Those interested in José Saramago may wish to know of the two following pieces of news:

1) Recently published in Portugal is a 416-page book of interviews, with Saramago himself and other people connected to his work:

http://www.portoeditora.pt/produtos/catalogo/ficha/id/1458680

Uma longa viagem com José Saramago

João Céu e Silva

Porto Editora, 2009

ISBN: 978-972-0-04276-7

2) October 2009 will see the release of a brand-new Saramago novel. The title is CAIM, or CAIN: so, as in ‘The Gospel According to Jesus Christ’, we will find Saramago wrestling with the angel and questioning received biblical narratives and the status of religion. The book will appear simultaneously in Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan versions and will be featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair. See, in Spanish:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Saramago/carga/Dios/salva/Cain/elpepucul/20090827elpepucul_4/Tes -

EL PAÍS 27-VIII-09

and in Portuguese: http://blog.josesaramago.org/indexpor.php.

En:

www.amigosdevilla.it/utilidades/de_peru_y_mas/libros.htm

("Autores y libros peruanos")

quienes se interesen por la literatura peruana encontrarán un sitio de referencia de valor, organizado por autores. Hay textos en castellano y quechua, material audiovisual, y material biográfico y crítico con enlaces a estudios críticos para una treintena de autores - César Vallejo, Mario Vargas Llosa, José María Arguedas y muchos más.

Me complace añadir que entre las entradas para la escritora Clorinda Matto de Turner hay un enlace hacia mi propio texto sobre esta autora (véase entrada en esta bitácora, 31-V-2007):

Reseña de Clorinda Matto de Turner, "Aves sin nido", edición de 2007, Boletín de la Academia Peruana de la Lengua (Lima), No 43, 2007, 173-181; http://yatrarollason.info/files/ClorindaAVESES.pdf

The Portuguese weekly EXPRESSO features, in its 12 July 2009 issue, a long and interesting article, "O tesouro da criadora de Harry Potter" ("The treasure of Harry Potter's creator", by Valdemar Cruz), on J.K. Rowling's time in Portugal, her marriage there, the places she frequented and the Portuguese influences on her work.

I am pleased to say that I am quoted on the onomastics of the sinister character Salazar Slytherin in the Potter books:

'Para o académico inglês Christopher Rollason, ex-professor da Universidade de Coimbra, esta é "uma referência evidente ao ditador fascista António de Oliveira Salazar".'

('For the British scholar Christopher Rollason, ex-lecturer at the University of Coimbra, this is "a clear reference to the fascist dictator António de Oliveira Salazar"')

This point comes from my own article on J.K. Rowling in Portugal (there is a note on it on this blog, in Spanish, entry: 4 May 2008):

'An English Teacher in Porto: In Search of Joanne Rowling', Lingua Franca (Brussels), Vol. 6, No. 1, 2003, pp. 4-8; first published rec.arts.books (Internet), 2002; on-line with photos at: www.seikilos.com.ar/Rowling_en.html; Spanish translation (trans. Leandro Fanzone) with photos, 'Una Profesora de Inglés en Porto: En busca de Joanne Rowling', 2004, www.seikilos.com.ar/Rowling_es.html; republished in on-line journal Sextante (Mexico City, Mexico), No 28, May 2008, www.sextante.com.mx

I draw your attention to the book POSTCOLONIAL INDIAN FICTION IN ENGLISH AND MASCULINITY, edited by Dr Rajeshwar Mittapalli (Kakatiya University, Warangal, India) and Dr Letizia Alterno (recently awarded her doctorate by the University of Manchester, England) - Delhi: Atlantic, 2009, www.atlanticbooks.com - ISBN  978-81-269-1015. This book consists of the articles listed below, plus a preface by the editors and a bibliography -

1. A Reading of G.V. Desani’s All About H. Hatterr as Queer Autofiction – Geetha Ganapathy-Doré

2. Marriage, Sexual Violence and Indian Masculinity: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s The

Dark Holds No Terrors and Anita Nair’s Mistress –Aparna Sundaram

3. Beyond the Phallic Axis in Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games –Adalinda Gasparini

4. Reconsidering Gender-Power Hierarchy in a Post/Colonial Society: Masculinities in Amitav

Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide –Susmita Roye

5. Kiran Nagarkar and the Discontents of Masculinity –Aysha Viswamohan

6. Mapping Masculinities in Mumbai: A Reading of Shobha Dé’s Fiction –Tripti Karekatti

7. “Tridib’s Gastric”: The Contradictory Sexual Politics of [Amitav Ghosh's] The Shadow Lines

