Abena Ntoso: Welcome to Backlit, a space for groundbreaking conversations with emerging authors. I'm your host, Abena Ntoso. In each episode, I converse with a contemporary writer and thinker whose work inspires deep and authentic conversation around social issues. Our discussion is not just about the book, or even just about the writer’s life and work; our discussion is a shared space where minds meet to be inspired by one another, explore issues together, and ultimately to generate new ideas and perspectives. 

Today’s thought partner is author Marguerite Feitlowitz, translator of the book Night by Chilean poet Ennio Moltedo. Marguerite is also author of A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture and has also translated the work of Argentine writers Griselda Gambaro and Luisa Valenzuela, and her multilingual work is influential both on and off the page. Marguerite is professor emerita of literature and literary translation at Bennington College, and she is also at work on translating a second book by Ennio Moltedo.

Thank you, Marguerite, for joining me in conversation today.

Marguerite Feitlowitz: Thank you, Abena. It's a pleasure to be here.

Abena Ntoso: So I wanted to start with Night. Night opens with three segments which establish the narrative and begins to dissect a society living under dictatorship. It also introduces us to Moltedo's writing style, and your translation beautifully conveys the vivid imagery and frankness that is the essence of Moltedo's style. I'd like to discuss some of these ideas in depth, but first, I'd love to have you read the opening passages.

Marguerite Feitlowitz: I'll be happy to, and thank you for that really nice introduction. Night—La Noche in Spanish—was written during and against the Pinocet dictatorship. But it was not published in Chile until the end… until 1999, which is to say, when democracy returned to the country. Moltedo held back these poems, for obvious political reasons, but also because he didn't want politics to leach the poetry out of the poems, so he let them sit for a while. None of the poems have verbal titles; they're all numbered, and there are 113 of them. 

1

¿A qué hora deben cantar los pájaros formados en el jardín, en árboles o jaulas?

Lea la ley.

1

At what time must the birds lined up in gardens, trees, and cages sing?

Look to the law.

2

Que se nombre, en visita, al loco del pueblo. En visita permanente, con asiento y voto y veto, para ejemplo cuerdo de autoridades que debaten y pueblo en horas de contemplación durante el descanso de sillas en las veredas, cuando el crepúsculo amenaza con historias y postales de sangre sobre la pantalla para hacernos creer que ha llegado, claro está, el final asqueroso de frutilla.

Que se nombre al loco del pueblo.

2

Let’s appoint the village madman. Chief justice on the Court of Appeals, with a vote and veto and seat at the table, a sane example to the debating powers-that-be and the people who in their hours of contemplation rest in chairs set out on the sidewalk, when twilight bloodies the screen with scrolls and pictures to make us believe that, of course, here it is, the disgusting fleshy finale.

Let’s appoint the village madman.

Abena Ntoso: Thank you so much for that wonderful reading, and for reading in both Spanish and English. The work of translation is one in which one has to think in multiple languages. What drew me to the book initially was the narrative and the style, the idea that this narrative of the Pinochet dictatorship and building a story inspired by it, this narrative could be told through imagery and imagination and metaphor, and this beautiful, beautifully rendered world that Moltedo has created through his poetry. The thing that I'm interested in hearing about, is this idea of how we translate poetry. How we think in… how one can think in multiple languages, and how one can translate a poem without destroying its original urgency and its original spirit.

In “Teaching in Translation: Poet as Translator” Malena Morling shares her insights from teaching a course in poetry translation, and she quotes Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer who wrote, “A poem is a manifestation of an invisible poem that exists beyond the conventional languages. Therefore, a translation of a poem into a new language is an opportunity to attempt to realize the original (invisible) poem.” And I feel like that's what you've done here with Night. You have so beautifully translated into English images and ideas and the feeling of the poems as Moltedo originally wrote them. So how do you translate a poem without destroying its original spirit, and how do you arrive at this ultimate form, right? How do you, … How do you keep the original?

