your doing / or the result of some
other agency." Such long strings of
Second, Williams is an obvi-
ously intelligent and well-read poet,
and his learning finds its proper
place in his poems, sometimes cen-
trally as in the poem "Marina," men-
tioned above. That said, at times the
musty smell of the academy can be
detected and be a little off-putting.
When one poem encounters cows,
the speaker must (of course) think
of lo; when another poem describes
an encounter between a man and
woman on the metro, the speaker
must (of course) recall Gombrowicz
for an idea as simple as physical
assertion. There are multiple other
examples of times when this reader
wishes the author would put aside
his professor's cap.
Third, there are too many
stretches, even whole poems, in
which the poet manages to bare-
ly include concrete imagery. For
example, consider these lines from
"All But Always": "and if you were
unable to give / an unqualified
response to these questions, / but
were forced to admit that you /
couldn't say with certainty whether
/ the activities of the thing were
-I
abstractions seem less like poetry
and more like the rushed hurtle of
abstract cogitation by someone con-
suming too much espresso.
Fred Dings
University of South Carolina
Miscellaneous
Beyond Words: Translating the World.
Susan Ouriou, ed. Banff, Alberta.
Banff Centre Press. 2010. 175 pages.
Can$21.95. ISBN978-1-894773-38-6
Beyond Words: Translating the World
is a collection of twenty-one short,
mostly informal essays, thoughts
on translation by a kaleidoscope of
translators who have participated
at various times in the Banff Lit-
erary Translation Centre's Summer
Residence Program. It is stimulat-
ing to confront in a short space
how twenty-one translators with
different approaches and attitudes
face twenty-one different problems
of translation in as many different
ways. How does translating make
us think about language? What can
translators do, caught in the gaps
between two languages? How does
each individual text determine its
translation? What about translating
from a major language into an indig-
enous language? What is involved
in translating from a minor national
language into a major one? What if a
translator is also a writer? How does
one carry across stylistic and lin-
guistic norms from one language to
another---even in the case of closely
related languages? How can poetry
be translated? Is translation politi-
cal? Should it be subjective? Is the
translator translating him- or her-
self? What about literary imports?
 What about translation in a bilin-
gual country? How does translation
relate to theory?
That all these questions are
raised cogently and in brief form in
this book reveals to the reader the
multilayered complexity that every
translation involves. Especially inter-
esting for this translator is the essay
"Literary Translation into the Indig-
enous Languages of the Americas,"
by Enrique Servin Herrera, investi-
gating problems raised by the recent
"renaissance of aboriginal languages
as literary media of expression,"
which creates a "real cultural chasm"
when a modem culture is translated
into the concepts of an archaic cul-
ture, leading the translator to "per-
form acts of social intervention, thus
transcending the mere function of
what we call translation." "We must
remember," the author writes, "that
languages are not parallel systems
of signs that 'reflect' the world, [but]
rather independent--or at least large-
ly independent-systems of interpre-
tation of the world."
Edith Grossman writes that in
translating Cervantes's Don Quixote, "I
believe that my primary obligation as
a literary translator is to re-create for
the reader in English the experience
of the reader in Spanish ... When
Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, his lan-
guage was not archaic or quaint. He
wrote in a crackling, up-to-date Span-
ish that was an intrinsic part of his
time,. . . a modem language that both
reflected and helped to shape the way
people experienced the world."
For those who believe transla-
tion is simple, Frantoise Roy offers
a not atypical conundrum: "If a
verse reads sus hermanos in Span-
ish, the translator into French must
know the gender of the herinanos
and whether there is more than one
of each gender in order to decide
761 World Literature Today
whether to use ses fr'res, leurs fr'res,
sesfrŽres et sa swaur, sonfrHre et sa sceur,
ses fr&res et ses swurs, son frere et ses
sw'urs, leurs fr'res et leur sweur, leurs
fr&res et leurs saeurs, leur frire et leur
saeur or leurfrýre et leurs sweurs."
Burton Pike
Graduate Center, CUNY
Hispanic New York: A Sourcebook.
Claudio lv6n Remeseira, ed. & intro.
Andrew Delbanco, foreword. New York.
Columbia University Press. 2010. xxiv +
547 pages. $89.50 ($29.95 paper). ISBN
978-0-231-14818-4 (14819-1 paper)
The publication of Hispanic New
York: A Sourcebook by Claudio Ivin
Remeseira, founder and director
of the Hispanic New York Project
in the American Studies Program
at Columbia University, marks
a significant milestone in Nueva
York studies as an interdisciplin-
ary, multinational field with hemi-
spheric and transatlantic scope.
The twenty-five texts anthologized
in four sections (Historical Perspec-
tives; Race, Ethnicity, and Religion;
Language and Literature; Music
and Art) represent numerous inter-
secting social science and humanities
disciplines: demographics, literature,
journalism, women's studies, soci-
ology, religion, dialectology, musi-
cology, and art history. Although
this selection of readings could not
possibly cover, uniformly, every
national group or scholarly issue of
Hispanic New York, the breadth and
depth of the classified bibliography
helps compensate for any perceived
omission of coverage. Extensive sub-
ject and name indexes also provide
access to the vast range of topics in
the readings, and the cover illustra-
tion-a demographic map by Ale-
jandro Largo--cleverly depicts the
extent of Hispanic New York.
Several selections are espe-
cially noteworthy for New York
literary studies. The inclusion of
Whitman ("The Spanish Element in
Our Nationality," 1883) and Marti
(an 1889 letter and "Our America,"
1891) shows that New York writ-
ing is firmly rooted in the United
States and Latin American literary
traditions. Selections by Bernardo
Vega and Jack Agiieros recognize
the place of first-person accounts
of the immigrant experience in this
literary corpus. Antonio Muhioz
Molina, in "Spanish in New York: A
Moving Landscape" (originally in
El Pais in 2007 as "Paisajes del idi-
oma"), reflects eloquently on Span-
ish in New York. And Remeseira's
own previously unpublished "A
Splendid Outsider: Archer Mil-
ton Huntington and the Hispanic
Heritage in the United States," an
important contribution to the his-
tory of Hispanism in the United
States and in New York, exempli-
fies the genre of the literary essay.
The centerpiece of the sourcebook's
literature selections, "New York
City: Center and Transit Point for
I-
 COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Author: Pike, Burton

Title: [Beyond Words]

Source: World Lit Today 85 no1 Ja/F 2011 p. 75-6

ISSN: 0196-3570
Publisher: World Literature Today
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