The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (74 page)

A N
OTE ON THE
T
RANSLATION

The one-act playlet that begins this novel is a farce, written in a kind of doggerel. Taking my cue from the high comedy and irreverent tone of that text, I have produced a playful and some would say “irreverent” translation that is, I think, faithful to it in spirit. Just as servility and sobriety are anathema in those pages, servility and sobriety in the translation would have betrayed them.

Andrew Hurley