Today is the day! My first book-length translation is officially published. This Darkness Will Never End, my translation of Edith Bruck's first short story collection, is out in the world.And it arrives in bookstores 30 years after I first expressed a desire to translate an Italian book.
I type those words hesitantly because it surely isn't a boast. How could it have taken me three decades to reach this goal?
Well, journalism got in the way. That's one excuse. Oh and before that: Italy! I was having too much fun living in Italy as an ex-pat after college to translate an actual Italian book. (Fear and cowardice are two more excuses).
And to be honest, seven years have passed since I first read the original work, Andremo in città, and began translating one of the stories. Seven years since I felt what I describe as a lightning bolt sensation: these stories need to be available in English.
Seven years in which I began to occasionally teach at Wesleyan University (my alma mater) and penned obituaries for CNN while Leo learned to curse in Italian, finished elementary school, began middle school and decided his parents aren't all that sharp (he, however, was sharp enough one day to ask me when there would be a book whose cover read, "Translated by Jeanne Bonner." Today, my son! Because when you were born, I was reborn.)
(On a practical note, seven years slipped by during which many publishers I'd deemed suitable rejected the manuscript; how many hours I poured into reading the back catalogs of publishers and crafting proposals tailor-made for them!)
But the wait is now over -- and the apprenticeship has been served.
Learning Italian has been one of the thrills of my life. It's a milestone that I connect to some of the other formative moments of my life -- including translating sections of the Aeneid in Latin class at St. Anthony's High School on Long Island.
In fact, the first words of literature that I can remember translating weren't in Italian. They were: "Arma virumque cano..." (the legendary opening words of Virgil's Aeneid." Among the flurry of tasks that I completed to introduce the translation, I sent a copy to the library at St. Anthony's.)
As I celebrate the "book birthday" for my translation, I am preparing for a series of readings, beginning with an event at I AM Books in Boston, Beantown's Italian bookstore. And I've been heartened by all of the kind attention people have lavished on this little translation, including a very perceptive review from the Jewish Book Council.
The translation is dedicated to Edith's father because that's the epigraph she'd written for the original manuscript. But if I could write a dedication, I would mention all of the small moments that led to the publication -- reaching all the way back to the little girl in elementary school who insisted on keeping a notebook and revealed her love of writing to her teachers by scribbling a poem about Harriet Tubman on the back of an assignment. (I would also of course want to recognize the precious readers who won't be able to provide any feedback but who quite literally escorted me to this moment in my life: my parents and Liz).
As I've said before, the book I've birthed into English, like all of the short stories and poetry that I've translated and published, is not coincidentally by a woman author. Thanks to Paul Dry Books for continuing to invest in Edith Bruck, an important transnational Italian writer!
The task of revising, polishing, proofing and publishing a translated book is the proverbial labor of love. And I'm thrilled it's a translation of a book by a woman.
Translate women.
It's all I've done in the seven years that I've been translating Italian literature.
While I studied Italian in college and read Italian literature in the decades following my graduation, I only stumbled into literary translation after earning an MFA and seeing the literary field as a potential home not only for my original writing but also for translated works of literature. Specifically works written by Italian women writers that I could smuggle into English.
Literary translators are often gold prospectors. They discover treasures that for English-speaking readers remain buried in another language.
This book expands the number of works by Italian women authors in English. It adds to the collection of books by Holocaust survivors available in English. And while it's a work of fiction, it nonetheless increases our understanding of the specific hardships women who were deported by the Nazis faced.
It has
been a long journey and while I have many regrets, I have embraced my penchant
for being a late bloomer. Only in the past 10 years have I completed any graduate
school degrees (two, in fact, two decades after leaving college); or written for The New York Times; or applied for important grants (I won a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship to translate Edith's stories).
I was
even late to becoming a mother!
If I stop to think of the time I squandered (as Philip Larkin said, "time/torn off unused"), I get
discouraged – so I don’t allow myself to dwell on that. Instead, I keep busy by setting goals, and taking
steps to reach them. I am proud to be a lifelong learner. I won’t ever compete in the Olympics but as I look to
future achievements, I say it’s never too late (to write my own book, for example).
Ever since Leo was born, I've viewed obstacles, achievements and hard work in a completely different way. Obstacles remain challenging for me, to be sure, but they call on me to work hard and I've now truly learned the Gospel of consistently working hard to achieve a goal.
Perhaps it's helped that I returned to the beginning -- my girlhood love of writing, of keeping notebooks. Plus, connecting deeply to someone else: the story of Edith Bruck I proudly carry into the English-speaking world, as I've carried the stories of my parents, my relatives, my friends. What's elemental remains for me enthralling -- discovery, language, connection, extrapolation, figuring something out.
In conclusion, thank you for your kind interest.
And happy book birthday to This Darkness Will Never End!
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