Feb 21 Response - Audree

 The talk with Susan Harris and Chad Post was insightful and fun. It was lovely to see how lively they were and how they spoke about publishing with such excitement and care. It is evident that they have been in the business for a long time and are familiar with its ins and outs. Harris spoke about WWB almost as if it was a passion project and Post talked about Dalkey with such familiarity. I suppose that these two "presses" are quite small with quite a small team, so it was nice to see how involved they each were with multiple levels of the process. One thing I found interesting is Chad Post's approach to editing and publishing translations. For Post, the original does not take precedent over the translation— he wants the book to be the best book it can be in English, and tends to dislike what he deems to be unnecessary foreignization. I found this interesting because, while we have only gotten the perspective of translators and critics so far, the editor's/publisher's view is obviously going to be quite different, and sometimes will be in conflict with that of the translator. 

I have always found poetry difficult to relate to or even to appreciate in its entirety because its mechanisms seem quite foreign to me. I really enjoyed A Poem...or Something More Beautiful for it really rang true with what I conceive love to be, and it was really beautiful how the author was able to capture the element of love that ages and grows. Indeed, it is "something more beautiful," and perhaps something more important than poetry. 

Fakhreddine's essay was also of particular interest to me, and they make a very good point about the way we make sense of literature in a historical context. Indeed,"In its “Global Turn,” the field of Medieval Studies is not illuminating previously dark spots in the world, but dark spots in its constructed image of the world." This highlights just how much our conception of literary history is shaped by our already biased perspective. She talks of Area Studies and states that "They are more readily approached as symptoms of cultural or ethnic or gender complexes, and rarely if at all acknowledged as art or literature with aesthetic merits worthy of study." Indeed, when we read these works it is obvious that they have merit of their own, but unfortunately, it is easy to slip into a politics when it comes to reading world literature. This made me wonder whether or not this kind of thing is escapable?