Off-Road Adventures: Reading Statistics in Alexander von Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain

Abstract This article focuses on the visual qualities of Alexander von Humboldt’s statistical tables in his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (1808–1811, 2nd ed. 1825–1827) with special attention to how such composites of numbers, alphabetical script, and semiotic elements relate to narrative writing. I argue that Humboldt’s tables/tableaus open up spaces inside his narrative that fragment the reading process, inviting new conversations, connections, and ideas. Resumen Este articulo entretiene con los atributos visuales de las abundantes tablas estadísticas incluyendo en el Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne (1808–1811, 2nd ed. 1825–1827) de Alexander de Humboldt, en especial con las relaciones entre las combinaciones de números, escritura y elementos semióticos (que Humboldt llama “tableaux”) y la propia narrativa. Obran estas relaciones una fragmentación del proceso de leer, abriendo dimensiones y espacios en que se podrían manifestar nuevas conexiones, conversaciones e ideas innovadoras.   Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit den bildhaften Eigenschaften der vielen statistischen Tabellen in Alexander von Humboldts Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne (1808–1811, 2nd ed. 1820–1827), wobei meine besondere Aufmerksamkeit den Verhältnissen gilt, die diese aus Zahlen, alphabetischer Schrift und semiotischen Elementen zusammengesetzten Komposita (die Humboldt als Tableaux bezeichnet) mit der beschreibenden Erzählung selbst eingehen: In diesen Verhältnissen offenbaren sich nämlich Dimensionen oder Räumlichkeiten, die durch die visuelle Zerteilung des Textes stets weitere, neue Verbindungen, Gespräche und Ideen zu produzieren suche

The Worlds of Langston Hughes

Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Christian Gauss Award. The poet Langston Hughes was a tireless world traveler and a prolific writer, translator, and editor. Translations of his own writings traveled even more widely than he did, earning him adulation throughout Europe, Asia, and especially the Americas. This study contends that, for writers who are part of the African diaspora, translation is more than just a literary practice: it is a fact of life and a way of thinking. “Kutzinski has given us one of the very best analyses and evaluations of Hughes's seminal texts. We observe him at work translating, but we also see his works being translated. Kutzinski, a preeminent polylingual comparativist who knows the literatures of the African diaspora as well as anyone, brings a keen understanding of both race and ethnicity to her overarching discussion. She has written an exemplary work, which will be widely influential."—John Lowe, Louisiana State Universit

The Worlds of Langston Hughes

Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Christian Gauss Award. The poet Langston Hughes was a tireless world traveler and a prolific writer, translator, and editor. Translations of his own writings traveled even more widely than he did, earning him adulation throughout Europe, Asia, and especially the Americas. This study contends that, for writers who are part of the African diaspora, translation is more than just a literary practice: it is a fact of life and a way of thinking. “Kutzinski has given us one of the very best analyses and evaluations of Hughes's seminal texts. We observe him at work translating, but we also see his works being translated. Kutzinski, a preeminent polylingual comparativist who knows the literatures of the African diaspora as well as anyone, brings a keen understanding of both race and ethnicity to her overarching discussion. She has written an exemplary work, which will be widely influential."—John Lowe, Louisiana State Universit

The Worlds of Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas

The poet Langston Hughes was a tireless world traveler and a prolific translator, editor, and marketer. Translations of his own writings traveled even more widely than he did, earning him adulation throughout Europe, Asia, and especially the Americas. In The Worlds of Langston Hughes, Vera Kutzinski contends that, for writers who are part of the African diaspora, translation is more than just a literary practice: it is a fact of life and a way of thinking. Focusing on Hughes’s autobiographies, translations of his poetry, his own translations, and the political lyrics that brought him to the attention of the infamous McCarthy Committee, she shows that translating and being translated—and often mistranslated—are as vital to Hughes’s own poetics as they are to understanding the historical network of cultural relations known as literary modernism. As Kutzinski maps the trajectory of Hughes’s writings across Europe and the Americas, we see the remarkable extent to which the translations of his poetry were in conversation with the work of other modernist writers. Kutzinski spotlights cities whose role as meeting places for modernists from all over the world has yet to be fully explored: Madrid, Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and of course Harlem. The result is a fresh look at Hughes, not as a solitary author who wrote in a single language, but as an international figure at the heart of a global intellectual and artistic formation