Place: Israel

Translation Tuesday: “Happy Now?” by Merav Zaks-Portal

February 23, 2021  |  in Translations  |  by Yaron Regev

I kick the skies with my voice. What do you care? A drop of rain, that’s all I’m asking for. But they just don’t care.

A woman’s impious plea for rain yields calamity in Merav Zaks-Portal’s short story “Happy Now?”, our pick for this week’s Translation Tuesday. Drawing upon the Talmudic story of Ḥoni HaMe’aggel’s rain prayer, our protagonist ensconces herself within her own circle of protest in hopes of similarly ending a drought. Our protagonist’s lofty but aggrieved voice accentuates the story’s humour, though it also provides an ironic moral lesson, cleverly toying with the cliché when it rains, it pours. We’re also treated to a more concrete lesson: never leave your stove unattended.  

They sent this message to Ḥoni HaMe’aggel: Pray, and rain will fall. He prayed, but no rain fell. He drew a circle in the dust and stood inside it
(Taanit 23a, The William Davidson Talmud)

I stir in the electrified air all around me. Prickles in my hands hint at coming rain. I lubricate my raspy throat with my tongue and wait. Wailing birds zigzag in the sky, carving across the canopy of blue hung out to dry by some careless housewife, pockmarked with cloud droppings. Electricity tingles in my hands, legs, bristling the blonde spikes of hair I’d pampered myself with. The news cricket claims the lack of rain is here to stay. Unless something drastic happens, he stresses in his tele-prompter voice, this will be declared a drought year. I entwine, then, abandon an onion to the fire, and go out to the garden to ring-a-ring o’ roses.

The earth is scorched, a cat pants in the shade, its tongue lolling. Wild pansies despairingly clasp each other in a flowerpot. With my kitchen knife, I lovingly draw a generous circle. I will remain inside, like Honi the Circle-Maker. Pleading, I will remain here until the heavens yield, cleave, bring a downpour on our heads. Honi, I beg, throw us a hint, grant me some wisdom. What am I, a long-haired, narrow-minded woman, to do? But Honi is silent, not a word, and I am still encircled, and the sun climbs the ladder of hours in sticky, yolky-yellow, stopping for nothing. And why would the sun, that son of a bitch, even care about some Honi-woman stranded in a circle, begging for rain, just a little, even a crumb, so she can go inside and weave back the day that was suddenly undone by the resolute-toned radio transistor. “Here is the news.”
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Section Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2021

February 8, 2021  |  in News  |  by Bassam Sidiki, Caridad Svich, Eva Heisler, Garrett Phelps, Lee Yew Leong, and Sam Carter

Our section editors present their favorite works from our Winter 2021 issue!

Our Winter 2021 issue marks a decade of diving into the languages of the world (our archive now boasts 113 of them!) in all their incredible singularity and variegation. Spanning thirty-one countries, this milestone edition feels like a fitting way to honor a decade of hard work behind the scenes. After hearing from our blog editors last week, let’s pass the mic to the very editors who had a hand in putting together the issue itself.

“Is it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy?” Thomas Bernhard asks in our debut issue from January 2011. Ten years later, Brazilian author Adelice Souza’s fever-dream of a story (in Padma Viswanathan’s pitch-perfect translation) provides a direct enjoinder: “The play wasn’t a comedy, nor was it a tragedy . . . It was a drama very specifically for those two women.” Just as in Bernhard’s story, the point is not the play at all—we hardly know what the play is about, other than the fact that its two actresses play a lonely woman and her dog, and that tragedy ensues when one demands to switch roles with the other. In contrast to Bernhard, who focuses squarely on the theatre-goer, Souza makes it all about the two actresses whose eight years of traveling with the play to multiple cities have “put them through every type of relationship.” It’s not a story one imagines being plotted out; rather, the work feels like it has been ejected, like toothpaste from a tube, sentence by exhilarating sentence. In the “Brave New World Literature” Special Feature, we also come full circle but in a different way via the return of frequent contributor Jeremy Tiang, who debuted as a translator in our first issue. Combining pop-cultural references with theory, “The World Is Not Enough” is full of quotable gems, but nowhere is Tiang more on-point than when he muses, “Perhaps if the dominant anglophone culture actually acknowledged itself to be part of the world, rather than treating ‘world literature’ as a spice rack to save itself from total blandness, more than three percent of books published in the United States would be in translation?” Finally, anyone who is curious about the workings of a magazine of world literature other than our own will find plenty of food for thought in John Freeman’s riveting piece on how he remade Granta into a global publication.

