And then there are writers whom I love whom I don’t think I could translate very well. . . . For example, Borges: I was asked to translate a Collected Poems of Borges and I knew I could never translate that kind of formal poetry at all.”
Not all translators seek out writers for whom they feel the most affinity. For them translation is not only about service and sharing, but also about personal and cultural growth. Serge Gavronsky, a professor at Barnard College and translator from French into English, and vice versa as well, told me, “the poets to whom I have been attracted are ones that are different from my own writing. I find that enriching for me; it liberates me from my own preoccupations; it allows, in a metaphorical sense, a cleansing of myself by the Other: translation as enema.” Here Gavronsky is speaking of his translations of French poets into English. But he has also been translating Louis Zukofsky’s A into French, and here his concern is primarily with bringing something new into French, “inseminating” French poetry with foreign genes. Translation as miscegenation.
Affinity is much more common to poetry translation than it is to the translation of fiction, because, as I’ve said, most poetry translation is initiated by the translator and most fiction translation is done on commission, initiated by the publisher. It is, therefore, with fiction translation that affinity gives way to something more akin to acting, where the translator is able to play a range of authors, including authors who write in a way totally unlike his own style or approach. In the only review I’ve ever seen of novels by different authors translated by the same translator, the reviewer, novelist Michael Upchurch, wrote that this offers “a perfect opportunity to gauge how much the translator’s art resembles an actor’s. In both these translations, John Brownjohn disappears inside his role completely, coming out with prose of such contrasting rhythm and temperament that it’s a challenge to remember that Brussig’s and Beyer’s German-language originals had to pass through the same mind on their way into English. It’s a fine accomplishment.”*
And even where there is affinity to start with, sometimes intimacy turns the feeling of love into one of annoyance, or even hatred. The Czech translator Zdenek Urbanek told me how it was
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