Marguerite Feitlowitz: Hmm. Wow, you just put your finger on it, Abena, how to do that without destroying the original. One of the things about Moltedo is he says “poems propose a new reality.” So I think that was really helpful to me as I contemplated his… his work. I would also say the first time I encountered his work, I just felt like the lines were going through me. There was a kind of porosity that I had as a reader of the work, which made me think that… that maybe I would be a good translator, for that I had an impulse that I had to translate this work, and that maybe it would be a good thing. 

I think that one of the things that's particular about Moltedo is that he's very… He's very curt. He's concise, he's terse, and he uses, and so there's, there's, there's no place to, embroider, there's no place to hide. And one of the things he does that helps him in achieving this concision is alliteration, and we see it in the very first poem. So, when he says, so literally, that's “read the law,” and I knew that wasn't going to work, because he's so… he could have said “consulte,” he could have said a number of other verbs, but he didn't. He chose “lea la ley.” And so it seemed to me that that alliteration was really important, and that was the first lesson I learned from him in this very first poem. So I chose “Look to the law.” 

So, these prose poems are narrative, and sometimes almost counter-narrative because of the images that are… that are surreal, and yet documentary in their way. 

One of the things he does is, he can write really short sentences, and then he can write a really long sentence, as we saw in poem number two, right? That whole first… the first four lines are just… they're one sentence. There's so much that he's doing with these concise poems. There are poems that are lyrics, there are poems that are surreal, here are poems that are vignettes, dramatic monologues, dramatic scenes, there are microfictions, and persona poems… and a lot of times, those persona poems are written to skewer that persona, right. So there's a lot going on in these apparently small texts.

Abena Ntoso: I love that you've brought up a lot of these literary devices, these strategies that Moltedo is using in his language choices. And I didn't even think about that, you know, the alliteration and with the original “Lea la ley,” and then, of course, right, you chose “Look to the law,” right? And like you said, you could have said, you know, read the law, but it wouldn't maintain the beauty of the language, the beauty of his choices in his writing. 

Thinking about that, right, your translation highlights this talent of his in using language and speaking in a very poetic way with these distinctive images and metaphors and associations and alliteration. So how does this kind of writing and thinking enrich one's view of the world? Thinking about your work as a writer and encountering all of these kinds of works—I know in your translations of other authors who have also used very experimental styles in their writing—what does this kind of thinking and writing do for someone in the context of their lives, and how does… what are the implications for our lives if we are looking at language as something that has the potential for beauty and not just communication?

Marguerite Feitlowitz: I guess I would say, because Griselda Gambaro, also was… she was forced into exile by the Argentine dictatorship, and from the time that she started, so Griselda is often considered to be, basically considered to be, the greatest 20th century Latin American playwright. She also wrote novels and short stories and a couple of memoirs. She was forced into exile by the dictatorship that was in power from 1976 to 1983. From the beginning of her trajectory as a writer in 1962, she always wrote about the theatricality of political power. A French writer, Liliane Atlan, a French Holocaust writer, whose work I've also translated, also very experimental, I guess I'm bringing these three authors up because in these crucibles of time that they lived in, they were, alert, just incredibly alert. And the attention was paid, right, in a sustained way. And as Griselda would say, had, you know, said, you know, “I could see things were happening. I didn't know there was a system behind it, and we wouldn't know that for a long time.” But she got down all of the… a lot… everything that she was aware of, right? And it was a trained attention. And I think that's something that certainly Moltedo has, Liliane Atlan. Writing in times of repression, state terror, a Holocaust. So I think it's that… the attention, and the sustained attention. And I think the… the belief that literature matters, that writing matters. 

