When Robin approaches a text, she has a remarkable ability to detect, as if in an inverted mirror, layers of meaning that the author herself did not perceive, and that she, in her reading, reveals, illuminates, and transforms. This sort of teamwork can give rise to a particular kind of intellectual intimacy, and Robin has the gift of knowing how to build a conducive space such that this intimacy should develop as fruitfully as possible. It is hard for such complicity not to evolve into some kind of friendship, since friendship, like translation, demands joint effort at interpretation, recreation, and respect. Would it sound strange to say that years later, when I met Robin in person, I felt like I was hugging an old friend?
“Imperceptible Anatomies,” by Mexican writer and academic Guillermo Jesús Fajardo Sotelo, is an essay that, from the trigger of a genetic condition, elaborates a penetrating discourse on personal health, the dimensions of an exceedingly rare pathology, and its links to literary creativity. This is an essay that shows extraordinary balance between the confessional, intellectual inquiry, the clinical aspect, and literary reference points. It likewise represents a minor epic on life and the questions surrounding the demands of the human body—a body, as Fajardo Sotelo calls it himself, that is “anatomically disobedient.”
Literary people always laugh at this line because it feels true. In the public imagination, authors are gods. They forge new universes where before there was only darkness. Critics, on the other hand, are embittered antagonists, like Lucifer cursing the sky in Paradise Lost: “O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams.”
Domestic Life is saturated with a theme I find eminently relatable, as I think many readers will agree: the imposter syndrome that plagues all of us who dedicate ourselves to creative endeavors. Here, Marcelo’s stand-in (Mauricio) is literally haunted by the ghost of Roberto Bolaño, who pops in every so often from the romantic deserts of poetic oblivion to poke fun at him for having fish filets for dinner and remind him of the wild, bohemian essence of pure literary impulse he is allowing to shrivel and wane as he lives the comfortable, (it must be said) domestic life of a poet-cum-professor at a U.S. university. After seven poetry books (and this one’s being recognized as the best of its pub year), Marcelo still cannot help but wonder: Do I write poems, or am I a poet? Does the former necessarily mean the latter? I can’t pretend to offer any answers here; I have translated a great deal over the past ten years, but I still find myself doubting whether or not I am a translator in much the same way. To use an appropriately homey idiom, I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I invite anyone who has read this far to turn to the poems and decide for themselves.
Arthur Malcolm Dixon
The response to the crisis experienced by the humanities is usually an apologetic discourse from its actors. Defending the irreplaceable character of the humanities undeniably has meaning, but the limitations on all apologetic discourse are also undeniable. Apology moves in parallel with the decadence of its object. What is decaying is defended. And, even worse, with this defense it is only possible to attract those who are part of its sphere. Only those who are already convinced applaud apologetic discourse. Critics will point out the economic, social, and cultural limitations of this discourse and, above all, of its object. And, in fact, not only do humanistic disciplines attract less of an audience and less money, less investment, and produce less, but they are unable to follow the innovative impetus of great science. And, beyond this, they are unable to explain the causes of their own unstoppable disparagement.
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