The Game of Evenings | Adolf Hoffmeister | Granta Magazine

The Game of Evenings | Adolf Hoffmeister | Granta Magazine: "James Joyce met the Czech writer Adolf Hoffmeister in Paris several times in 1929 and 1930. Joyce was writing Finnegans Wake under the title Work in Progress and had completed the ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’ section of the book. A Czech translation by Hoffmeister, Vladimír Procházka and Marie Weatherall was published in 1932. In the introduction to an excerpt published a year earlier in Literární noviny, Hoffmeister and Procházka wrote: ‘The complete Work in Progress, will never be translated, because no one would be able to translate it, taking into account the average life-span . . . We are fully aware that we are doing work which will not be understood and will go unrewarded . . . Our translation will never be a precise mirror of the original. But . . . we are clear that we have attempted a translation of beautiful poetry, one which extends the vault of the sky over the world of man.’

Hoffmeister’s interview with Joyce which begins below was published in Rozpravy aventina over two issues in 1930-31. The conversation was conducted in French. This is its first full publication in English."



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