Elizabeth Harris
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Harris
Bio
Elizabeth Harris is a literary translator specializing in contemporary Italian fiction. She holds graduate degrees in creative writing and literary translation from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arkansas. Before moving to translating fulltime, Harris was a professor of creative writing at the University of North Dakota. Her translations appear in the Kenyon Review, the Missouri Review, the Literary Review, New England Review, AGNI Magazine, Words Without Borders, and many other literary journals. Her full-length translations include Mario Rigoni Stern’s novel Giacomo’s Seasons (Autumn Hill Books), Giulio Mozzi’s collection This Is the Garden (Open Letter Books), and Antonio Tabucchi’s novels Tristano Dies and For Isabel: A Mandala (both with Archipelago Books). For her translations of Tabucchi, she has received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, the Italian Prose in Translation Award, and the National Translation Award.
The timing of this National Endowment for the Arts award could not be better. I left my position as a professor of creative writing to concentrate on translating literature, and this award affirms that this difficult decision was the right one for me. The project for this NEA fellowship, Stories with Pictures, is my third translation of a book by Antonio Tabucchi. I am thrilled that Jill Schoolman, publisher of Archipelago Books, has entrusted me with Tabucchi’s beautiful writing. Stories with Pictures, like Tabucchi’s other works that I’ve translated, is extremely challenging, constantly varying in style and form, moving from narrative to the philosophical and back again, and permeated with literary references and other cultural references. The NEA fellowship will allow me to linger over this incredible book and, I hope, to give it the life it deserves in English.
From “Story of the Man of Paper” in Antonio Tabucchi’s Stories with Picture
[Translated from the Italian]
The only thing that doesn’t exist is oblivion.
And all the rest exists, all the rest can be portrayed. Life escapes, you pass through it and it escapes. Death escapes, it grabs hold of you and it escapes. Cities escape, you pass through them and they escape. And you, you escape as well, you can’t tell your story, because you escape. But the hand runs over the page, guides the nib or brush; life escaped, but its image remains. The music played, the notes disappeared. But the score remains. Right here, in front of you. Do you all see it, how it’s drawn in precise lines, legible, decipherable: waiting to be played. Play it. Each one of you will play it on your own instrument. You have a cello you keep at your side like a beloved bride? You have a flute that’s your classmate? You have a set of bagpipes you carry piggyback like a child? Play the score in your own way, play the music as you see fit. You have an ocarina? Take it from your pocket. You don’t have any instrument at all? Try whistling. You don’t know how? Try humming to yourselves, step onto the main square of this beautiful city carrying your vision of that score you saw, transform these images to a sound that’s yours alone, play it with your music, coming home, even if you’re tone-deaf—do it—for the private gifts that I won’t mention, for the music, that mysterious form of time. Day enters night. It doesn’t go away.
(Used with permission of Archipelago Books)
About AntonioTabucchi
Antonio Tabucchi, born in Pisa in 1943, was considered one of the preeminent writers of Europe; he published over 30 books that have been translated into 40 languages and was the recipient of many awards. For his most famous works, Notturno Indiano (Indian Nocturne) and Sostiene Pereira (Pereira Maintains), he received the Médicis étranger, Premio Super Campiello, Premio Scanno, and the Premio Jean Monnet for European Literature, and he was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In France he was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He was also shortlisted twice for the International Man Booker Prize. In his fiction Tabucchi often engaged with politics and history and was critical of contemporary Italy, in particular attempts at rehabilitating fascism in the 1990s. A passionate lover of Portuguese literature and Portugal, Tabucchi lived half the year there and also taught Portuguese literature at the University of Siena. His writing was deeply influenced by the Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa, many of whose works Tabucchi and his Portuguese wife, Maria José Lancastre, translated into Italian. Tabucchi was named Commander of the Order of Prince Henry by the Portuguese government. He died in 2012 in Lisbon.