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Skyscrapers or Gardens A Discussion of the Power of Paratext
Skyscrapers or Gardens A Discussion of the Power of Paratext
Between the reader and Eugene Onegin, Nabokov famously wanted to erect “skyscrapers”—towering footnotes on cultural context, prosody, specific translation choices, and more. This kind of paratext can helpfully orient a reader to histories, aesthetics, cultures, and processes different from their own.
However, how much extratextual material can a translator raise between their translation and the reader before they strand the reader inside a fixed, idiosyncratic interpretation of the text? Is there a point at which paratext becomes an obstacle, not a path, to experiencing the text itself? Four translators of 20th-century poetry will discuss their use of paratext to allow readers to roam a cultivated—but still roughshod—terrain around the text, instead of locking them inside a single vantage.
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Moderator
Conor Bracken is author of Henry Kissinger, Mon Amour (Bull City Press, 2017), and translator of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Scorpionic Sun (CSU Poetry Center, 2019). He is Assistant Poetry Editor at Four Way Review and teaches English at the University of Findlay.
Presenters
Philip Metres has written ten books, including Shrapnel Maps, Sand Opera, and The Sound of Listening, and four translations from Russian poets. Awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, he is Professor of English and Director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. Yerra Sugarman is the author of three poetry collections, including Aunt Bird, which is forthcoming from Four Way Books. She has received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, among other honors, and is translating the work of the French-Egyptian poet Edmond Jabès, and the modernist Yiddish-language poet Celia Dropkin. Jake Syersak (MFA University of Arizona, PhD University of Georgia) is the author of the poetry collections Mantic Compost and Yield Architecture. He is also the translator of two books, both by Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine: the poetry collection Proximal Morocco and the hybrid novel Agadir.