–Stephen da Silva

8. Masculinity vs. Femininity: Perpetuation and Transgression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of

Small Things –Fewzia Bedjaoui

9. The Inheritance of Loss: Mapping Postcolonial Indian Masculinities –Purnendu Chatterjee

10. Reciprocal Relationship between Masculinity and Femininity in Thi.Ja.’s Mogamul and Mulk Raj Anand’s Gauri –N. Chandra

11. Inferiority, Individual Psychology and Cultural Determinism: An ‘Indian Complex’ in

Ra.Vi.Sastri’s A Man of No Consequence –Rajeshwar Mittapalli

Now out is Vol. II, No. 1 (Winter 2009) of PROSOPISIA: An International Journal of Poetry and Creative Writing (Ajmer, India - ISSN 0974 – 1011), ed. Anuraag Sharma - sharma_anuraag@yahoo.com (website at: www.arawlii.com).  I have the honour of being, from this issue, a member of the Editorial Board of this journal, which also includes, among others, Bill Ashcroft, Stephen Gill, John Kinsella, Jayanta Mahapatra, Les Murray, Geoff Page, Jaydeep Sarangi and E.E. Sule.

As with the two previous issues, this number of PROSOPISIA showcases poems, short stories and other creative prose from a wide range of origins - Indian, Australian, African and Latin American. The featured poets include Satish Verma and Trina Banerjeee (India), Lyn McCredden and David McCooey (Australia), and B.M. Dzukogi (Nigeria). Anuraag Sharma and Sunil Sharma (India) have contributed short stories. Also included includes (pp. 10-15) is my translation of BONFILIO, a short story by Héctor Domingo (Mexico). This translation is also available on-line at: www.ediciona.com/escritor_hector_domingo_www_hectordomingo_com_mx-dirf-1821-c15.htm (see also entry on this blog, 4 Jan 2009).

“A Viagem do Elefante” (“The Elephant’s Journey” – not yet available in English), published in 2008, is José Saramago’s latest novel, and he has said it may be his last. In its warmth, geniality and good humour, as well as its joyful exploration of the resources of the Portuguese language, it does indeed have a feeling of farewell to literature that might recall Shakespeare’s in “The Tempest” (“Our revels now are over”), and, like the play in which Shakespeare bids adieu to the stage, this mellow work is, ultimately, a comedy in which threats never quite come to fruition and no-one dies untowardly.

Saramago recounts what is in itself a true story, the journey of an Indian elephant and his retinue across land and sea, plain and mountain, all the way from Lisbon to Vienna. It was in 1551 that King João III of Portugal gifted an Indian elephant to his cousin the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, son-in-law of the Emperor Charles V. Saramago thus returns to the genre of the historical novel in which he wrote so memorably in “Memorial do Convento” / “Baltasar and Blimunda”. That novel, set in the eighteenth century, focused on the Portugal of the Inquisition, though not excluding the wider European world, in, for instance, the figure of Domenico Scarlatti. The new novel starts in Portugal but fans out through Spain and Italy to its Austrian finishing-point: more pan-European, it also takes in, as no previous Saramago novel had done in significant fashion, another wider world, that of empire. The book’s twin heroes are, beyond all doubt, the elephant Solomon (Salomão or Solimão) and his mahout or keeper (in Portuguese, “cornaca”), Subhro (later absurdly renamed Fritz), a Bengali Indian and nominal Christian convert, arrived in Portugal via Goa. The dignified and resourceful figure of Subhro is  a fictional vindication of the ordinary person recalling other such characters in Saramago’s work – Blimunda, Lídia in “O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis” / “The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis”, or the optician’s wife in “Ensaio sobre a Cegueira” / “Blindness”. Through Subhro, too, Saramago engages as he had never done before with the culture of India, as when, in inquisitorial Portugal, Subhro recounts the story of the elephant-headed Hindu deity Ganesh.

