Summary

The story “Forbearance” follows a woman named Amelia, who works as a literary translator. She is American and temporarily residing in Tuscany as she works to translate a collection of poems. Her deadline is six weeks away, and she is stuck on the translation of a 200-year-old poem called ‘Impossibility’ that is written “in an obscure Botho-Ugaric dialect” (110). The man who wrote the poem was named Imyar Sorovinct. He worked as a tailor, but his poems all had an aristocratic, warrior-like tone. Amelia does not like his poems. Amelia is temporarily living in a villa she has rented. Her teenage son, Jack, is staying with her. Jack recently began dating a local teenager named Gwyneth. Amelia takes a break from working and drives along the countryside, thinking somewhat bitterly about poetry—and art in general—as being potentially meaningless and futile. She...