Letter from the Editors
One year since publishing our first issue, we find ourselves facing yet another winter of uncertainty. Adrift in shaky tides, the written word might seem a paltry solace—and sometimes words are all we have. They make up the stories we tell, jokes we crack, notes we exchange and leave behind. When we look to the past for answers or for beauty, we may be lucky enough to find remains of material things that clue us into ways of life and histories untold, but it is ultimately the narratives we craft from those remains that give them meaning in the present.
In this issue, we excavate a labyrinth of objects as well as words, confronted with the countless ways language has been expressed, impressed, inscribed, engraved, across places and times. As if piecing together shards of a shattered vase, Dan Beachy-Quick weaves eighteen fragments attributed to the early Greek poet-philosopher Xenophanes into a new whole that resounds like the “all-bell cosmos” in those verses. We take our seat at the table set by Salma Harland’s delectable translations of Kushājim’s gastronomic poetry, accompanied by the visual delicacy of artwork by Hassân Al Mohtasib. Sascha Engel’s translation of the Lapis Niger pays homage both to the inscription’s physical form and to the scholarly legacy of the Latin language. Out of a poetic fragment, Alex de Voogt crafts an intricate linguistic game of Liubo, the oldest attested board game of Chinese antiquity. In Jeremy J. Swist’s essay on tweeting translations of the Roman emperor Julian, we glimpse new ways for language to be materialized in the ever-changing technologies of print.
Other pages in this issue offer material diversions of a different sort, pausing on earthly pastimes and delights. Landscapes in Mufeng Zhou’s Journal of the Petit Tarn focus the itinerant mindful eye on gem upon gem: a ringing here, a flicker there—first up close, then a panorama—reminding us that perspective can shift so much. In a melodious new translation by Nik Gunn, The Wanderer leaves us nostalgically recalling the pleasures of warmth, feast, and community. The Roman poet Propertius’ pining lover transforms through CB Brady’s translation into a meditation on the embodied forms of love and longing that reach us when we are (or should be) sleeping. Such mortal pleasures and pains collide in a poem by Martial that strives to articulate what makes a good life, appearing here in two radically different and adventurous translations by Susan McLean and J. Tristan Barnes. In a fitting finale, Samantha Pious brings such daydreams to a halt with her arresting translation of a medieval French poem addressed to Death itself.
Like the breath behind all these words, Ania Spyra’s cover art, from a series entitled “Energia,” inspires exploratory connections between vibrant colors, embodied movement, work, and life. The same original shape re-created in a series reminds us that iterative and repetitive approaches often allow for the emergence of new and surprising insights.
Perhaps it is that breathtaking triptych that has us thinking (even more than usual) about the notion of retranslation. Sometimes it’s hard not to think about retranslation for those of us who work on ancient literature, when those texts have graced the pages of many predecessors’ drafts long before we lift our own pencil to the task. Sometimes the weight of these predecessors feels too much to bear, shouldering us with a near-obsessive drive to word something anew, to correct the errors of the past, to unseat the authority of previous translations and interpretations.
But just as often, retranslation is a place for play—relieved of the pressure to get something just right, we give ourselves permission to place ourselves in our work in bold and visible ways. We leave the task of authority and correctness to the scholarly minds that have decoded ancient scripts and excavated burial sites and pieced together manuscript fragments. And with the materials we’ve been gifted, we make something beautiful.
Because no game is as much fun played solo, with this new issue we invite you to play with retranslation alongside us. As you peruse the translations contained within, you’ll find on each page a playful prompt for how you might incorporate the piece into your own creative practice or that of your students. The game we have in mind has no set rules, no language prerequisites, no required materials, save perhaps a pen and paper. We’ve been dared to be adventurous, and we hope you’ll play along.
Always in search of our next diversion, by next summer we hope to hatch for you a special teaching-focused issue of Ancient Exchanges. If reading "Diversions" leads you down fruitful paths in your own classroom, consider writing to us with your ideas for contributing to that next issue. We can’t wait to hear from you.
Love,
the Ancient X team