Translator/Author

Joel Priddy · 07 May 1997, 14:52 · from urth-v0001.mbox · original

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From: Joel Priddy <jpriddy at saturn.vcu.edu>
Subject: (urth) Translator/Author
Date: Wed, 7 May 97 10:52:27 EDT
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[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other work=
s]

Just a couple of quick comments...

Wolfe begins _The_Urth_of_the_New_Sun_ with the quote:
Awake! for morning in the bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
 And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turrent in a Noose of Light.

This is from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, but Wolfe credits
Fitzgerald. Edward Fitzgerald translated the Rubaiyat. This of
course reflects the New Sun series where the author presents
himself as a translator, but (if this conversation is possible
without getting too far off track) does anyone know if Wolfe has
some strong ideas about the nature of translation that he would
consider the translator of a stanza to be more the stanza's
author than the original poet? Or is there something specific to
the Rubaiyat that would lend itself to this distinction (the way
some people have started listing Bacon as the credit for
Shakespeare quotes, or the way you would consider the translator
to be the key identifier/author of any given edition of the
_Arabian_Nights_?).

Also, has it struck anyone else that Gene Wolfe's description of
synergenic time travel in _Free_Live_Free_ is an excellent
description of the proccess of reading a Wolfe book? Everytime
you go back and visit the same place, you're a little better at
it, surer on you feet, able to do more with the clues presented
to you.

JOEL

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