As in “Memorial do Convento”, Catholicism is a lurking presence in the pages of a narrative this time set in an earlier period, that of the Council of Trent (happening while the tale unfolds), the Counter-Reformation and the ideological counter-offensive against Protestantism. The Inquisition threatens, but while the church throws up both an absurd attempt at exorcism and a fake miracle involving the elephant, here, in marked contrast to the tragic finale of the earlier novel, no-one actually falls into its institutional clutches, and the “alien” Subhro reaches destination safe and sound. There is, meanwhile, some implicit intertextuality with Saramago’s interrogation of biblical orthodoxy in “O Evangelho Segundo Jesús Cristo” / “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ”, as in passages rewriting the stories of Lazarus and the Gadarene swine.

If “A Viagem do Elefante” marks Saramago’s return to the historical novel – far more successfully than Salman Rushdie’s recent damp-squib stab at that genre in “The Enchantress of Florence”, and on a par with Amitav Ghosh’s remarkable tour de force in “Sea of Poppies”, it also finds him engaging in the art of (purposive) comedy to a greater extent than in any other of his novels, the black humour of “O Homem Duplicado” / “The Double” included. Here we may identify a continuity with its predecessor, “As Intermitências da Morte” /  “Death at Intervals”, whose second half marked a new departure combining Gothic fantasy in the mode of E.T.A. Hoffmann with an exuberant high comedy. If the author’s intuition is that this elephant’s odyssey may be the last in a long and distinguished line of novels, then we may join with him in crowning this empathetic feat of narration as, indeed, the Portuguese Nobel laureate’s very own “The Tempest”.

NOTE: I discussed Saramago's “As Intermitências da Morte”/"Death at Intervals" in this blog on 18 January 2006.

Now published in ATLANTIS, the journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN) (Vol. 31, No. 1, June 2009, pp. 9-22), is my comparative study of Poe and Borges:

"The 'Character of Phantasm': Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Jorge Luis Borges' 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius'". The full text is on-line at: www.atlantisjournal.org/ARCHIVE/31.1/2009Rollason.pdf; this article was presented in a shorter version as a paper at the the International Conference: Edgar Allan Poe, 200 Years Later at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain (February 2009) - see entry on this blog, 14 February 2009.

Acaba de salir en ATLANTIS, la revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos (AEDEAN) (Vol. 31, No. 1, junio 2009, pp. 9-22), mi estudio comparativo de Poe y Borges:

"The 'Character of Phantasm': Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Jorge Luis Borges' 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius'". El texto completo se ubica en: www.atlantisjournal.org/ARCHIVE/31.1/2009Rollason.pdf; este artículo fue presentado en una versión más breve en el congrso internacional: Edgar Allan Poe, 200 Years Later, en la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Albacete, España) en febrero de 2009 - véase entrada para 14-II-2009 en esta bitácora.

ABSTRACT

The traces of Edgar Allan Poe in the work of Jorge Luis Borges have long been recognised, but both in the Argentinian writer's own hands and others', comment has tended to concentrate on three areas of the American author's work, namely: the detective fiction; the novel Arthur Gordon Pym; and Poe's literary theory. This paper will explore another facet, i.e. the possible intertextual relations and parallels between Poe's tales of terror and Borges' admired metaphysical fictions. The side-by-side examination of 'The Fall of the House of Usher', Poe's most celebrated Gothic tale, and 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius', Borges' fable of the intellectual attraction of an imaginary planet, reveals significant links, both overt and covert, between Borges' tale and Poe's, highlighting the seductively similar yet also strikingly divergent forms in which both writers privilege the textual and intertextual in exploring and developing the concept of a parallel reality.

RESUMEN (Nota: este texto sólo existe en versión inglesa)

EL “CHARACTER OF PHANTASM”: ‘THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER’ DE EDGAR ALLAN POE Y ‘TLÖN, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS’ DE JORGE LUIS BORGES

La presencia de huellas de Edgar Allan Poe en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges es un fenómeno ya reconocido. Sin embargo, los comentarios al respecto, de parte tanto del mismo Borges como de la crítica, se han limitado en general a tres áreas de la obra del norteamericano, a saber: los relatos policiales; la novela Arthur Gordon Pym; y las teorías literarias de Poe. En este artículo se explorará otra faceta: las relaciones y los paralelismos identificables a nivel intertextual entre los relatos de terror de Poe y las célebres ficciones metafísicas de Borges, tomando como textos de referencia ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, el más famoso de los cuentos góticos de Poe, y ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, la fábula borgiana de la atracción intelectual de un planeta imaginario. Su examen simultáneo revelará unos vínculos significativos, tanto abiertos como encubiertos, entre los dos textos, trayéndose así a colación los modos, seductoramente semejantes y a la vez llamativamente divergentes, por los que los dos escritores destacan lo textual y lo intertextual en su exploración del concepto de una realidad paralela.

