The Translator’s Invisibility

A project with this sort of intention and scope will inevitably come to rely on the help of many people in different fields of literary and critical expertise. Assembling the list of those who over the past several years read, discussed, criticized, or otherwise encouraged my work is a special pleasure, making me realize, once again, how fortunate I was: Antoine Berman, Charles Bernstein, Shelly Brivic, Ann Caesar, Steve Cole, Tim Corrigan, Pellegrino D’Acierno, Guy Davenport, Deirdre David, Milo De Angelis, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, George Economou, Jonathan Galassi, Dana Gioia, Barbara Harlow, Peter Hitchcock, Susan Howe, Suzanne Jill Levine, Philip Lewis, Harry Mathews, Jeremy {x} Maule, Sally Mitchell, Daniel O’Hara, Toby Olson, Douglas Robinson, Stephen Sartarelli, Richard Sieburth, Alan Singer, Nigel Smith, Susan Stewart, Robert Storey, Evelyn Tribble, William Van Wert, Justin Vitiello, William Weaver, Sue Wells, and John Zilcosky. Others assisted me by providing useful and sometimes essential information: Raymond Bentman, Sara Goldin Blackburn, Robert E.Brown, Emile Capouya, Cid Corman, Rob Fitterman, Peter Glassgold, Robert Kelly, Alfred MacAdam, Julie Scott Meisami, M.L.Rosenthal, Susanne Stark, Suzanna Tamminen, Peter Tasch, Maurice Valency, and Eliot Weinberger. Of course none of these people can be held responsible for what I finally made of their contributions.

For opportunities to share this work with various audiences in the United States and abroad, I thank Carrie Asman, Joanna Bankier, Susan Bassnett, Cedric Brown, Craig Eisendrath, Ed Foster, Richard Alan Francis, Seth Frechie and Andrew Mossin, Theo Hermans, Paul Hernadi, Robert Holub, Sydney Lévy, Gregory Lucente, Carol Maier, Marie-José Minassian, Anu Needham, Yopie Prins, Marilyn Gaddis Rose, Sherry Simon, William Tropia, and Immanuel Wallerstein. I am grateful to the staffs of the libraries where much of the research was carried out: the British Library; the Archive for New Poetry, Mandeville Department of Special Collections, University of California, San Diego; Rare Books and Manuscripts, Butler Library, Columbia University; the Library Company, Philadelphia; the Nottingham City Archive; the Inter-Library Loan Department, Paley Library, Temple University; and the Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. I am especially thankful to Bett Miller of the Archive for New Poetry, who did a special job of helping me secure copies of many documents in the Paul Blackburn Collection, and to Adrian Henstock of the Nottingham City Archive, who enabled me to consult Lucy Hutchinson’s commonplace book. Philip Cronenwett, Chief of Special Collections at Dartmouth College Library, kindly answered my questions about the Ramon Guthrie papers.

Various individuals and institutions have granted permission to quote from the following copyrighted materials: Excerpts from Mary Barnard, Sappho: A New Translation, copyright © 1958 by The Regents of the University of California, © renewed 1984 by Mary Barnard; and from Assault on Mount Helicon: A Literary Memoir, copyright © 1984 by Mary Barnard.

Excerpts from Paul Blackburn’s correspondence, translations, and nonfiction, copyright © 1995 by Joan Miller-Cohn. Excerpts from {xi} The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn, copyright © 1985 by Joan Blackburn. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc.

Excerpts from the writings of Macmillan employees: editor Emile Capouya’s letter to John Ciardi, Capouya’s letter to Ramon Guthrie, Guthrie’s report on Paul Blackburn’s Anthology of Troubadour Poetry. Reprinted by permission of Macmillan College Publishing Company, New York: 1958. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar, translated by Paul Blackburn, copyright © 1967 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Excerpts from “Translator’s Preface” by Robert Fagles, from Homer: The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles, translation copyright © 1990 by Robert Fagles. Introduction and notes copyright © 1990 by Bernard Knox. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc.

Excerpts from Poems from the Greek Anthology, translated by Dudley Fitts, copyright © 1938, 1941, 1956, by New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Excerpts from Dudley Fitts’s essay, “The Poetic Nuance,” reprinted by permission from On Translation edited by Reuben A.Brower, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, copyright © 1959 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.