





































Preface

An open question: Is the renewed interest in nature nowadays a true ele ment 
of  today’s Zeitgeist, or is it merely a typical phenomenon, a by- product, as it 
 were, of renewed interest and awareness on the part of the editors of Delos, 
who suddenly are seeing signs of such interest everywhere,  after having 
selected the theme of “Lit er a ture and Nature” for this spring 2019 issue about 
twelve months ago?

Certainly,  there are some signs of an extraordinary resurgence of interest 
in nature, for example, the best- selling author, a forester by profession, Peter 
Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees (2015), and his companion work The 
Inner Life of Animals (2016; both works translated from German by Jane Bill-
inghurst, 2016 and 2017). For writers and their translators as well as for art-
ists, the  human connections to the world of plants and animals are of par tic u lar 
interest. Research and startling discoveries in the context of the era of envi-
ronmentalism and sustainability go back a few de cades, such as Jane Good-
all’s work with primates and the Dutch primatologist Frans De Waal’s famous 
book, Chimpanzee Politics (1982).

Closer to  today, in ter est ing studies and research are taking place in cross- 
species interactions such as reciprocal altruism in animals. And  there are the 
very accessible findings in innovations by Janine Benyus, who coined the term 
biomimicry, combined with her not so subtle recommendation, “ Human beings 
should consciously emulate nature’s genius in their designs.”

What makes the theme of “Lit er a ture and Nature” additionally attractive 
for some of us located in Gainesville, Florida, is being more or less part of 
the “other” Florida. Only a few miles southeast of the university- metropolis 
Gainesville, within commuting distance, Cross Creek was the home of one of 
the best- known writers of the other Florida, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Cross 
Creek? It borders the “Big Scrub,” the Ocala National Forest, where in addi-
tion to the typical Florida alligator warning signs,  there are street signs  gently 
alerting motorists to the presence of black bears. Even more impor tant than 
 these signs of otherness and nature are the hundreds of natu ral springs in the 
other Florida— thankfully not completely exploited and despoiled by commer-
cial and touristic interests.

Delos Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. v–viii. Copyright © 2019 University of Florida Press. 
doi: 10.5744/delos.2019.1000



vi    Preface

Delos. Creative writers and their translators do not follow a specific cur-
riculum or ascribe to any par tic u lar set of ideas in prescriptive ways. Never-
theless, nature,  human nature, the  human condition, and the connectedness 
of  things is subtly reflected and depicted, for example, in Theodor Fontane’s 
classic novel, Der Stechlin (1897), translated by Jane K. Brown, the first chap-
ter of which is contained in this issue. Another work from German, William 
Ruleman’s translations of five poems by Georg Heym, offers Nature as a broad 
prospect laid out for the poet to interpret.

It is not always easy to get a perspective on Nature, however. In the story 
by the Haitian writer Mirline Pierre, a child’s perception of the natu ral includes 
a home among streets of bookshops and funeral parlors, streets which are 
abruptly turned to rubble by the 2010 earthquake. Another story from the same 
island, by the Dominican writer José Alcántara Almánzar, tells of a mysteri-
ously wounded man’s longing for the ocean. Two delicate poems by the Gua-
deloupean poet Guy Tirolien complement  these island stories.

From a more distant island, Japan, two brief tales by Yoshiro Takayasu 
evoke a nature inhabited by fairies and spirits of the  water and forests— 
refugees from their own disappearing world, uneasily encountering the  human.

Tobias Hülswitt’s narrative of parents watching over their premature child 
in a hospital ward, week  after week, hovers between the miracle of survival 
and the naturalness of death. A dif fer ent reminder of mortality is Jacopone 
da Todi’s poetic tour de force enumerating all the natu ral (and some unnatu-
ral) horrors he longs to suffer in his shame at being  human.

A special note on the contribution of Esther Heboyan, a handful of poems 
by the Turkish poet İzzet Yasar. As Professor Heboyan was working on  these 
translations, the poet himself died. Sad as the circumstances are, we hope that 
 these poems  will alert translators and readers to a complex body of work.

We are pleased to pre sent Amy Newman’s translations of some of the let-
ters of Antonia Pozzi, the Italian poet and photographer.  These are the pas-
sionate letters of a teenage poet in love, reaching for the social world of literary 
and moral debate at the same time as she imagines marriage and motherhood.

A dif fer ent epistolary question is addressed in the essay by Alberto De 
Simoni; he tackles the question of  whether it is better to translate proverbs 
used by the fourth- century letter- writer Libanius with English- language equiv-
alents, or rely on the reader (and footnotes) to grasp the savor of the original 
imagery. This essay began as a paper at a gradu ate student conference  here at 
the University of Florida, and we hope to have more contributions developed 
from conference papers.



Preface    vii

Ben Hebblethwaite takes us back to the Ca rib bean with a discussion of the 
background of reggae songs and the challenges of translating Rastafarian 
“Dread Talk” in his essay on two songs by Chronixx.

We are grateful for the permission of Mirline Pierre, Tobias Hülswitt, José 
Alcántara Almánzar, and Yoshiro Takayasu to include the translations of their 
work, and to Seçkin Yasar for permission to print İzzet Yasar’s poems with 
their translations. Éditions Présence Africaine has kindly allowed us to reprint 
Guy Tirolien’s poems and the translations of them by Eva Ulrike Pirker. Thanks 
are due also for permission to include translations of Angela Pozzi’s letters, 
to the Centro Internazionale Insubrico “Carlo Cattaneo” e “Giulio Preti.”

Hal H. Rennert
Judy Shoaf