**

NOTE/NOTA adeded/añadida 30-VII-09:

This ATLANTIS article has been mentioned by the Albuquerque Examiner (New Mexico, USA), in

the article:

Este texto de ATLANTIS ha sido mencionado por el Albuquerque Examiner (Nuevo México, EE UU), en el artículo:

"Albuquerque writer to organize mystery fan convention in Santa Fe", Peter Kelton, 29-VII-09 -

23 April 2009 saw the official launch, at the Cervantes Institute in Delhi, of the reissue of a nineteenth-century Bengali translation of the first part of Cervantes' DON QUIJOTE. This version (an indirect translation via English), by Bipin Behari Chackrabarti, first appeared in 1887. The new edition, which includes a critical introduction, has been prepared by Professor Shyama Prasad Ganguly, of the Centre for Hispanic Studies at the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. A special aspect of this edition is that four of the chapters are presented in *two* different Bengali versions: a) Chackrabarti's own; and b) a contemporary rendition by a distinguished Bengali scholar: this will allow those interested to make a comparative study of nineteenth- and twenty-first-century translational practices.

Professor Ganguly is the author of the book "Quixotic Encounters: Indian Responses to the Knight from Spain", which I have reviewed in both English -  http://yatrarollason.info/files/Quijote.pdf; and Spanish -www.embajadaindia.net/docs/revista06.pdf - see also this blog, entry for 15 June 2007.

For more on the event, see, in Spanish:

http://www.laregion.es/noticia/90007/india/presentaci%C3%B3n/reedici%C3%B3n/quijote/bengal%C3%AD/instituto/cervantes/

("Se presenta en India la reedición del 'Quijote' en bengalí" ["Presented in India: reissue of 'Don Quixote' in Bengali"]) - La Región, 5 May 2009)

and in English:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=b42d0225-be0c-45f3-a741-f3e5420777cb

"Bengali 'Don Quixote' gets new lease of life" - Hindustan Times, 8 May 2009

**

El 23 de abril de 2009, fue lanzada, en el Instituto Cervantes de Delhi, la reedición de una decimonónica traducción al bengalí de la primer parte del QUIJOTE de Miguel de Cervantes. Esta traducción, realizada por Bipin Behari Chackrabarti (por la vía indirecta a través del inglés), apareció por primera vez en 1887. La nueva edición, que incluye una introducción crítica, ha sido preparada por el profesor Professor Shyama Prasad Ganguly (Centre for Hispanic Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi). Como aspecto especial de esta edición, señalamos que cuatro de los capítulos aparecen en *dos* versiones diferentes: la de Chackrabarti y una traducción contemporanea realizada por un eminente estudioso bengalí: esto permitirá el estudio comparativo de las prácticas de traducción características de los siglos XIX y XXI.

El profesor Ganguly es el autor del libro "Quixotic Encounters: Indian Responses to the Knight from Spain", el cual ha sido reseñado por mí mismo, en versiones inglesa: http://yatrarollason.info/files/Quijote.pdf

y española:

www.embajadaindia.net/docs/revista06.pdf - véase esta bitácora, entrada 15-VI-2007.

Más información sobre el evento - en castellano:

http://www.laregion.es/noticia/90007/india/presentaci%C3%B3n/reedici%C3%B3n/quijote/bengal%C3%AD/instituto/cervantes/

"Se presenta en India la reedición del 'Quijote' en bengalí" - La Región, 5-V-2009)

y en inglés:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=b42d0225-be0c-45f3-a741-f3e5420777cb

"Bengali 'Don Quixote' gets new lease of life" - ["'Quijote' bengalí adquiere segunda vida"]- Hindustan Times, 8-V-2009

The French literary magazine TRANSFUGE, No 30 (May 2009), carries an interview with Vikram Seth ('Vikram Seth: 'Á San Francisco, la solitude est une mode de vie" ['In San Francisco, solitude is a way of life']; interviewer: Marine de Tilly; pp. 39-41), centring on the newly-published French translation of 'The Golden Gate', his California-set novel-in-verse from 1986. Details of the translation are: 'Golden Gate' [no article], trans. by 'Claro', Paris: Grasset, 2009. Only now, after 23 years, does this work of Seth's appear in French: in the interview, Seth describes the book as 'tout simplement intraduisible' ('quite simply untranslatable' - p. 41), and expresses his pleasure at nonetheless having it appear in French: he lauds the translation and says it should have been published as co-signed by the translator! Asked on the no doubt still, to some, controversial issue of the 'non-Indianness' of 'The Golden Gate', Seth argues (p. 39) that roots are not confined to one place: there are trees like the banyan which can be transported and replanted anywhere.

