The following is Dubravka Ugrešić’s preface to Damion Searls’s new translation of Marshlands, by André Gide, published earlier this month by New York Review Books.

André Gide, 1893. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why a preface?

Prefaces usually offer the reader a guide to the book before them; they say a few words about the book’s author and place the book in its historical or contemporary literary context. In the pre-Internet age this was a job entrusted to literary experts. Today, with the assistance of the Internet, expertise is no longer considered necessary. I confess, I myself am no expert, arbiter, or competent interpreter of André Gide’s work. I am here merely as a literary interloper and I see it as my task to respond to two questions:

1. How did this little French book come to be translated into English?
2. Why did I once love this book, do I love it still today, and if I have loved it, why do I think others will?

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Literature as Seduction

I made the acquaintance of Damion Searls—who has translated Marshlands into English—in 1998 at a literary event in Vienna. Our encounter was fleeting and superficial. Four years later, when he was on a Fulbright, Damion turned up in Amsterdam. This was our chance to spend more time together.

True book lovers—writers, critics, translators, publishers, and readers—can be identified (or at least I identify them!) by the way they allow themselves to be “seduced” by books. If the art of the word, meaning literature, is a form of interhuman communication, then “seduction” is one of the forms this communication takes. Literary seduction doesn’t know or respect age, nor national, ethnic, racial, gender, or cultural boundaries. Yet finding a true friend, a book lover, is a true rarity. Read More

Portrait of Dalip Singh Saud by Jon R. Friedman (Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives)

As curators search the Capitol Building, cataloging and repairing the damage done by the January 6 riot, I read for news of a painting of Dalip Singh Saund that I saw two years ago when I visited Washington. On the landing of the East Grand Staircase, the portrait’s richly marbled frame is adorned with symbols of Saund’s immigration, education, and career. A plaque below the painting commemorates his historic election as the “First Asian American in Congress”—he represented California from 1957 to 1963. As reports emerge of how mob vandalism targeted, in particular, certain racialized objects within the U.S. Capitol, we need to reckon with the artifacts within its walls.

Images from the January 6 riot make clear the white supremacist terms upon which entry into the U.S. Capitol is premised. While these scenes are new and unprecedented, they are not an aberration. Those who make a study of U.S. empire, enslavement, genocide, segregation, and voter suppression know that the Capitol represents the illusion of democracy. To the extent that the rioters stand for antidemocratic, fascist, and racist principles, it is not surprising to see them inside the Capitol Building. They are a feature of the system. This is their house, and they write on its walls with impunity.

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