Born Edith Marion Dorph in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Grossman lived in New York City later in life.[2] She received a B.A. and M.A. from the
University of Pennsylvania, did graduate work at the
University of California, Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. from
New York University with a thesis on the Chilean "anti-poet"
Nicanor Parra.[3][4]
She taught at NYU and
Columbia University early in her career.[2] Her career as a translator began in 1972 when a friend, Jo-Anne Engelbert, asked her to translate a story for a collection of short works by the Argentine avant-garde writer
Macedonio Fernández.[5] Grossman subsequently changed the focus of her work from scholarship and criticism to translation[6] and, in 1990, left teaching to dedicate her energies full-time to translating.[7]
Grossman was known to her friends as "Edie".[4] She married Norman Grossman in 1965; the couple had two sons, but divorced in 1984. Edith Grossman died from pancreatic cancer at her home in
Manhattan on September 4, 2023, at the age of 87.[2]
Translation work
In a speech delivered at the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, she explained her method:
Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. Let me insist on the obvious: Languages trail immense, individual histories behind them, and no two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a photograph can link movement and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that either translation or photography, or acting for that matter, are representational in any narrow sense of the term. Fidelity is our noble purpose, but it does not have much, if anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable.[8]
Grossman was notable for advocating that her name appear on the covers of the books she translated, alongside the author. Translators had traditionally been uncredited, which Grossman facetiously said implied that "a magic wand" had been waved to change the language of the text.[2] In a 2019 interview, she said that "It's bloody well about time that the translator not be treated as a poor relation, that the translator is treated as an equal partner in the enterprise... Reviewers used to write as though translation had appeared through kind of a divine miracle. An immaculate conception!"[9]
Awards and recognition
Grossman's translation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, published in 2003, is considered one of the finest English-language translations of the Spanish novel by some authors and critics, including
Carlos Fuentes[10] and
Harold Bloom, who called her "the
Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note."[11] However, some Cervantes scholars have been more critical of her translation. Tom Lathrop, himself a translator of Don Quixote, critiqued her translation in the journal of the Cervantes Society of America, saying
Serious students of literature in translation should consider looking elsewhere for more faithful translations, such as
Starkie and the discontinued and lamented
Ormsby-Douglas-Jones version. There are just too many things that just are not right, or are confusing, in this translation.[12]
Both Lathrop and Daniel Eisenberg criticized her for a poor choice of Spanish edition as source, leading to inaccuracies; Eisenberg added that "she is the most textually ignorant of the modern translators".[13]
^Grossman, Edith (January 2005).
"Lecture: "Translating Cervantes"". Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center. p. 2. Retrieved September 6, 2023.
^Grossman, Edith (January 23, 2007).
"Narrative Transmutations". PEN American Centre. Retrieved April 26, 2014.