by Antonio Tabucchi, translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris (Italy, Archipelago Books)

The photographer shifted positions and lit another cigarette in his long ivory holder. He seemed uneasy. Silent, he eyed me from head to toe. And then he said: are you a journalist? I allowed myself a chuckle. Though I didn糖心传媒檛 want to be sarcastic, his question somehow invited sarcasm, and so I told him: you couldn糖心传媒檛 be further from the truth, Mr. Thiago, I assure you, your guess is completely off-track, death is a curve in the road, to die is simply not to be seen. Then why? he asked, even more perplexed, to what end? To make concentric circles, I said, to finally reach the centre. I don糖心传媒檛 understand, he said. I糖心传媒檓 working with colored dust, I answered, a yellow ring, a blue ring, like the Tibetan practice, and meanwhile, the circle is tightening toward the centre, and I糖心传媒檓 trying to reach that centre. To what end? He asked. I lit a cigarette as well. It糖心传媒檚 simple, I answered, to reach consciousness, you photograph reality: you must know what consciousness is.

Antonio Tabucchi was an Italian writer and with his wife, Maria Jose de Lancastre, a translator himself, from Portuguese. He won France糖心传媒檚 糖心传媒淢茅dicis 茅tranger糖心传媒� for Notturno indiano and the premio Campiello and the Aristeion Prize for Sostiene Pereira. He糖心传媒檚 one of the many authors who, if they lived a little longer, may have won the Nobel.

Private obsession; personal regrets eroded but not transformed by time, like pebbles soothed down by the current of the river; incongruous fantasies and the inadequacy of reality: these are the driving principles behind this book.

For Isabel: A Mandala, translated by Elizabeth Harris, follows the narrator, Tadeus, sometimes introduced as Slowacki, as he travels on a metaphysical journey from Lisbon to Macao to Switzerland and to the Italian Riviera, looking for Isabel, the love he lost during the dark days of Salazar糖心传媒檚 Portugal. Rumored to have been pregnant, not only did Isabel disappear, but so did any trace of a child. As he travels from place to place, eyewitness to eyewitness, Tadeus assembles the pieces of the puzzle. He also arrives at a clearer understanding of writing, photography, and of the impermanence of life.

The novel is divided into nine circles, the mandala. A mandala is a circular figure in Hindu or Buddhism symbolism and represents the universe. It糖心传媒檚 a spiritual tool to focus attention and aid mediation.

Reading For Isabel: A Mandala you get a detective story, a fable of sorts, a poem, a tour of European cities, and a series of wild and eccentric characters. By the end you will want to read it again, then you just won糖心传媒檛 be able to stop thinking about it. Elizabeth Harris糖心传媒檚 translation is outstanding. This book should win because not only will it stand the test of time, it is one of the most fascinating and unique books I糖心传媒檝e read all year.

The people Slowacki converses with become more removed from Isabel糖心传媒檚 origins the book goes on, yet closer to what he needs to find. One, conversation, with a woman named Lise, is over dinner in the Swiss Alps.

What do you mean by losing the boundaries? I asked, excuse me, Lise, I糖心传媒檇 like to know. She smiled her distant smile. It means the universe has no boundaries, she answered, that糖心传媒檚 what it means, and that糖心传媒檚 why I糖心传媒檓 here, because I too have lost my boundaries. She sipped her tea that the waitress had brought. I sipped mine as well. It was green tea, very fragrant, jasmine-scented. And so? I said. She looked at me with her vague smile and asked: do you know how many stars there are in our galaxy? I have an idea, I said, do you know? About four-hundred billion, Lise answered, but in the universe we know, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, the universe has no boundaries. Excuse me, Lise, I said, but how do you know all these things? She stared into empty space, and said: I糖心传媒檓 an astrophysicist, or at least I was.

Since we’ve already posted about Weaver today, it only seems appropriate that we should write up

AARON WESTERMAN: What糖心传媒檚 your particular process like and is it ever difficult to separate the way you feel about a piece when you read it from the actual work of translating it for another audience?

