Catherine E. Paul

«For its editors, AVA provides opportunities to present formally the “reverse miracle” that WBY saw: the published text is not finally separable from the multitudinous papers that represent its genesis. The 1925 book represents WBY’s final intentions even less than do many modern texts and is inexplicable without many details from stages of composition outside its pages» — declaran, en la introducción que firman con Margaret Mills Harper, que el texto publicado no se separa de los papeles que lo engendran, y que el libro de 1925 representa las intenciones últimas de Yeats aún menos que otros textos modernos.

«The challenge of this edition is to document its multiple sources, for AVA is both the culmination of WBY’s many years of occult study as well as the most collaborative of his many esoteric works» — y ponen ahí el reto que se fijan: documentar las fuentes múltiples de un libro que llaman a la vez culminación de años de estudio oculto y la más colaborativa de las obras esotéricas de Yeats.

«Crucially, A Vision is the product of two Yeatses: the poet and the young Englishwoman» — abren su tesis de autoría en una frase: el libro es producto de dos Yeats, el poeta y la joven inglesa que tomó su apellido al casarse en 1917.

«GY is responsible for much of the system and its exposition, although it is not possible to untangle the intertwined threads of authority for any of the material» — y la acotan en la misma respiración: George Yeats es responsable de gran parte del sistema y de su exposición, y a la vez los hilos de autoridad no se dejan desenredar. La disputa queda consignada sin arbitrarla.

«The creators of AVA knew that it was both finished and incomplete, like all books but to a considerably greater extent than most others. It announces the need for revision in its opening pages; its rhetoric throughout is characterized by hesitation as well as poses that claim certitude» — describen el libro de 1925 como terminado e incompleto a la vez, con una retórica hecha de vacilación y de poses de certeza.

«The book is a beautiful artifact but hardly an accurate text, and it has never been reset or corrected» — y lo juzgan sin suavizarlo: hermoso artefacto y texto poco exacto, nunca recompuesto ni corregido.

«The current edition presupposes integrity for the 1925 text rather than treating it as a quirky predecessor for the “improved” 1937 edition, as has often happened in the history of the two very different books entitled A Vision by W. B. Yeats» — declaran su decisión editorial de fondo: dar por íntegro el texto de 1925 en vez de tratarlo como precursor extravagante de la edición mejorada de 1937.

«We agree with the notion of “versioning” as defined by Donald Reiman. He writes that “it is both more useful and more efficient to provide critics and students with complete texts of two or more different stages of a literary work, each of which can be read as an integral whole, than to chop all but one version into small pieces and then mix and sprinkle these dismembered fragments at the bottoms of pages, or shuffle them at the back of the book as tables of ‘variants’ or ‘collations.’» — y dicen de dónde toman el criterio, nombrando a quien lo formuló: la noción de versioning de Donald Reiman, con su argumento citado entero.

«This volume differs significantly from others in the Collected Works series, which follow closely the principle of final and expressed authorial intentions. While this principle will determine the editorial choices made for AVB, AVA must be understood as a version rooted in the historical moment of 1925» — declaran en qué se aparta su tomo del resto de la serie: los demás siguen el principio de las intenciones autoriales últimas y este trata el texto como versión anclada en 1925.

«Our focus on the T. Werner Laurie printed text as copy-text, rather than attempting to posit authorial intention beyond its pages or synthesize an ideal text, also follows from instabilities in the concept of authorial intention. Although this idea has a distinguished history in the field of scholarly editing, it is less meaningful for A Vision than for many texts, if only because of the complex collaboration that was its genesis» — y razonan esa elección por una inestabilidad que declaran en el propio concepto de intención autorial, menos aplicable aquí por la colaboración que engendró el libro.

«For these reasons, we have made this volume a first-presentation edition, adhering closely to the text as printed by T. Werner Laurie in its limited edition» — y nombran el tipo de edición que hacen: una edición de primera presentación, ceñida al texto que imprimió T. Werner Laurie.

«Thus our text of AVA freezes the moment of its publication, with annotations suggesting some links between it and AVB» — resumen el efecto buscado: su texto congela el momento de la publicación y deja los vínculos con la versión de 1937 en las anotaciones.

«Capitalization and italicization of terms is also wildly variable in AVA. For the most part, we have retained the capitalization and italicization found in the copy-text, in order to retain the impression that AVA would have given its original readers» — declaran la variabilidad de mayúsculas y cursivas del original y por qué la conservan: para retener la impresión que el libro dio a sus primeros lectores.

«All students of A Vision will continue to rely heavily on the important edition CVA, with its extensive introduction and notes. George Mills Harper and Walter Kelly Hood, its editors, presented the text in facsimile, a fact that left the text uncorrected but gives readers the opportunity now to examine both this reset text» — sitúan su tomo frente a la edición facsimilar de George Mills Harper y Walter Kelly Hood sin desplazarla, y dicen qué añade la suya: un texto recompuesto junto al fotostato.

«This edition does not hope to supplant so much as complement CVA, and we have used Harper and Hood extensively, often borrowing without major change from their notes. However, our notes can take advantage of scholarly advances since the publication of CVA» — y lo dicen con el verbo exacto: no aspiran a suplantar sino a complementar, tomando de las notas de aquellos editores sin cambio mayor.

