Winter Journey

Translator's Note

Readers unfamiliar with Jaume Cabre need to know two fundamental facts about him. First, he is a native speaker of Catalan who writes in his own language. And second, he is the author of novels and short stories that have an enthusiastic readership not just in Catalonia but in much of Europe.

Most authors write in their native language; exceptions to this generalization, such as Beckett and Nabokov, are famously few. Why then is the fact that Jaume Cabre writes in his own language worthy of mention? The answer is bound up with the minority status of Catalan, a language spoken by some seven million Spaniards, about one-sixth of the population of Spain. Catalan is protected by the Spanish constitution of 1978, but Spanish has the geopolitical advantage of being both a national and a world language. Because Catalan and Spanish are related languages (both are descended from Latin) and because Spanish was vigorously promoted during the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975), virtually all speakers of Catalan are bilingual.

Bilingualism is a very complex phenomenon, and the unique characteristics of an individual's bilingualism are the result of where the languages are used (at home, in school, in public interactions, on radio and television, etc.) and what they are used for (to converse, to read and write, to do business, to relax, etc.). Some of the writers who have been formed by Catalan/Spanish bilingualism, notably Juan Marse and Eduardo Mendoza, write in Spanish. Jaume Cabre writes in Catalan.

The choice of a literary language entails both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, Catalan is the natural expression of Cabre's personal and intellectual history. And using Catalan is a conscious act of support for a language whose vitality is far from guaranteed. The disadvantage of writing in Catalan, however, is obvious: an author as creative and as prolific as Cabre (he also writes essays, television and movie scripts and children's literature) would be much better known, and much more marketable, if he wrote in Spanish. He would be writing in a language that has nearly 400 million speakers, and for which there is an established network of editors, translators and publishers. In spite of this disadvantage, Cabre has achieved both critical and popular success, and his work has attracted a wide readership. His 2004 novel about the aftereffects of the Spanish civil war, Les veus del Pamano (Voices of the Pamano), was the toast of the 2007 Frankfurt Book Fair, at which Catalan culture was the Guest of Honor. He is well known in Europe, and his works have been translated into fourteen languages.

Winter Journey is the first of Jaume Cabre's works to be translated into English. Imaginative and accomplished, it needs no special pleading. But any work written in Catalan is part of the ongoing project of saving the language, and the culture of which it is a central part, from being worn away by assimilation. 1 hope that my translation will serve this work both as literature and as Catalan literature.

Winter Journey is an atypical collection of short stories. Many collections bring together stories that were written over a given period of time, but these stories were written at different times and-as Cabre explains in the Epilogue-were brought together only when he figured out what they had in common. Nor do these stories share a single style; the collection includes international intrigue (Poc!), fantasy (Dust), historical narrative (With Hope in His Hands), interior monologue (Finis Coronat Opus) and even O. Henry-esque fable (The Will). Rather, the stories in Winter Journey share motifs, obsessions, objects, and even some characters. One side of a phone conversation appears in the first story, for example, and the other side in the last. An embossed leather bookmark belonging to Bach in Gottfried Heinrich's Dream shows up centuries later in the collection of an eccentric bibliophile in Dust. And so on… Readers will want to discover other connections themselves.

The stories do not share a time and place; they are set in various European countries and in various centuries, but painting (especially Rembrandt's The Philosopher) and music (especially Schubert's Winterreise) play a role in almost all of them. Some of the characters are artists or musicians, many of them are seekers of aesthetic pleasure, and a few do terrible things in the pursuit of beauty. Taken together, the stories are a discourse on beauty: its power, its danger, and its price. Given that music has been a theme in many of Cabre's works, the collection might be thought of as a set of variations on the theme of beauty.

This translation presented several challenges. One was the specialized vocabulary; references to music, for example, range from classical repertory to parts of the organ to King Crimson. These references had to be as unobtrusive in the translation as they are in the original work: details that serve to define the characters but that do not otherwise call attention to themselves. Not all of the clues will be picked up on by all readers, but they had to be there to be found by readers who share the interests of the characters. An additional challenge was that each story was a new text, and therefore a new occasion for negotiating the nature of the translation's faithfulness to the original. Finally, the stories had to be as enjoyable in English as they are in Catalan; they are sophisticated and intellectual, but also fun to read, and 1 tried to retain this quality in the translation. In fact, reading is one of the aesthetic pleasures that fuel the actions of the characters of Winter Journey.

1 began to learn Catalan as a graduate student in Hispanic linguistics, and had the good fortune to study with the Catalan linguist Josep Roca-Pons and to become friends with him and with his wife, Teresa. Thanks to them, l learned to speak Catalan, but after 1 became a professor of Spanish my Catalan ebbed and flowed depending on my access to speakers of the language. In 2007 1 was in Barcelona, collaborating with colleagues at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and trying to perfect my Catalan. As part of this effort 1 started looking for a work of Catalan literature that 1 might translate, and a chain of contacts led me to Viatge d'hivern, which has become Winter Journey. 1 am grateful to Jaume Cabre for authorizing this translation and for answering my questions without betraying the slightest dismay at what 1 didn't know; to Carme Rei-Granger for introducing me to Viatge d'hivern; to Maria Roura-Mir for advice about translation; and to]osep and Teresa Roca-Pons for sharing with me their profound knowledge and love of their language.

Swan Isle Press is an independent, not-for-profit, literary publisher dedicated to publishing works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction that inspire and educate while advancing the knowledge and appreciation of literature, art, and culture. The Press's bilingual editions and single-language English translations make contemporary and classic texts more accessible to a variety of readers.

i '9 must take a road from which no one returns."

i "As if its course had begun in my heart, / it was muddy, wise and grand, the Danube" (Attila Jozsef).