An Absence of Biography?

The almost complete lack of evidence regarding Wright’s personal life in the Wright mss. reflects her conscious decision to erase herself as a woman in favor of promoting herself as a translator. John Calder, who first published Wright’s translation of Exercices de style in 1958, commented that “she tended to compartmentalize her life, knowing many people who did not know each other or of other interests of hers. She was rarely outgoing about her activities and interests that she did not in some way share with me." Far from being an act of modesty, however, her refusal to divulge personal information or acknowledge that she had a life outside of her profession is more likely an attempt to repress anything that took away from the act of translation and her subsequent image as a translator.

Her studies in Paris with Alfred Cortot, a celebrated pianist whose heavily annotated editions of Chopin and Debussy have remained standards of piano performance studies 70 years after their publication, led her to pursue French literature as well as translation, an art form she considered comparable to musical accompaniment. However, the effects of this experience – a fascination with French, the creation of a process as thorough and meticulous as Cortot’s commentary on Chopin’s works – illustrate that translation remains at the core of her being.