«The current edition of A Vision faces two large sets of challenges in a series invested in the authorial intentions of WBY. First is the difficulty of ascertaining his intentions in the last version of the text published in his lifetime. Second is the question of what to do with emendations made to that text by trusted collaborators after his death. When combined, these challenges make the ideal of a perfected text impossible» — abren la sección textual del tomo de 1937 declarando que los dos problemas juntos —las intenciones del autor y las enmiendas póstumas de sus colaboradores— vuelven imposible el ideal de un texto perfeccionado.

«Other parts, however, are completely lost: no galleys or proofs survive (typically the locus of many revisions), and even the carbon of the setting typescript for sections X–XVIII of Book IV is lost» — inventarían lo perdido sin rellenarlo: ni galeradas ni pruebas sobreviven, y falta hasta el carbón del mecanoscrito de imprenta de varias secciones del libro IV.

«For our edition, we have had to rely on the text as printed by Macmillan in 1937, but it is frequently impossible to ascertain where printers’ errors might have been introduced into the text—that is to say, where WBY’s intentions were not followed» — declaran su base y su límite: se apoyan en el texto que Macmillan imprimió en 1937 y no pueden saber dónde entraron erratas de imprenta.

«But to what degree are changes marked in those same copies in GY’s hand a reflection of WBY’s wishes, or of her profound understanding of the system of A Vision, which she helped create? Are we to accept GY as an author of equal standing?» — se plantean ellas mismas la pregunta que su propio trabajo abre y la dejan abierta: hasta qué punto las correcciones de mano de George Yeats reflejan los deseos del poeta, y si hay que aceptarla como autora de igual rango.

«Her marking of corrections in the same copies as WBY argues for her semiauthorial status. And as for Thomas Mark, does his “permission” to correct A Vision expire with WBY’s death, or could we take his corrections as well?» — y extienden la pregunta a Thomas Mark: si su permiso de corregir expira con la muerte del autor.

«We have charted a conservative course, keeping our emendations minimal, noting all in Appendix 1, Table 4» — declaran el rumbo que eligen ante esa incertidumbre: conservador, con enmiendas mínimas y todas registradas en un apéndice.

«These apparatuses allow readers both to reconstruct different published and imagined states of the text, and to consider our own editorial practice, and thereby to ruminate over the textual authority of Thomas Mark and GY while seeing what text WBY left behind» — y dicen para qué sirve ese aparato: para que el lector reconstruya los estados del texto y juzgue la práctica editorial de ellas mismas.

«CATHERINE E. PAUL is Associate Professor of English at Clemson University. She is the author of Poetry in the Museums of Modernism: Yeats, Pound, Moore, Stein and of numerous articles relating to modernist studies» — la nota «About the editors» del tomo de 2008, que es texto editorial de Scribner y no voz suya, la da como profesora asociada de inglés en Clemson University y autora de Poetry in the Museums of Modernism: Yeats, Pound, Moore, Stein.

«CATHERINE E. PAUL is a Professor of English at Clemson University. She is the author of Poetry in the Museums of Modernism: Yeats, Pound, Moore, Stein and co-editor of A Vision (1925), Vol. XIII of this series. She has also published articles about Ezra Pound and Italian fascism, Italian modernism, and modernist poetry» — y la del tomo de 2015 la da ya como profesora titular en la misma universidad, coeditora del tomo XIII y autora de artículos sobre Ezra Pound y el fascismo italiano, el modernismo italiano y la poesía modernista. La guarda anticosido se apagó aquí porque el paréntesis de cuatro dígitos que la dispara es el título A Vision (1925) y no una cita bibliográfica; el tramo se releyó entero en el crudo.

«VOLUME XIII A VISION (1925) ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper VOLUME XIV A VISION (1937) ed. Margaret Mills Harper and Catherine E. Paul» — la lista de la serie imprime el reparto de firmas de los dos tomos y lo invierte entre uno y otro: ella primero en el de 1925, Margaret Mills Harper primero en el de 1937. Guarda apagada por la misma razón: el paréntesis es el título y no un año de cita.

«Supplementary materials copyright © 2008 by Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper All rights reserved» — la página de derechos del tomo de 1925 pone el copyright de los materiales suplementarios a nombre de las dos, en 2008, separado del copyright de 1925 del propio Yeats.

«A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition : the Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Volume XIV / William Butler Yeats ; edited by Margaret Mills Harper and Catherine E. Paul. — Scribner hardcover edition» — y la ficha de la Library of Congress del tomo de 1937 la asienta como coeditora, con Margaret Mills Harper, del volumen XIV.

«Paul Catherine E. Paul. “Compiling A Packet for Ezra Pound,” Paideuma 38 (2011), 29–53» — la lista de abreviaturas del tomo de 1937 registra un artículo propio suyo, «Compiling A Packet for Ezra Pound», publicado en Paideuma en 2011, y le da sigla propia para citarlo en las notas: es la única obra suya que el corpus usa como fuente.

«MARGARET MILLS HARPER is the Glucksman Professor in Contemporary Writing in English at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She has co-edited Yeats’s “Vision” Papers (volumes 3 and 4) and A Vision (1925), Vol. XIII of this series, and is the author of Wisdom of Two: The Spiritual and Literary Collaboration of George and W. B. Yeats and The Aristocracy of Art in Joyce and Wolfe» — la misma nota editorial describe a la coeditora con quien comparte toda su voz en el corpus, Margaret Mills Harper, y sus obras propias; va aquí porque sin ella no se entiende el reparto de firmas de esta ficha. Guarda apagada por el paréntesis del título, y tramo releído entero.