Ilán Stavans
Stavans is a Mexican-American essayist, lexicographer, cultural commentator, translator, short-story author, TV personality, and teacher known for his insights into American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures. His work is wide-ranging, and includes both scholarly monographs such as The Hispanic Condition(1995) and comic strips in the case of Latino USA: A Cartoon History(with Lalo Alcaraz, (2000). Stavans is editor of several anthologies including The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998). A selection of his work appeared in 2000 under the title The Essential Ilan Stavans. In 2004, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pablo Neruda’s birth, Stavans edited the 1,000 page-long, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. The same year he edited the three-volume set of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories for the Library of America.
Stavans on civil discourse, from “Civility and Latinos”:
There is no equivalent for the noun civility in Spanish. A number of approximations are available: urbanidad, buena crianza, decoro, afabilidad, atención, and, in the proper context, educación, as in Esa persona tiene buena educación. None of these words — in English, they can be translated as urbanity, well bred, decorum, affability, attention and education — have the connotation of civility, which Merriam-Webster defines as “a polite act or expression.”
By mentioning the fact that Spanish has no word for civility I’m not implying, of course, that Hispanics (a term I use to refer to people anywhere in the Hispanic world, from the Iberian Peninsula to Latin America and the Caribbean Basin, and the United States) aren’t civil. It does imply that the Hispanic understanding of civility is somewhat different. And therein lays the core of my argument.
