We started classes on Tuesday, May 27th.
We are taking Creative Writing (in English) with Professor Rufo Quintavalle, and Translation of Classics (en français) with Professor Hédi Kaddour.
I think they’ll both be useful for us as translators– because we are writing as well as expressing the message of the author.
Prof. Quintavalle gave us two quotes to ponder about writing, the other day.
“The fiction I’m most interested in has lines of reference to the real world. None of my stories really happened, of course. But there’s always something, some element, something said to me or that I witnessed, that may be the starting place. Here’s an example: ‘That’s the last Christmas you’ll ever ruin for us!’ I was drunk when I heard that, but I remembered it. And later, much later, when I was sober using only that one line and other things I imagined, imagined so accurately that they could have happened, I made a story—‘A Serious Talk.’”
– Raymond Carver
“The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees. For him, to be reasonable is to find, in the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the spirit which makes it itself. This is not an easy or simple thing to do. It is to intrude upon the timeless, and that is only done by the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth.
It follows from all this that there is no technique that can be discovered and applied to make it possible for one to write. If you go to a school where there are classes in writing, these classes should not be to teach you how to write, but to teach you the limits and possibilities of words and the respect due to them. One thing that is always with the writer– no matter how long he has written or how good he is– is the continuing process of learning how to write.”
– Flannery O’Connor
French and the city 