In the essay version published in her second Common Reader series (1932), Virginia Woolf highlights the interrogation mark in the title of “How Should One Read a Book?” Despite having been originally written and footnoted as “A paper read at a School,” in typical fashion Woolf eschews didacticism in favour of readerly independence and the provisionality of individual answers reached for in “the spirit of freedom,” which gives libraries their sanctuary status. Her advice is radically empathetic; rather than coming to books with “blurred minds,” she suggests it might be more productive to stop dictating to authors and to try to become the author, their fellow worker and accomplice. The exercise she suggests as the “quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words.” Yet this empathic reading would only be the first step and must be completed with its other, more complex half, comparison.
Bearing in mind the pedagogy of reading presented in this essay, I suggest a variation to her exercise of writing-to-read: what if we translated to read? In her “Translation as Culture,” Gayatri Spivak relates her discovery that “translation was the most intimate act of reading” to her concern “for the constitution of the ethical subject” in the figure of the reader-as-translator, a concept she further develops in “Politics of Translation.” Barbara Cassin is similarly concerned with the paradoxes involved in the task and proposes a definition for the “untranslatables” not as something that one does not translate but as “something that never ceases to (not) be translated.” Would not the act of attempting to translate Woolf’s untranslatable but repeatedly translated words perfectly combine the two halves of reading, since as translators we both become the author and constantly make comparisons across two languages, two cultures in the effort?
This four-hour workshop is open to every reader of Woolf interested in exploring this form of “intimate reading.” No prior experience in translation or knowledge of languages other than English is required, since monolinguals can also help the multilingual participants in the discussion of their choices. The workshop will take place before the Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, on Friday, June 3, at 1:00 pm Eastern Time (New York, USA) but special arrangements can be made for participants who cannot make that time zone. Participants will present their experience at the conference itself during the Saturday lunchtime break (June 11, 12:30-1:30 pm Eastern Time, US).
We would like to see represented as many languages as we can from in this truly international conference so please sign up by May 30 by writing to mritaviana@gmail.com and fill up the table with your information on working language(s) in the linked spreadsheet:
What? A 4 hour workshop to explore translation as a mode of reading Woolf open to all participants of the Woolf Conference, regardless of experience with translation.
When? June 3, at 1pm EST and presentation on June 11, at 12:30pm during the lunchtime break of the Conference.
Why? To experience a different way of engaging with Woolf and her words in a transcultural mode.
How? Sign up by sending Rita an email by May 30 and add your basic information to the spreadsheet.
Maria Rita Drumond Viana is Professor C3 at the Department of Letters at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, in Brazil. With Ana Carolina Mesquita, she published the first translation into Portuguese of the 1931 text of On Being Ill for Editora Nós (2021). Her research focuses on life writing, feminisms and translation studies.