HE prize Nobel Prize in Literature South African John Maxwell Coetzee By trying to get her last novel, first published in Spanish, to be translated from Spanish into other languages, she admitted she had lost the “fight” against English, which she expressed disappointment. version.
This Monday in Madrid, reported by Coetzee, the author has been selected to inaugurate the “Escribir el Prado” project, an initiative between the museum and the Loewe Foundation that invites internationally renowned authors to work. “interrogating the museum’s collections from the narrative imagination”.
Coetzee attended a public talk at the Prado Museum with her Spanish translator, philosopher and writer Mariana Dimópulos, who translated the author’s latest novel in English, “The Pole.” first requested it to be translated into Spanish for publication in that language.
Because she remembered being disappointed when she started writing that novel, and being disappointed about English as a lot of things. global political power and wanted to highlight“his personal breakup with her.
Expressing his reservations about this language on other occasions, Coetzee described how he wanted his original text in that language to disappear for a while, once translated into Spanish: translations”.
“ButThis plan could not withstand the superior forces operating in the world publishing industry.. In Poland, France, Japan and other countries, they refused to translate the Spanish text, accepting it as the original, saying that this text was not original,” explained the author, whose book was published by the publishing house El hilo de Ariadna, for eight months it was only in Spanish.
Coetzee assured that if the book had been written in a “minor” language such as Albanian and had gone from there to Spanish, the translations would have been in Spanish.
“And in this fight I provoked with the English language, I lost and the original language principle prevailed,” he complained.
The South African author, who resides in Madrid from late June to mid-July to make the museum a hub of activity, will write a text in connection with the Prado, the first of a collection focused on exploration. connects expressions between fiction and plastic arts.
John Coetzee and Dimopulos also talked about it. language and images and whether words can translate pictures and what various pictures conveyboth from the Prado Museum and other art galleries, to think they can’t do it.
Beginning with a few words in Spanish, the author also talked about the imagery of his literary characters and the importance of music, before starting the conversation in English but promising to do everything in Spanish next time. , the third of the great arts since then, never writes a paragraph without paying attention to the rhythm.
Javier Solana, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Prado Museum; Sheila Loewe, President of the Loewe Foundation, and Miguel Falomir, director of the art gallery, recalled after confirming that the museum had been working on the “Write the Prado” initiative for a long time. enormous attention paid by present writers to the art of the past.