This Little Art

(Paperback)

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Part-essay and part-memoir, This Little Art is a manifesto for the practice of literary translation. Taking her experience translating Roland Barthes' lectures at the College de France as her starting point, Kate Briggs offers a portrait of translation as a compelling, complex and formative activity. Building on Barthes' late work, Briggs explores the philosophical and aesthetic facets of translation alongside its practical implications. Dealing in turn with the controversial translations of Thomas Mann by Helen Lowe-Porter and Dorothy Bussy's translations of Andre Gide, Briggs argues for an understanding of the history of translation as a form of domestic, feminized labour. In what ways do notions of care and literary service imbue our understanding of translation

'Not so much a demystification as a re-enchantment of the practice of literary translation, that maddening, intoxicating 'little' art which yokes humility and hubris, constraint and creativity- in Briggs's passionate telling, you can practically hear the sparks fly.' - Deborah Smith, translator of Han Kang and winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016

Reviews

Kate Briggs's This Little Art shares some wonderful qualities with Barthes's own work- the wit, thoughtfulness, invitation to converse, and especially the attention to the ordinary and everyday in the context of meticulously examined theoretical and scholarly questions. This is a highly enjoyable read: informative and stimulating for anyone interested in translation, writing, language, and expression.'- Lydia Davis, author of Can't and Won't

'In The Little Art, a digressive, scholarly, absorbing 350-page essay, Kate Briggs roams across the vast terrain- practical, theoretical, historical, philosophical- of translation. Brigg's writing is erudite and assured, while maintaining a tone that is modest and speculative; this paradox encapsulates something of the essence of translation, which is always contingent (no translation is ever definitive) yet also- for its time at least- authoritative...There have been many books written about translation, but few as engaging, intriguing or exciting as Kate Brigg's exploration, with its digressive forays, infinite self-questioning, curiosity, modesty and devotion to the concrete- the very qualities, as it happens, that distinguish the translator's labour.'- Natasha Lehrer, Times Literary Supplement

'In This Little Art, Kate Briggs looks at the "everyday, peculiar thing" that is translation, testing it out, worrying at its questions. She deftly weaves her recurring threads (Roland Barthes, Crusoe's table, The Magic Mountain, aerobic dance classes) into something fascinatingly elastic and expansive, an essay- meditation call to arms- that is full of surprises both erudite and intimate, and rich in challenges to the ways we think about translation. And so, inevitably, to the ways we think about writing, reading, artistry and creativity, too. As a translator, I'm regularly disappointed by what I read about translation- it feels self-indulgent, irrelevant in its over-abstraction- but This Little Art is altogether different. It comes to its revelations through practicality, curiosity, devotion, optimism, an intense and questioning scrutiny, as the work of a great translator so often does.' Daniel Hahn, translator of Jos Eduardo Agualusa and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award in 2017

'This Little Art reads like a jubilant tribute to that vital impulse that marks the reader's attempt to engage with the pleasure of the text at the very basic level of language, a delight that derives from the minutiae of writing's unfolding, the joy of seeing both how contingent language is and yet how absolutely necessary it appears in the works of writers and their translators...Briggs has written a testimony about the possibility of reading a text so intensely that one feels tempted to recreate it.' --Carlos Fonseca, BOMB

Author Bio

Kate Briggs is a writer and translator. She teaches at the American University of Paris and the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.