These are prose poems, that implies narrative, but there's also an interruption of narrative, right? It also complicates what narrative is. We have a question that's asked in the very first poem here, and the answer gives rise to many more questions, right? “Look to the law.” And Moltedo was very… he has a lot of poems about the law. What is the law being used to? Is there an absurdity that the law is actually regulating birds? And why are the birds lined up? Right? Who lined them up? Did they line themselves up because they're anticipating? … their own obedience to power, or have they been lined up forcibly? And what is our law doing? And so, there's, you know, we have the expectation of, well, here's a question. Well, here's the answer. But the answer just propagates more questions, and more questions, and more questions, right? And then following those questions to their sort of logical extension, what does that make you responsible for? What does that say about your own consciousness, or where you decide not to follow those questions? So the engagement with the reader is, well, it's an imperative. “Look to the law.” And so, the question is, well, here's an imperative, do we live with imperatives every day? What might be different about this imperative? Or are we just so inured to imperatives?

Abena Ntoso: I love that you have brought up these ideas of attention, right, and alertness. And that alertness and attention in our use of language is not only a manifestation of wanting to express and pay attention to what's happening around us, and what's happening in the world, and what's happening even within ourselves. So… and it's… so it's not only a manifestation of it, but it also leads to it. Right? Because the more attention and alertness we have to our language, the more apt we are to pay more attention to what's going on around us and within ourselves. So it's almost this reciprocal relationship where the alertness in our language is leading to more alertness in our observation and even imagination, and then vice versa, right? The alertness in our observations and imagination are leading us to be a lot more alert and… and conscious in the language that we use. 

Thinking about it from a literary perspective makes us stop and think about how can we bring this beauty and alertness into our language. And I'm thinking now about how this work in translation brings this to an English-speaking audience that would not have had access to it without your work of translation. And I think we tend to think of literature as existing only in our home language sometimes. We forget that there are writers around the world who are having relatable experiences, telling fantastic stories, writing moving poetry, all in their native language, and in so many ways, the work of translation brings humanity together, because it allows us to see how people from such different cultures still engage in this creative and intellectual endeavor of literary writing. And so, considering what's gained when we publish literary work that has been translated from other languages, what do you think would make it more feasible to publish literary translations? And what are some of the biggest challenges in finding, translating, and publishing literature from other languages and cultures?

Marguerite Feitlowitz: So I would say, going back to the point that you made that there just hasn't been enough awareness that there's great literature being written all over, and there has been great literature being written for centuries, all over, in places maybe that, as you say, that are, different continents, different, you know, completely different places, different language. There's so much to discover. 

For a long time, publishing was not really oriented outward to the degree that it could have been and should have been. So, what has been done to remedy that? Well, there are a number of small presses, including World Poetry Books, that publishes Night. There are also some wonderful journals; Words Without Borders was the first online journal devoted to works in translation, tremendously important. Asymptote is a great literary magazine focusing on translation. There are any number of ellipses, review. I hesitate to start naming for fear of leaving out obvious candidates, but… so there has been a groundswell, and the American Literary Translators Association, known as ALTA, is very, very active in promoting the work of translations from all kinds of languages. We offer fellowships and grants to emerging translators. There are MFA programs in literary translation that have exchanges with programs in other countries. NYU, for example, has a creative writing program in Spanish, so you can get a creative… an MFA in, doing all of your work in Spanish.

Translation is writing. So there are a lot of writers who also translate, and translators who also write. For me, it's all very fluid, and I'm certainly not the only one in the field who is at once a writer and a translator and a scholar. These things all come together. And I think that when I was coming up in the 70s, that… that wasn't the case. You know, you were a scholar, or you were a writer… and so the degree to which those things are now much more fluid, much more intertwined, where finally, finally, finally, people can apply for tenure and receive tenure on the basis of their work as literary translators, in academe. It's not universal, but it's… it's happening. So, there's a lot more to do, especially in this… this climate is, … makes translation ever more important, ever more urgent.

Abena Ntoso: So you mention the fluidity, and I want to take a little bit of time to hear more about that because it's something that I think is unique to translating. You have the chance to read the work in the original language, but you have to think about it from the mindset of both a writer and a reader. You have to, if you're going to translate. You've shared that when you're translating, you are also reading, and there's no binary. It's very fluid. So that fluidity, in so many ways, the fluidity of languages, but also the fluidity of the mindset and act of reading, and the mindset and act of writing, and having to engage both of those at the same time… having to engage imagination while also engaging a sense of being true to what is existing on the page already. And… and not, not creating it anew, but… creating it In a way that maintains the original. So, a lot of fluidity. 

