1 00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:05,490 Liana X. Jacobs, your Phillips Across College, Oxford associate professor from Cowley, 2 00:00:05,490 --> 00:00:12,120 lecturer in modern Hebrew literature and fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew Jewish Studies at the UN. 3 00:00:12,120 --> 00:00:19,560 When did you come to Oxford and to some course college? I came to Oxford answering Cross at the same time. 4 00:00:19,560 --> 00:00:31,310 In September 2013, when I took up my post as the Kaldi lecturer in modern Hebrew literature in the Faculty of Oriental Studies. 5 00:00:31,310 --> 00:00:36,290 And how friends across college and house have been for you. 6 00:00:36,290 --> 00:00:44,210 So I think for me, it's because I am not a what they call here the college tutorial fellow. 7 00:00:44,210 --> 00:00:53,330 I think St. Cross has been an important community for me outside of my faculty and outside of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. 8 00:00:53,330 --> 00:01:04,130 It's brought me into contact with a variety of academics and a range of disciplines, and I find it to be a very collegial environment. 9 00:01:04,130 --> 00:01:16,080 And I also really relish the informality of St. Cross, which is a breath of fresh air sometimes from the very formal aspects of teaching at Oxford. 10 00:01:16,080 --> 00:01:24,710 No high table. So it's great. So you want I think it appeals to my American individualism. 11 00:01:24,710 --> 00:01:30,710 Can you talk to somebody, something about your story, what you did before you came to Oxford? 12 00:01:30,710 --> 00:01:37,160 And what led you to switch them? So. So I did my APHC at Princeton. 13 00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:44,240 I was in comparative literature and I focussed there on and I still do on modern Hebrew literature, 14 00:01:44,240 --> 00:01:48,780 which I study and teach and research in a comparative context. 15 00:01:48,780 --> 00:01:58,130 So I'm really interested in the relation between writing in Hebrew and translating into and out of Hebrew. 16 00:01:58,130 --> 00:02:04,070 And I was living in New York City. I was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale. 17 00:02:04,070 --> 00:02:11,060 Coming to the end of that of that experience. And like a lot of people, I was on the job market. 18 00:02:11,060 --> 00:02:15,800 And it's a very challenging job market as much then as it is now. 19 00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:18,200 It's probably even harder now. 20 00:02:18,200 --> 00:02:27,770 And that year, I was really coming to that question that a lot of academics who'd been on the job market for a long time are asking themselves, 21 00:02:27,770 --> 00:02:35,060 which is how much longer can I keep doing this? And so I decided to cast a really wide net. 22 00:02:35,060 --> 00:02:41,020 And as a result, I ended up sending an application to this post at the University of Oxford. 23 00:02:41,020 --> 00:02:47,540 Do I have to say that I don't think living in England or was ever on my horizon. 24 00:02:47,540 --> 00:02:51,140 But as it turns out, I. I got the job. 25 00:02:51,140 --> 00:02:57,740 And my family and I my husband and I sat down and talked about and we decided it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. 26 00:02:57,740 --> 00:03:05,420 So we decided to make the move. So can you tell me something about your research? 27 00:03:05,420 --> 00:03:13,460 So, yeah, as I said, I've been working on Hebrew literature and translation for quite a while. 28 00:03:13,460 --> 00:03:17,300 My specialisation is modern Hebrew poetry. 29 00:03:17,300 --> 00:03:26,510 And in my book, which came out in August 2013, a book titled Strange Cocktail Translation In the making of modern Hebrew Poetry, 30 00:03:26,510 --> 00:03:30,920 I turned my attention to the figure of the poet translator. 31 00:03:30,920 --> 00:03:37,070 So what really motivates that study is the question of why poets translate, how they translate, 32 00:03:37,070 --> 00:03:44,900 what they translate, and ultimately how this shapes their own writing in Hebrew. 33 00:03:44,900 --> 00:03:49,580 But it was also a project that was very translations centred because I brought together 34 00:03:49,580 --> 00:03:56,600 poets who I think typically wouldn't be considered connected in any sort of obvious way. 35 00:03:56,600 --> 00:04:03,680 But they were connected, in my view, because they had all been translated by the poet who closes the study. 