It's been nearly four years since my first post! It sounds like "it's been four years since my last confession.." and maybe there really is some kind of parallel between publishing and confessing: in publishing, you have to own up to, or at least expose, those things you have and haven't done, observed, felt, etc., Judgement of "sin" and the appropriate penance, on the other hand, is left to the readers.

I haven't heard from readers of my translations, and in a way I take that as a compliment: I've made myself "inaudible" enough in the texts to make the English "read" as the authors' own. Still in keeping with the underlying premise of Kate Briggs' inspiring meditation, This Little Art, namely that in significant ways, a translation is a new book, I'll use this blog to describe how the books have affected and continue to affect me -- for I, too, am a reader.

The longest and strongest effect has been the rescue of "aesthetics", a significant factor in all six books. I long suffered from a kind of allergy to the term, an instant suspicion that wherever you find it, what follows will be needlessly complex and largely irrelevant. Now, my first approximation of its meaning is "perception". That IS important and always has been. Only it's too general: I now try to keep ides of an "embodied perception" in mind, that is, the particular way some specific person inhabiting a unique physical body perceives, e.g. sees, hears, tastes, etc.