Behind the Scenes with Salman Rushdie
What do you believe is the most difficult thing to capture in translation?
Poetry. Tone of voice. Comedy. Beauty. Everything.
Is there anything that you believe transcends translation?
Human nature, the great constant.
How do the places you've lived in inform your view of the world around you?
First of all, I'm a city boy, and if you have lived in Bombay , London and New York , the rhythm of the city is also yours.
Second, I'm a person who, at the age of 12, chose (my parents didn't force me) to leave the city where I was rooted and happy to go to boarding school in a cold country across the world, where I had never been, and where I knew nobody. I'm also the person who, at the age of 52, when other people might have been settling down, decided to remake my life again in another city across an ocean. So clearly there is something uprooted in me, some openness to changing and being changed, and I see the world through that person's eyes.
Your latest book, The Enchantress of Florence, is the story of two cities, the Mughal capital and far-off Florence, which are unknown to each other until young man from Europe travels eastÑand thus begins an epic tale of translation. How did you manage to capture this riveting interaction between east and west? Did you envision each city from both insider and outsider perspectives?
Mostly I tried to know them from the inside, but then "arrive" at them in the form of an outsider — Mogor dell'Amore/Niccol˜ Vespucci arriving at Sikri, the Enchantress, Qara Kšz, arriving in Florence ; so, yes, in the end, there was a kind of double vision there.
What was the inspiration behind The Enchantress of Florence?
Two men I didn't invent — Niccol˜ Michavelli and Akbar the Great — and one woman I made up by rubbing together two fragments of stories, the story of the capture of Akbar's great-aunt by the Uzbeg warlord Shaibani Khan, and the story of "Angelica," the "Princess of India and Cathay," who arrives in Europe to entrance many knights-errant in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso — in fact the reason Orlando is furioso is that she falls in love with someone else instead of him. I felt as if I'd found two ends of a bridge, and decided to build the bridge that joined them up.
What do you believe is the most difficult thing to capture in translation?
Poetry. Tone of voice. Comedy. Beauty. Everything.
Is there anything that you believe transcends translation?
Human nature, the great constant.
How do the places you've lived in inform your view of the world around you?
First of all, I'm a city boy, and if you have lived in Bombay , London and New York , the rhythm of the city is also yours.
Second, I'm a person who, at the age of 12, chose (my parents didn't force me) to leave the city where I was rooted and happy to go to boarding school in a cold country across the world, where I had never been, and where I knew nobody. I'm also the person who, at the age of 52, when other people might have been settling down, decided to remake my life again in another city across an ocean. So clearly there is something uprooted in me, some openness to changing and being changed, and I see the world through that person's eyes.
Your latest book, The Enchantress of Florence, is the story of two cities, the Mughal capital and far-off Florence, which are unknown to each other until young man from Europe travels eastÑand thus begins an epic tale of translation. How did you manage to capture this riveting interaction between east and west? Did you envision each city from both insider and outsider perspectives?
Mostly I tried to know them from the inside, but then "arrive" at them in the form of an outsider — Mogor dell'Amore/Niccol˜ Vespucci arriving at Sikri, the Enchantress, Qara Kšz, arriving in Florence ; so, yes, in the end, there was a kind of double vision there.
What was the inspiration behind The Enchantress of Florence?
Two men I didn't invent — Niccol˜ Michavelli and Akbar the Great — and one woman I made up by rubbing together two fragments of stories, the story of the capture of Akbar's great-aunt by the Uzbeg warlord Shaibani Khan, and the story of "Angelica," the "Princess of India and Cathay," who arrives in Europe to entrance many knights-errant in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso — in fact the reason Orlando is furioso is that she falls in love with someone else instead of him. I felt as if I'd found two ends of a bridge, and decided to build the bridge that joined them up.