36 00:04:03,680 --> 00:04:11,930 So this American born Hebrew poet who translated the poets of the first three chapters into English. 37 00:04:11,930 --> 00:04:23,180 So by putting the translator at the heart of the project, I was able to bring in writers who otherwise I think would not be gathered together. 38 00:04:23,180 --> 00:04:28,610 And I continue working on relations between Hebrew writing and translation. 39 00:04:28,610 --> 00:04:33,920 But I've been broadening my work in the last couple of years to include Spanish 40 00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:40,220 and also Anglophone writing as part of a new project on poetry of crisis, 41 00:04:40,220 --> 00:04:46,040 which I'm currently researching and giving shape. 42 00:04:46,040 --> 00:04:51,380 Can you tell me something about the skills that it requires of you to be able to do this kind of work? 43 00:04:51,380 --> 00:04:57,720 The poet translator. Well, I think one thing was I had to learn Hebrew. 44 00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:03,830 I had to learn a lot of Hebrew. And I'm still I always say that. I think I'm still learning Hebrew. 45 00:05:03,830 --> 00:05:11,780 Each poet that I encounter opens up a whole new world of text, both in Hebrew and in other languages. 46 00:05:11,780 --> 00:05:16,190 So I feel like I'm still a student in that respect, which I really quite like. 47 00:05:16,190 --> 00:05:18,410 I think I'd like learning from my research. 48 00:05:18,410 --> 00:05:29,840 And instead of just imposing my theoretical models or sense of mastery, I take the view that I can learn a great deal from the poets that. 49 00:05:29,840 --> 00:05:35,560 I'm looking at I think that for my kind of work, I think it helps to really love poetry. 50 00:05:35,560 --> 00:05:42,500 I have to read a great deal of it. And one way to preserve the love of it is to read for me. 51 00:05:42,500 --> 00:05:45,860 It's to read poets also outside of Hebrew. 52 00:05:45,860 --> 00:05:56,180 So I was really careful, even as a doctoral student, that I didn't want to turn reading the reading of poetry into into a chore. 53 00:05:56,180 --> 00:06:02,270 So one way I kept the passion alive was to read poets and other languages. 54 00:06:02,270 --> 00:06:09,740 I read Spanish and English, of course, and this ended up, I think, influencing the current book project. 55 00:06:09,740 --> 00:06:19,160 But that's been very important. I think also because I work on translation and it's also helped to be a translator. 56 00:06:19,160 --> 00:06:24,620 So I'm also a literary translator. I translated contemporary Hebrew poetry into English. 57 00:06:24,620 --> 00:06:28,790 And that practise of translation is something that I also addressed in the book. 58 00:06:28,790 --> 00:06:39,650 And how for me, what I call a practise of translation is inextricable from theories of translation or the way I theorise or think about translation. 59 00:06:39,650 --> 00:06:42,890 Would you call that practise led research? 60 00:06:42,890 --> 00:06:56,300 It is to some extent I am careful to distinguish between the ways that I translate, and that process is sometimes how I'm thinking about translation. 61 00:06:56,300 --> 00:07:04,520 I mean, they are very much connected. But I think the practise of translation for me is also very personal. 62 00:07:04,520 --> 00:07:11,420 It's very subjective. I can see how the series that I'm reading, the criticism I'm reading, 63 00:07:11,420 --> 00:07:17,180 or other translations that I'm reading influenced and sometimes inspire certain approaches. 64 00:07:17,180 --> 00:07:27,350 But ultimately, the experience of sitting down and translating a poem is sometimes a very long process that can take years until I feel it's right. 65 00:07:27,350 --> 00:07:32,870 And there are parts of that process that I think for me are hard to put into words. 66 00:07:32,870 --> 00:07:41,720 But yeah, I do think that in my case it is practise led to a degree so lost in translation. 67 00:07:41,720 --> 00:07:49,560 I mean, what kinds of things are lost in translation? Do you think? So I'm allergic to the expression lost in translation. 68 00:07:49,560 --> 00:08:03,580 I I'm I'm very aware of its history and its currency, but I don't see translation in terms of loss any more than I see writing in terms of loss. 69 00:08:03,580 --> 00:08:12,170 I am aware is also someone who writes both academically and creatively that there's a great deal that doesn't end up on the page. 70 00:08:12,170 --> 00:08:20,150 So I take that also in my ways of reading and practising translation. 