Boston University OpenBU http://open.bu.edu Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations 2015 Translating Latin America: Harriet De Onís and the U.S. publishing market https://hdl.handle.net/2144/14069 Boston University BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Dissertation TRANSLATING LATIN AMERICA: HARRIET DE ONÍS AND THE U.S. PUBLISHING MARKET by VICTORIA LIVINGSTONE B.A., The College of New Jersey, 2003 M.A., Boston College, 2009 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 © 2015 VICTORIA LIVINGSTONE All rights reserved Approved by First Reader _________________________________________________________ Adela Pineda Franco, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Spanish Second Reader _________________________________________________________ Christopher Maurer, Ph.D. Professor of Spanish DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my mother Margaret (1948-2006), whose curiosity, strength, and love inspired me, and whose energy continues to encourage me in ways she cannot know. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the intellectual and emotional support of many people. At Boston University, I felt extremely fortunate to receive guidance from Adela Pineda Franco and Christopher Maurer, both of whom have helped me develop as a researcher and as a writer in more ways than I can list here. My family has been patient and supportive during these years and I am grateful to my father Ian, and to my siblings Katie, Peter, and Elizabeth. I was fortunate to have access to multiple archives and a Fulbright grant, which allowed me to spend 9 months conducting research at the Universidade de São Paulo, where Sandra Vasconcelos, John Milton, and many other professors and friends guided me. Juan de Onís graciously took the time to meet with me to talk about his family, language, and literature. The collaborative spirit and enthusiasm of researchers including Kaitlin Sobieski and Rebecca Lippman impressed me. Finally, I am sure that I could not have completed this project without the suggestions and consistent encouragement I received from many people, especially Robert Del Frate, Leslie Harkema, Alexis Ortiz, Célia Bianconi, Tina Carvalho, Rodrigo Oliveira, Manuel De Iacavo, Maria Do Carmo Oliveira, Jacques Fux, Harrisa Pianka, Mindy Wolfrom, Kate Chappell, and Bryan Betancur, who was always by my side in the final months of completing this project. v TRANSLATING LATIN AMERICA: HARRIET DE ONÍS AND THE U.S. PUBLISHING MARKET LIVINGSTONE, VICTORIA Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2015 Major Professor: Adela Pineda Franco, Associate Professor of Spanish ABSTRACT Responding to recent debates about the circulation of literary texts in the global market, this dissertation examines various literary and socio-political factors that shaped the translation and reception of Latin American literature in the U.S. between 1930-1969. This study seeks to fill a critical gap in the history of translated Latin American literature, focusing on the editorial project of Alfred A. Knopf, the most influential publisher of Latin American literature in the U.S. during these years, and Harriet de Onís, Knopf’s principal translator from Spanish and Portuguese into English. Drawing on archival research, each chapter traces the publication history, and follows with a close reading, of a different text translated and sometimes edited, by de Onís. The three case studies from both Spanish and Portuguese source texts and from geographically diverse regions (Mexico, Brazil, and Cuba) examine specific problems of translation. Chapter One addresses the ways in which explicitly political texts are transformed in translation and are shaped by readers’ cultural expectations. It analyzes de Onís’s translation of Martín Luis Guzmán’s semifictional memoir of the Mexican Revolution, El águila y la serpiente (1928), The Eagle and the Serpent (abridged version in English published in 1930 and complete version in 1965). Chapter Two studies the movement of scholarly texts from vi peripheral to central markets through an analysis of Fernando Ortiz’s Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940), translated in 1947 as Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Chapter Three studies the difficulties of reproducing experimental language in translation through close readings of de Onís’s translations of João Guimarães Rosa’s Sagarana (1946, title unchanged in the 1966 English translation) and Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956, translated in collaboration with James L. Taylor in 1963 as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands). These case studies suggest that current models of the global circulation of literature should acknowledge more fully the active editorial role of the translator and other agents in shaping source texts and in seeking out the cultural analogies that make those texts more readily understandable to foreign readers. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION .............................................................................................................. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................v ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................. viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ..........................................................................................x INTRODUCTION: LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION: AN OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: FROM INTELLECTUALS TO CAUDILLOS: THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT IN 1930 AND IN 1965 ......................................................................... 23 CHAPTER TWO: TOBACCO, SUGAR AND TRANSLATION: CONTRAPUNTEO CUBANO IN THE UNITED STATES ........................................................................... 65 CHAPTER THREE: TRANSLATING SUR-REGIONALISM: GUIMARÃES ROSA IN THE UNITED STATES .............................................................................................. 113 CONCLUSION: LITERATURE, TRANSLATION, AND GLOBALIZATION .......... 167 APPENDIX A: TRANSLATIONS BY HARRIET DE ONÍS ...................................... 180 APPENDIX B: PHOTO OF HARRIET WISHNIEFF (DE ONÍS) ............................... 184 APPENDIX C: TABLE OF OMISSIONS IN THE 1930 TRANSLATION OF EL ÁGUILA Y LA SERPIENTE ......................................................................................... 185 viii APPENDIX D: SAMPLE IMAGES THAT APPEAR IN CUBAN COUNTERPOINT (KNOPF, 1947) AND NOT IN EDITIONS IN SPANISH ........................................... 187 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 189 CURRICULUM VITAE .............................................................................................. 201 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AK .......................................................................................................... Alfred A. Knopf BR ............................................... Brotherton and Company Business and Family Archive HDO .......................................................................................................... Harriet de Onís HRC ................................................ Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. archive, Harry Ransom Center IEB ................................... João Guimarães Rosa Archive, Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros JGR ................................................................................................. João Guimarães Rosa SO ........................................................ Seminario de Estudios Hispanos Federico de Onís SW ................................................................................................. Sumner Welles Papers x 1 INTRODUCTION: LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION: AN OVERVIEW Before the twentieth century, the U.S. showed little interest in the cultural production of the rest of the Americas. The Latin American texts published in English translation in the United States during the nineteenth century tended to be non-fiction or regionalist fiction framed in didactic or moral terms. These early translations included: Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Civilización y barbarie: Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga (1845), translated by Mary Mann as Facundo: Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or Civilization and Barbarism (1868), Colombian writer Jorge Isaacs’ 1867 novel, titled María in Spanish and Maria: A South American Romance in Rollo Ogden’s 1890 translation, and Ramón the Rover of Cuba: The Personal Narrative of that Celebrated Pirate in English (1829, anonymous author and translator), a “free translation”1 of a manuscript the translator claimed to have found in Cuba.2 All of the English titles of these works include specific references to the region or to the language, which would imply that they were marketed as explicitly foreign rather than as universal texts. Of these early translations, it is worth noting that Sarmiento was well connected in North America and therefore could advocate to have his work translated into English. 1 In his preface to the book, the anonymous translator and editor writes, “My present purpose is to inform the public, how I became possessed of the original Spanish manuscript, of which