Letter from the Editors

When we selected the theme Black & White for this winter issue of eXchanges, we thought about contrast and binaries, New York-style cookies and penguins (two major delights of eXchanges editors and assistant editors), the way black ink appears on white paper, the classic simplicity of 35-millimeter film. One of the pleasures of announcing a themed collection is waiting to see how the theme will ignite the imagination: how it will be pushed and stretched and ultimately transcended. Looking with an eye to the blacks and whites of this issue, you may pause over certain moments in these diverse texts: the way that Miklavž Komelj blurs the solid lines of Malevich's Black Square, the bolded imagery that emerges from the poetry of Gerald Stern, the stunning visual and textual intricacies of Christian Dotremont's logogrammes, the shadowy world of “Sucre Alley,” and, in high contrast, the extraordinarily color of “On the Train,” narrated by a woman whose very voice resists the rigidities of Fascism. These moments might slip by unnoticed in different context. A particular power of translated literature is the way it directs the eye, asking it to consider a new angle, a new interpretation, a new voice, a new culture. In this way we hope that in showcasing the work of these excellent literary translators, assembling their work together under our theme, we will continue to question borders and spark affinities between languages and literatures.

And so we are proud to present this issue, full of beautiful, thought-provoking literature. We are also proud to be a part of eXchanges’ new look, one that will be developed in issues to come. Though eXchanges has always been under the auspices of the department of comparative literature and run by graduate students in the MFA in translation program since its transition online, we were recently awarded status as a student organization at the University of Iowa.  With their financial support, along with the benefits of working within The Writing University, eXchanges will be able to continue to refine our vision as an online journal and continue to publish important works of literary translation by both established and emerging translators, from within the Iowa writing community and beyond.  As a final note, Emily and I would like to thank Becka Mara McKay, eXchanges editor from 2004-2007, for her invaluable insight and continued support of this journal and its editors.

--DT

I had the opportunity this winter to travel through Europe by train, up from Istanbul to Budapest and Vienna, and then across Switzerland to Paris. During the long hours of travel, I couldn’t help but notice that on the train, translation is not just an art, it's a way of life. So many people from so many countries come and go, that languages are teased out of passengers and conductors, whether willing or not. Zoren, our Serbian conductor and guardian angel, grimly informed my husband and I before departing Istanbul that our wagon was “broken.” (There would be no heat or water for the 24-hour ride through the snow.) But he made sure that we were safe from the “bandits” on the Turkish-Bulgarian border. A friendly Bulgarian passport controller (whose wife was from Michigan) wished us “a happy road,” and somewhere in Switzerland we were able to negotiate some space for two Austrian snowboarders’ long, expensive cargo.

All this made me think about this issue of eXchanges. As Diana wrote, in choosing this theme we were thinking of how literature points at the nuances that binary thinking tries to obscure. This is illustrated by the interactions we had on the train. Struggling between languages is not simple. It is nuanced and complicated and often “wrong,” but it is alive with the thrill of being forced to think beyond black & white.

The binaries are still there, however, in rich and poor, traveler, worker, English speaker and non-English speaker. This reminded me of the conclusion drawn by the 2007 PEN/IRL report, To Be Translated or Not to Be: There is a lack of works and languages being translated into English, while the translation of works from English into other languages is extensive. "On the train, our conversations were in English, which I note not as an indictment but only as a reminder that, while translation is an art, it is also a subtle political act.

--EG