Preface

One of the uncanny effects of the Internet is making references to the time 
and place of composition of casual postings, such as this preface, irrelevant. 
However, in this case, one of the Delos editors happens to have spent in Ger-
many the entire month of January 2021, including Wednesday the 20th, the 
extraordinary and memorable inauguration ceremony for Joe Biden and 
Kamala Harris, the new president and vice president of the United States. 
There are certain elements of that ceremony resonant and relevant to the 
Spring 2021 issue of this translation journal, which showcases poetry from 
France and Portugal, Holland and Israel, Peru and China: this inauguration 
revives a tradition of poetry recitation going back to the first and perhaps 
most celebrated performance by Robert Frost spontaneously paraphrasing 
one of his dedicatory poems at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, Janu-
ary 20, 1961, in which he alludes to American exceptionalism with the futur-
istic concluding reference to the nation “such as she will become.”

Reflecting the extraordinary speed of the Internet, in turn, was the instan-
taneous availability in Germany of the German translation, “Der Hügel, den 
wir erklimmen“ (The hill we conquer), in addition to the source text in Eng-
lish by the young poet laureate, Amanda Gorman performing her poem “The 
Hill We Climb.“ Noteworthy in this incantatory translation is the verb “erk-
limmen“ in the title, selected by the anonymous, but no doubt officially sanc-
tioned translator, from a more poetic register, instead of the common and 
denotative “steigen“ or “besteigen.“ The mountaineering term “erklimmen“ 
is an echo of the well- known traditional German Volkslied “Wenn wir 
 erklimmen . . .  “ (When we conquer . . .), also known as the “Bergvagabun-
denlied“ (mountain- vagabond climbing song); this song is replete with refer-
ences to Edelweiss, snow- covered mountain peaks and life- risking Alpine 
rock- climbing. The prestigious publisher Hoffmann und Campe in Hamburg 
has already announced it will publish the works of Amanda Gorman in 
Germany.

In this Spring 2021 issue of Delos, we are introducing a new content item 
category, an additional invitation for submissions. We call it our Forum. We 
envision a new interactive, open, and perhaps free- wheeling category of 
 contributions, in addition to our traditional segments: letters- to- the- editors, 

Delos Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. v–vi. Copyright © 2021 University of Florida Press.  
doi: 10.5744.delos.2021.1000



vi    Preface

follow- up discussions, and supplemental information, and other communica-
tions in the field of literary translation. To begin, we have Stanley Corngold’s 
translator memoir (a category which our colleague Sylvie Blum, professor of 
French studies at the University of Florida and sometime Delos contributor, 
has recently alerted us to), a poem on translation by Al Shoaf, and a fascinat-
ing experiment in  translation of a modern song to the language of the 
 Troubadours. Submissions suitable for Forum of such items for online or 
hard- copy publication in Delos should be sent directly to one of the three 
executive editors, Alexander Burak, Hal Rennert or Judy Shoaf.

Another first for Delos on our watch is the first article in this issue, an 
interview with the celebrated translator of Elena Ferrante’s novels, Ann 
Goldstein. On the other hand, we welcome back Patricia Worth with another 
translation from Marcel Aymé, as delightful as her version of “The Wolf” 
(Delos Fall 2018). Short fiction from Norwegian and Turkish provide glimpses 
of a literary language emerging in Scandinavia and popular (feminine) voices 
just after the end of the Ottoman Empire.

A note on the images in this issue: inspired by the ekphrastic poetry of 
Jules Breton and Eduardo Chirinos (translated for us by Sharon Fish Mooney 
and Gary Racz), we have chosen images which echo, though they do not 
illustrate, some of our contributions.

Hal H. Rennert
Judy Shoaf
January 2021