David Georgi
Who: David Georgi
Where: New York, NY, USA
What: David worked on a new English translation of the poems of medieval French poet François Villon.
The book is François Villon, Poems, published by Northwestern University Press, 2013.
David studied medieval literature and modern poetry at Yale University and New York University (Ph.D., Comparative Literature).
He works at Vanity Fair magazine and lives in New York City. Excerpts from his Villon translation have appeared in Tin House, The Literary Review, and Inventory.
In His Words:
What do you consider most valuable about your time at La Muse?
The work I did at La Muse — and the experience of devoting twenty days in a row to work exclusively on this project, in a concentrated, serious way — was a crucial pivoting point: I arrived with a desultory handful of pages and left with something that was on its way to becoming a book.
Tell us, in a sentence or two, about the project you were focused on while at La Muse.
Villon’s irreverent, mischievous poems have been translated into English before, but translations have had a hard time catching the humor that crackles and riots through the work. Villon was an outsider — scholar, thief, murderer (it was an accident!) and chronic jailbird — and his poems have a sharp satirical edge. I wanted to write an English translation that catches the wordplay, puns, wisecracks, and gallows humor that make Villon’s observations playful and trenchant at the same time.
What advice would you give future residents?
You’re in a special place — that beautiful valley, but also in terms of your work — so don’t forget to be more open than usual to instinct, whim, and various other species of magic.
Finally, your three French (or English) words to describe La Muse?
Châtaigniers, buis, chênes-verts.