TRANSFUGE has a site at www.transfuge.fr, but the articles are subscriber-only.

I draw to your attention the book INDIAN LEGENDARY WRITINGS IN ENGLISH: MULK RAJ ANAND, R.K. NARAYAN AND RAJA RAO, ed. Jaydeep Sarangi, Delhi: Authorspress, 2009. This volume collects 26 essays, some of them previously published, on these three key figures of Indian Writing in English. There are five articles on Anand, four on Rao and 17 on Narayan. Contributors include, on Anand, Binod Mishra and Jaydeep Sarangi; on Rao, Gauri Shankar Jha; on Narayan, Subhendhu Mund (on 'The Guide') and Ludmila Volna ('The Town of Malgudi: The World of R.K. Narayan's Novels').

The 14-20 May 2009 issue of the Paris weekly LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR is billed as an 'India special', and features, inter alia, a long interview with Vikram Chandra: 'La justice ou le chaos' ['Justice or chaos')', pp. 46-47; interviewers: François Armanet and Gilles Anquetil).

The interview text is on-line at:

http://hebdo.nouvelobs.com/hebdo/parution/p2323/articles/a401293-.html?xtmc=vikramchandra&xtcr=1

The novelist, whose SACRED GAMES (in French LE SEIGNEUR DE BOMBAY) has proved a big seller and critical success in France, talks on his reasons for writing that novel, the interrelations between the underworld and the rest of society (including institutions like the intelligence service), the extent to which his novel prefigured the Bombay bomb attacks, and the strengths and challenges of Indian democracy.

He stresses (p. 46 - I re-translate from the French) 'the way crime impregnates the diverse facets of my city': 'The detective novel has always had that function, since the Memoirs of Vidocq. The investigator explores all the strata of the city, historical and social, and as he unveils the links between the world of the rich and the underworld, between past and present, the reader creates a map of the world'.

The interview is of major interest, and also indicates Vikram Chandra's rising profile in France. Unfortunately, though, there is a flagrant error when, again on p. 46, he is described as 'l''auteur des "Tigres d'Allah"', i.e. as the author [sic] of "The Srinagar Conspiracy" (the title is different in French), a novel published in 2000 by *another* Vikram (A.) Chandra, an Indian TV presenter. This is not the first time this error has appeared in the French press: I only hope those responsible will be made aware of it and that it will be the last …

Acaba de ser publicado, en la revista ENTRECULTURAS de la Universidad de Málaga (Número 1, 2009, 33-43), un estimulante artículo de Miguel Sáenz, el muy conocido traductor de literatura anglosajona y alemana al castellano: www.entreculturas.uma.es/n1pdf/articulo02.pdf  

En este texto, "El castellano bien templado", el autor plantea una extensa y fecunda analogía entre traducción y música, desde puntos de vista tanto teóricos como prácticos, explicándonos que "cuando me sitúo ante un texto (que normalmente coloco en un atril), me siento como un músico dispuesto a acometer la tarea de descifrar, asimilar y expresar lo que otro compuso".  Me complazco añadir que este excelente estudio hasta incluye, en una nota en su página 38, una cita de un texto  mío: “Translating a Transcultural Text – Problems and Strategies: On the Spanish Translation of Vikram Chandra’s ‘Love and Longing in Bombay’” (de Dora Sales y Esther Monzó) - www.seikilos.com.ar/LoveAndLonging.html. Aquí quedan mis agradecimientos al eminente traductor Miguel Sáenz por  honrar mi trabajo de este modo: es un verdadero halago.

I draw to your attention the April 2009 edition of the London-based print magazine CONFLUENCE: SOUTH ASIAN PERSPECTIVES  (confluenceuk@btinternet.com). This lively and stimulating publication covers a wide range of political, economic, arts and literary subjects concerning the countries of South Asia and their diasporas.

