6/30/2023 0 Comments Fugitive pieces novelHe was rescued and raised by a kind man who took him first to Greece, then to Canada, and taught him to love language and life. It follows the life of Jakob Beer, who buried himself in the mud to survive a Nazi attack on his village in Poland. This book was the 1997 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, making it the second title in this year’s #ReadingWomen challenge. Her writing floats you through the book - evenly, decisively, not unpleasantly - even as she asks us to consider the lifetime and generational trauma of the Holocaust. The poet moves from life to language, the translator moves from language to life both, like the immigrant, try to identify the invisible, what’s between the lines, the mysterious implications.”Ĭan we all please take a moment to revel in these passages? Anne Michaels’ poetic prose is absolutely the highlight of Fugitive Pieces. You can choose your philosophy of translation just as you choose how to live: the free adaptation that sacrifices detail to meaning. “Translation is a kind of transubstantiation one poem becomes another. If we look up at that moment, it’s not due to any ability of ours to piece the darkness, it’s the world’s brief bestowal. “But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. I know even less than lamplight in a window, which knows how to pour itself into the street and arouse the longing of one who waits.” “Standing together on the winter sidewalk, in the white darkness.
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