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PROGRAMS
DECEMBER 9, 7:00 PM | ANN GOLDSTEIN AND ESTHER ALLEN
Readings from Primo Levi's Complete Works
Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, | 24 West 12th Street
Free admission. Reservation required: RSVPWine reception to follow.
Reading and conversation with Ann Goldstein (editor of Primo Levi's Complete Works) and Esther Allen (Baruch College)
"To Translate and Be Translated" from: Primo Levi, Other People's Trades (translated by Anthony Shugaar).
According to Genesis, the first humans had only one language: this made them so ambitious and so dexterous that they set about building a tower that reached as high as the sky. God was offended at their audacity, and he punished them in a subtle manner: not with a thunderbolt but by confounding their speech, which made it impossible for them to continue their blasphemous work. This episode has parallels, surely no accident, with the story of original sin, a story that comes shortly before this one in the bible and which was punished with expulsion from Paradise; we can conclude that linguistic differences were perceived from the earliest times as a curse.
And a curse they have remained, as anyone knows who has been forced to live, or, even worse, forced to work, in a country where he doesn't speak the language, or anyone who has been obliged to hammer a foreign language into his head as an adult, when the mysterious material in which memories are engraved becomes more refractory. Further, for many people, at a more or less conscious level, anyone who speaks another language is a foreigner by definition, an outsider, a "stranger," and different from me; and someone different is a potential enemy or, at least, a barbarian-that is to say, etymologically speaking, a stutterer, someone who cannot speak, a quasi-non-human. Thus, linguistic friction tends to become racial and political friction, yet another curse that afflicts us.
It ought to follow that those who practice the trade of translator or interpreter should be honored, inasmuch as they strive to limit the damage done by the curse of Babel. [...].
Speakers:
Ann Goldstein is an editor at The New Yorker. She has translated the works of many of Italy's most prominent writers, including Elena Ferrante, Primo Levi, Giacomo Leopardi, Aldo Buzzi, and Alessandro Piperno.
A two-time recipient of translation fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Esther Allen has translated a number of books from Spanish and French, and helped found the PEN/Heim Translation Fund. She teaches at the Graduate Center and Baruch College, City University of New York. Read
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CPL EDITION | ON READING IF THIS IS A MAN
In 2012 Einaudi and Centro Internazionale Studi Primo Levi in Turin published a new annotated version of Primo Levi's If This is a Man, by Alberto Cavaglion. We are presenting here Cavaglion's preface to his annotated version, which offers new insights, context and a wealth of detailed information that can deepen the understanding of Levi's text.
«I meant my comment to be taken as a piece of useful work. On the one hand, I addressed myself to digging into the rich literary mine where many of Levi's words come from, the many expressions of If This is a Man. This is a mine where the metal, Dante, lies beside the jewel, Baudelaire. On the other hand, my comments explore the relationships between what Levi defined as "grammatical derivations" and a vision of the world that presents itself as "opposed to everything infinite." It is a vision that is fascinated equally in the face of both extremes - that of the demons and degenerates and that of the martyrs and saints» Alberto Cavaglion. Translated by Alta Price. Buy
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FROM THE PRESS | PRIMO LEVI'S COMPLETE WORKS
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FILM | IF ONLY I WERE THAT WARRIOR AWARDED SPECIAL PRIZE
After being awarded a special prize at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence, If Only I Were That Warrior, a film by Valerio Ciriaci is shown in New York for the first time
Saturday, December 12 @ 8:30pm
Cowin Center, Teachers College, Columbia University
525 W. 120TH St, New York, NY 10027
The stories of three characters, filmed in present day Ethiopia, Italy and the United States, take the audience on a journey through the living memories and the tangible remains of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia - a journey that crosses generations and continents to today, where this often overlooked legacy still ties the fates of two nations and their people.
Screening followed by a Q&A with filmmaker and reception. Read
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