here — after a leisurely drive — shortly after 11. A pleasant, air-conditioned trip over the Apennines. The last part, in the Alto Montefeltro country, is particularly striking: great rock formations, like forts or cathedrals, on peaks all around, a great stone cliff like a wall (now and then I thought also of Tombstone Valley). And fields being plowed: I was wakened this A.M. by the grumble of a nearby tractor. As Um points out, this is one of the few parts of Italy to remain so sparsely inhabited. “Nothing like this in Tuscany,” he says, with an edge of rivalry.
Here, he is very much the lord of all he surveys, and he is more relaxed in this vast, rambling, comfortable and unpretentious house than he is in Milan or Bologna.
I sit at the table, and most of the time he paces the room (after politely asking if it makes me nervous; it does, a little, but I say it doesn’t). At some of my questions, he produces a book, a volume of an Italian encyclopedia, or he vanishes upstairs for a work he has put aside to lend me. We puzzle out some of the nautical terms together, he tells me where I can find other vocabularies. I see I’m going to have to spend some time at the N.Y.P.L., perhaps even at the Library of Congress. For some things, like Caspar’s raging, I am given a free hand (“anything you can find that gives the impression of eccentricity”). He worries about some matters that don’t worry me — for instance, old Pozzo’s Piedmontese dialect. Of Father Caspar’s Germanic-macaronic speech, Um says: “Make him sound like Kissinger!” Burkhard Krober — Um’s German translator — will have him speak Old German, which will be printed in Gothic type (Um’s suggestion).
Monte San Savino, 13 August. Saturday. 6:15.
I have reached Chap. 30 — so, with luck, I will come close to finishing this revision before leaving for Rome, New York and Dutchess County.
As the book enters the last part, the translation goes more quickly (it may be that the book itself goes more quickly). Also I am, to some extent, hitting my stride. Now there can be a whole page with only one or two small revisions, while in earlier chapters there was rarely a sentence without radical alterations.
Bard College, New York, 15 December ‘94.
Long silence due largely to debilitating sciatica (with consequent, justified depression), and other work.
But progress was also made on the “Island” (sometimes I felt like Father Caspar, struggling in his submerged bell). I finished a full revision of the book about two weeks ago, printed it out and began consulting experts. Nicholas Adams, at Vassar, was extremely generous, going over all the arms, fortifications, etc. Here at Bard, Liz Frank checked the little “Euphues” pastiche, and a young chemist, Dan Freedman, recommended by my students, gave me an enthusiastic lesson in fencing (though I’m not sure of the 17th-century terminology, at least I now know what is going on); Bill Mullen also gave Latin advice, and Prof. Silvio Bedini of the Smithsonian is going over the navigation problems. I spent some time here in the library with Aristotle’s “Categories,” for Padre Emanuele’s telescope (pretty easy, after all).
So I am now ready to plug most of the gaps before I see Um. By mid-January, a printout should be in Harcourt’s hands! Monte San Savino, 10 January ‘95. 6 P.M.
Yesterday and today I devoted myself entirely to going over Eco. Tomorrow I should finish this rereading; there are still many questions — nearly a hundred, I should judge — and Um (whom I see next Monday) will not be able to answer all of them, for example the English names of some of Marco Polo’s exotic places. Clever Andrew Porter discovered that Camul is Hami, but what is Tesso?
I have effected endless, tiny, I hope felicitous changes. For instance, I had made Roberto exclaim (referring to the Intruder): “He wants me dead!” That is now improved, I believe, as “He would have me dead!”
A recurrent problem (not only with Eco): Bible quotations. The Italian version, especially the Old Testament, diverges enormously from the English. I had a hard time finding a verse of Proverbs, which Um quotes as (literal translation) “apples of gold in a silver net.” King James says: “Apples of gold . . . in a silver picture.” What on earth does that mean? I’ve had to do a good deal of fudging. The Song of Songs creates more difficulties, as always.
