Edith Grossman
Stephen Haff’s project, Still Waters in a Storm, is aptly named–something I didn’t realize until I visited a few weeks ago. Just as the old saying predicts, these still waters run very deep. They nourish children often overlooked or pigeon-holed by our educational institutions because they are from poor or working-class immigrant families. In a soft-spoken, gentle, yet disciplined atmosphere, their natural intelligence and insight are allowed to flourish. And so they read literary masterworks in their original form–not pared down or edited for younger readers–analyze and discuss them together, and write about them. I found it startling: a wonderful, optimistic antidote to the threatening clouds that seem to be hovering everywhere. You can find the remedy for despair in Bushwick, where, in a bright, inviting storefront, very young students turn their collective backs to the storm and allow the still waters of literature to wash over them. On the day I visited, the students were reading Don Quixote in Spanish and in my English translation and beginning their own collective translation. I was very touched by that. The great novel has never been in better hands.