I’ve opened my heart to you, you know all there is to know about me. This is my offering, you have me, I am yours. It’s not the same as forgiveness, but I have leapt into the chasm, I have walked into the flame; I hope to meet you halfway.
Our flight, Alitalia 515, arrives on Thursday, 7 a.m.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Translations from the Italian are my own; in translating La Vita Nuova, I occasionally referred to Mark Musa’s translation (Oxford University Press, 1992) and, more often, to that of Barbara Reynolds (Penguin Books, 1969). My reading of La Vita Nuova was shaped by those translations as well as by Robert Pogue Harrison’s The Body of Beatrice (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). Dorothy Sayers’ introduction to Purgatory (Penguin Books, 1955) is responsible for my understanding of Dante’s three-part ‘technology’ for repentance (which is itself derived, Sayers tells us, from St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa).
In writing about Romei’s penna, I relied on Osip Mandelstam’s “Conversation about Dante” (reprinted in The Poets’ Dante: Twentieth-Century Responses, Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff, eds. [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001]), which speaks of Dante’s bird/flying imagery, the feather, and the feather pen, as well as John Freccero’s Introduction to Robert Pinsky’s translation of the Inferno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), which associates penne, wings, and birds with both poetic inspiration and carnal love. Shira’s Nabokov quotation concludes his essay “ ‘Onegin’ in English,” which can be found in The Translation Studies Reader (Lawrence Venuti, ed. [Routledge, 2000]); her understanding of the translative act (as bringing the translator back to the original moments of a poet’s creation) is derived in part from that of Paul Valéry, as presented in his essay “Variations on the Eclogues,” as well as that of Yves Bonnefoy, as discussed in his essay “Translating Poetry” (both reprinted in Theories of Translation, Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet, eds. [University of Chicago Press, 1992]).
All translations from the Latin are taken from Reynolds. The translation of the Celan line (from “Soviel Gestirne,” from the collection Die Niemandsrose) is mine, though I referred to Michael Hamburger’s translation in Paul Celan: Poems (Persea Books, 1980). I relied on several translations of the Song of Songs when translating various lines and when imagining Esther and Benny’s co-translation. Among these are the King James Version but also those of Marvin H. Pope (Doubleday, 1977), Marcia Falk (HarperCollins, 1993), and most notably, Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch (University of California Press, 1995). The sources of Romei’s English translations of the charming chiasmus and the Shulamite epigraph from the Song of Songs are noted in the text. My reading of the Song was strongly influenced by the Bloch Introduction and Commentary and the beautiful Robert Alter Afterword to that edition, as well as Marcia Falk’s Translator’s Note.
In writing this book, I was the recipient of extraordinary generosity. I give thanks, in alphabetical order, to the following residencies, conferences, and grant-giving institutions, which allowed me blessed time and space in which to write: Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, the Leeway Foundation, the MacDowell Colony (where this book was born), Millay Colony for the Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Ucross Foundation, Fundación Valparaíso, the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo. Many friends read portions of the book; special thanks to Philip McFarland, Robin Black, Patricia Chao, and Elizabeth Cantor for reading the whole and offering definitive assistance. Thanks also to Jim Crace for helping me understand just who Shira was and to Lynn Freed, Margot Livesey, and Erin McGraw, who offered terrific advice about the book’s first chapters. Shira herself was born as a result of a seminar on the Song of Songs led by Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, z”l; thanks to the former Elat Chayyim Jewish Retreat Center for making such learning possible.
Many of Shira’s stories about her own life and her friends can be found in the world. I refer the reader to these fine publications, and thank their editors, whose support to emerging writers is so appreciated: “Love Drugstore,” Kenyon Review (Vol. 33, No. 3, 2011); “Confessions of a Cerebral Lover,” Fence (Vol. 12, No. 2, 2009–10); “Tibet, New York,” New England Review (Vol. 29, No. 4, 2008); “Zanzibar, Bereft,” Ninth Letter (Vol. 3, No. 1, Fall/Winter 2006); and “Picnic After the Flood,” One Story (No. 80, 2006). For Shira’s stories about Elena, Mabel, Cora, Janey, and Rosaria, see “Priscilla Learns a Lesson,” Redivider (Vol. 5, No. 2, 2008); “Slave for a Day,” New England Review (Vol. 24, No. 4, 2004); “Hello, I’m Cora,” New England Review (Vol. 23, No. 3, Summer 2002); “I Know Who You Are,” Greensboro Review (No. 71, Spring 2002); “Rosaria 1988,” New England Review (Vol. 20, No. 4, Fall 1999). And, finally, for her Celan story, see “Rose No One,” Chelsea (No. 72, 2002).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RACHEL CANTOR was raised in Rome and Connecticut. She is the author of the acclaimed novel A Highly Unlikely Scenario, and her short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, and The Kenyon Review, among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.