The Bialowieza Forest, in eastern Poland, has been a private hunting ground for medieval Polish monarchs, Russian tsars, and Nazi hierarchs, a refuge for the resistance in World War II , and home to some of the last European bison and a multitude of species on the brink of extinction, especially phagocyte fungi. Today, a natural reserve nestled in one of the last primeval forests of Europe, the award-winning translator and writer Jennifer Croft (Stillwater, Oklahoma, 1981) transports us to this dreamlike forest and nightmare jungle in her novel The Extinction of Irena Rey (Anagrama), a hilarious satire about the literary world filled with profound artistic and human reflections.
The reason for the meeting is the invitation from Irena Rey, a wonderful Polish novelist and perennial Nobel candidate, who has invited her eight translators to start translating her latest book, the masterpiece Eminence Grise. Initially identified only by their languages - English, French, German, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian - the translators are familiar with the ritual. The entourage is driven by a kind of lust for "Our Author" and a loyalty bordering on pathology . Soon, however, the precedent collapses: this time Irena Rey appears erratic, bewildering, and suddenly vanishes, tilting the novel towards a mystery that unfolds through a series of clever and deceptive revelations, each more implausible than the last.
"I wanted to reflect on translation, which is my life and my passion, but I thought I couldn't just tell a story about translators, because everyone I know is kind, generous, and peaceful people , and talking about them would result in an extremely boring book," explains the writer from her home in Oklahoma with laughter. "So I decided to gather them in this forest and pose a series of mysteries, crazy situations, to make them go completely wild , make them a little paranoid so that resentments and rivalries that we all carry inside would surface."
What is a text without the author?
Winner, among others, of the International Booker Prize for her translation of the Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, Croft, who lived several years in Argentina , has also translated the works of authors from this country into English, such as Federico Falco or Pedro Mairal. She even wrote her first novel in Spanish, Serpientes y escaleras, a kind of autobiographical diary about her childhood and her relationship with her sister. "Perhaps because of the language, it was a simple book, with clear language and very accessible. Here I wanted to do the opposite and be completely maximalist and baroque, a delirious point that was inspired by authors like Gombrowicz, Borges, and Bolaño," she explains.
"When one starts translating, they think they can get into the author's head. Of course, it's not like that."
Authors who, along with Tokarczuk and many others, shape the writer Irena Rey, a caricatured character who stands as the supreme diva of literature and embodies all the virtues and vices of word geniuses. "It is true that, to a certain extent, Irena has some things from Olga, but in truth, she is a combination of different people I have met over the years in many jobs and literary events. Some authors really are like divas, Tokarczuk certainly isn't, but the fun of the book is that exaggeration . If she were a normal person, nothing would happen," explains Croft. "Furthermore, as the title suggests, the key is that very early on the author disappears because I wanted to reflect on what happens to a work without its author, what Roland Barthes wondered: what is the text without the author? ".
And, more specifically, in a book about translation: What do translators do without the author? "She mysteriously disappears at the beginning of the book, and since then, anything we discover about her is the result of the panic and confusion of the translators, we never really know her, and that is for me a metaphor for the translation process," she confesses. " When one starts translating, they think it's a kind of mystical experience where they can communicate with the author, really be inside their head . But, of course, that's not the case, each one is their own and makes their own choices by building their own book."
To reflect this, in a surprising and impactful twist, the novel is presented as written by the Argentine Emi, Rey's translator into Spanish , and, in addition, it has been Alexis, Rey's American translator (and bitter rival of Emi), who has translated the novel into English, a task she performs while adding biting and unsubtle footnotes. The dispute between them, which unfolds in the novel, makes the perspective of the story so biased, so unreliable, that we have no idea which version of the facts to believe .
"I don't think translators are parasites or mere intermediaries; we have a lot of power in the reader's mind."
"That was the effect that was so difficult to achieve. It wasn't enough to just throw out a theory of translation; I really wanted to force the reader to think about it all the time. My intention is for them to be questioning all the time if what they are reading is true , and I hope that makes them understand that every translation is a co-authored book, and that every word in a translated book is chosen by someone who is not the author," Croft asserts. "It happens especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, many readers assume that, for example, Olga Tokarczuk writes in English, and that is simply offensive . There are many reasons to insist on the visibility of the translator, on their co-authorship of a text."
In this sense, the writer, author of a popular article published in The Guardian titled Why Translators Should Be Named on Book Covers and leader of the #TranslatorsOnTheCover campaign, states: " I don't think translators are parasites or mere intermediaries , but that our work is a huge responsibility and offers the possibility to contribute in such an important way to the literary ecosystem," she defends. "Although we often forget it, translators have a lot of power in the reader's mind , and I believe it is important to reflect on the cultural changes that affect a text when it moves from one language to another."
But going back to those references that resonate in the book's humor, The Extinction of Irena Rey is much more than a wildly frenetic mystery story with a narrative pace reminiscent of an old Scooby-Doo episode . Hidden in this seemingly frivolous plot, literature is alive, even dangerous, and serves Croft to explore themes such as anxiety about climate change, extinction, and the imbalance of nature due to art . That is, art in the sense of artifice: everything we humans create, always and necessarily at the expense of something else.
"I am fascinated by this question: What is the role of the creator, the artist, the writer? In this book, I question why there is this constant human need to produce things, to create. In my opinion, humans are too obsessed with posterity, with the eternal .