—Lee Yew Leong, Fiction Editor and ”Brave New World Literature“ Special Feature Editor

Max Rojas is a constant enthusiasm of mine and so I was thrilled to showcase a pretty sizable excerpt from Zane Koss and Gerónimo Sarmiento Cruz’s translation—the very first in English—in all its shining, breathless glory. Even though it’s a mere sliver of a doorstop-sized poem, it’s an excellent sample of Rojas’ talent and an overdue introduction for the Anglosphere. The language of Bodies is both baroque and ephemeral, rugged and philosophical, and its tone swings between that of a theologico-political treatise and a declaration of war. It’s some of this last century’s densest and most sophisticated Spanish-language verse, and some of the most woefully unknown.

—Garrett Phelps, Poetry Editor READ MORE…

We’re Reached Our Milestone Tenth Anniversary! 🎉

January 28, 2021  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

And we’re celebrating with a new issue (and some very big names in world literature)!

Dear reader,

I’m thrilled to present “Brave New World Literature,” our special milestone edition marking ten full years of curating the very best in contemporary letters. Highlights include an exclusive last interview with James Salter conducted before he died in 2015, new translations of Alfred Döblin and Alain Mabanckou, as well as a trio of essays by intellectual heavyweight Eliot Weinberger, former Granta editor John Freeman, and frequent contributor Jeremy Tiang—all suggesting a “culturally multidirectional” way forward for the next decade.

In addition to featuring a “writer’s writer” (the aforementioned James Salter), we’re proud to debut in English a “true poet’s poet” (the Mexican Max Rojas) in a roster that also includes poet superstars Najwan Darwish and Carlos de Assumpção. Elsewhere, fellow Brazilian writer Adelice Souza and Hungarian author Anna Mécs give us a pair of stunning fictions in which women perform (or postpone) their deaths, while our first nonfiction lineup under new Nonfiction Editor Bassam Sidiki sees a fascinating pseudo-scientific colonial document answered with a modern memoir of Egyptian politics. In light of the recent protests by Navalny supporters all across Russia, Artur Solomonov’s drama—also about enacting death, while portraying the machinery of state propaganda—could not be more timely: The play was in fact considered so politically inflammatory that it has only ever been staged underground. All of this is illustrated by talented guest artist the Australia-based Naomi Segal. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Air Plants” by Inbar Livnat

February 25, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Shoshana Akabas

I know that time passes, and time is what gives life to my epiphytes.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, a lonely pensioner opines about life and horticulture in this moving slice-of-life narrative by Inbar Livnat. To carry our narrator’s nuanced voice into English, translator Shoshana Akabas adroitly deploys several techniques to capture the source language’s uniqueness. Writes Akabas: “Livnat’s writing is very cerebral and contains long sentences, which are much easier to understand in the original Hebrew; articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns are often attached to other words in Hebrew, which allows for concision that is not possible in English. I often had to split sentences or drastically alter punctuation to attempt to give an English reader the same experience or level of comprehension that a Hebrew reader might enjoy. […] On a more macro level, Livnat’s clipped, digressive prose is very characteristic of the modern Israeli style (be it literature, film, or visual art). In the United States, however, that disjointedness is considered much more experimental.”

The old woman in the greenhouse is me. I’m the one planting the Zamioculcas in the yard, growing air plants. I know that time passes, and time is what gives life to my epiphytes. I’m talking about plants that grow only in air that is steeped in humidity. I’m that way too: I grow old in humid air. I don’t feel it moment to moment, but if you put a camera there and photograph me every week, you’d see a difference, just like with the air plants. Like me, they scare some people, all bent, looking a bit like thorns. To me, they resemble fungus, something that isn’t supposed to grow, something that, if no one mentioned it, you’d just forget in some corner. My yard is full of air plants. There are already nurseries contacting me, asking if they can please buy some of the rare ones. Of course I could water and spray them, and, generally, dedication is a vehicle for good, but on principle, I do not nurture them. Just watch them. Just watch them survive. And they do survive. I’m by myself most hours of the day, anyway—I don’t need pity from anyone, thank you very much, that’s what I do best. I’m a retired archeologist and my pension is horrible, so my kids help a little. The state definitely doesn’t. The state’s not good for much, so perhaps I made a mistake giving it all my best years, if that’s what they were. Since Chaim’s gone, I’m alone every day. Oh, I already said that? Alright, so maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come interview me. Can’t you send the photographer out for a walk now, and you and I can drink some tea in peace and quiet? All this fuss, and for what? I’ll make some tea for us and you can tell me a little about your studies and what a journalist does these days. I hope I’m not talking too much. Ah, no? Good. Well, if the photographer won’t go for a walk, tell him to take pictures of my plants. There are plenty of them. Me? Why on earth would you want to photograph an old lady like me? What do you mean, I’m just being modest? I think you’d be good to sit here on the sofa. It’s not that bad, right? It’s not that bad. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: January 2020

January 13, 2020  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Eva Wissting, Leah Scott, and Samuel Kahler

A darkly comical Cuban fiction, the collected texts of an impassioned French thinker, and an Israeli story of radical empathy.

