Making \'Our America\' Visible: J.M. Cohen (1903-1989) El Transculturador / a Bibliography

Making Our America Visible
J.M. Cohen (1903-1989): El Transculturador
A Bibliography
by
Vladimir Alexander Smith-Mesa
Dedicated to Professor Isabel de Madariaga
(Based on the Cohen Collection, Old Library, Queens' College, Cambridge University)


Portrait of J. M. Cohen by Lotte Meitner-Graf (1898-1973)
From the cover of Cohen's book A History of Western Literature, published by Penguin Books, 1956



Making Our America Visible
J.M. Cohen (1903-1989): El Transculturador
A Bibliography
ABSTRACT
by
Vladimir Alexander Smith-Mesa
Dedicated to Professor Isabel de Madariaga
(Based on the Cohen Collection, Old Library, Queens' College, Cambridge University)
Allen Ginsberg, José Lezama Lima, J. M. Cohen, Nicanor Parra & Jaime Sabines/ Jury 1965 Casa de las Américas Literary Award

Who was J. M. Cohen?
J. M. (John Michael) Cohen (5 February 1903 – 19 July 1989) was a prolific translator of European and Latin American literatures. His obituary in The Guardian stated that Cohen did: "more than anyone else in his generation to introduce British readers to the classics of world literature by making them available in good modern English translations (20 July 1989)." Born in London, J. M. Cohen was a graduate of Cambridge University. In addition to teaching young people, he spent the war years teaching himself Spanish and Russian. He launched his translation career with the first English translation of poems by Boris Pasternak (1946), which garnered praise from American poet John Ashbery, in his book Other Traditions (2000). Cohen's translation of Cervantes's Don Quixote (1950) has been highly praised. Cohen wrote a number of works of literary criticism and biography. He also edited and introduced programmes for the BBC. In addition to his translations of major works of European literature for Penguin, Cohen edited several important anthologies: A History of Western Literature (1956), Poetry of this Age (1959) and The Baroque Lyric (1963). Alongside E. V. Rieu, he edited many of the Penguin Classics. Cohen's interest in Latin American literature began on a visit to Argentina in 1953 when he first met Jorge Luis Borges. From this time, he was in contact with writers (and books) from these countries.
For Nuestra America, the 1960s was the age of literary discovery, a period when the major works of the Latin American Literary Boom were published. Certainly, it launched Latin American literature onto the world stage. The "boom" brought about a new genre of writing - "magical realism". J. M. Cohen played a key role in the dissemination of the writers of the "boom" by translating many of them: Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz, José Donoso, and Carlos Fuentes, and by bringing the works of Gabriel García Márquez to the attention of his future English publisher. In Havana, J. M. Cohen was a member of the Jury of the Casa de las Américas Poetry Prize of 1965 and of the Jury of the Julián del Casal Poetry Prize of 1968, which was won by the Cuban poet and dissident, "the Cuban Pasternak", Heberto Padilla with his book Fuera del juego. Consequently, Cohen translated pre-Boom writers such as César Vallejo, Gabriela Mistral, Alejo Carpentier, João Guimarães Rosa, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, José Lezama Lima, among many others. Today, all these names sound more or less familiar to everyone, but how did this literature became available? Who translated their works into English? These questions remain a major blind-spot in the bibliography of Latin American and Translation Studies.

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See also "J. M. Cohen, Gifted translator of foreign prose classics" (Obituary), The Times (London), 22 July 1989.
"Obituary of JM Cohen: An opener of closed books" (Obituary), by M.C. and W.L.W., The Guardian (London), 20 July 1989.