Marguerite Feitlowitz: Yes, fluidity for sure, but there's also… we also do need our critical distance, and critical distance on our own act of reading, you know? Do I have this right? Is it… is it literally correct, in terms of plain meaning? And so there's a lot of time in making a translation where it's not quite so fluid as we might like. You have to consult your thesori, you've got to consult your etymological dictionaries, you've got to consult your dictionaries, and there are places where there's a lot of self-interrogation, and that has to be, you know, that's very conscious, and that's, you gotta be really clear-eyed, and sometimes there's a lot of wrestling to understand, you know, and I would never presume to say, I know what Enio was thinking here. I know what's on the page. I see what's on the page. And I see what patterns he has. That's another reason I'd like to do more than one work by a particular author, or do a whole book, series of books, because you see…you get immersed and you see what are the patterns of composition. 

Moltedo in particular was, you know, read Latin fluently, and Italian fluently. So his references are Mediterranean. He's very steeped in that, and sometimes his references are pretty subtle, and so there's a lot of research that goes into making a translation. Moltedo will paraphrase classic authors, and you have to be, again, alert to, oh, wait, that rings a bell somewhere. I need to find out, well, where is that coming from? Make sure it is Catullus and not Horace. Make sure it is, you know, all of those things. It has been pointed out, and I think it's, you know, absolutely right, Night is, in many ways, Moltedo’s Inferno. He was steeped in Dante. So it's not just what I'm reading, but it's what your author has been reading. Everything you read ends up in what you write, explicitly or implicitly.

So there's… yes, there is porosity, yes, there is fluidity, but there's also critical distance and the research journey, which sometimes is more or less intense, more or less extensive.

Abena Ntoso: That is… so you actually answered the question I was going to ask. So, I was going to ask you to describe some of the… how that works to… to have that fluidity, yet be translating. And so… and I love that you've mentioned the idea of critical distance And the idea of asking yourself, am I understanding what's on the page? Am I reading this right? And… and then trying to maintain the meaning, and maintain the ideas, and maintain the craft of the language, all while putting it in a whole different language.

So, in that work, having to juggle all of those mindsets all at once, how has that influenced your life, and what has opened up for you as a human being that you didn't have access to before engaging in so much of this work of translating?

Marguerite Feitlowitz: Well, I guess I would, you know, that's a wonderful question. I guess I would say it has been my life. A lot of the work I've done, looking back, it's a very coherent body of work. Over, you know, a long time now. I published my first book in 1985. So I was in my 20s. But that was a collection of three poems by Liliane Atlan, again, this Holocaust writer that I was mentioning. She had spent the war years in hiding. Her family were Parisian. They were actually, Jews originally from Salonica, Greece, but had been… she was born in Paris. And in our family, my cousin, my father's cousin, was, shielded for five years, by a Catholic family outside of Paris, in the cathedral city of Beregieux. So there was… I was introduced to Liliane through serendipity, by Eleanor Fuchs, the late, great, theater critic, and James Leverett, for whom I was working at the theater communications group. I was his, secretary assistant, administrative assistant, and Ellie walked into the office and was doing an anthology of Holocaust… the first anthology of Holocaust plays, and she said, I need a French translator, and Jim said, well, here she is. I was a fledgling translator, okay. I was very much an apprentice, and so in certain ways, this is sort of an insane story. But, I… that was my first book. The first play I translated was in this anthology, and then I did two more. And I was very privileged to work with Bettina Knapp, the late, great French scholar of 20th century French literature, who was very close to Liliane, and I worked with her. 