We’re starting up 2020 with what we do best: bringing you a selection of brilliant titles that have most recently landed in world literature. Our picks this month span the radical, the intimate, and the dark, with the stunning cross-section of twentieth-century Cuban society, a collection of essays by the notorious Jean Genet, and an Israeli tale of survival and struggle told in a great feat of imagination. Go ahead and take advantage of that new-year urgency to fulfill your resolution to read more, and start here.

black cathedral

The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala, translated from the Spanish by Anna Kushner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020

Review by Leah Scott, Social Media Manager

A dark mosaic of interwoven narratives, The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala lures the reader straight into the complicated dramas of Cienfuegos, a small Cuban town riddled with poverty and conflict. The novel features a broad cast of idiosyncratic characters, whose histories we come to understand not only through their own unique voices, but by the tales told by others; Cienfuego’s harrowing history emerges through decades of local gossip, placing the reader right at the center of the town’s most turbid rumors and confessions—stories that ultimately culminate in a vicious and bitter end.  READ MORE…

Navigating Identity through Translation: Jessica Cohen on Translating Ronit Matalon

November 25, 2019  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Josefina Massot

I see myself trying to navigate or mediate between the two parts of my identity through my translation work.

For the month of October, the Asymptote Book Club is doubly proud to present our October selection, Ronit Matalon’s And the Bride Closed the Door, as it not only won Israel’s prestigious Brenner Prize, but was also translated by Man Booker winner Jessica Cohen. In the following interview, the translator talks to Asymptote’s Josefina Massot about her complex relationships with the author, her love for translating dialogue, and her bicultural self. 

The Asymptote Book Club is our gift to readers in the US, the UK, and the EU. Bringing the most notable titles in translated literature for as little as USD15 per book, you can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page.

Josefina Massot (JM): Your first book-length translation happened to be Ronit Matalon’s Bliss, her second novel and second work to be published in English overall. What drew you to her so early on, before she hit the level of international recognition she enjoys today?

Jessica Cohen (JC): Bliss (which in Hebrew was titled Sarah, Sarah) was Matalon’s second novel, but she had previously published a YA novel, a collection of short stories, and numerous journalistic and opinion pieces, so she was quite well known in Israel in both literary and political circles. I had read her first novel, The One Facing Us (translated by Dalya Bilu) and found it fascinating. I was certainly excited and honored to be asked to translate her novel, although since I was in the very early stages of my career, I was not really in a position to pick and choose anyway.

JM: You were each more or less getting started back then, and were also, I take it, able to exchange thoughts on the translation. And the Bride Closed the Door found you both in a radically different place: at the top of your game but presumably unable to engage as much due to Matalon’s untimely death two years ago. How did these factors—your evolution as translator and novelist, your sudden inability to fully interact—affect the translation process? What, if anything, didn’t change?

JC: When I translated Bliss I did meet with Ronit to consult with her about the translation, but our contact was quite minimal. This was both because I was an absolute beginner and still unsure of what the translator-author relationship typically looked like, and because Ronit was busy with other projects and explained to me that she found it difficult to step back into this novel that was, from her perspective, something she had moved on from. She did offer to answer specific questions should they arise, and we corresponded a little after I had finished my first draft (this was before email was such a large part of our lives, and if I remember correctly we exchanged faxes), but I think that at the time I felt I should do my best to struggle through difficult parts of the text and not “bother” the writer too much. I have since learned that discussing the text with the author is actually one of the most rewarding—and important—aspects of my work, and I have been told by a number of authors that they worry when a translator has no questions at all. READ MORE…

Announcing Our October Book Club Selection: And the Bride Closed the Door by Ronit Matalon

November 7, 2019  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Josefina Massot

Redemption, Matalon appears to be saying, demands something like inclusive ambiguity.

