Welcome to The Lost Shelf - the series where we invite authors to rescue their favourite neglected works of literature from obscurity.
In Episode Two, Art O'Connor and Camilla Grudova discuss "Zoo, or Letters Not About Love" by Viktor Shklovksy. Their wide-ranging conversation touches on Shklovsky's lovesickness and homesickness, his theoretical background in Formalism, as well as some of the finer points of literary composition. They also consider the challenges of literary translation, the critic-as-novelist, and the state of contemporary literary fiction.
Erratum: Art misquotes "Ulysses" by adding a spurious "f", thereby banjaxing a reference to Fritz Senn. The correct quotation is "Going forth he met Butterly" (not "Butterfly"). Among the many translational ingenuities this tricky line inspired is Wollschläger's "Und er ging hinaus und weinte Buttermilch" (and he went out and wept buttermilk) - but no sign of any Schmetterlinge.
After analysing four competing translations of the sentence, Senn concluded: "It is open to everyone to add further remedial touches, which is one way of attesting a basic intranslatability." (Joyce's Dislocutions (1984), p. 36)
Thanks to Camilla Grudova, Emmet White, Liam Mulvaney, and the whole team at The Whistleblower.
Title song: 'Harry Clarke' by Clara Tracey
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