Essays Two
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A collection of essays on translation, foreign languages, Proust, and one French city, from the master short-fiction writer and acclaimed translator Lydia Davis In Essays One, Lydia Davis, who has been called “a magician of self-consciousness” by Jonathan Franzen and “the best prose stylist in America” by Rick Moody, gathered a generous selection of her essays about best writing practices, representations of Jesus, early tourist photographs, and much more. Essays Two collects Davis’s writings and talks on her second profession: the art of translation. The award-winning translator from the French reflects on her experience translating Proust (“A work of creation in its own right.” —Claire Messud, Newsday), Madame Bovary (“[Flaubert’s] masterwork has been given the English translation it deserves.” —Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Book Review), and Michel Leiris (“Magnificent.” —Tim Watson, Public Books). She also makes an extended visit to the French city of Arles, and writes about the varied adventures of learning Norwegian, Dutch, and Spanish through reading and translation. Davis, a 2003 MacArthur Fellow and the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize for her fiction, here focuses her unique intelligence and idiosyncratic ways of understanding on the endlessly complex relations between languages. Together with Essays One, this provocative and delightful volume cements her status as one of our most original and beguiling writers.
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This was a wonderful follow-up to 2019's Essays One. I knew that Davis was translator — it was her beautiful story “The Walk” that inspired me to read Proust — but I didn't grasp just how much of her life she has dedicated to translation. While Essays One had some pieces sharing her process in writing fiction, it was also very outward-focused, with much of the content being critical essays about visual artists and writers. Essays Two, in contrast, is extremely process-focused and highly technical; if Stephen King's On Writing is a “memoir of the craft,” then Essays Two is a memoir of the science of the written word. Davis emphasizes repeatedly that translation isn't exact, that there is no such thing as a perfect translation, but she also demonstrates that arriving at a satisfactory solution, of which there may be several, is extremely difficult.
In some cases, translating just a single word requires knowledge of the word's plain meaning and potential synonyms, of its etymology, and of life in 19th century France. The most striking case of this is the translation of the word boule, the title problem from the essay “Loaf or Hot-Water Bottle.” One would imagine that from context it would be simple to tell which meaning the author intended, but Davis outlines in great detail just how tricky a problem this is, before revealing and justifying her choice of hot-water bottle.
There are glimpses of Davis's gentle humor throughout. In one instance, after considering that an alternative translation may be better than the on she settled on, she remarks:
“Then again, maybe not. (If I were to write a memoir about being a translator, I might title it: Then Again, Maybe Not. Or, then again, maybe not...)”
However, given the subject matter, Essays Two is bit dry, although this is certainly deliberate and I don't think the collection suffers from it. If one were looking to read for entertainment, I'd steer them towards The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, as Essays Two is indisputably on the informative end of the spectrum.
On the whole, I really loved this book. Davis is perhaps my favorite author, and I'm very grateful that she has shared so much about her methods for translation and language acquisition.
Thank you to FSG and NetGalley for the advanced copy!
