Reflections 04/04/22

 The title of Karashima's talk, "Reproducing Contemporary Japanese Literature for the Anglophone Market", gave an impression of modern authors as if being used to experiment with and explore the market. This commercialization moves literature, like a pearl, out of the shell of a purely aesthetic phenomenon - at the same time, what does it offer in return for what it replaces? Something that struck me in Karashima's talk was, firstly, the use of kawaii visuals on book covers to increase sales and secondly, the fact that publishers avoid certain authors because they "don't sell well", this becoming especially keen when it comes to foreign authors because "translated literature is a hard sell" to begin with. With kawaii visuals, an aesthetic that is gaining in popularity in the West is used to sell what's "a hard sell", i.e. translated literature. The work is not sold for its content, but for how lucky it is to be able to fit into an appealing cover. Similarly with both the avoidance of low-selling authors and acceptance of a "difficult sell" label for translated literature, I believe publishers forget that their job is to sell literature, not profit from what already sells. Instead of tackling and addressing the scheme of nonacceptance of foreign art, it's the easy way that they take, going for "outliers" that satisfy the current narrow trends. I think there is low awareness of why exactly certain books got pushed on the market and of why the public buys them - this is shown perfectly in meaningless stamps like "Splendid", "Unique", "Fresh" on covers. Neither the publisher nor the buyer have an idea of what exactly they get out of this and that book; that's not the focus. The selling revolves around creating hype and pushing buttons, the receiving end participates in it because it feels exciting and entertaining. There is pervasive purposelessness in actions taken by both parties, and neither searches for particular meanings - in my opinion. 

I think that, in contrast, Boris Dralyuk does ask the "difficult questions" about the parcel that are Julia Nemirovskaya's poems and does elaborate on what the someone gets out of reading them, namely the angle of equal and deep empathy to all beings and even inanimate objects, a connection to one's lost inner childhood, non-habitual lenses to look at ordinary things and "charging" of the spirit. The translations were not always accurate, and I believe that was the sacrifice worth making for the sake of preserving the lighthearted rhythm and rhyming. It is also good to witness Russian poetry successfully living on in niches after grandiose "golden" 19th and "silver" 20th centuries of Russian literature. 

-Ksenia