Earlier in the semester, we passed around a copy of The Key by Tanizaki. The paper was beautiful; I think the cover might have been hand-stamped. In Professor Vincent’s class too we have seen several beautifully made and produced Japanese books. For this reason, I was struck by the cover designs of some of the books that David Karashima shared. Although the English translations did not share the same style or unparalleled attention to detail that Japanese publications seem to contain, they still seemed in conversation with them. They were objects that lovers of books would want to look at, to hold, to own. And while of course the saying goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” inevitably people do, and so Karashima’s visuals made me think: Could this be a way to encourage readers to read works in translation? Through design and aesthetics? At the very least for Japanese literature, but perhaps for other literatures as well.
Dralyuk’s translations of Nemirovskaya’s poetry stood out most to me for their use of rhyme. It seems most contemporary translators avoid rhyme in English, dismissing it as impossible to replicate or too simple-sounding in English. Often, I think this dismissal is warranted, so I’m interested to hear more about why Dralyuk chose to try to bring it across in English and if it was a real challenge. It seems rhyme holds a more significant place in Russian literature, and Nemirovskaya’s “humble” and “somewhat childlike” voice perhaps allowed for the rhyme to be brought over as well. I found the mixture of rhyme and slant rhyme especially engaging and poignant in “Neighbor”—like two entities trying to connect, communicate, and empathize with one another but not always getting it exactly right.
-sharon
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