71 00:08:20,150 --> 00:08:27,050 I think Yosef Brodsky said that translation was also just too much about gains. 72 00:08:27,050 --> 00:08:32,810 And I think that culturally we gain a great deal from translation. 73 00:08:32,810 --> 00:08:41,270 I know that's certainly been the case for me, not only as a student of translation and someone who teaches it, 74 00:08:41,270 --> 00:08:52,040 but I remember that my first encounters with translated literature really opened up in Windows and Worlds, all those metaphors. 75 00:08:52,040 --> 00:08:57,710 But it it was so critical to shaping a wider perspective on the world. 76 00:08:57,710 --> 00:09:01,610 And so I don't think we can live without it. Can I ask you then, 77 00:09:01,610 --> 00:09:07,580 is translation an extension of work in the same way that an exhibition of an artist's 78 00:09:07,580 --> 00:09:13,110 work is an extension of that artist's work in the way that it might be exhibited, 79 00:09:13,110 --> 00:09:18,080 displayed interpretive in some way? Or am I being naive? No, I think it is. 80 00:09:18,080 --> 00:09:28,880 But I also think translation is this is its own thing. So I think on the one hand, a translation can offer new ways of reading an author. 81 00:09:28,880 --> 00:09:38,150 So, for instance, I, I always tell my teaching of Hebrew literature, my students at Oxford read these texts in Hebrew. 82 00:09:38,150 --> 00:09:43,580 But before I came to Oxford, I taught Hebrew literature largely an English translation. 83 00:09:43,580 --> 00:09:50,450 And I often bring English translations into my teaching here because I think it's important for 84 00:09:50,450 --> 00:09:59,000 students to see sometimes how translators are wrestling with certain aspects of a Hebrew text and 85 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:03,230 in ways that can be really productive and sometimes really well often will illuminate something 86 00:10:03,230 --> 00:10:09,890 about the Hebrew text that is only that we can only see through the translation or in this case, 87 00:10:09,890 --> 00:10:19,250 through sometimes multiple translations. So in that respect, yes, I think it's an important interpretive tool. 88 00:10:19,250 --> 00:10:25,310 And certainly as part of the life of a text, but it also takes on its own life. 89 00:10:25,310 --> 00:10:31,360 And we certainly have cases of translations that have superseded their original. 90 00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:43,840 And I think that translations can be incredibly creative and they can spark new works and create their own lineages. 91 00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:49,360 I have to ask you, do you love poetry? I have to ask you what your favourite song. 92 00:10:49,360 --> 00:10:57,220 Oh, gosh. So I think if you go into so in my office, I have a shelf for kind of my workbooks. 93 00:10:57,220 --> 00:11:03,250 And then I have a shelf. So all the poetry that I've gathered that I'm not necessarily working on. 94 00:11:03,250 --> 00:11:07,230 And I read. So if you look at it, you'll see that I've a lot of. 95 00:11:07,230 --> 00:11:13,420 And Carson, I'm a huge fan of. And Carson. I also love American poet name Alice Notley. 96 00:11:13,420 --> 00:11:23,680 She lives actually part of the year in Paris and ended up a sardonic, wonderful Argentinian poet who I also enjoy reading. 97 00:11:23,680 --> 00:11:27,890 And Yvette Seagate's English translation. So I can read underfunded up. 98 00:11:27,890 --> 00:11:29,410 You certainly can in Spanish. 99 00:11:29,410 --> 00:11:38,230 But she's an example of someone who I also enjoy reading and translation because of the wonderful things Evet is doing with her work in English. 100 00:11:38,230 --> 00:11:44,380 So say those are three poets that loom large for me in Hebrew. 101 00:11:44,380 --> 00:11:48,370 I think I'm always my favourite poet. Sometimes the poet that I'm currently translating. 102 00:11:48,370 --> 00:11:54,130 So I really love the work of To Help Frosch, whose work I've been translated into English. 103 00:11:54,130 --> 00:11:59,440 Schiemann Adath is a wonderful contemporary poet. So it's a hard question to ask. 104 00:11:59,440 --> 00:12:07,960 It keeps changing. I'm sorry if it seems so. What makes what you do imprudent and for whom? 105 00:12:07,960 --> 00:12:11,170 Yeah, that's always a big question for us academics. 