Bone Into Stone

The Cahiers Series is delighted to publish a newly commissioned work by renowned bilingual Jhumpa Lahiri who for three years has been collaborating with her friend the classicist Yelena Baraz on a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses into English. From among the elements of transformation that have spoken to her directly and intimately she has chosen to focus here on stones: stones that turn into human beings; and, later, human beings - silenced, stilled, petrified - who will turn into stone. The connotations of stone - of rock, of pebble - pose questions of origin and destiny, immobility and unsettledness, living and dying. Lahiri's text on translation-as-metamorphosis and the protean self resonates alongside the dynamic and colourful paintings of celebrated artist Jamie Nares. These extend the exploration of metamorphosis by questioning, beautifully, the relation of the permanent to the ephemeral, the necessary to the aleatory, the completed art work to the human gesture that created it.