David Vichnar in conversation with Natalie Nera
The art of literary translation has gained increasing recognition in recent years, which is why I am so keen to speak with David Vichnar, one of the leading translators of Czech poetry today. He was the only non-native speaker selected for a special issue of the prestigious Modern Poetry in Translation. His latest endeavour is the translation of a collection by one of the most cerebral and conceptually demanding Czech poets today, Olga Stehlíková. Her book Though the Sky Is Embroidered by a Zigzagging Bat has recently been published by the Scottish press Blue Diode Publishing.
Sitting in the corridors of the oldest university in Central Europe, Charles University in Prague, I find myself wondering whether this interview will ever actually take place: David Vichnar is late, and arranging our meeting has taken several months. Yet when David—also a lecturer, organiser, and publisher—finally arrives, he immediately disarms me with his smile. He is charming, witty, and completely immersed in the world of art and literature.
You have been translating Olga’s poems for many years. What do you find so fascinating or appealing about her poetry?
It is of course difficult to express one’s literary (dis)preferences in a few words— – it is even more difficult with poems that, as we all know, cannot be paraphrased, and even more difficult with poems that are as dear to one’s heart as Olga’s are to me, but let me try anyway. Olga’s poems are among the most conceptually intelligent, linguistically playful and innovative, but also atmospherically brooding, wistful and even emotionally poignant poems I have come across in contemporary Czech literature. What I wrote about Olga’s poetry some time ago for her Versopolis profile is still valid, I think: Olga’s poems take a whole range of expressive devices from everyday language to “remake” them”, orchestrating them into unexpected metaphorical melodies. Her themes are dreary domesticity, the straitjacket of the everyday, the imbalance between the sexes, male bravado and the ordeals of dis/loyalty in a partnership.
That makes Olga’s ordinary themes special is the lyrical subject’s oft-heard warning about all the alienations that creep into the most intimate of our lives together, as well as a muted undercurrent of constrained femininity. Linked to this is the question of what sense it might make to write poetry in the 21st century, along with her satire on the vanity of what passes for official ‘poetry’
What ultimately turns her intimate microcosms into macrocosms is her keen eye for socio-economic detail and her sensitive ear for a dramatic tone whose urgency never dissolves into pathos. Olga is simply poetry “as insatiable as a fatty acid”.
Olga’s poems are not easy to understand and interpret in her mother tongue: There are multiple layers, connotations, references… How do you deal with the challenges of recreating her poems in another language and essentially interpreting them for a completely different readership?
To paraphrase Derrida: Only that which is untranslatable is worth translating… He said this fifty years ago, but it’s even more important today, because otherwise we could all just watch the paint dry while we wait for the models of the great languages to do our work for us. So as a translator, I’m happy to take on a challenge…
With Olga and her recently published volume of collected poems, it helped that she works as an editor and is more than proficient in English, so she was always on hand to explain one or two unusual phrases and to scrutinise my first draft translation, often suggesting improvements to my feeble attempts. These were then sublimated to a second level in Tereza Novická’s editorial lab, so that they might work even better in the eyes of the native reader. Rob MacKenzie then took it upon himself to revise the manuscript one last time. I remember from our communication that he asked Olga, Tereza and me several times whether the original was “as funny as this sentence here”, to which our chorus could only ever give a resounding “Yes, it is”
All in all, the translation of Olga’s poems was a challenge, because it was not just about a strange pun, a paronomasia or an inverted phrase, but about entire discourses (e.g. about the game of marbles or the reproductive cycle of bee colonies) and cultural realities (of course, numerous Czech pop-cultural and everyday references had to be replaced by those familiar in the Anglo-American reality of life). Hopefully we have found something in our translation endeavours and not just lost something.
Looking through the publisher’s website, I noticed that it gives space to many Czech authors. Do you know why that is?