The other day at La Foce, the guests included some writers (Luigi Malerba, Sergio Romano). It seems to be chic not to have read Eco, rather like not having a TV. The usual attempts to explain (to explain away) his success — no one seems prepared to admit that the success might be due to his enormous gift!
Monte San Savino, 11 January ‘95. 6 P.M.
Finished going over the whole thing. Two and a half yellow pages of queries, some for Um, many for the unknown N.A. (naval attache), who may or may not be able to answer.
I have allowed myself some embellishments — very slight — more for reasons of rhythm than of meaning. Um may shoot some of them down.
Sensations, having now read through the whole book, on paper: 1) of course, exhaustion; 2) some really successful passages, either of poetic flights (Roberto’s deliriums) or of strictly narrative bits (Mazarin, Biscarat, etc.); and 3) some passages — mostly erudite — still opaque. I am hoping that once I have really grasped the simple meaning, I can infuse some vitality, lymph as Um would call it, into these — few — stubborn passages.
Milan, 17 January ‘95. Tuesday.
On the 13th (Friday) I worked all day and, after dinner, until midnight, feeding the solved problems, corrections, spelling, etc., back into the computer. Saturday A.M. to Florence to work with Pietro Corsi on a lot of scientific (and other) problems. Pietro also put me in touch with two other experts who offer to help, one a professor of history of science and philosophy, the other a curator at the Museo di Storia Della Scienza in Florence. We really worked out some of the most abstruse passages. Pietro kept saying, “But this would be a mystery even for an Italian reader.” But, as we know, even if the meaning is elusive for the reader in English, I must know (or at least have some idea of) what it means.
Thanks to my hours with Pietro, there were, after all, not many problems. To some of them Um himself didn’t know the answers. Incenso maschio, for example, he originally found in some seicento text, but has now forgotten where. I can fake it. Fava moresca (an alchemist’s ingredient) comes, I learn, from Act I of “La Celestina.” So I should find the Old English translation. Meanwhile, I have used “pile-wort,” just because I like the name and it seems to be related to fava. For that matter, Um gives me a free hand to invent anything that achieves the desired effect (literal fidelity is of no importance). Thus cosmopea — which is not in any of my dictionaries, La Crusca or in the O.E.D. — may come out quite differently. Or I may leave it (as I like it), since I can see no reason, in this book, not to use invented words.
As our work progressed, Um began having fun, pulling down books to illustrate various problem words (much talk of emblems and impresas), pictures of clocks with ropes, quotations from Tesauro, etc. Somehow just the handling of books, the finding of a quotation, excites him. With him, I always feel like a student.
Monte San Savino, 26 January ‘95. Thursday. 10:15 A.M.
I finished the latest — and first acceptable — draft on Sunday afternoon.
Of course, this is really only another first stage. With it, my privacy ends. Now I’ll be bombarded with suggestions from Um, Drenka, the copy editor and anybody at Harcourt who reads it (including, I sometimes think, the elevator operator and the cleaning staff). I have to be prepared for a couple of months of combat.
I have written a kind of “preventive” letter to the still-unnamed copy editor.
In all honesty, I have to say that some of the suggestions — Um’s especially — will, I know, be helpful. He is good at seizing problems, less good at finding solutions (why should he do my job for me, anyway?). Though he sometimes just says, in effect, “suit yourself.” For example, I imagined there was some great significance in his saying sometimes Mazarino or Mazzarini instead of the more usual Mazarin, and I shyly suggested calling the character by his Italian name in the Casale scenes, then in the French way when we get to Paris. “Oh, just call him Mazarin throughout, if you like,” he said. Actually, I prefer my first solution and will stick with it. A similar question arose about the protagonist’s name. Sometimes he is della Griva and sometimes de la Grive, without any apparent consistency. Again, Um told me to do as I like, so I am trying to use the Italian name when Roberto is in Italy or is being addressed by Italians (or is thinking about himself), and French when he is among the French, including Casale, where he is with Saint-Savin and Toiras.
