Victoria Martinez, What the cards say, 2022, 9' x 16' 5"
The possibility of otherness
By Lucía Cornejo
While translating Lucille Clifton’s first book of poems, Good Times (Random House, 1969), for my graduate thesis, I thought about why and how I had chosen to translate her poetry. I became familiar with her work at a workshop in the U.S. Poets in Mexico residency, where poet Eileen Myles shared Clifton’s poem “The Mother’s Story”. The poem goes:
a line of women i don’t know,
she said,
came in and whispered over you
each one fierce word,
she said, each word
more powerful than one before. (2012: 83).
I like to think of that poem as a little opening door, as a way of conjuring. I felt moved to find out more about the author and her work. I wanted to listen to it up close, in my own mother tongue. In that sense, my decision to translate Clifton’s poetry was motivated by the desire to preserve something indefinable, maybe the emotion of reading that poem for the first time or the revelation it elicited. I sought the possibility of feeling connected to someone or something through words, an experience of shared solitude. The poem also revealed to me something about myself and my own story as a reader and a writer: I felt the need for literary ancestry, an ancestry formed by other women’s literary voices. I also felt the need to read about mothers and grandmothers; and not only to read about ancestry or family bonds as a literary theme, but as a way of understanding the act of writing and sharing poetry. One that dealt with the emotional connections we establish through the words we recognize as said by others. Others with whom we think we share something, whether life experiences, points of view, or sensibilities. In that sense, Clifton’s poem showed me a kind of empathy and recognition of myself I hadn’t yet felt while reading other authors. Until then, my literary experiences had been shaped by my readings of Mexican male authors of the twentieth century, such as Octavio Paz, Xavier Villaurrutia, or Salvador Novo. Even though I feel their works were and are incredibly interesting, at the moment they felt like figures from which I could learn different ways of experiencing literature, history, and language. I did not experience their works as places where I could recognize something about myself. I also want to add that I do not think that to recognize oneself in a literary work one must share gender, identity, or background similarities with the author. However, in my case, my experiences as a reader have been, to some extent, shaped by gender and strong female family bonds.
Therefore, these experiences as a reader influenced my practice of translating Clifton and as a literary translator in general. Here I want to recall Lawrence Venuti’s concept of “simpatico”; a concept that was also brought to him by a friend: a certain romantic attitude towards translation defined by the connection of souls between a poet and a translator. This concept involves the recreation of the author’s creative process in the translator’s own process, ideally when both are at the beginning or at the same stage of their careers (Venuti, 274). Thus, he found in simpatico a very attractive position for him to adopt as a translator when he decided to translate Milanese poet Milo de Angelis, who was roughly his own age.
However, in my case there was a huge historical distance between Clifton’s poetry and my own translation process. Furthermore, it was only years after, during the process of writing about the motivations behind my thesis work, that I got the opportunity to think about my own creative/aesthetic motives to do so. Although literary translation always demands an immersion into the works and literary figure of an author, translators rarely get the chance to put into writing our own decisions and expectations during this process. When we do, we are having a particular translation experience, maybe one that is fundamentally different from that one where we don’t get to choose who and what we translate. And even if our motives do not respond to this notion of “simpatico,” the interesting thing about Venuti’s concept is that it allows us to reflect on the position we assume as translators.
In the cases where we choose to translate an author because we are moved by this kind of empathy, our choice is an act of affection. Paradoxically, I think that, maybe, it is when we choose and love an author that we are more open to the recognition of otherness in their works. We are more open to recognizing the differences and the distances that translation reveals. And even though our practice is attached to the collective values of what literary communities consider to be literary, this choice demands a certain responsibility and self-awareness. Why am I choosing this author? What parts of myself as a reader, writer, or creator do I find in this work? What is my relationship with both the languages I am working with, from a cultural point of view and also a literary one? We must be aware that, by making these choices, we contribute to the creation of a certain continuity or inheritance, the possibility of an author to be passed on to other readers and possible translators.
Though I believe that translation does constitute a kind of knitting of literary ancestry and connection, I’m aware that this practice has always been hiding in plain sight, particularly in the case of women translators. Their practice has historically been determined by a tone of political and cultural resistance, whether it is because of the social and material conditions in which they worked, their selection of authors, or their ways of approaching a certain literary text through translation choices. I always think of the differences between Borges’s version of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1937) and Maria Luisa Balseiro’s (2012) version.
An interesting example is Borges choice of the word “condition,” in Spanish “condición,” to translate Woolf’s word “position”; Woolf’s narrator uses this word when referring to the moment Orlando realizes there are certain demands and privileges in being a woman (page 151). Balseiro, on the other hand, uses the word “position” (posición), a more immediate and direct translation. Also, in some passages of the book, I feel that her translation choices are more concerned with preserving Woolf’s vocabulary and a similar syntax. Borges, in contrast, synthetizes constantly and chooses phrases that have a very attractive rhythm in Spanish; in a way, they feel more direct and musical. However, regarding the ways of naming gender in the novel, Balseiro’s translation choices seem more aware of the complexities of the subject, and even Woolf’s jokes are more evident in her Spanish version. Even if both translations have their high points, both are also limited to their historical, linguistic, and cultural contexts.