And then that led serendipitously again to Griselda. I was editing an anthology of interviews with 20th century female playwrights. Griselda was one of them. I was asked to translate her interview, which I did, and I was just amazed by her, and got in touch with her. She sent me a play, Information for Foreigners, Informacion Para Extraos, that was truly a prophetic play that was written in 1970-71, but it foretold the coming era of state terror in, again, in very experimental dramaturgy. And so I translated that play, as it turned out, as the trials of the ex-commanders were being, were going on in Buenos Aires. I've translated five plays of Griselda. They were published, three of them by Northwestern. They've been produced in London and New York, Iowa City, very—Jersey City—very many places, and that led me to write A Lexicon of Terror. I wanted to know what was the reality behind her plays. And then, that led to, you know, eight or more years more years, actually, of writing A Lexicon of Terror that was based on primary research with three generations of Argentines from all over the country who had either survived those torture centers, had lost relatives, been activists, etc, etc. And that, too, was… all the work was done, obviously, in Spanish, and that I translated from the recordings. And then I was, because of A Lexicon of Terror, I was invited to a human rights and culture conference in Santiago de Chile, and the day before the conference was to begin, I was wandering around, wandered into a bookstore, and was introduced to Moltedo by the bookseller. 

So, it's all… you can see how  it all makes sense in retrospect, but at the time it can seem, it seemed to me sometimes like I was being pushed here and there, and that things were kind of out of my control, and they were in excellent ways. 

So, … I was… I've been very, very fortunate, and … So, I don't know if that answers your question.

Abena Ntoso: Absolutely, and you used the word serendipity a few times, and so it makes me think about, again, this idea of alertness and paying attention, and how, you know, through the work of translating and that work of having to simultaneously think about, am I understanding this? How do I capture this? How do I convey this? And that work of the fluid existing in multiple mindsets, that seems to open up an ability to recognize and welcome serendipity, at least how it has come about in your life. You know, you've had these opportunities that have opened up because of the need for translation, and then in embracing that and trying to translate, in ways that honor the work of the original author, you are also creating more opportunities to learn about those other cultures and have a deeper understanding, and then that deeper understanding leads to more opportunities. 

I want to return to something that you mentioned earlier, this idea of “documentary surreal.” When we talked about it, it came up because I was noticing that there are so many lines in which it seems like Moltedo is making a reference to something that really existed, or something that really happened. But without the historical, cultural, social, political, or geographical context, we might miss out on the full significance of the line, even though it sounds incredibly engaging. They're beautiful lines, very surreal, but yet they are derived from these very real references that we just may not have the inside scoop on. Can you explain this idea of documentary surreal, which you have coined… I love that term. Can you explain it and give us an example?

Marguerite Feitlowitz: Sure. So I guess I would like to sort of jump to poem “12” if that's okay?

Abena Ntoso: Absolutely, thank you.

Marguerite Feitlowitz:

12

Me han enviado al fondo del mar. Sin oxígeno, por supuesto. En traje de calle y con sobre azul en mano.

12

They have sent me to the bottom of the sea. Without oxygen, of course.

In street clothes, with blue envelope in hand.

So, “They have sent me to the bottom of the sea” we know that during the Pinochet dictatorship political prisoners were indeed dropped from military airplanes into the sea. The blue envelope, it's a really striking image because we can see it, we've all had blue envelopes, right? But I didn't know what this… and I had to ask people. And I've been very fortunate to be able to, ask a colleague from Bennington, Jonathan Pitcher, who is a specialist in Chile, but, and in addition, to work with Molteo's closest friends and executors in Valparaiso. I was told that the blue envelope is equivalent to the pink slip that people in this country, back in the day anyway, when they weren't fired by text, would get a pink slip from Human Resources, and that was, to tell you you'd been fired.

So the blue envelope was the same thing in Chile, and Moltedo, when he was fired as director of the University of Valparaiso Press, got a blue envelope. So it's, again, a lot of things going on there. He had been fired, but also there's a, “they have sent me to the bottom of the sea” unifying the speaker of the poem with these, hundreds, possibly thousands of people who had been, certainly hundreds, who had been, thrown from military airplanes into the sea.

