Vol.
4(2) (2015): Sound and Dissonance: Music in Latin American Culture | 19
Marcelo Cohen (2014)
Msica prosaica (cuatro piezas sobre traduccin)
Buenos Aires: Entropa, 85 pp.
Reviewed by Denise Kripper
Georgetown University
Im a translator. A professional one
translator as a musician, rendering a music
(11)1 opens Marcelo Cohens latest book,
score. For him, translating is a need with
Msica prosaica (cuatro piezas sobre
physicality, his fingers start to tingle if he
traduccin), a collection of four essays
doesnt translate for a while; my fingers
recounting his personal experience with
want to play (11)2 . Being able to translate
translation and exile. One of Argentinas
means being able to listen to literatures
most notable writers, Cohens list of
music, to the rhythmic possibilities of its
translations
narration, capturing its tune, but also
includes
the
outstanding
names Christopher Marlowe, Jane Austen,
T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Scott Fitzgerald,
William Burroughs, Machado de Assis, and
Clarice Lispector, among many others. Far
from a translation manual or theory book,
Msica prosaica proves to be an intimate
and personal book about a translators
shortcomings
and
successes,
his
eccentricities and occupational hazards.
Heavily autobiographical, the essays that
make up this book (previously published
as articles in the literary magazines Otra
Parte, Vasos comunicantes, and Dossier)
are also interwoven with music, another
reproducing its dissonance.
In the second essay, New battles over
the ownership/propriety of language,3
Cohen goes back to his origins as a
translator, which coincides with his time
in Spain, where he lived in exile for twenty
years. There, he also developed as quite
a prolific writer, publishing over a dozen
books. In this essay, through his personal
experience as writer and translator, he
raises fundamental questions such as,
who owns language or what is proper
Spanish.
The
matter
of
languages
of his passions in addition to writing.
musicality reappears, as Cohen is caught
In his first essay, which gives the title to the
a foreigner in a mother tongue that was
in the conflict of Spanish varieties. I was
collection, Cohen dwells on the concept
of translation as performance, and of the
2 los dedos quieren tocar
1 Soy traductor. Profesional
3 Nuevas batallas por la propiedad de la lengua
Critical Reviews on Latin American Research | 20
not my mother tongue (35)4, says Cohen
Cohen is sure his translations sound in
echoing Derridas I have only one language
Argentina just as strange as they sounded
and it is not my own. But Cohen soon
in Spain. I do it on purpose, of course
discovered that the difference between
(48)8, he brags.
Argentine and Peninsular Spanish is not a
lexical one (saying calabacn or zapallito
for zucchini) but rather lays in the beat
of the interrogative () in the diction,
intonation and prosody (38)5. That is to
say, in the music. Submerged in a double
exile, a territorial and a linguistic one,
Cohen quickly developed a dialectical
schizophrenia, and his translations thus
acquired a unique sound, that of an
incognito Argentineness, a distinguished
hybridity (45)6. He would smuggle a
strange and foreign-sounding word here
and there, practicing a linguistic insurgency
and performing polyrhythmically.
In the next essay Two or more ghosts,7
it is translation that once again triggers
the reflection. While translating Easter
In the fourth and last essay, Persecution9,
readers are given an insight into the
everyday
activities
meditation,
breakfast,
newspaper,
dictionaries, computer. He is translating
upstairs. What did you say? yells his
wife from downstairs. But hes talking to
himself, he is constantly saying phrases
out loud (78). He needs to hear how they
sound, listen to the music of translation.
Msica prosaica (cuatro piezas sobre
traduccin) is a short yet sharp book, a
personal entry point to Cohens mind,
ideal for anyone interested in his writing,
translation, and, of course, music.
who would he have become had he
stayed in Spain, and who would he have
become had he never left Buenos Aires.
The fact remains though that his rather
impertinent translation method followed
him back home to Argentina, a country
as linguistically unwelcoming as Spain
can be, and where some of his adopted
peninsular slip-ups could be considered
a trait of vanity or high treason (64). But
4 Yo era un extranjero en una lengua madre que no
era mi lengua materna
7 Dos o ms fantasmas
sedentary
trivial life of a translator. Shower, run,
ponders about the roads not taken:
6 una argentinidad de incgnito, una hibridez
distinguida
his
nomadism (73) , an account of the
Morning a poem by A.R. Ammons, Cohen
5 la cadencia del interrogativo () en la diccin, la
entonacin y en la prosodia
of
10
8 Lo hago adrede, claro
9 Persecucin
10 nomadismo sedentario
