{"id":263416,"date":"2008-07-15T14:08:53","date_gmt":"2008-07-15T14:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2008\/07\/15\/interview-with-bill-johnston-and-more-on-magdalena-tulli\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:30:00","slug":"interview-with-bill-johnston-and-more-on-magdalena-tulli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2008\/07\/15\/interview-with-bill-johnston-and-more-on-magdalena-tulli\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Bill Johnston and More on Magdalena Tulli"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone from Polish Writing<\/a> posted this in the comments section,<\/a> and since it’s such a good interview, I thought I’d post about it separately. <\/p>\n

First off though, if you haven’t seen Polish Writing<\/a>, it’s definitely worth checking out. Great interviews, info about Polish books and authors, and even a graph<\/a> detailing how many books have made their way into English. . . . Looks like last year there were about 10, although 1990 was a banner year.<\/p>\n

The interview with Bill Johnston about Magdalena Tulli<\/a> is pretty interesting (and a good example of what’s cool about this site):<\/p>\n

\n

What have been the main developments in her writing style between Dreams and Stones and Flaw?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

In Dreams and Stones<\/i> there are practically no people, or more precisely, no characters. It\u2019s a novel about objects and about ways of seeing and explaining. The only actual character is the narrator, whose rather pedantic voice is our only clue to his existence. (Tulli and I disagree over what kind of book Dreams and Stones<\/i> actually is—Tulli claims it\u2019s a novel, whereas for me it\u2019s a prose poem.) In her subsequent books Tulli gradually introduces narrative, though she does so in a very tentative and self-aware way (this is why she\u2019s sometimes accused, wrongly, of writing \u201cmeta-fiction\u201d). In In Red<\/i> she retells the story three times; the plot of Moving Parts<\/i> (Tryby<\/i>) also unexpectedly changes course at several moments. It\u2019s only in Flaw<\/i> that she settles into a single narrative arc that carries through the entire book.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And related to Daniel Green’s desire for an introduction to Flaw<\/i> (and my echoing of the need for more contextual info):<\/p>\n

\n

Archipelago also tend not to include many notes or translator’s introductions. Is this a conscious intention for the work to stand on its own?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I can only speak about my own translations with Archipelago. I\u2019ve always tried to minimize paratext in any form, and my hope is always that a work ought to be able to stand either completely or mostly alone—this is certainly the case with Tulli, who simply needs to be read carefully. You don\u2019t need to know a lot of Polish history or culture to \u201cget\u201d her, I think. For me, footnotes and so on are a major part of the ghettoization of small literatures I referred to above, and I avoid them whenever I can—they make texts look like academic treatises rather than novels to be read and enjoyed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I definitely agree re: footnotes and the like, although I still feel that there’s a way of creating a context for approaching someone like Tulli, be in through an intro\/afterword, promotional materials, or whatever. <\/p>\n

And finally:<\/p>\n

\n

A significant number of authors who came to prominence in the 1990s have now made it into English. Are there any newer writers you are keen to translate?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

A current project of mine is the translation of Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s brilliant 2004 epic poem Dwana\u015bcie stacji<\/i> or Twelve Stations.<\/i> He\u2019s by far the outstanding poet of his generation (he was born in 1970); his lyric poetry has been (and is being) translated wonderfully by Mira Rosenthal, and I\u2019m going to have a go at this longer piece.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone from Polish Writing posted this in the comments section, and since it’s such a good interview, I thought I’d post about it separately. First off though, if you haven’t seen Polish Writing, it’s definitely worth checking out. Great interviews, info about Polish books and authors, and even a graph detailing how many books have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[9576,9306,1836,11796,13356],"class_list":["post-263416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-archipelago","tag-bill-johnston","tag-cwp","tag-magdalena-tulli","tag-polish-writing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357516,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263416\/revisions\/357516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}