Abena Ntoso: This idea of documentary surreal presents opportunities for engaging our imagination while also using our curiosity to explore history and culture more deeply. As you mentioned, you asked, well, what is this blue envelope? And that inquiry led to learning about the firings, and how that literally happened.

So I'm thinking about this “documentary surreal,” and how it presents these opportunities to learn more deeply about history and culture. If we want to use literature as a window or door to learn about history or culture, how do we go about finding information and supplemental resources to help us better understand or get more out of the text? So how do we use literature as a springboard for learning about the world?

Marguerite Feitlowitz: By reading and reading and reading and reading, is one thing I would say. I would also say it's really important… there's another example, actually, in the second poem I read, where I had to just say, what?… you know, and it's, “let's appoint the village madman.” And in Spanish, it's “que se nombre en visita.” “En visita” is a very specific Chilean term referring to the visit of the Chief Justice or their traveling magistrates that would go from, you know, small town to small town to small town, and that was called "el juez en visita," the visiting judge.

I had… and, but again, “que se nombre en visita.” It just… I thought, what is… what is en visita? I had no idea. It just seemed like, I had no idea, I had to ask. Right? And so that's something, like, really specific that would have no idea about. You know, there's another example, and it's 

10

Si pones el oído sobre la tierra desnuda escucharás claramente el nombre de los asesinos.

10

If you put your ear to the naked earth, you will precisely hear the murderers' names.

Why the naked earth? Because, it wasn't just into the sea that political prisoners were dropped, they were dropped from airplanes into the Atacama Desert. So again, I think it's, you know, we can never assume we know, we know things. Assuming that we understand, it can be a short road to a really bad translation because not only can you run the risk of inaccuracy, but there's something that would seep into the tone of a kind of knowingness that… that we don't have, and haven't earned, and would be, an abomination to try to, affect.

Abena Ntoso: I love this idea of deeper and deeper understandings that one is able to reach as you inquire more and more into choices, in word choice and language. And how that generates deeper and deeper understanding, because there are so many layers. This is a multi-layered work.

Marguerite Feitlowitz: Absolutely.

Abena Ntoso: And when I read it, I felt like I need and want to re-read it over and over again, you know, a second or third time to get the full significance of the collection. It reminds me of those kinds of movies that are so complex, so intricate and intriguing that you want to watch them again and again, and each time you do, more and more is revealed to you in the craft and in the story. Did you have this feeling when working on the translation, and what insights did you gain through multiple readings of night?

Marguerite Feitlowitz: I came away with… with a deep, deep admiration for Moltedo as a writer. Again, his writing is so bold and fine and… and subtle, and he uses bluntness in a way that's extraordinary. 

What insights did I come away with? How… how much he had at his disposal, and how much he was psychologically shrewd as well. I mean, one of the things he does in this book is to… he's able to see through to the end of the dictatorship, and to the ways in which those who participated in the dictatorship, or were silently complicit with the dictatorship, or were self-satisfiedly prospering from the dictatorship, would then revise their histories. And so he has some poems about that as well, and I think the other thing is, this poem was written, as we said, in the 90s in Chile, but it feels very, very, contemporary to what's going on in the United States and elsewhere right now, with the crumbling of the institutions. He writes a lot about the law. I'll read you a poem, if that's okay.

Abena Ntoso: Absolutely.

Marguerite Feitlowitz: 

57

Write me a law. Write it by hand. A law that lays down a life sentence to read and listen to poetry. Including the epic, with its prefab prosody and caterpillar cadence, rhymed gunshots and bared breasts to excite the listener, and then what happens, happens.

Write me a law with a gold-tipped pencil on a table in the burnt-out palace so I can legally, always legally, spend the rest of my life safe and snug and laughing at all the movies. A law, a law so we can breathe, or at least an ordinance, something simple and local that will let us live in some cranny while the wind carries off, or carries in, the sound of guns.

I live in Washington, D.C., and we are, … you know, we've got the National Guard, and we've got ICE, and we're the first city that, that is, living this, this drama, but we're not going to be the last.

