Photo of Dust Breeding, by Man Ray, ca. 1920, by Liquid Liquid / Flickr.com
Our columnist looks back through the centuries to rekindle our fascination with dust. Using the word itself as…
Untranslatable
Pages from the Voynich Manuscript by IanDagnall Computing / Alamy.com What does it say about our society that we are so fascinated by an object that seems to retain a meaning that nobody on earth…
Photo by Karolina Grabowska / Pexels.com From the missing work of Sappho to Lucy Ellmann’s thousand-page, stream-of-consciousness novel Ducks, Newburyport, our columnist considers the linguistic,…
Photo by ink drop / Stock.adobe.com Going 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…
Photos of Handley Cellars Painted Mural at the AV Historical Museum courtesy of Courtney DeGraff / Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association / avwines.com In her column for this issue, Veronica…
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 untranslata…
Photo courtesy of Castle Rock Entertainment / RGR Collection / Alamy Stock Photo From the Middle Ages to Seinfeld, schlemiel and schlimazel characters enjoy an interesting history. Veronica Esposi…
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 sehns…
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…
December 19, 2024
December 02, 2024