It seems strange not to have to face the computer every morning. Yesterday was devoted to packing books — I am donating about 600-700 volumes of Italian literature to Bard. Today I am tidying up my desk.
But the first person I must call, on arriving in N.Y.C., is Drenka, who by Sunday should be immersed in “The Island.”
Bard, 5 February ‘95.
Drenka had had the script for almost a week, and I was growing apprehensive. This magic island of Eco’s could also not appeal (in which case the translator would automatically be blamed).
I needn’t have worried. Drenka was 30 pages from the end, and would have called me on finishing. She is ecstatic, positively effervescent, both about the book and the translation. According to her, the copy editing will be painless (they may even let me put an “s” on “towards,” against all Harcourt house rules). Great relief. I guess, secretly, I knew all my hard work had paid off; but there is always the possibility that someone will read it against the grain. I will see Drenka on Thursday night, to celebrate. A provisional celebration. I won’t break out the Champagne until I have the bound book in my hands (mid-September, if all goes according to schedule).
Now I await Um’s reaction.
Bard, 14 March ‘95. Afternoon.
The past 10 days have been so busy that I have rarely had time to write for myself; and when I did have some time, I had absolutely no energy.
Shortly after the last entry, I had a festive dinner in N.Y.C. with Drenka, both of us a bit giddy with relief (at Provence — I was giddy, too, from a superb white Burgundy).
But that was only another beginning. When the copy-edited MS. came back, we returned to work. The copy editor had treated the text (mine, that is) with care and respect, pointing out some inconsistencies and some awkwardnesses, and querying a lot of things. For instance, the name of the ship. I called it the Amarilli, as in the Italian, and Drenka also liked that name. But, the copy editor asks, why not Amaryllis, since the ship is presumably not Italian? At first, I resisted instinctively, and Drenka — who loved the Italian name — was with me. Then one morning she came into the office where we are working, having changed her mind. I had changed mine that same night.
Actually, D and I think alike to an uncanny degree. Time and again, when we are debating between two words, we arrive — absolutely simultaneously — at a splendid third. Then, laughter and a reciprocally congratulatory handshake. The other day, I gave Drenka her first “high five.”
But this phase was exhausting. For five or six days, including the weekend, we worked from 10 A.M. to 5-6 P.M., with a midday sandwich and some iced tea at the conference table, where our stuff is spread out, as we debated, our mouths full, over an “a” or a “the.”
Then, when we thought we had finished, D decided that we both had to go over the whole text again. My back aching, I had to agree. So she is now in Germany with one copy of the re-edited, copy-edited text, and I am here in Dutchess County with another. We meet on Monday for two more days of work. Then Wednesday I’m back here to teach, and Thursday I go to Italy and to I Tatti, for other work there.
Meanwhile, I have looked at Um’s red-penciled notes on a number of pages of the translation. Some concern his own errors, corrected (after the appearance of the Italian edition, and — for the final chapter — of the Dutch). Many of the red-marked pages involve the vexed question of romanzo: “novel”? or “romance”? The Italian word can mean either. I had chosen “novel” because “romance” to me suggested Barbara Cartland or Fred Astaire. But, as Um points out, “novel” is really an 18th-century word, so — head bloodied and bowed — I’ve made the changes.
Blushing, I have also corrected my own mistakes (only two or three, I’m happy to say), like ventose, which I strangely took to mean “suckers” (like those of an octopus or a trumpet-vine or a plunger) — maybe it was all those South Pacific fish — when it simply means the more normal “windy.”
Though my 10 days in Italy will be hectic, I’m looking forward to them. When I get back there will be proofs ahead of me.
Monte San Savino, 26 March ‘95.
Back here in Italy, as it’s spring break at Bard, and — last week, after another day and a half in the Harcourt office — I re-revised, with Drenka, the last revision; and the script has gone to the printers. So here I am for 10 days, most of which will be spent at I Tatti working on a book for Abrams, my next job. I go there tomorrow morning and will stay till Friday. A welcome change of perspective.