The literary material in this issue is very strong, and includes the following reviews: by Val Nolan, of the novel 'The Sweet and Simple Kind' by Yasmine Gooneratne (which looks to be Sri Lanka's answer to 'A Suitable Boy'); by Reginald Massey, of a study of Ruskin Bond by Som Parkash Ranchan; and by Padmaja Thajore, of John Thieme's volume on R.K. Narayan in the Contemporary World Writers series (University of Manchester Press). Also included, on pp. 14-15, is a three-way dialogue on Indian Writing in English bringing together Nilanshu Agarwal, Ludmila Volna and myself (this interview has also appeared in the Indian journal THE QUEST and on-line; see entries on this blog for 24-6-08 and 29-12-08).  

CONFLUENCE has a website: www.confluence.org.uk (apparently not identical to the print edition).  

 Con motivo del día del libro, la noche del 23 de abril Madrid se convirtió en un hervidero de lectores y escritores compartiendo charlas y experiencias literarias (en la página web http://www.madrid.org/lanochedeloslibros/ podéis consultar las diversas actividades que se organizaron para celebrar lo que se llamó "La noche de los libros"). Uno de los actos programados estaba dedicado, como no podía ser menos en este año de bicentenario, a la figura de Edgar Allan Poe. Este acto, además, constituía en sí mismo una gran novedad: se trataba del primer concierto de cómic celebrado en España. Música, actuación y arte gráfico se aunaron magistralmente, encandilando al público.

            José Ramón García puso las notas de piano a los cuentos de Poe, mientras eran interpretados por el actor Felé Martínez, y el artista Jack Mircala les daba forma con sus cartulinas. Todo perfectamente coordinado. Una gran pantalla mostraba al público las representaciones de Mircala, fiel al estilo que presenta en su libro ilustrado Siniestras Amadas (véase entrada en esta bitácora del 19-I-09, punto 15), dedicado a las hermosas mujeres que habitan la vida y la obra de Poe. Durante una hora y media se leyeron "El cuento mil y dos de Scheherezade", "Eleonora" y "El Gato negro", cada uno de ellos con un ritmo y un tono propios. Los aplausos del Ateneo, que llenó todas sus butacas, fueron los garantes del éxito que tuvo este primer concierto de cómic, o lectura ilustrada.

**

The night of 23 April 2009 - DAY OF THE BOOK - saw Madrid seething with readers and writers exchanging conversations and literary experiences (for the programme - "La noche de los libros" - see www.madrid.org/lanochedeloslibros/) One of the events was, fittingly for the writer's bicentennial year, dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. This event was also a major breakthrough as it offered the first concert centred round comic book illustration to be held in Spain, with a fusion of music, drama and graphic art which held the public spellbound.

            José Ramón García provided a piano accompaniment to Poe's tales, recited by the actor Felé Martínez and illustrated by the artist Jack Mircala. All was perfectly coordinated. A large screen displayed Mircala's images, faithful to the style he has used in his illustrated book Siniestras Amadas (see entry in this blog for 19 Jan 09, point 15), dedicated to the beautiful women who people the life and work of Poe. The ninety minutes of readings included "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade", "Eleonora" and "The Black Cat", all recited with the appropriate rhythm and tone. The event was held in the Madrid Athenaeum to a full house, and the applause testified to the success of this pioneering 'comic book concert'.

** Nota amablemente proporcionada por / Note kindly supplied by: Ana González-Rivas Fernández

Now on-line at:

http://yatrarollason.info/files/Sophie.pdf

 is my review of:

Maria Dolores Narbona Carrión (ed.), Sophie Treadwell: Contexto teatral, biografía, crítica y traducción de su obra Machinal, Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2007, paperback, 193 pp., ISBN 978-84-9747-181-7

**

The book reviewed is in Spanish but the review is in English: I hope it will interest those concerned with American theatre, US women's writing, and translation and reception studies.

