Posts featuring Nancy Kline

Desire and Possession: A Review of Jérôme Prieur’s Zombie Proust

Proust saw glittering Parisian dinners and costume balls as “great massacres.” His society models posed for him and were in turn “devoured” by him.

Zombie Proust by Jérôme Prieur, translated by Nancy Kline, Les Fugitives, 2025

 “Marcel Proust was never filmed at all,” asserts Jérôme Prieur in Proust fantôme, his 2001 French text rendered into English by Nancy Kline in 2025 as Zombie Proust. In 2017, however, a Canadian professor claimed that he had found Proust’s moving specter in the silent footage of Countess Élaine Greffulhe’s 1904 wedding to the Duke de Guiche. Entering the frame about 35 seconds in, Proust, or his mustached double, wearing a pearl-gray overcoat, black vest, and black bowler hat, looking somewhat less formal than the other guests and in a hurry, descends the stairs, overtakes some older folks, and exits the frame.

The discovery of this possible Proust, occuring in the interval between Prieur’s originally published text and its translation, seems to be especially meta. Whenever we talk about Proust and his seven-volume novel, In Search of Lost Time, there exists always a splintering tension between chronological and subjective recollections, motion and stillness, analogous to the temporal, spatial, and linguistic gaps between an original text and its translation. In short, there are many ways to interpret Prieur’s statement that Proust “was never filmed,” just as there are many ways to read Zombie ProustREAD MORE…

Celebrate International Translation Day with your favorite magazine!

Get ready to spread word of the wonderful work of translators—and win an Asymptote Book Club subscription!

Dear reader,

Happy International Translation Day!

As David Mitchell put it, “Translators are jugglers, diplomats, nuance-ticklers, magistrates, word-nerds, self-testing lie detectors, and poets. Translators rock.” At Asymptote, every day is a good time to celebrate not only translators but also the editors and publishers who help move ideas across languages and cultural borders—but we suppose one official day will do for now.

Even so, you can make it a big day by joining us on Facebook and Twitter as we revisit our best articles about translation from our archive. From the why

“Translating beauty is an act of counterterror in this murderous world” (Nancy Kline)

and the how

“It takes courage to venture into that empty space” (Frederika Randall)

to the whom

“The best ones are accidents of migration and biography, who’ve come through the trauma of bilingualism” (Michael Hofmann)

we hope to use this occasion to advocate for the wonderful but often maligned art that is translation. To encourage as many of you as possible to join us on Twitter and Facebook, we’re giving away a three-month Asymptote Book Club subscription to one lucky winner who shares one of our #ITD2020 posts, sent out every hour today on social media.

Goethe once remarked that the work of translation “is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.” In our close to ten years, we’ve given away $13,500 in prizes to emerging translators, and advocated for a more inclusive world literature by seeking out and publishing the best work from 120 countries and 100 languages in our massive quarterly issues. But there’s more we can do—with your support.

If you would like to help us champion the art of translation, please consider making a one-time gift to Asymptote or becoming a sustaining member from as little as $5 USD/month. For a limited time only, new donors and subscribers will receive the above print-ready digital poster designed by Thai-Taiwanese artist Michael Laungjessadakun commissioned especially for Asymptote—a perfect gift for all your translator friends.

Thank you for being a vital member of our community!

ta24

 

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Spring 2019

Join our blog editors as they explore everything the Spring 2019 issue has to offer!

The Spring 2019 issue of Asymptote, “Cosmic Connections,” features work from 27 countries and 17 different languages. If you’re not sure where to begin, our blog editors have you covered with recommendations for some of their favorite pieces, including an essay about an adventure in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a story that jumps from medieval Jewish theology to the relationship between an Argentine father and son, and poems that offer us a glimpse into intimate moments in the city of Shanghai.

Asymptote’s newest issue is one of the journal’s best to date, meaning that it was nearly impossible to choose just one piece to highlight. In the interviews section, I found Dubravka Ugrešić’s comments on literary activism and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s discussion of the role of Marxism in his work particularly illuminating, while, in the special feature, Nancy Kline’s essay stood out for its focus on the often-overlooked role of the writer’s (and the translator’s) accent and spoken voice in the translation process. But I’d like to devote my highlight to an essay by a somewhat lesser-known writer, one who might otherwise get lost among the many big names that appear in this issue.

READ MORE…