Andrew Rickard
I used to have an online commonplace book at this domain, where I quoted and translated from various musty old tomes. I called it Graveyard Masonry, after a line from one of W. E. Henley’s essays in which he said that the translator is “too often a common graveyard mason that would play the sculptor.”
After ten years and more than 1200 entries I realized that the practice had changed the way I read, and not for the better. I often caught myself just trufflehounding through a work in search of something clever to post. Sometimes I would refrain from recording an author’s remarks on a contentious subject, lest I draw the ire of bien pensants.
In any case, the quality of my notes declined when they were made public. To eliminate this observer effect I have gone back to keeping my literary journal the old-fashioned way — in private, and on paper.
I still maintain a blog at The Obolus Press, albeit with a much narrower focus. If you’d like to stay in touch and be notified whenever I publish a new translation, please follow along there.