**

Abstract:

It is usually stated that significant modern American theatre begins with the work of Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), but, as with other literary forms, that generic history may also be viewed and re-viewed from a female perspective, and the present volume comes as a timely reminder of the contribution to that same American theatre made all but simultaneously by O'Neill's contemporary, the journalist, novelist and, above all, dramatist and theatre producer Sophie Treadwell (Stockton, California, 1885 - Tucson, Arizona, 1970). Consisting of diverse editorial material in Spanish and a new translation (the first-ever into Spanish) of Treadwell's best-known play, Machinal (1928), this book is by definition aimed at a Hispanophone public. The present review, it is hoped, may nonetheless also be of interest to English-speaking readers and scholars, as an index of the reception outside the Anglophone world of women's theatre from the US and as evidence of the capacity of Sophie Treadwell's writing to cross borders - as also of the problems and challenges involved in translating a work which, on closer scrutiny, reveals itself to be in some aspects a product of cultural hybridation (Treadwell was of part-Mexican origin, and, from today's theoretical perspectives, doubly liable to subalternhood).

The volume, edited by María Dolores Narbona Carrión, of the University of Málaga, consists of the following: an introduction and chronology, both by the editor; a study of the theatrical context of the play Machinal, again by the editor; a general account of Treadwell's life and work, by Miriam López Rodríguez, with a bibliography of writings by and on the author; and a translation into Spanish of Machinal (under the same title), by María Dolores Narbona Carrión and Ricardo Vivancos Pérez

For followers of Indian Writing in English (IWE), it is always interesting to learn of an IWE book being translated into an Indian language. Now out is Manju Kapur's novel HOME from 2006 (see this blog: entry for 31 May 2006), in Malayalam translation - a first for this autthor in this language (though her earlier novel DIFFICULT DAUGHTERS has existed for some time in Marathi). The translation is by Jibu Jamal (Kottayam: DC Books, 2009). For a notice, see NEELA PADMANABHAN: 'About joint families', THE HINDU 21 Apr 2009:

 http://www.hindu.com/br/2009/04/21/stories/2009042151041403.htm

Review of Hunt Henion, THE DON Q POINT OF VIEW, Eureka (Montana): SHIFT AWARENESS BOOKS, 2008, 148 pp., 1SBN: 978-0-9822054-19, www.shiftAwareness.com

**

Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes’ world-famous novel, has offered generations of entranced readers a world where the boundaries between imagination and reality are porous, ever-changing, and repeatedly crossed. In the ninth chapter of Part I, Cervantes himself claims the book is ‘really’ a translation from an author writing in Arabic, Cide Hamete Benengeli; in the third chapter of Part II, the Don and Sancho are told about a book that is none other than the first part of Cervantes’ novel featuring themselves. Readers have been similarly imaginative. In the American literary tradition, Washington Irving tells of a Spanish countryman who solemnly believes Sancho and the Don to be real people; in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer spins yarns of elephants and diamonds and tells a sceptical Huck: “if I wasn’t so ignorant, but had read a book called “Don Quixote”, I would know without asking”.

Now, more than four centuries on, Hunt Henion’s The Don Q Point of View comes as the latest in a long line of tributes. It might be thought difficult to say anything new about the Don, but in these pages we have a reliving of the Man of la Mancha’s life and hard times that is startling in its originality.

The book’s narrating “I” tells the reader that he who writes actually was, in a past life, a Don Quixote who in real truth existed. The reader who agrees to suspend disbelief, or to believe all the way, is rewarded with a remarkable journey. Hunt Henion retraces his steps as the Don, riding side by side with Sancho across the La Mancha plain: and tells how the book Miguel de Cervantes wrote combined fact with fiction, mixing true recollections of Don Quixote’s life with his own elaborations and inventions.

G.K. Chesterton saw Cervantes’ Don as no better than a “lean and foolish knight’”. Hunt Henion’s Quixote is at the antipodes of any such travesty. He is lean, but he is not foolish. He is one whose vision aspires beyond the surface of things and makes of the world a constant battlefield between good and evil. Despite defeats and disappointments, the paladin of the good never says die, and goes on believing till his last breath in “the impossible dream”. The Don whom Hunt Henion brings to life is the heroic Quixote, the one who on a dusty road frees the chained prisoners bound for the galleys, the one who declares “I am who I am” and refuses to be another. Our narrator relives a life in which he, as Don Quixote, challenged the rigidities and cruelties of Spain in the Inquisition era, never faltering in his vision of a kinder and juster world. In the epoch of Barack Obama, this re-created Quixote is one who stands up against the giants and enchanters of oppression, and shouts long and loud, for all the world to hear, “YES, WE CAN!”

NB: This review is also on the Shift Awareness site accompanying the book details, at:

http://www.shiftawareness.com/The-Don-Q-Point-of-View.php