private life by josep maria de sagarra

, translated from the Catalan by Mary Ann Newman.

FIRST PART

His eyelids opened with an almost imperceptible click, as if they had been stuck together by recent proximity to tears and smoke, or by the secretion produced by the irritation of a long time spent reading under a dim light. 

With the pinky finger of his right hand he rubbed his eyelashes, as if with the quick flick of a comb, and his pupils struggled to make something out. What he saw was a panorama of vague, limp, semiliquid shadows: the view a man blinded by daylight would perceive on entering an aquarium. From the shadows, a sort of long vaporous knife the color of the juice of crushed oranges on the piers was becoming more and more prominent. It was a beam of light coming in through the slats of the shutters, and souring in the heavy atmosphere of the room.

It must be about four-thirty in the afternoon. Frederic de Lloberola, the man with the distressed eyelids, had awakened naturally. No one had called him, no sounds had startled him. His nerves were tired of sleeping; they had sapped to the dregs a colorless, absurd dream, the kind you have when nothing is going on in your life, that leave hardly a trace of their plot when you awaken...

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Mary Ann Newman és una de les millors ambaixadores culturals que té Catalunya als Estats Units. Catalanòfila amb un full de serveis impressionant, va ser a l’Institut Ramon Llull durant l’etapa de les grans Fires Internacionals (Guadalajara, Frankfurt) i va dirigir el Catalan Center de Nova York, un organisme adscrit a NYU. Traductora, dinamitzadora d’activitats i intercanvis, amfitriona de catalans a Nova York, actualment és la principal impulsora del Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the US.

[...] Traductora de Quim Monzó, actualment s’ha proposat de traduir ‘Vida privada’, de J.M. de Sagarra. [Font: Núvol. 30|5|2012]

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L'artista abans conegut com subal quinina, que aquest estiu ha estat voltant per NY, dóna fe que, efectivament, la Newman està treballant en la traducció de Vida privada. Aquí.