Last week, we featured two pieces of writing in translation by the highly-acclaimed Fionn Petch: an excerpt from Mickaël Correia ‘s A People’s History of Football, and a teaser from Carolina Sanín’s Your Cross in the Desert Sky. Given his prolificacy, and the range of writing his translations bring to non-Spanish speakers, we thought it would be good to hear from the man himself, and learn a little more about his life, career and the other idiosyncrasies the Momus Questionnaire reveals.
Have you rebelled against someone else’s dreary expectations of your life, and become something more unexpected?
I’m not sure anyone has ever had expectations for my life, dreary or otherwise – certainly my parents were very careful not to impose any on me (they regret that now, the fools!) – but I’ve done my best to undermine imaginary ones anyway. I studied philosophy at York Uni, and despite having some of the highest grades of my year group the head of department advised me to escape academia, since he could predict (accurately, as it turned out) the way things were going with the humanities in British universities (well, either that, or he thought I just wasn’t cut out for it). So a few years later I found myself living in Mexico City, where I followed the example of half the population and started hawking stuff on the street: I had a stall selling homemade bread outside the philosophy department at the biggest uni, the UNAM. The irony! Anyway after a couple of years they took pity on me and I began a PhD there, which was brilliant as they let me write about whatever I wanted, which turned out to be a really obscure late 19th-century Italian philosopher and the idea of ‘persuasion’ in the pre-Socratics. Having satisfied that need, I finally decided to abandon academia for good and instead dedicate myself to embodying the conclusion of my thesis, which is that ‘translation is exemplary of the life of persuasion…’
What in your life can you point to and say, like Frankie, ‘I Did It My Way’?
I had to think hard about this, as I’ve always found my own life to be unconventional in ways that may not be readily apparent. So rather than pointing to a single thing I’d say the hallmark of ‘my way’ is precisely to avoid the exclusivity that suggests. I’ve always refused to specialise – not only in a professional or academic sense or even of having one all-consuming passion, but in the sense of having a single, defined way of being. So for example I feel equally at home among books and ideas as when engaged in physical work and building things. I’m never happier than when in nature, but have lived in big cities most of my life. In the right circumstances I switch from my habitually solitary, even shy character to a somewhat extroverted one… I’ve translated myself between countries and languages, from voluntary exile to voluntary exile, swinging like a satellite around a fixed point in Scotland that I still think of as home. To me it feels like I’m trying to cram in as many lives as possible; more clear-sighted observers may have other diagnoses… I do reckon, though, that this ‘bearing’ on life has stood me in good stead when it comes to working in translation, where it helps to be chameleon-like, able to imagine yourself into different roles and lives.
What creative achievements are you most proud of?
Secret ones, mostly. Artworks hidden inside walls in remote places. A few lines of writing that with any luck will never see the light of day. But perhaps these are only a source of pride because they haven’t been exposed to critical appraisal. I’ve always been at a bit of a loss when it comes to putting forward my own work, and am content to stand slightly off-stage, in the wings – which is probably a good position for a translator to be in, when you are seeking to find the right voice for another person’s writing, rather than imposing your own on them.
So instead I’ll mention (since we’re allowed to talk about translation as creative work itself these days!) my translation of Luis Sagasti’s A Musical Offering, which won the Valle Inclán Prize. I remember revising a passage for what must have been the twelfth time and being moved by my version of his words all over again, and had a strong sense of creative satisfaction and of it being ready to meet its readership. In a different field altogether, I’m also very proud of the curatorial work I did for a huge multi-disciplinary exhibition about Mexico City that toured Europe in the late ‘00s. That was an experience of great creative collaboration unlike any other I’ve had.
If there was one event in your life which really shaped you, made you the person you are today, what would it be?
That would be the interview I had age 16 that won me a scholarship to a United World College in a forest on the edge of Canada where I lived and studied for two years with 200 people from over 75 different countries. Everything that’s happened in my life can be traced back to that experience. (Also, I’ve avoided interviews ever since, as I reckon you only get that lucky once.)
If you had to make a song or rap boasting about your irresistible charm and sexiness, how would you describe yourself?
A what? About what? Who, me? (repeat to fade)
Have you ever made material sacrifices because of your integrity?
I’ve long given up on the hope of ever having my own home, a pension, or any form of stability greater than the bracingly precarious freelance existence I currently enjoy. It’s hard to tell whether this is a sacrifice, though, or if it could ever have been any other way. As for integrity, is doing something for love called having integrity…?
Describe a public personality who exemplifies everything you’d like to be yourself, then another public personality who incarnates everything you’d least like to be.
All I will say is that these days there are far too few of the former, and far too many of the latter.
If you were an Egyptian pharaoh and had to be buried with a few key objects to take to the next world, what would they be?
I have a handful of talismanic objects that have been with me for many years. An ancient rusted roof nail I found by a monastery in the Caucasus. A burnt fragment of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (in Russian) I found on the pavement outside the Glasgow School of Art months after the fire. My old teddy bear, of course. Along with so many deeply engraved gestures, secrets and stories that can never be recounted, not until it is far, far too late…
Do you have a favourite joke, quotation or proverb?
‘I prefer to be a man of contradictions, than one of convictions.’ I don’t remember who said it, but I definitely read it somewhere…
What’s your favourite portrait (it can be a song, a painting, a film, anything)?
Albrecht Dürer’s Self-Portrait at the Age of Twenty Eight. Mainly because it reminds me of the long curly hair I used to have at that age.
Fionn Petch is a Scottish-born translator from Spanish, French and Italian. He lived in Mexico City for 12 years, where he completed a PhD in Philosophy at the UNAM, and now lives in Berlin. His translations of Latin American literature for Charco Press have been widely acclaimed. Fireflies by Luis Sagasti was shortlisted for the Translators’ Association First Translation Award 2018. The Distance Between Us by Renato Cisneros received an English PEN Award in 2018. A Musical Offering, also by Luis Sagasti, was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021 and won the Society of Authors Premio Valle Inclán 2021 for best translation from Spanish. Twitter: @elusiveword
minor literature[s] 