Though Balseiro’s version has a fair dose of visibility nowadays, I cannot help but think that, if both translations had been released during the same historical time (let’s say 1937, the year Borge’s version was published), Balseiro’s would’ve been, probably, much more invisible. With this invisibility I mean that her version would have not been equally distributed or even published, and her name as a translator would not have been printed in the book. This due not only to the lack of recognition of translation as a creative and key work for the distribution of literary work (which is nowadays much more recognized), but to Balseiro’s ability to access prestige, which has been historically related to gender inequalities. Also, researchers Nathaly Bernal and Leah Leone both have mentioned that Borge’s Orlando is nowadays, still, the most available version in the literary market and the most visible worldwide.
In that sense, I think women translators know best how this practice has been one of invisible presence in relation to the literary canon and the notion of authorship. My ideas on Balseiro’s version of Orlando are just one example, but, historically, there have been many more women translators who, in fact, had to face their work in total invisibility. That is not to say that gender is the only factor involved in the erasure of translated literary works, but a very significant one. This practice depends on the historical, social, and material circumstances of translators: And, in the case of women translators, it has been a practice in conflict with or devoid of a sense of authorship.
So, despite this invisibility, I wonder about all the women authors and translators who have affected literary history through their choices. Moreover, through their choice of translating authors they loved. How they passed on certain authors and the knowledge we have of them and their literary works, despite this invisibility. Furthermore, how they created spaces in between languages, cultures, and literary traditions: I like to think literary translation allows for all kinds of in-betweens: Not only formally and aesthetically, but in the material dimension and circulation of books and literary texts.
Translations that appear in magazines, anthologies, and digital formats are also a way of thinking of translation as an experimental field. What characterizes these formats is diversity and a collective presence. They remind us that there are many ways to translate a single text, or that a translation does not have to exist on a printed book to have an impact on a reader. Sometimes a translated poem is enough for a translator to have a deep experience of affection and to get hooked on an author. It also allows for a space of dialogue and play. In my case, when I was researching other Spanish versions of Lucille Clifton’s poetry, online magazines and anthologies compiled by women writers and translators were key. Particularly Rosa Lentini’s and Susana Schreibman’s Siete poetas norteamericanas actuales and De la nieve, los pájaros compiled by Lisa Bradford.
This reminds me of my recent experience with not only literary and written translation, but also live translation, at MAKE Literary Productions’ Lit & Luz Festival. MAKE Magazine has evolved into a space where translated literature is at the core of understanding and approaching art. I think of its hometown, Chicago, as a city that cannot be conceived without its cultural and linguistic diversity. MAKE also supports translated literature as a main element of their programs and editions. This is a stance that I find especially interesting in a country where translated literature does not have the same visibility as literature originally written in English. And this makes me think that if we want to get a wider idea of the environment of literary translation in a certain community, city, or country, it could be more interesting to take a look at these hybrid spaces of festivals, anthologies, magazines, and independent publishing. These are spaces that depend on a notion of dialogue, plurality, and on the act of literary translation.
Moreover, in a time where hyperconnectivity and being “connected” with others through data is considered a tool for generating profit, translation is often reduced to a commercial transaction. Communication, in this sense, is a way of reaching consumers, not people, and markets, not communities. This way of thinking translation and communication can lead to an erasure of differences in between cultures, communities, and people. Hyperconnectivity and having the technology to connect easier from one geographical point to another, does not mean we are more able to understand or stablish a dialogue with others. Here, literary translation can lead us to not romanticize or simplify connection, to have in mind the nuances and differences in thinking, experiencing and living that languages and different literary expressions convey. Moreover, it can help us appreciate these differences and celebrate them. The tensions between similarities, proximities, and differences that literary translation reveals are not only exciting, but crucial in a time were consumerism constantly demands texts to be readable, or apt for commercial purposes; in a time where we are constantly consuming marketing discourses that feed on our preconceived ideas and prejudices. The possibility of intuiting this kind of otherness, of something particular and indefinable that you can’t quite capture in your own language, is an incredible learning and reading experience, a task worth undertaking.
Texts and articles mentioned in this essay:
Bernal, Nathaly. "La tardía publicación de Orlando en España: un posible caso de autocensura editorial". Escritos 28, no. 61 (2020): 31-50. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18566/escr.v28n61.a03
Clifton, Lucille. The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. BOA Editions: 2015.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. Una biografía. Traducción directa de Jorge Luis Borges. Ediciones SUR: Buenos Aires, 1937.
Orlando. Traducción de María Luisa Balseiro. Alianza Editorial: Madrid, 2012.
Lentini, Rosa y Schreibman, Susana. Siete poetas norteamericanas actuales. Pamiela Argitaletxea: España, 1991.
Leone, Leah. “La Novela Cautiva: Borges y La Traducción de ‘Orlando.’” Variaciones Borges, no. 25 (2008): 223–36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24880546.
Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility. Routledge: New York, 1995.
Lucía Cornejo is a poet and translator born in Sonora, Mexico. She received her MA in Translation Studies at El Colegio de México and a creative writing scholarship at Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas in Mexico City in 2018. She is currently working on a book of poems at the FONCA program for young writers. Her poems, translations and essays appear in different anthologies and literary magazines, such as Novísimas. Reunión de poetas mexicanas (1989-1999) (Los libros del perro, 2020), Círculo de poesía, Revista de la Biblioteca de México, Letras Libres, Este País and Punto de Partida UNAM.
