Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest in literary news from Vietnam, Bulgaria, and Taiwan!

As Venice makes its cinema showcase and the MET spreads its red carpets for the lavishly dressed, literature also serves up September as a memorable month with plenty of international displays and showcases of both known favorites and new releases. This week, a vital Vietnamese poet is commemorated in film, a varied arts festival takes place on Bulgarian shores, and an eminent Taiwanese author makes his English-language debut. Read on to find out more!

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Vietnamese Diaspora

Each year, on September 16, the village of Tiên Điền, in the province of Hà Tĩnh, commemorates the death anniversary of Nguyễn Du (1765-1820), its venerated native son and author of The Tale of Kiu—a 3,254-line epic poem unequivocally embraced as the Vietnamese soul. This year, to mark the 201st year of his passing, the three-hour biopic Đi Thi Hào Nguyn Du (The Great Poet Nguyn Du) will make its premiere at the XXII National Film Festival in Hue, Central Vietnam. The film’s original September release—meant to coincide with Nguyễn Du’s death anniversary—has now been rescheduled to November 2021, due to safety concerns related to Vietnam’s recent surge of COVID cases.

The Tale of Kiu, created during a time of warring loyalties and written in the Nôm (Southern) script with Chinese characters modified to reflect Vietnamese spoken vernacular, has been endlessly adapted into ci lương (“reformed” Southern Vietnamese folk opera), chèo (Northern Vietnamese musical theatre), Western-styled opera, and films. Since the idea of trinh 貞 (chastity/integrity/ faithfulness) in Nguyễn Du’s oeuvre represents both a conceptual and linguistic challenge, its complexity has inspired at least six English translations in recent decades. Huỳnh Sanh Thông’s Nguyn Du, The Tale of Kieu–A Bilingual Edition (Yale University Press, 1983), while still considered the gold standard, employs unrhymed iambic pentameter that often lapses into wooden syntax. Vladislav Zhukov’s The Kim Vân Kiu of Nguyn Du (Cornell University Press, 2013), in grafting iambic pentameter to lc bát (six-eight syllable Vietnamese rhyme scheme), results in obtuse renderings reminiscent of Nabokov’s eccentric translation of Eugene Onegin. Most recently, Timothy Allen’s The Song of Kieu: A New Lament (Penguin, 2019), while ebullient with vivid syntax, contains numerous errors and self-indulgent interpretations.

Nguyễn Du’s mistrust of chastity goes hand in hand with his concept of exile; his heroine wanders far-flung places and learns to survive by endless transformations—also a recurring theme in Kiu Chinh: Ngh Sĩ Lưu Vong (Kiu Chinh: Artist in Exile) (Văn Học Press, 2021). Penned by veteran Vietnamese American actress Kiều Chinh, the memoir echoes Nguyễn Du’s art of story-telling “to beguile an hour or two of your long night.”[i] The Joy Luck Club actress—whose dramatic flight to freedom is recounted in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer—will embark on a September-November book tour to Vietnamese diasporic communities in the U.S., sharing chapters from her own life that reflect the larger history of Vietnam.

[i]Huỳnh Sanh Thông’s English translation, The Tale of Kiều, line 3254, p. 167.

Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Bulgaria

September is in full swing and with it, the promise of a returning literary scene ready to surprise the Bulgarian audience, both at home and abroad. Before the leaves change colors, however, the local cultural events took a short trip to the seaside town of Sozopol, where the thirty-seventh edition of the Apollonia Arts Festival greeted avid readers and lovers of the abstract from all over the country.

The visitors enjoyed a vast array of (mostly) open-air events, including jazz and classical concerts, theatrical performances, contemporary exhibitions, and movie screenings. Among the highlights of the celebrations were several book readings, each followed by an interesting discussion.

Georgi Gospodinov, who has already received the acclaimed Apollo Toxophoros Award for exceptional contribution to the advancement of Bulgarian culture, introduced his latest work В пукнатините на канона (In Between the Cracks of the Canon) devoted to the invisible gaps in our collective knowledge about the past—or, as the author himself has put it: “We’ve been living in a sort of a monumental system for a long time and I think that, by now, we are all sick and tired of it. I belong to the generation that wants to see the cracks, the little, the unseen, the still alive.” (This sentiment is similarly apparent from his poetry, verses of which have previously been published by Asymptote.) It is also worth noting that his insightful interactions with the public came right after the end of a masterclass in creative writing, which he taught as part of the official program.

Another prominent author who participated was Kapka Kassabova. She discussed the Bulgarian translation of her latest travelogue, originally published in English (covered on the Asymptote blog). Among the crucial questions the writer grapples with are the Balkan identity, the search for the true “kaleidoscope of history”, and the generational trauma that, in her own words, stems from “the borders that obstruct life’s natural flow”.

Shortly after, the festival came to an end, but the stories it inspired are certain to leave a lasting impression—and perhaps may even help those sad to see summer leave embrace the coming autumn. 

Darren Huang, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Taiwan

In September, the first English translation of Faraway, a novel by acclaimed Taiwanese writer Lo Yi-chin, was released by Columbia University Press. The work was translated by novelist, translator, and playwright Jeremy Tiang, whose first published translation appeared in the debuting 2011 issue of Asymptote. Tiang also recently wrote on the biases and provincialism rooted in translation and world literature for Asymptote’s January 2021 issue. The translation of Faraway is significant for introducing Western readers to Lo’s work, which, despite its influence on modern Chinese literature, has not been previously translated into English. The novel centers on a narrator, resembling Lo himself, who becomes stranded in China while struggling to bring his comatose father back home to Taiwan. He grapples with convoluted hospital regulations and unfamiliar relatives, while his wife is on the verge of giving birth to his second child. In the interim, the protagonist reflects on his conflicted relationship with his estranged father. The novel weaves a moving meditation on family relationships, fatherhood, and Chinese-Taiwanese politics.

In August, Taiwan, along with the rest of the world, mourned the loss of Chinese historian Yu Ying-shih, who was considered one of the foremost historians of Chinese thought. At the date of his passing, the historian had written a hundred and two books in both English and Chinese, including versions published in China, Taiwan, the US, and Hong Kong. One of his great accomplishments was a series of volumes entitled Chinese History and Culture, which traced Chinese history from the sixth century BC to the present day. His other books include a Chinese-language study of Zhu Xi, a Confucian thinker, and The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China. Yu was also extensively involved in supporting democracy movements in both Taiwan and Hong Kong. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen praised Yu as a “master of historical studies” and a guardian of democratic values.

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