Posts featuring Félix Francisco Casanova

Translation Tuesday: “Midnight Falls Like a Bird” by Félix Francisco Casanova

wounded with sleeplessness...

This Translation Tuesday, a poem from the Canary Island poet Félix Francisco Casanova charts a journey from exhaustion to the brink of a balmy doziness. A page is turned, and the process begins. All the forces of wakefulness are surmounted by the dreamy, inexorable course of a perfect poem read on the cusp of dawn.

Midnight falls like a bird

wounded with sleeplessness,
tediously you turn the page
and the poem wends its course
like a river without end,
it dilates and narrows the eyes
enrages and pacifies you
while the wood’s burning wanes
drowsiness arrives with the dawn.

translated from the Spanish by Adelaida Vida

Félix Francisco Casanova was born in Santa Cruz de la Palma, in the Canary Islands, in 1956, and passed away in 1976 at the age of nineteen. In 1973, at the age of seventeen, he won the Canary Islands’ main poetry prize, Julio Tovar, with his book El conservatorio. In 1974 he won the Pérez Armas novel with Demipage’s reissued work, El don de Vorace. A month before his death, he won a contest sponsored by the newspaper La Tarde for his poetry collection, A suitcase full of leaves. The translated poem, “Midnight Falls Like a Bird,” is from Félix Francisco Casanova’s book, Cuarenta contra el agua, compiled by Francisco Javier Irazoki, and published by Demipage.

Adelaida Vida is a writer, translator, and student in San Francisco, California. She first read Casanova’s work when she was living in the Canary Islands.

***

Read more from Translation Tuesdays on the Asymptote blog:

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Your one-stop spot for all you want to know about world literature

This week we bring you news from Spain, Slovakia, and Brazil. We will begin our journey with Editor-at-Large Carmen Morawski who captures the excitement leading up to the Madrid Book Fair. We will land next in Slovakia where Editor-at-Large Julia Sherwood updates us about the buzz surrounding the country’s most prestigious literary prize, Anasoft Litera. We will finish our journey across the world in Brazil to read Maíra Mendes Galvão’s report of writers’ protests against the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. 

Carmen Morawski, Editor-at-Large from Spain, reports:

In its seventy-sixth year, the Madrid Book Fair (Feria del Libro de Madrid) has yet again marked the transition from spring to summer for Spanish book lovers. Taking place in the Buen Retiro Park in Madrid from May 26 to June 11, this year’s fair will open with a lecture by Eduardo Lourenco, the Portuguese essayist and philosopher, in the Pabellón Bankia de Actividades Culturales.

Although a detailed schedule for this year’s fair isn’t available yet, a glance through last year’s schedule should give Asymptote readers a flavor for the lectures, readings, and other events typical to the fair. Whether on the look out for children’s literature, YA or adult fiction, non-fiction reportage, essay collections, philosophy, specialty and minority literatures, visitors to the fair can browse a wide array of contemporary offerings from the Spanish publishing scene, take advantage of special discounts, and even meet a favorite author at one of the many book signing sessions. If you want to learn more about the  history of the fair and are interested in sampling previous years’ fairs, you may enjoy this brief video of the 2014 fair.

Asymptote readers interested in more historical literary fare might prefer to visit the Spanish National Library’s (Biblioteca Nacional de España) special exhibition, Scripta: Tesoros manuscritos de la Universidad de Salamanca. Intended to commemorate the 800-year anniversary of Alfonso IX’s order to create ‘Schools in Salamanca,’ that in turn led to the founding of the first universities in Europe, the exhibition showcases 23 pieces spanning the history of the manuscript in Europe, from medieval Visigoth codexes belonging from the eleventh and twelfth centuries through the sixteenth century. The exhibition is on loan from the University of Salamanca and is divided into four main sections. It includes a section devoted to Humanism and the Vulgate languages, thereby acknowledging the prominent role of romance languages derived from Latin as vehicles for literature and scientific works. The exhibition runs from May 4 to June 4.

READ MORE…