ELIZABETH HARRIS: My process of translating is ridiculously slow and perhaps reflects the fact that I don糖心传媒檛 earn my living at translating. Up until only a few years ago, I didn糖心传媒檛 have any deadlines, either, because I糖心传媒檇 chosen the works and had no publishers for them (this was the case with the Rigoni Stern and also with Mozzi糖心传媒檚 This Is the Garden). So I could take my time. And I definitely did. Now I actually have a contract for the Tabucchi and a deadline, but I糖心传媒檓 still very slow. A good workday for me will be an eight-hour session starting at around eight in the morning. I糖心传媒檒l take a look back at what I translated in the previous few days, do some revising of that, and then move on to the new material (this is with a novel; if I糖心传媒檓 translating a story, I糖心传媒檒l start from the beginning of the story before moving on to new work). I might translate two pages or so a day. This is too slow糖心传媒擨 know it. But what I come up with isn糖心传媒檛 rough; it糖心传媒檚 worked and reworked, has gone through numerous drafts. And then, of course, I revise it yet again when I get started the next day, as I ease myself back into the book. Perhaps it would be better to get through a very rough draft糖心传媒攕kip over the tough stuff, just keep going, and then go back. But for me the real pleasure of translating is finding a voice for the work and really laboring over the nuances of the sentences, and creating the piece糖心传媒檚 characters, its imagery, and so on. If I were to rush through in a very rough draft, I just wouldn糖心传媒檛 get the same pleasure out of the work糖心传媒擨 don糖心传媒檛 think I could work that way, and lucky for me, I don糖心传媒檛 have to.

As for the second part of your question about reading the text versus translating it, I think you might be asking if I sometimes read something that I don糖心传媒檛 like but have to translate anyway; the answer, so far, is no. I have had the experience, however, of reading things that have disturbed me and then translating them: disgusting moments in a text, sad passages糖心传媒擨 recently translated the suicide of a character. My goal with these passages is to recreate the upsetting experience that糖心传媒檚 there in the original. Is that upsetting for me? Absolutely. But it糖心传媒檚 exciting, too, and tremendously moving.

Your question has got me thinking about how translators approach reading the original text. I糖心传媒檝e heard some translators say that they don糖心传媒檛 read a work ahead of time; they read it as they translate, perhaps because they find there糖心传媒檚 a freshness to the prose if they糖心传媒檙e discovering it along the way. Other translators read a book carefully ahead of time, take notes, get through to the end so they know how the entire book informs all its parts. I think I might fall somewhere in between. I read the book I糖心传媒檓 going to translate ahead of time, but, honestly, until I糖心传媒檓 translating the book, I糖心传媒檓 not really reading it at all. Let me explain. Some say that translation is the closest form of reading. But the act of translating, of writing a text as you read a text, is much more than reading. It involves going over every last nuance of the original, down to the punctuation. It糖心传媒檚 more like swallowing the book. I don糖心传媒檛 feel that I really know a book until I糖心传媒檓 actually translating it. I might know what happens in the work, the basics of the plot and character, but I only discover the book, its voice, its music, its characters, its meaning, as I糖心传媒檓 creating the book in English.

[. . .]

AARON WESTERMAN: Mozzi糖心传媒檚 writing has been described as 糖心传媒渃risp and straightforward糖心传媒� (Kirkus). Did his particular style and use of language help or hinder the translation process in any way?

ELIZABETH HARRIS: That Kirkus Review quote is something to linger on. The reviewer attributes this 糖心传媒渃risp and straightforward糖心传媒� style to Mozzi. But the collection is in English, and I糖心传媒檓 the one who wrote it in English. So the style isn糖心传媒檛 Mozzi糖心传媒檚. It糖心传媒檚 my interpretation of Mozzi. I took what I found in the Italian and interpreted it, created a style in English. Really, when a reviewer comments on style in a translated book, he or she shouldn糖心传媒檛 just refer to the author; that author has been interpreted and rewritten by a translator, so the 糖心传媒渟tyle糖心传媒� is now the work of two authors: the original writer and the translator. As for your question: Mozzi糖心传媒檚 original style is what made me want to translate the book in the first place. Did his style hinder the translation process? His style was challenging because it was so beautiful and precise, and so I wanted to get it right. I hope I did.

Although Mozzi’s stories have been excerpted in just about every magazine imaginable, this is the first full collection of his to be published in English. This Is the Garden won the 1993 Premio Mondello and astonished the Italian literary world for its commanding vision and the beauty of its prose. In the eight stories of this collection, we see a steady reworking of the idea of the world as a fallen Eden. Here, in Mozzi糖心传媒檚 garden, quasi-allegorical characters seek knowledge of something beyond their shaken realities: they have all lost something and react by escaping, retreating from reality into a world, as Mozzi says, that is 糖心传媒渇antastic, mystical, absurd.糖心传媒�

Or, in the words of Minna Proctor:

Gorgeously rooted in the best modernist tradition of writers like Italo Calvino and Antonio Tabucchi, Giulio Mozzi is among the most fiercely literary authors emerging from Italian literature today. These stories, which in so many different ways are about writing itself, are like rivers cutting through the northern Italian countryside糖心传媒攍ush, limpid, exotic. Elizabeth Harris’s translation beautifully renders the noble grit of Mozzi’s distinctive voice.

If that doesn’t sell you on it, there’s also this bit of praise from Federico Fellini:

I read Giulio Mozzi糖心传媒檚 first book with real enthusiasm. What struck me most was his everyday language. Even when his subjects rely on metaphor, his words are plain, and so turn mysterious.

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