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Anthology of Galician Literature, 1981-2011 / Antoloxa da literatura Galega, 1981-2011

2013; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 87; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2013.0072

1945-8134

David MacKenzie,

Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism

Dag Solstad Professor Andersen’s Night Agnes Scott Langeland, tr. Vintage Books With wry humor throughout, Solstad tackles existential guilt through the character of a bumbling and hesitant academic. The titular professor witnesses a murder but inexplicably fails to report the crime. The rest of this darkly comic Norwegian novel tracks his pursuit of redemption despite his indecision, building up to an unexpected encounter in a sushi bar. Tzveta Sofronieva A Hand Full of Water Chantal Wright, tr. White Pine Press Winner of the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation, this collection of Sofronieva’s poems alongside English interpretations represents a rich exploration of language and identity from an international poet. The verse is densely populated with mythological, literary, and geographical allusions, and translator Chantal Wright aptly reinterprets Sofronieva’s variable verse. July–August 2013 • 75 Nota Bene one scientist’s hypothesis that flowers had been buried at a Neanderthal grave sixty thousand years ago in the Shanidar cave in what is now Iraq, a gesture which, if true, perhaps shows that grief is an emotion that spans ages and species, one that overcomes its bearer but, more importantly, one in which the person grieving seeks solace in presenting something beautiful to the memory of their loved one. There is a sense of stillness in many of these writings that one does not find in the expression of other major subjects for poetry, such as love or the ending of love, and the poems collected in Time of Grief seem to each display a sort of cognitive muteness. In Eugénio de Andrade’s “Brief September Elegy,” he writes of someone he has lost, whom he is afraid to call out to, indeed “afraid of breaking the thread / with which you weave unremembered days.” He asks, “With what words / or kisses or tears / can one awake the dead without harming them . . . ?” Perhaps this is another way of saying that we must meet the depths of experience with a sense of courage and dignity toward the memory of those we have lost. That mourning is a subject which seems to surpass all others in its need for dignified treatment within art is not surprising. In confronting such subjects with dignity, we come to understand that we are each of us brought into the world in a shroud of darkness we soon learn will never lift but will soon fade only into nothingness , never revealing its nature. Time of Grief exemplifies how death might be treated with steadiness and reserve, for it is undoubtedly a value that stretches out from us into the twilight fields of the past and will no doubt extend beyond us far into a future we will never know. It is a reassuring thought that perhaps our more noble emotions will be understood by those who come after us. Jordan Anderson Portland, Oregon miscellaneous Anthology of Galician Literature, 1981–2011 / Antoloxía da literatura Galega, 1981–2011. Jonathan Dunne, ed. Vigo, Spain. Xerais de Galicia. 2012. isbn 9788499144306 This is the third in a series of bilingual volumes produced by Jonathan Dunne, though we learn this only in his preface, even though the publishers are identical. The first two dealt with earlier periods of Galician literatura , and this one spans right up to the present. Galician (galego) is a Romance language spoken in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula, of which Portuguese is the daughter language; it has been under severe pressure from Castilian. Dunne divides his books on the model of literary history. The first volume deals with the early and most prolific period, which ends at the beginning of the sixteenth century; then come the “Dark Ages,” during which nothing at all of note was written in Galician;inthemid-nineteenthcentury, there was a revival, which lasted until the civil war, when the language was once again banned. When the dictator Franco died, things gradually came to improve for Galicia and the other “historical regions,” and the language became co-official with Castilian. 76 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews This is the stage at which Dunne begins his anthology. He takes sixty works by writers of various generations , which they themselves chose, and arranges the passages selected by...