{"id":1059,"date":"2015-12-01T00:00:55","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T05:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2018-09-13T14:53:31","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T18:53:31","slug":"iker-espana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/2015\/12\/01\/iker-espana\/","title":{"rendered":"“So-Called Synonyms:\u201d Translating Dar\u00edo de Regoyos\u2019s ‘Espa\u00f1a negra’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dar\u00edo_de_Regoyos_Santona_Bay\"<\/a>
Dar\u00edo de Regoyos, The Downpour. Santo\u00f1a Bay<\/em>, 1900, oil on canvas, 30 in. x 36 in. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I first became familiar with the paintings of Spanish artist Dar\u00edo de Regoyos (1857-1913) at a survey exhibition held at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Madrid, on the centenary of his death. Captivated by the sun-dappled fields and villages of Regoyos\u2019s Spanish landscapes, I also began reading his 1899 travelogue, Espa\u00f1a negra<\/em>. Immersing myself in the words of an artist whose brushwork I was simultaneously getting to<\/span> know led me to translate the text, as yet unavailable to English readers. As I would soon discover, both translation and art history are fundamentally acts of interface\u2014the former, the transposition of writing in one language into another language, and the latter, the evocation of objects with words.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In \u201cArt History and Translation,\u201d Iain Boyd Whyte and Claudia Heide ask, \u201cWhat actually happens when a text crosses a linguistic border and what can art history learn from this process?\u201d\u00a0[1]<\/span><\/a> Writer and translator Lydia Davis\u2019s <\/span>\u201cThoughts of Translation and Fiction\u201d provides one insight:<\/p>\n

As we translate it is not our own choice that confronts us, but the choice of another writer, and we must search more consciously for the right words\u2026. It is then that we summon all the so-called synonyms in our own language, in the hope of finding just the right one.\u00a0[2]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

As Davis observes, there are only \u201cso-called\u201d synonyms between languages, and more obviously, between objects and words. Even so, approaching objects as translators reorients us, productively I think. With all the \u201cso-called\u201d synonyms at our disposal, we strive to attend meticulously enough to an artist\u2019s choices to approximate their style and sense. In effect, we are asking the painting (or the paragraph), What are you<\/em> trying to tell me<\/span><\/em>?<\/p>\n

My translation of Espa\u00f1a negra<\/em> from Spanish into English is the translation of an earlier translation from French to Spanish by Regoyos himself. In 1888, just over a decade before Espa\u00f1a negra<\/em> was published in Barcelona, Regoyos and Belgian poet \u00c9mile Verhaeren, friends through the Brussels artists\u2019s circle L\u2019Essor, traveled together across northern Spain. As Regoyos painted, Verhaeren composed four articles describing their journey, all featured between June and August of 1888 in the Belgian French-language review, L\u2019<\/em>Arte Moderne<\/em>.\u00a0[3]<\/a> Near the century\u2019s end Regoyos translated his friend\u2019s articles, each headed \u201cImpressions d\u2019artiste,\u201d from French into Spanish, and embedded over thirty reproductions of his prints and paintings in the text.\u00a0[4]<\/a> In the prologue to Espa\u00f1a negra<\/em>, Regoyos characterizes his book as a \u201ctranslation of [Verhaeren\u2019s] travel impressions of Spain\u201d and requests that he \u201cnot [be] taken for a writer, but for the companion of the Flemish poet.\u201d\u00a0[5]<\/a> However, in his translation of the book, Regoyos shifts the narrative perspective from Verhaeren\u2019s to his own, adds new descriptive passages, and significantly alters the overall structure of the text. Perhaps most noticeably, Regoyos also reorients the narrative around his conviction that Verhaeren, \u201cfar from viewing [Spain] in a happy manner like most foreigners who see blue skies and the apparent joy of bullfights, felt a Spain morally black<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0[6]<\/a> Regoyos, then, in addition to negotiating between languages, negotiates between subjectivities, mediums, formats, and cultures\u2014not unlike practitioners of art history. In doing so he seeks out \u201cso-called\u201d synonyms, in the form of prints, paintings and words to express and also alter Verhaeren\u2019s account, creating an \u201cEspa\u00f1a Negra\u201d of his own in the process.<\/p>\n

Annemarie Iker<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

____________________<\/p>\n

Endnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Iain Boyd Whyte and Claudia Heide, \u201cArt History and Translation,\u201d Diogenes<\/em> 58 (2011): 49.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> See Lydia Davis, \u201cSome Notes on Translation and on Madame Bovary,\u201d The Paris Review<\/em> 198 (Fall 2011): 65.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Verhaeren published his four articles in L\u2019Arte Moderne<\/em> (of which he was also an editor) on June 17, July 8, July 22, and August 5 of 1888.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> For the original 1899 Espa\u00f1a negra<\/em> see the edition published by Hesperus (Jos\u00e9 J. de Ola\u00f1eta, editor) in 1989. Also worth reading is Mercedes Prado Vadillo\u2019s facsimile of Espa\u00f1a negra<\/em> (Bilbao: El Tilo, 2004), which contains a helpful publication history, and the exhibition catalogue Dar\u00edo de Regoyos (1857-1913)<\/em> (Madrid: Fundaci\u00f3n Cultural Mapfre Vida, 2002), for a more general survey of the artist\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> In the Spanish, Regoyos\u2019s note \u201cAl p\u00fablico\u201d reads, \u201cQue no me tomen por escritor, sino por compa\u00f1ero del poeta flamenco, es lo que m\u00e1s deseo y ruego al p\u00fablico antes de leer estas impresiones de viaje.\u201d See Espa\u00f1a negra<\/em>, edited by Jos\u00e9 J. de Ola\u00f1eta (Palma de Mallorca: Hesperus, 1989), 27.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> \u201c\u2026 lejos de verlo de una manera alegre como la mayor parte de los extranjeros que nos ven al trav\u00e9s del cielo azul y de la alegr\u00eda aparente de las corridas de toros, sinti\u00f3 una Espa\u00f1a moralmente negra<\/em>.\u201d Regoyos, Espa\u00f1a negra<\/em> (Hesperus, 1989).<\/p>\n

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I first became familiar with the paintings of Spanish artist Dar\u00edo de Regoyos (1857-1913) at a survey exhibition held at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Madrid, on the centenary of his death. Captivated by the sun-dappled fields and villages of Regoyos\u2019s Spanish landscapes, I also began reading his 1899 travelogue, Espa\u00f1a negra. Immersing myself in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10585,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10585"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1273,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/1273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}