106 00:12:11,170 --> 00:12:18,220 And now that we're approaching the end of the ref cycle, I've been asked to give this a lot of thought. 107 00:12:18,220 --> 00:12:26,320 What is the impact of my research? What is its reach? There are a lot of different answers to this question. 108 00:12:26,320 --> 00:12:32,920 I think I know my work is important in the field of Hebrew literature, 109 00:12:32,920 --> 00:12:40,510 which has become increasingly interested in histories and theories of translation. 110 00:12:40,510 --> 00:12:46,760 I think my book is it, and it's focussed on poetry. 111 00:12:46,760 --> 00:12:55,240 I think a meaningful contribution to the field of modern Hebrew literature and its engagement with translation issues. 112 00:12:55,240 --> 00:13:00,070 Outside of that, I think it's important because I work on Hebrew, 113 00:13:00,070 --> 00:13:08,590 which is for me a fascinating language that has taken has lived many lives over the centuries. 114 00:13:08,590 --> 00:13:19,990 I think today the issue of Israel, Palestine and that whole region necessitates a continued study of Hebrew and its and its literature, 115 00:13:19,990 --> 00:13:25,840 which can, I really think, open up new perspectives on that conflict. 116 00:13:25,840 --> 00:13:33,940 But I think also broadly, I really believe that studying poetry is vital to human beings. 117 00:13:33,940 --> 00:13:39,040 I think it makes us. It may not save our lives, but it could save our life, actually. 118 00:13:39,040 --> 00:13:43,270 I'm going to revise that. Yes, I just said it and I'm already contradicting myself. 119 00:13:43,270 --> 00:13:52,370 I do think I just recently read a really wonderful book to my son's classroom by a book called Frederich by Leo Leonys, 120 00:13:52,370 --> 00:13:59,290 which is a book about mice that are trying to survive the winter. And one mouse doesn't seem to be doing any work. 121 00:13:59,290 --> 00:14:03,850 He is then taken to task by his his fellow mice. 122 00:14:03,850 --> 00:14:07,630 And and he says that he's gathering words. 123 00:14:07,630 --> 00:14:14,260 And at the end of the winter, when all the food has run out and the mice are very cold, they ask Frederick to share his words. 124 00:14:14,260 --> 00:14:18,970 And then he delivers this really beautiful poem which cheers them up. 125 00:14:18,970 --> 00:14:32,560 And for me, this is what what my work does is cast some light on that moment when I think something like a poem can alleviate our anxieties, 126 00:14:32,560 --> 00:14:41,830 sometimes point us towards a way forward out of a crisis. And can you say things in poetry you can't say in other ways? 127 00:14:41,830 --> 00:14:48,580 Oh, absolutely. I think so. I think the other thing is that you can also not say things in poetry. 128 00:14:48,580 --> 00:14:54,430 You don't have to explain everything. And that's also something I really love about poetry. 129 00:14:54,430 --> 00:14:58,420 I also am I'm aware that this is what makes poetry very challenging. 130 00:14:58,420 --> 00:15:09,220 Sometimes we seek explanations and poetry sometimes offers them, but not explicitly, which then encourages us. 131 00:15:09,220 --> 00:15:17,950 If we're open to it, to doing a great deal of work with the poem and with the poet and being a part of that creative process. 132 00:15:17,950 --> 00:15:24,840 And so I think, yes, I think poetry can offer up. 133 00:15:24,840 --> 00:15:29,430 So it is very radical ways of experiencing language and. 134 00:15:29,430 --> 00:15:39,340 Strong language, but it's also an experience with what isn't spoken or written down. 135 00:15:39,340 --> 00:15:43,810 You've been doing the podcast series. Could you tell us something about that? 136 00:15:43,810 --> 00:15:54,880 Yes. So I last year, I had a John Fell fund grant to produce a podcast series that's connected to my new project. 137 00:15:54,880 --> 00:16:02,140 So this is a series on poetry of crisis. And I called it Staying Alive Poetry and Crisis. 138 00:16:02,140 --> 00:16:11,260 So pretty straightforward title. And it was an eight part series that featured an interview with a poet with a contemporary living poet. 139 00:16:11,260 --> 00:16:19,360 In each episode and these poets came from the U.K., the United States, from Israel. 