Virtual Memories Show 640:
Cécile Wajsbrot
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“What struck me was the coincidence, the collusion between what Virginia Woolf was describing in Time Passes and the things I saw in that documentary about the Forbidden Zone.”
With her bewitching and beautiful novel NEVERMORE (Seagull Books, translated from French by Tess Lewis, who joins our conversation), Cécile Wajsbrot takes us on a tour of Chenobyl’s Forbidden Zone, the High Line in NYC, Dresden, Paris, under the shadow of the Time Passes section of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. We talk about the challenges of writing a first-person novel about translation, the strange ways Woolf has followed Cecile throughout her careers as author & translator, and how it felt to see her novel about translating Virginia Woolf into French get translated into English. We get into her literary career, how Time Passes became a stand-in for her fascination with destruction, why she’s translated Woolf’s The Waves three times over thirty years (and whether the first one got her into the bad graces of the editor of Le Monde de Livres), what it was like to subvert the translator’s typical role of invisibility with this novel, and the language she wishes she had. We also discuss mourning and the ways we try to keep conversation alive with those we’ve lost, the time I impressed the Princess of Yugoslavia by transliterating the Cyrillic on her family’s jewels, and more. Give it a listen! And go read NEVERMORE!
“Translation as a process is almost a character in this book.”
“For me, writing a novel is not only an intellectual question, but one of emotion.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Born in Paris in 1954 to Polish Jews, Cécile Wajsbrot has written 17 novels, a collection of short stories and numerous essays. She also translates from English and German. Her translations of Virginia Woolf, Jane Gardam, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Olson, Gerd Ledig, and Peter Kurzeck, among others, have won the Eugen Helmle Translation Prize. In 2016, she was awarded the Prix de l’Académie de Berlin for her writing.
Tess Lewis’ numerous translations from French and German include works by Peter Handke, Jean-Lue Benoziglio, Klaus Metz, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Pascal Bruckner, among others.
Go listen to my 2020 and 2021 conversations with Tess.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Tess Lewis’ home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Cecile by Samuel Kirszenbaum / MODDS. It’s on my instagram.