Edith Grossman, CW’57, G’59
The 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award is presented to Dr. Edith Grossman, CW’57, G’59.
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Edith Grossman is the foremost translator of poetry and prose by leading contemporary Spanish-language writers, including Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julián Rios and Álvaro Mutis. Her first Spanish-to-English translations were lyrical renderings of poetry by Juan Ramón Jimónez and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, published in the Pennsylvania Literary Review when she was an undergraduate at Penn. She went on to receive advanced degrees at the University of California at Berkeley and New York University.
After a brief career as a critic and college professor, Grossman discovered her true calling as a translator. She understands that translation is not merely transcribing equivalent words, but a deep sensitivity to the rhythms and tones of language. While the vast majority of translators rarely receive recognition outside the world of bibliophiles, Grossman has become almost as well known as the writers whose words she transforms. In fact, Nobel laureate García Márquez has described her as “my voice in English.”
Grossman received great acclaim for her translation of the 400-year-old classic Don Quixote. This new translation is Grossman’s excursion into the classic literature of an earlier time, an effort to which she brings her many years of experience. The result has been widely lauded at the definitive English-language rendition. The esteemed Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes called her Quixote “truly masterly” while “Publishers Weekly” said it was “honest, robust and freshly revelatory.”
Click here to read more about Edith Grossman in Penn Arts & Sciences Magazine.