The genius of language
More and more publishers, thankfully, are not limiting themselves to publishing a literary work, but are also offering us, within the same volume, a gift in the form of a prologue, epilogue, or translator's or editor's note. These extra texts help us get to know the author, provide context, or elaborate on a specific aspect of the edition or translation, making it even more interesting. It's a bonus, a detail for readers, that is greatly appreciated.
This is the case with the book published by Edicions del Periscopi, which is destined to be one of the most outstanding titles of this literary spring. It is the novel Spider stitchA delicate opera by the Galician writer Nerea Pallares, originally written in Galician.
In this story we find the lives of sailors, bobbin lace, drug trafficking, TikTok videos and ancient legends, all woven and intertwined with the skill of lacemakers. Spider stitch It invites us to discover the village of Camariñas, on Galicia's Costa da Morte (Coast of Death). When a stranger, Ari, arrives to work in the lace museum and as a tour guide, the villagers are reeling from a tragedy: the death of a teenager at sea. This is the starting point of a story that blends tradition and modernity, drawing us into the ever-mysterious world of the Costa da Morte. In this case, the plot centers on the rebellion of the lacemakers, who, driven by grief and rage, go so far as to summon "the spiders," deities who, according to legend, possess great wisdom and ancestral power. When we finish reading Spider stitchPeriscope surprises us with an unexpected gift: the text "The site and the language of Spider stitch"," written by the novel's translator, Eduard Velasco, who has crafted a work of art and explains it to us. And that is how the novel we have just read doubles its interest. "Oral tradition would have no value without the language that created it and brought it to us here." "Form and content in literature are as inseparable as Galicia, Galician culture, and Galician literature are from the language of the land," Velasco asserts. The translator tells us that the vitality of the language on the Costa da Morte is based on the continuity of linguistic habits that, beyond phonetics, represent the genius of the language. When translating this text into Catalan, Eduard Velasco has made an effort to have the characters speak in a colloquial but not excessively dialectalized style—a genuine language that should be transmitted naturally from generation to generation. But how many of our young people have inherited and adopted the words and expressions of their grandparents?