The day and a half of work went fairly serenely, though D had many queries (I had a few improvements of my own to make, including some restorations after the copy editing, more discreet than usual but also quirkish). As expected, D balked at a few more extravagant words she wanted tamed; sometimes she persuaded me, sometimes not. “Frugiferous” I changed to “plenteous,” which, after all, I like better.
Most often, we found a new solution we both preferred. At one point she questioned the word “sickness,” so, to convince her of its appropriateness, I sang “I attempt from love’s sickness to fly,” omitting Purcell’s coloratura. The week before, I had sung a verse of “The Rose of Tralee,” to prove a point about fountains. (I had written that a fountain “rose”; the copy editor had changed it to “flowed,” and D agreed with him. But when I crooned about the crystal fountain “that rose in the beautiful vale,” she had to give in.) She has a dislike of colons, finding them too European, so I’ve grudgingly allowed her to reduce some to commas. Meanwhile, at Bard in my Translation Workshop (Eng. 312), I encourage my students to clarify (and codify a bit) their punctuation, so I am training a whole cadre of young translators to torment the next generation of Harcourt editors.
There was a problem about the Hebrew word for dove. The copy editor wanted to substitute another Hebrew word, so I was delegated to fax Eco. The reply arrived, miraculously, 10 minutes later, with the photocopy of some erudite text (in English), with Eco’s word. But, exasperated, Um (who has had some grueling experiences with American copy editors) said to cut the whole three-line paragraph. I reworded it slightly, to appease the still unsatisfied D, and the paragraph was saved.
D, who lives among copy editors, was a little puzzled by Um’s evident irritation. I, on the contrary, understand it only too well and, secretly, share it. It was a characteristic case of “copy editor erudition”: he knows a great deal, but he doesn’t know everything.
In any case, we finished Tuesday at noon, I enjoyed a nice lunch at the Century and arrived at Bard in time to see Pasolini’s “Accattone” with my other class (Italian Neo-realism).
New York, N.Y., 1 May ‘95.
Returned from Italy a month ago.
After two readings with Drenka — endless, friendly debates about cutting (or not) an “on the contrary” or an “in other words,” of which there seem to be an awful lot — the script was sent off to the printer, and in a dismayingly short time we had it back in the form of proof (“rough pages”). My set reached me — on 22 April — at the Radisson Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe, Ariz., where I was attending the annual meeting of American scholars of Italian literature. I hardly had time to open the box and didn’t get around to looking at the pages until I was on the — horrendous — return flight. Then more correcting on Amtrak (which helpfully broke down and sat, unmoving, outside of Beacon, N.Y., for a fruitful hour), and — this past weekend — in my sister Jane’s guest suite in Durham, N.C.
“Rough,” indeed. Full of those perilous errors that look almost right, like “Power of Sympathy” for “Powder of Sympathy.”
This afternoon — for an hour or so — a session with Drenka at Harcourt, then the text was off to the printer again. I am excused from checking the final proofs, though I hope to be granted a last look at them.
Exceptionally, and perhaps ominously, I feel some satisfaction with the result of all this. The translation seems to read well, and while some readers may not like it (or the book), others, I am sure, will be enthralled by this “Island,” as I was.
I feel a bit like Verdi after Falstaff. “Va, vecchio Umberto, per la tua via.” It will be odd not to have this huge novel on my shoulders, after a full year of bearing the burden, which occasionally shifted its weight, but never got lighter.
N.Y.C., 26 May ‘95. Friday.
Received from Harcourt a set of bound, uncorrected galleys, with the handsome dust jacket, a starry vessel sailing in a blue sky-sea, amid signs of the zodiac. It still isn’t the real book, but holding it, I feel again that sense of adventure that surged in me just over a year ago, when the raw pages of the printout reached me in Monte S.S., where I am going the day after tomorrow, taking this near-book with me.
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