Ronit Matalon is known for her unwavering aesthetic, keen social awareness, and profound insight into family. For the month of October, Asymptote Book Club is proud to present her latest novel, And the Bride Closed the Door. Awarded Israel’s prestigious Brenner Prize a day before she died of cancer, this humorous and tender work captures a chaotic politics in the intimate microcosm of a single family, combining Matalon’s tremendous literary talents with her passion for interrogating identity, both public and private.

An apology and very special thank you to our European subscribers, who’ve had to wait a bit longer than usual for the book to reach them (hence, too, this somewhat late announcement). Though it’s been famously said that “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays couriers from the swift completion of their rounds,” today’s postal service must fend with much more than the elements; there’s no accounting for logistic mishaps on a global scale! Luckily, thanks to New Vessel and Asymptote’s efforts, Europe-bound copies of the book were finally rescued from postal limbo. Our loyal subscribers will now all receive a lasting gift: a brilliant author and activist writing in her singular language, rescuing empathy from the tumult.

The Asymptote Book Club is bringing the foremost titles in translated fiction every month to readers in the US, the UK, and the EU. For as little as USD15 per book, you can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page.

And the Bride Closed the Door by Ronit Matalon, translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen, New Vessel Press, 2019

Young Margie locks herself up in her bedroom on her wedding day. Save for a brief but damning avowal—“Not getting married. Not getting married. Not getting married”—she falls silent for hours. Efforts to dissuade her prove useless: after pleading, pounding, and heatedly debating the merits of a locksmith, her relatives turn to a company said to quell pre-wedding jitters. The firm’s appointed expert can’t get the bride to open the door, but manages to tap on her third-floor window after an electrician from the Palestinian Authority chips in with his lift truck. Little comes of their gymnastics, however: Margie issues a handwritten “sorry” and retreats. The scant missive and a gender-tweaked excerpt from a classic Israeli poem are her only hints at communication. READ MORE…

The Summer 2019 Issue Is Here!

July 18, 2019  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Dive into new work from 30 countries!

Wake up where the clouds are far with Asymptote’s Summer 2019 edition—“Dreams and Reality” brings you stunning vistas from 30 countries, including new fiction from Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, an exclusive interview with Edith Grossman, translator of Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, and never-before-published translations of Nicole Brossard, recent winner of Canada’s Lifetime Griffin Trust Award for Poetry. In our Special Feature on Yiddish writing, published with the generous support from the Yiddish Book Center, you’ll find everything from Isaac Berliner’s dreams of ancient South America to Yermiyahu Ahron Taub’s modern-day America.

In Leonardo Sanhueza’s retelling of intimate life before, during, and after Chile’s Civil War, each poem an unforgettable portrait of a colonist, dreams are harbingers of death. In “A Rainy Tuesday,” Bijan Najdi’s nonlinear journey of grief, on the other hand,  dreams are bulwarks against the almost certain demise of missing loved ones. When the veil breaks, the real returns. Internationally acclaimed Korean poet Kim Hyesoon tackles the reality of violence head-on in her latest collection, reviewed by Matt Reeck. For artist Jorge Wellesley, the emptiness of slogans lies exposed in images of rotting, blurred, or blank billboards. In a candid essay, Fausto Alzati Fernández confesses to the rituals of drug addiction, some of which attempt “to grab hold of reality and strip it.”

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Haim Nachman Bialik 

July 9, 2019  |  in Translations  |  by Dahlia Ephrat

There is Love in the world, they say. / Love—what is it?

This week features the Hebrew language poetry of Haim Nachman Bialik, a poet and cultural leader who influenced twentieth century Hebrew and Yiddish poetry like few others. Bialik’s commitment to innovation in stylistic Hebrew comes across in these skillful translations, which carry emotion upon a poignant succession of nouns that cover a stirring breadth of emotion in relatively few words. Verdant religious language is foiled by a personal lack. Yearning, the language evokes a sense of constantly thwarted arrival met with evacuation. Yet, the poems brim with hope for the future, foregrounding the hope which gives meaning to the barren condition of the present. Bialik remains the national poet of Israel.

Drops a Sprig in Silence

Drops a sprig in silence
To the fence.
Like him,
I’m mute. Shorn of fruit,
Estranged from branch and tree.
Shorn of fruit, the flower
Memory forgotten,
The leaves do sway,
Sure victims for the gale to slay.
Then the nights do come.
The nightmare—
The gall—
I thrash about in the dark,
I knock my head against the wall.
And spring will come.
Is splendour
A foil
To me, a barren twig,
Which bringeth forth
No fruit, nor flower, nor nill.

