Taccuino di traduzione

"Più la storia s'avvicina ai nostri tempi, e più alle fusioni di due civiltà attraverso la carne si sostituisce quella attraverso la carta. Alle invasioni le traduzioni." Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: 1940, 11 gennaio

31/10/2007

Introducing ... il Calvino olandese

Jess Row, autore di una raccolta di blandi racconti dal titolo The Train to Lo Wu, tesse le lodi dello scrittore olandese Cees Nooteboom.

Why is it not acceptable, for example, for me to write "the novelist Cees Nooteboom," without having to attach that ubiquitous appendage, "the Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom"? Because we assume his novels express some trace or essence of Dutchness, some distinct, if ineffable, coloring that makes them necessarily different from German, Swedish, Danish, or, for that matter, Japanese novels? Because, as readers, we resist the idea of an undifferentiated world culture, dominated by instantly recognizable (primarily American and European) brands, i.e., "Things go better with Philip Roth"? These are difficult, perhaps even slightly ridiculous, questions, but they are entirely relevant, as it happens, to the work of Cees Nooteboom. In the United States, Nooteboom is thought of—if he's thought of at all—as a writer of whimsical, cerebral, postmodern fables, not unlike Calvino, Nabokov, or Milan Kundera. His narratives often have a tricky, self-reflexive quality, at pains to remind us that storytelling is a fallible and self-interested human act. But he is also a master portrayer of restlessness and aimless wandering, in its late capitalist, jet-fueled, turn-of-the-millennium guise. Lost Paradise, his new novel, lends a poetic and even spiritual cast to this feeling of homelessness, without taking itself too seriously; it constructs a wry portrait of two ruined civilizations meeting and perhaps creating something new.

Il resto dell'articolo è qui.

In italiano i libri di Nooteboom sono stati pubblicati soprattutto da Iperborea.