Jaume Cabré: Winter Journey

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.

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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).