Take Me Under Your Wings

Take me under your wings,
Be to me sister and mother.
Let your bosom shelter my head,
Nestle my banished prayers.

Then in twilight, the hour of mercy,
Bend down to me, my anguish I’ll tell thee:
There is Youth in the world, they say.
My youth—where is it?

And another secret I’ll tell:
My soul, it is all burnt out.
There is Love in the world, they say.
Love—what is it?

The stars have all deceived me.
There was a dream, it too has passed.
I have not a thing in the world now.
I have nothing, at last.

Take me under your wings,
Be to me sister and mother.
Let your bosom shelter my head,
Nestle my banished prayers.

Translated from the Hebrew by Dahlia Ephrat 

Haim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934), recognized today as the national poet of Israel, wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish. Born in the former Russian Empire, Bialik, who wrote passionately about the persecution of the Jewish people in Russia, moved to Germany and then to Tel Aviv. He had a relationship with Ira Jan, a painter and writer who followed him to Tel Aviv. After his untimely death in surgery, a massive funeral procession mourned down the street which now bears his name, showing his importance as an icon of an emergent Jewish literary movement and a significant cultural leader. During his productive career, Bialik wrote extensively, and his poems are well known to the Israeli public. On top of his poetry and essays, which have now been translated into more than thirty languages and set to music, Bialik translated a book of Talmudic legends called Sefer Ha’agada (The Book of Legends). 

Dahlia Ephrat lives in Tel Aviv, where she was born. She began writing poetry at a young age, and began work as a translator at eighteen. She has translated scores of English language poetry into Hebrew. She remains interested in Hebrew, and embarks on linguistic studies of Hebrew etymology and thought. 

*****

Read more translations on the Asymptote blog:

Thirteen Keys to a Doorless House in Toledo: On Tela de sevoya by Myriam Moscona

May 16, 2019  |  in Essays  |  by Sergio Sarano

The Ladino language has etched on her tongue the addresses of countless houses in the Jewish Quarters of Toledo and Burgos.

Myriam Moscona’s Tela de sevoya (Onioncloth) was published in English in 2017, translated from the Ladino by Antena (Jen Hofer with John Pluecker). In today’s essay, Asymptote’s Sergio Sarano, himself a Ladino speaker, uses Moscona’s book as a starting point to explore the language and its history, shaped by the complex migrations of the Jewish diaspora. Sergio also discusses Ladino’s current status as an endangered language and highlights the important role that Moscona, as one of just a few writers who continue to publish in Ladino, has to play in keeping the language alive.

“I come upon a city
I remember
that there lived
my two mothers
and I wet my feet
in the rivers
that from these and other waters
arrive to this place”

—Myriam Moscona

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My 2018: Jonathan Egid

December 20, 2018  |  in Essays  |  by Jonathan Egid

I relished the opportunity to read texts with somewhat more invigorating prose than typically displayed in analytic philosophy journals.

Israeli writer Amos Oz and Cretan memoirist George Psychoundakis are two of the highlights of Assistant Blog Editor Jonathan Egid’s 2018 reading list. Addressing topics ranging from Israeli politics and the death of Jesus (Oz) to Renaissance poetry and home-brewed alcohol (Psychoundakis), the two writers nevertheless share a sense of humour and a talent for producing powerful and thought-provoking texts.

Having spent most of the first half of the year reading texts about, rather than in translation, as part of my research for a thesis on the philosophy of cultural and conceptual difference, I relished the opportunity to read texts with somewhat more invigorating prose than typically displayed in analytic philosophy journals, and my summer reading list was full of translated fiction.

High on this list was the Israeli writer Amos Oz’s first new novel in over a decade, Judas. An old-fashioned novel of ideas in the tradition of Tolstoy and Thomas Mann, Judas begins with an end; the protagonist Shmuel Ash is left suddenly by his girlfriend, and then learns of his father’s bankruptcy, which forces him to abandon his promising studies. He takes up work caring for an elderly cripple in an ancient house on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and the narrative follows Shmuel as he is drawn into the troubled history of this crumbling house and its mysterious and enticing inhabitants.

The narrative is interspersed with Shmuel’s reflections on his now-abandoned thesis, giving the story—which takes place almost entirely in the old house and the neighbouring streets, cafes, and alleyways—a dazzling historical and intellectual scope, as Oz spans continents and centuries from medieval Al-Andalus to Galician shtetls and kibbutzim on the Sharon plain, tracing the fraught history of Jesus and the Jews. The focus of these reflections is neither Jesus nor the Jews, but on the eponymous Judas, or rather on the figure of Judas, the figure of a most reviled and hated traitor.