140 00:16:19,360 --> 00:16:23,050 And yeah, it was it was a lot of work. 141 00:16:23,050 --> 00:16:26,710 It was very challenging. I've never done anything like that. 142 00:16:26,710 --> 00:16:36,610 It was also a bit scary because with this new project, I decided that I was going to share it at a very rough stage, I think, with the first book. 143 00:16:36,610 --> 00:16:43,780 A lot of it I kept close to my chest. I just didn't really talk a great deal about, aside from conference presentations. 144 00:16:43,780 --> 00:16:49,360 But with this book, I decided I maybe I've given the subject matter or maybe given that I was working 145 00:16:49,360 --> 00:16:56,260 with contemporary poets who are alive and therefore one can engage with them, 146 00:16:56,260 --> 00:17:00,640 that I wanted to share it in its rough early stages. 147 00:17:00,640 --> 00:17:11,350 So the podcast was also a way for me to do this kind of research, but maybe do it in in a way that was less lonely than in the first book. 148 00:17:11,350 --> 00:17:16,240 Something about having put Kerstetter cutting away. 149 00:17:16,240 --> 00:17:17,170 Yeah, I know. 150 00:17:17,170 --> 00:17:33,280 And it's I think it was interesting to see how, first of all, how poets understand their work and also poets often don't enjoy explaining their work. 151 00:17:33,280 --> 00:17:43,060 And one of the features of the podcast was that we would read a poem and then and then the poet would discuss it. 152 00:17:43,060 --> 00:17:51,430 And at first I was a little concerned about this because I thought, well, sometimes poets really don't want to be doing this. 153 00:17:51,430 --> 00:18:00,040 They want to let the reader experience the work without the baggage of the author's intentions or ideas about the work. 154 00:18:00,040 --> 00:18:03,820 But it actually ended up being my favourite part about the podcast. 155 00:18:03,820 --> 00:18:16,330 I think it just gives listeners a chance to really dig into at least one text and experience it and think about it with the author. 156 00:18:16,330 --> 00:18:18,250 And but yeah, no, 157 00:18:18,250 --> 00:18:25,960 I think uncut is an interesting way of putting it because there's so much that didn't make it into the podcast and I'm so aware of that. 158 00:18:25,960 --> 00:18:30,880 All these these long transcripts. And then you have to. So it's both cut and uncut. 159 00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:36,400 There's the podcast that no one will see or no one will hear. 160 00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:42,130 And then there's this edited version. So I had the experience of both very much. 161 00:18:42,130 --> 00:18:47,030 The translators are high exact on podcasting, which. Which is which is fascinating. 162 00:18:47,030 --> 00:18:51,760 Right. Yeah, no. And I think that's another thing I like about translation. 163 00:18:51,760 --> 00:19:01,330 And I brought that a little bit into this podcast is that there's so much that goes into the process of translation, 164 00:19:01,330 --> 00:19:06,520 so many attempts and words scattered around margins and on napkins. 165 00:19:06,520 --> 00:19:16,630 And then ultimately what people see is this thing that we call kind of the finished translation, which for me is really still a work in progress. 166 00:19:16,630 --> 00:19:24,070 And so I think the podcast in that way, people can hear these edited and somewhat polished interviews. 167 00:19:24,070 --> 00:19:29,940 But for me, it's still just the beginning of this project. 168 00:19:29,940 --> 00:19:35,690 Adriana, what's on the horizon for you? Well, there's this book on poetry of crisis. 169 00:19:35,690 --> 00:19:41,680 It's somewhat apt that we're having this conversation today in the midst of virus anxiety. 170 00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:50,530 So now I'm wondering if we're going to see a lot of poetry come out of this and maybe this will work its way into my book. 171 00:19:50,530 --> 00:19:57,970 I'm going on sabbatical next year, so I'll have the chance to develop this research. 172 00:19:57,970 --> 00:20:02,020 Possibly do a season two of staying alive. 173 00:20:02,020 --> 00:20:07,990 There were a lot of poets that I wasn't able to include, poets who also were interested in being a part of it. 174 00:20:07,990 --> 00:20:16,640 So if I can figure out the funding aspect, I'd love to do another round of this podcast. 175 00:20:16,640 --> 00:20:21,407 Adrianna X. Jacobs, thank you so much. Thank you.