A Year in Reading: Juan Villoro

I am a chaotic reader. Is there a hidden logic in my scattered interests? Whenever somebody asks me about my recent reading, the first temptation is to discard the question with a pedantic answer: “I reread Ulysses.” Truth is, I only read Ulysses once, some 30-odd years ago.

This year, however, I returned to a major classic to teach a seminar. The Spanish-born Mexican poet achieved a new and astonishing rendition of. One of the great side effects of translators is that they can renew a masterpiece. You Americans can have a “new” , and we Mexicans can have . Segovia, who died in 2011, was a great poet. He translated some hundred books. His shadow boxing for was the Spanish version of ’s . After such a titanic feat, he approached ’s play with special attention to the music of words. On the rule, translators try to deliver the same in a different language. But this not always includes finding an equivalent to the sound of words. Each language has its own rhythm, its own metric. Segovia translated Shakespeare “as if” he was using the rhythmic stanzas of, lets say, . The outcome is awesome, both refreshing and loyal to the original poetic intention: the musical flow of English assumes the flow of Spanish.