The “why” would be a question best addressed to Rob, our publisher. All I know is that he seems to have developed a love affair with contemporary Czech literature and has made Blue Diode Press one of the few English-language publishers currently publishing translations from Czech beyond Hašek and Čapek. I also know that he is supported in his efforts by numerous literary grants, from the UK and by the Czech Literature Centre, namely Jan Zikmund, with whose help he has even been able to take Czech writers on reading tours between the UK and the US.
Nabokov famously wrote that “the clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times prettier than a paraphrase.” On the other hand, one may argue that every translation is always a form of interpretation and a way of paraphrasing the original text. As a translator, how do you feel about this question?
The Nabokov quote reminds me of the old Italian proverb “traduttore, tradittore”, which means that every translator is a traitor, or the sexist shibboleth that translations are like women — they are either faithful, or beautiful. We have also seen this dynamic in machine/AI translation, and the seismic shift it has undergone in recent years from literal translation to “creative” translation. In my practise, I stick to the literal sense in the sense that I remain as faithful as possible to, let’s say, the “first level” that forms the core of the information. I also adhere to literalness in the sense that I refuse to “embellish” the original where it is harsh or downright harsh/ugly, or on the other hand to “dumb down” or “explain” where the original is abstruse or mysterious in its communication(s). In another shorthand, I would say that I strive to do what all translators strive to do: to become a mediator of a reader’s encounter with a text, whose code may now be different, but whose functioning and effect within that other code should be as close as possible to that of the original.
Would you take a moment to speculate on the future of literary translation with a metaphorical crystal ball in your hand? What I mean is – is there a future in the context of the onslaught of AI, which has already more or less taken over the technical translations.
Crystal balls or not, what is becoming apparent is that the meaning of “translation” will change in the past and in the not-too-distant future. The question is not if, but when, the models for major languages will be applied to modern fiction and poetry, for which some copyright restrictions apparently still apply (but not for much longer), and the whole divide between “literal” and “technical” will collapse.
Human vs. machine translation could then become something like a live concert vs. a studio recording in music. Yes, there is the smooth, technologically polished, near-perfect “ideal” studio version, but some listeners instead like the grainy imperfections, the magic of the moment, the odd mistake that makes the phrase punchier, that can only be found in live recordings, warts and all.
Which other Czech authors would you like to translate into English?
Well, I would like to think that I have already translated quite a few, and the ones I was supposed to translate somehow: besides Olga, these were Michal Ajvaz, Petr Borkovec, Adam Borzič, Milan Děžinský, Sylva Fischerová, Magdaléna Platzová, Olga Slowik, Josef Straka, Jaromír Typlt, Martin Zet, to name but a few. I would like to continue to contribute to the international dissemination of contemporary Czech writing through my work for the Prague Microfestival in co-operation with the Versopolis Network for European Poetry. Every year we select two young Czech writers under the age of 30 and make a first English translation of their selected poems, to help them get started in the festival circuit. In recent years, I have been able to help the works of Ondřej Buddeus, Zofia Baldyga, Klára Goldstein, Marie Iljašenko, Filip Klega, Ondřej Macl, and others, make their international debut in this way.
Though the Sky is Embroidered by a Zigzagging Bat by Olga Stehlíková and translated by David Vichnar is available for £10.00 at the Blue Diode Publishing website
David Vichnar
David Vichnar is a lecturer whose research focuses on James Joyce, modernism, and related areas of literary theory. He is also a prominent translator of Czech poetry, with work featured in Modern Poetry in Translation and on the international literary platform Versopolis. In addition, he is the organiser of the Prague Microfestival, an annual celebration of contemporary art and literature. More information is available at: https://ualk.ff.cuni.cz/staff/academic-staff/david-vichnar/
Olga Stehlíková
Olga Stehlíková is a poet, writer, editor, and critic. In 2014, she won the Magnesia Litera Book Prize for poetry with her debut collection Týdny. Since then, she has established herself as one of the most original voices of her generation, with significant achievements on both the national and international literary scenes.
