Photo of Dust Breeding, by Man Ray, ca. 1920, by Liquid Liquid / Flickr.comOur columnist looks back through the centuries to rekindle our fascination with dust. Using the word itself as her p…
Untranslatable
Pages from the Voynich Manuscript by IanDagnall Computing / Alamy.comWhat does it say about our society that we are so fascinated by an object that seems to retain a meaning that nobody on earth can a…
Photo by Karolina Grabowska / Pexels.comFrom the missing work of Sappho to Lucy Ellmann’s thousand-page, stream-of-consciousness novel Ducks, Newburyport, our columnist considers the linguistic, cultu…
Photo by ink drop / Stock.adobe.comGoing back to the medieval period, the word besa is a small word with large implications throughout Albanian society, from law to literature to history. And in a wor…
Photos of Handley Cellars Painted Mural at the AV Historical Museum courtesy of Courtney DeGraff / Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association / avwines.comIn her column for this issue, Veronica Esposito…
Photo of Kim Yuna, courtesy of UPI / Alamy Stock Photo / Molly Riley Is this idea of mass frustration distinctly Korean, or is it more international in scope? In her ongoing column on untranslatable…
Photo courtesy of Castle Rock Entertainment / RGR Collection / Alamy Stock PhotoFrom the Middle Ages to Seinfeld, schlemiel and schlimazel characters enjoy an interesting history. Veronica Esposito tr…
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1817), oil on canvas, 119.5 x 99.5 x 9 cm bpk Bildagentur / Hamburger Kunsthalle, SHK / Elke Walford / Art Resource, NY What is sehnsucht…
In her new, ongoing column, Veronica Esposito highlights an untranslatable word—its history, its contemporary usage, and why it’s so hard to translate. To begin this new project, Esposito delves into…
