— Mariana Enríquez, excerpt of ‘Adela’s House’ Things We Lost in the Fire (trans. Megan McDowell) 

wanted to talk briefly about the genius of McDowell‘s translation of Enríquez’s stories, perhaps perfectly encapsulated in the above translation.

the Spanish original text reads, “Recuerdo que los escuché decir «máscara», no «cáscara». La casa es una máscara, escuché.” if we were to translate this literally, it would translate as “I remember I heard them say ‘mask’ not ‘shell’. The house is a mask, I heard.” 

but McDowell doesn’t translate it literally. why not? the cadence of a language is often lost in translation, but this cadence needs to be preserved. máscara and cáscara rhyme in Spanish, but mask and shell do not.

the word hell comes into English from Proto-Germanic *haljō, meaning ‘the underworld’. and *haljō, in turn, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *kel, meaning ‘to hide’. (the word occult shares this root). the word hell literally means the hidden place. and what is the task of a mask? the task of a mask is to hide. to cover it. it could also be said that this is the task of hell; to conceal the dead from the living, the damned from the saved.

and a house? a house is a hell because it masks what traumas lie within.

Translation is an art, just as writing is. It’s interpretation and illustration in one: the choices matter. Language is a tool of communication and the best way to wield that tool is the most effective way.

I love reading a translation that strikes me as artful. I love reading several translations and seeing what strikes me as true.

Whenever my work is being translated, I’m really honoured. I ask for the translator to have my contact information if they have any questions at all, and I trust them. It’s their art, not mine.

a girl is never simply grocery shopping btw. she is grocery shopping and running away from the horrors. she is grocery shopping and trying to find her childhood whimsy somewhere between the aisles. she is grocery shopping and feeling an amount of grief that is insurmountable. but she is never just grocery shopping

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991)

Cabello/Carceller No Es Él (It’s Not Him) 2007

Ruth Orkin. American girl in Italy. 1951

Many folktales throughout different cultures feature a heroine being given the impossible task of sorting through grains/seeds– whether that be picking them from the ashes, from between each other, or from their rotting counterparts.

In this task, she often does as much as she can before submitting to a higher power, whether that power recognizes her virtue or she directly asks for help varies based on the culture and tale.

Featured are eight such tales, most of which can be categorized into “Snake Bride” (ATU 425) type tales or “Cinderella” (Both often ATU 510 in the folklore index– Cinderellas are specifically ATU 510A)

The circle puts them in no particular order, as “origins”  and lineages are muddied, and many of the current incarnations have been influenced by each other, though Ye Xian is the oldest known “complete” version of Cinderella.

Snake Brides:

Psyche, Eros and Psyche (Greco-Roman)

Sukkia, The Snake’s Bride (India)

Donan Sampakang Tale about Gansaļangi and Donan Sampakang (Indonesian)

Cinderellas:

Aschenputtel (German)

Tam, Tấm and Cám (Vietnam)

Unnamed Heroine The Wonderful Birch (Finish & Slavic)

Ye Xian (Chinese)

Neither (ATU 480B– Stepmother and Stepdaughter)

Vasilisa, Vasilisa the Wise (or Beautiful) (Slavic)

Maggie Smith as the fairy queen Titania, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1977)

Alex Dimitrov, from “Together and by Ourselves”

J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Return of the King

Mahmoud Darwish, Life To The Last Drop

Elena Ferrante, tr. by Ann Goldstein, from The Days of Abandonment

i don't know where you end and i begin (x)