The South African writer recounted how he wanted his original text in that language, once transformed into Spanish, “to disappear for a while so that it was the latter that gave birth to a multiplicity of translations.”
He prize Nobel Prize for Literature South African John Maxwell Coetzee He has acknowledged that he has lost the “combat” he launched against the English language, of which he has declared himself disappointed, by trying to get his latest novel, which was first published in Spanish, translated into other languages from its Spanish version.
This was reported this Monday in Madrid by Coetzee, the author selected to inaugurate the “Escribir el Prado” project, an initiative between the museum and the Loewe Foundation that invites internationally renowned writers to “to question the museum’s collections from the narrative imagination”.
Coetzee has participated in a talk open to the public at the Prado Museum with his translator into Spanish, the philosopher and writer Mariana Dimópulos, who was the one who translated his latest novel, entitled “The Pole”, which the writer wrote in English but wanted to to be translated into Spanish to be published first in this language.
Because, he recalled, when he began to write that novel he had been disillusioned “and a lot, about English as a global political force and wanted to emphasize“his personal break with him.
Coetzee, who has expressed his reservations with that language on other occasions, has recounted how he wanted his original text in that language, once transformed into Spanish, “to disappear for a while so that it was the latter that gave birth to a multiplicity of translations “.
“But eThis plan did not survive superior forces operating in the world’s publishing industry.. In Poland, France, Japan and other countries, they refused to translate taking the text in Spanish as the original, they said that this text was not the original”, recounted the author, whose book, published by the publishing house El hilo de Ariadna, was only in Spanish for eight months.
Coetzee has assured that if the book had been written in a “minor” language such as Albanian, and from there it had gone to Spanish, the translations would have been made from Spanish,
“And in this fight that I provoked with the language -English- I lost and the principle of the original language triumphed”, he lamented.
The South African writer, who has established his residence from the end of June to mid-July in Madrid, to make the museum his center of activity, will write a text linked to the Prado, the first in a collection that will focus on exploring the links expressions between fiction and plastic arts.
John Coetzee and Dimopulos have also spoken about language and image and whether words can translate paintings and what various paintings conveyedboth from the Prado Museum and from other art galleries, to consider that they cannot do so.
The writer, who began his speech with a few words in Spanish before beginning the dialogue in English, but not before promising that next time he would do everything in Spanish, also spoke about the images he has of his literary characters and the importance of music, the third of the great arts since, he has assured, he never writes a paragraph without paying attention to the rhythm.
Also participating in the event were Javier Solana, President of the Board of Trustees of the Prado Museum; Sheila Loewe, president of the Loewe Foundation, and the director of the art gallery, Miguel Falomir, who recalled that the museum has been working on the “Write the Prado” initiative for a long time after verifying the enormous interest that current writers pay to the art of the past.