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Documenting Translators: The Political Backstage of Translation

October 29, 2018  |  in Essays  |  by Denise Kripper

These films make protagonists out of the ultimate supporting actors in history, the translators.

Translators are often represented as mediators, actors in the communication of a text who are subordinate to the author. However, translators have often played crucial roles in politically pivotal moments. Denise Kripper tells us more about these translators, and the films in which their stories feature.

Coming soon this year is Les Traducteurs, directed by Regis Roinsard, a high-profile French thriller inspired by the true story behind the translation of Dan Brown’s novel Inferno. During this process, several international translators were shut away in a bunker in an effort to avoid piracy and illegal editions while aiming to launch the book simultaneously in different languages, all over the world. In real life, the book ended up generating $250 million, but in the action-packed film, “when the first ten pages of the top-secret manuscript appear online, the dream job becomes a nightmare – the thief is one of them and the publisher is ready to do whatever it takes to unmask him – or her” (IMDb).

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Blog Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2018

July 23, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News  |  by Chloe Lim, Ilker Hepkaner, and Sarah Booker

Our blog editors pick their favorite pieces from the Summer 2018 issue!

Here at the blog, we continue to be amazed by the breadth of the material featured every quarter at Asymptote. From our multilingual special feature to the urgent work of Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh, who wanted to “recollect. . . Syria through the stories of the people,” and to “live its diversity,” our Summer 2018 issue again proves that incredibly groundbreaking material is being produced far from the centers of Anglo-American literary dominance. Gathering new work from thirty-one countries, this bountiful issue, also our milestone thirtieth, unfolds under the sign of the traveler “looking for [himself] in places [he doesn’t] recognize” (Antonin Artaud). Highlights include pioneer of modern Chinese poetry Duo Duo, Anita Raja on Christa Wolf, and rising Argentinian star Pablo Ottonello in a new translation by the great Jennifer Croft. Today, the blog editors share our favorite pieces from the new issue, highlighting the diversity of cultures, languages, and literary style represented. Happy reading! 

Perhaps because of my fascination with multilingual writing and the languages of mixed cultures, I was immediately drawn to the multilingual writing special feature in this issue of the journal. Shamma Al Bastaki’s “from House to House | بيت لبيت” in particular dazzles with its polyphonic quality.

Bastaki’s three poems (“House to House,” “Clay II,” and “Barjeel”) refuse singularity, whether in terms of form, language, or register. Different voices call out from the text of each poem and are brilliantly rendered alongside an audio clip of sounds from interviews conducted by Bastaki herself. (I would recommend listening to the clips before or during your reading of the piece!) The poems are inspired by and based on the oral narratives of the peoples of the Dubai Creek, but speak also to a modern global phenomenon of language mixing and syntax shifting that many around the world will relate to. I enjoyed what Bastaki terms “severe enjambments”—defamiliarizing what is otherwise standard English syntax, creating an instructive experience for native speakers.

Form and language aside, “from House to House” in particular reminded me of the communal nature of colloquial language—the speech that we are most familiar with in our daily lives, and that which we use with our families. To present them in poetry is an attempt to memorialize what is so near and dear to us. The context of Eid is especially well suited to this project, and to the issue’s timing as a whole, in celebration of Eid just past in June. “Barjeel” on the other hand, reminds me of poetry looking back on childhood (Thomas Hood’s “I Remember, I Remember” comes to mind) and on the things that seemed so big then. The Emirati influences and polyphony of “Barjeel” take that idea and renew it—demonstrating how reflection often is not a solipsistic affair, but very often one that takes place with family, parents telling children of their childhood pasts.

—Chloe Lim

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Announcing the Summer 2018 Issue of Asymptote

July 19, 2018  |  in News  |  by Asymptote

Introducing our thirtieth issue, which gathers never-before-published work from 31 countries!

We interrupt our regular programming to announce the launch of Asymptote’s Summer 2018 issue!

Step into our bountiful Summer edition to “look for [yourself] in places [you] don’t recognize” (Antonin Artaud). Hailing from thirty-one countries and speaking twenty-nine languages, this season’s rich pickings blend the familiar with the foreign: Sarah Manguso and Jennifer Croft (co-winner, with Olga Tokarczuk, of this year’s Man Booker International Prize) join us for our thirtieth issue alongside Anita Raja, Duo Duo, and Intizar Husain, and our first work from the Igbo in the return of our Multilingual Writing Feature.

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