Choruses of “Hola chicos” and “¿Cómo estás?” resonated from around the room as students and faculty waited for Álvaro Enrigue and Miguel-Angel Zapata to take the stage for Hofstra’s 13th annual “Great Writers, Great Readings” series on Wednesday, Oct. 19, in the Guthart Cultural Center Theater.
In the first ever double-author reading of the series, Mexican novelist Enrigue started off the evening with a reading of his critically acclaimed novel “Sudden Death.” Enrigue’s fifth book can best be described as historical fiction on acid. With topics including Cortes’ conquest of Mexico, the beheading of Anne Boleyn and a fictional tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, “Sudden Death” spans across all eras and settings.
There is no doubt that icons are what fascinate the Mexican author. “Writing about Caravaggio is like writing about Mick Jagger or Donald Trump; they are everywhere and everyone wants to know everything about them,” Enrigue said.
The night changed pace as it transitioned from Enrigue’s history-packed, high stakes tennis match to a more tranquil atmosphere as Peruvian poet and Hofstra professor of romance language and literature, Miguel-Angel Zapata, read his “La Ventana” (The Window) to the crowd. Read first in his native Spanish and then in English, the poem possessed the cadence and beauty that is so often associated with the romance languages.
Primarily a writer of prose poems, Zapata’s work is at the same time effortless, innovative and simply lovely.
“A poem for me has to really come freely, like opening your heart and letting the blood out,” Zapata said.
As the night drew to a close, a question and answer session with the audience allowed both men to address their feelings on language and the challenge that translation presents writers. “I have an ambiguous relationship with English,” Enrigue said. “Even though I am more eloquent in Spanish, I do not fear English.”
Zapata expanded on the difficulties surrounding translation in writing, especially poetry, saying that there will always be small discrepancies between the writer and translator, but that this is just something that comes with the craft. He jokingly describes the only time in which translation is easy, saying, “If the author is dead, then there won’t be any problems.”
The next “Great Writers, Great Readings” series will be with poet Lia Purpura, on Thursday, Nov. 17.