On translating Magris: ‘Closelaboration’ with a difference

Abstract

This essay focuses on the translation of Claudio Magris’ novel Blindly (Alla cieca) into English and the collaboration between author and translator during the course of the project. Magris’ willingness to become an active participant in the translation process confirmed his frequent observation that ‘the translator is truly a co-author, part accomplice, part rival, part lover.’ Specifically, the essay examines the themes, imagery, and stylistic elements employed by Magris to render the multiple, interwoven strands that form the river of the narrative, spanning geography and history, space and time, to describe a story of senseless actions and wrongs endured and inflicted. Of revolutionaries and those who persecute them, victims and oppressors, hunter and prey. Of the betrayed and their betrayers everywhere. And over it all the pall cast by those unwilling to lift the shroud of silence and bear witness to the truth: those who prefer to live ‘blindly.’