venuti

264 The Translator’s Invisibilitythey burn trash on the embankment, layingbarer than ever our sad, civilized refuse. 1 coffee canwithout a lid1 empty pint of White Star, the labelfaded by rain1 empty beer-can2 empty Schenley bottles1 empty condom, seen from1 nearly empty trainempty(Blackburn 1985:141)Blackburn’s quotation uses the troubadour motif to interrogateconsumer capitalism, juxtaposing a lyrical evocation of spring to anitemized list of “trash” visible from a New York subway. TheProvençal idealization of human sexuality as a renewing naturalpleasure emphasizes the dirty realism of contemporary sexualpractices, which come to seem less “civilized,” more emotionallyimpoverished, even as they suggest that troubadour poetry is itselfsuspect, a mystification of the material conditions and consequencesof sexuality.It is worth noting, finally, that Blackburn’s experience with theProvençal translation also bears on his other translation projects.With the 1958 manuscript unpublished, he turned his attentionsto Latin American writing, particularly the fiction of theArgentine Julio Cortázar. In 1959, Blackburn entered into acontract with Cortázar that made him the Argentine writer’s“exclusive and official literary representative (AGENT)throughout the entire world (except in): France, Germany, Italyand all the Spanish-speaking countries.” 10 Blackburn negotiatedthe publication of the first English-language versions ofCortázar’s fiction, which were two novels: The Winners, translatedby Elaine Kerrigan in 1965, and Hopscotch, translated by GregoryRabassa in 1966. Late in the 1950s, Blackburn began translatingCortázar’s poems and short stories, mostly for magazinepublication, and in 1967, the stories were issued as End of theGame. He then translated another collection of Cortázar’s shortprose pieces, Cronopios and Famas (1969), and was the likelytranslator for the next volume of Cortázar’s stories to appear inEnglish, All Fires The Fire (1973), but his failing health prevented