And so I, I think, again, these poems have a very … They feel very immediate. Again, you never know what's going to be contemporary. What is most contemporary isn't always that which is written the same afternoon, right? To put it in that way.

Abena Ntoso: Yes, and, and… even Moltero, as you mentioned, did not publish his book until after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship… and it is risky to publish work that criticizes an authoritarian or totalitarian regime that's currently in power. So when we look at Moltero and his work, did he publish other work during that time?

Marguerite Feitlowitz: He did. He did publish a little bit of work during that time, but they were small books, and they were published in Valparaiso or Vinea del Mar. He was staunchly, adamant never to move to Santiago. He was very much… he was a creature of that part of the Chilean coast, which had been… had a very strong Italian immigration at the beginning of the 20th century, from particularly from Northern Italian, where his family was from. And in that way, he's very much a Mediterranean poet. Certainly a poet of the sea. 

He disliked, he was suspicious of, centers of power, and so that was one of the reasons he didn't want to go to Santiago. He didn't want to be in the epicenter of political power, or even cultural power. He has lines to this effect in a number of poems of “this small city that is bigger than the whole world.” So he has those… those tensions. And so, even though, I have to say, even though he writes poems that are very surreal, he's really rational in a lot of ways. 

Abena Ntoso: It makes me think, again, you know, brings me back to that theme of alertness, and attention in both the writing and in what's going on in and around someone, in their life. It gives me hope, actually, that this kind of alertness and attention being translated into English, gives us a way to think about what it takes, and what it looks like to remain alert, to be conscious, not lulled, not oblivious, but to pay attention. But to do so also, you know, I'm thinking again about wearing the multiple hats, the multiple ways of thinking about something, multiple perspectives on it as you are in the moment of writing it, reading it, experiencing it, you know, what it takes. It takes asking yourself, am I reading this correctly? Am I understanding this correctly? What is my understanding? And… and how do I put this into words? How do I… how do I convey Ideas and feelings that are very difficult to convey? And so I love this book and your work for that reason.

Marguerite Feitlowitz: Thank you. You know, having the example of people who have done this work in situations that are really perilous. And I'm making these translations in a period of, you know, in situations of safety, right? I mean, relative safety. And so that's… so having these examples of writers from the past, writers in different places who are doing this is tremendously, heartening, and it's nutritional, you know? And it does help us hone our own resolve. You know, we get great company from… from history. Right? From each other, to be sure, absolutely. But sometimes, you know, some of our most important relationships are with writers who are not physically with us. 

Abena Ntoso: And something that you mentioned actually came up in the book, you know, this idea of, you know, getting those ideas and that attention from history, from one another, and then I'm also thinking about from imagination, from our creativity, from our practice of creativity, and how those three things can be triangulated to create a sense of hope, right? If we're… if we are alert to history, and we are alert to our present, and alert to one another. And we are also in touch with our creativity, and our sense of imagination, our sense of the beauty of what language can do, then there's so much hope in that.

Marguerite Feitlowitz: I agree with you. I agree.

Abena Ntoso: Thank you so much. You're so welcome.

Marguerite Feitlowitz: Been a pleasure.

Abena Ntoso: We’ve been talking today with writer and translator Marguerite Feitlowitz. You’ve been listening to Backlit, and I am your host, Abena Ntoso. You can find more of Marguerite’s work at margueritefeitlowitz.com. Her most recent translation, Night by Ennio Moltedo, is available for purchase using the link in the episode details. In the episode details, you will also find links to other publishers and publications that feature translated work, including World Poetry, the publisher of Marguerite’s translation of Night. Today’s episode was produced in my home studio in Houston, Texas, in conjunction with Bricolage Lit, and features the song “Campfire” by Midnight Daydream in the intro and outro. For more information on Backlit, please visit abenantoso.com/podcast/backlit. Thank you for listening, and until next time, be well, read books, and let’s generate some new ideas together.