












































Preface

This issue is an issue of transitions, edited in a world of transitions. Hal. H. 
Rennert, who has been the editor- in- chief and preface- writer- in- chief of Delos 
for more than five years, is now a very active member of the Board, while Ben 
Hebblethwaite has moved from the Board to the editor position, beginning 
with the 2022 volume. You will find in this issue commentaries from both of 
them on the past and the immediate future of Delos. Meanwhile, I, the manag-
ing editor, have put together this volume to my taste, and I hope to yours, 
reader.

The world of transitions is upon us. There are fires and far too little ice. 
Starvation and destruction drive survivors across borders, weakening the 
imaginary unity of states. Gainesville, Florida, weathers the changes well 
for now— it rains almost every day, replenishing the aquifer and encour-
aging the eponymous flora. There is also a plague, which human ingenu-
ity battles with masks, modified RNA, and, at the last, with ventilators 
and isolation. There are political struggles between those who seek a sav-
ior and those who preach a life pure of any encroachment on another 
individual.

All this presses against my window (closed to keep the air- conditioning 
in) as I read and re- read the contributions of so many translators and so many 
source authors to this volume.

With the exception of Louise Labé, all the source authors are of the twen-
tieth and twenty- first centuries. The poets Claudia Lars, Jibanananda Das, 
Xu Zhimo, and Giuseppe Ungaretti were all born near the end of the nine-
teenth century, and their poems are beloved in their own countries, memo-
rized as treasures of the energetic modernism of the first half of the twentieth 
century.

The writers Givi Margvelashvili, Luigi Malerba, and Epitácio Pais were 
all of an age to experience World War II, in various ways, and to look back on 
the changes in society brought about by the new outlines of nations. Mar-
gvelashvili was sent by the Soviet Union from Germany to Georgia; litera-
ture helped him endure his linguistic and social isolation. Malerba, on the 

Delos Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. v–vii. Copyright © 2021 University of Florida Press.  
doi: 10.5744/delos.2021.2001



vi    Preface

other hand, made the acquaintance of a rural society where illiteracy and 
ignorance limited the lives of peasants, but not the meaning of their lives. 
Pais gives us a postcolonial murder mystery, complete with a policeman who 
narrates the story in Portuguese, the colonial language of Goa, already slip-
ping away from common use there.

Two very long stories dominate the last half of the issue: An American 
Lover by Philippe Sollers, published luxuriously in French under its own 
covers, and “The Tempest” by Bao Ninh, published in the last issue of 
a journal which the Vietnamese government promptly shut down. They 
are both love stories. The one is all clarity and light and pleasure, full of 
art and music and the changing enthusiasms of the second half of the 
twentieth century. What does it mean to be French in America, or vice- 
versa? The other story confuses, is confused, in the smoke and death of a 
Vietnamese village in 1971, so that the reader can hardly discern motiva-
tions or characters, plot points are mere rumors; the men are defined by 
social roles, and by their need to love and/or kill a particular singing 
woman. 

Two contributions are marked in my mind as of this century. The Dane 
Thomas Boberg, travelling with a half- Ghanian companion, explores an 
African city without, I think, trying to find in it either an abased Other or a 
mirror. Buying bananas for hungry children becomes a morally conflicted 
act; finding repressive Danish Christianity in Addis Ababa requires a little 
repression of one’s own opinion of such religion. Maria Attanasio, a Sicilian 
poet who uses Sicilian dialect in her work, looks at African immigrants, with 
their hidden names and languages, with a shock and outrage beyond compas-
sion. If indeed literature can alleviate isolation, her poems have a chance to 
do that.

 . . .  At which point I come back to the sonnets of Louise Labé, intensely 
personal love poetry in a rigorous form. I received two submissions of her 
sonnets, and asked the translators, Dorothy Trench Bonett and Jim Kates, 
to discuss the joys and challenges of translating French Renaissance 
poetry. 

This is a moment for taking stock and expressing gratitude for the past 
six years, during which I have worked with Hal Rennert and with review 
editor Alex Burak, and also with all the contributors to the journal and read-
ers of contributions. Hal’s editorship has been very personal, and he comes 
from a tradition in comparative literature which harmonized with my own 
background as a medievalist. Alex raised my awareness of the discipline of 



Preface    vii

translation (as did our colleague Dror Abend- David). I look forward to 
working with Ben, and with Rori Bloom and Roxana Walker-Canton, the 
incoming book and film review editors.

Judy Shoaf






