Dispatches

Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been?

January 29, 2015  |  in Dispatches  |  by Asymptote and Lee Yew Leong

With 6 hours remaining, we're closing in on the gap with less than $1,000 to go!

In true Asymptote fashion, the script for the following video was written in Berlin and edited and polished in Taipei, Singapore, New York, London, and many other cities. The talking heads were recorded in Ithaca and then edited together in Virginia, all the while being sent all over the globe in various stages of completion so other team members could chime in with their two cents—we could think of no better way to not only explain why we we do what we do, but also to showcase how.

Presenting world literature to a wide audience all over the world is our main goal, but our main strength is our team, which works tirelessly behind the scenes all over the world to showcase that otherwise obscured poet or this overlooked writer in the best possible light and style. Please help us — all 70 of us — keep Asymptote alive beyond January 2015 and for many more years to come by donating to our Indiegogo campaign here.

—Lee Yew Leong, on behalf of the entire Asymptote team

 

Meeting Our Readers in the Flesh! (Part II/II)

January 29, 2015  |  in Dispatches  |  by Rosie Clarke

With 12 hours remaining and just $1,480 to go, Rosie Clarke gives us a dispatch from our anniversary event in New York

The theme of our fourth anniversary event in New York was ‘Why Retranslate the Classics?,’ and three leading figures in contemporary translation—Edith Grossman, Susan Bernofsky, and Damion Searls—shared their perspectives with us, speaking eloquently and insightfully on their different approaches to retranslating some of the greatest works in European literature.

Columbia University’s Director of Literary Translation Susan Bernofsky started things off, addressing the topic of retranslation by saying that one should take it on when “you have something to say about a text that hasn’t been said before.” She then recalled the formative experience that inspired her to translate–reading Siddhartha at the age of 14—and how, when returning to Hesse’s novel as a translator, she had been transported back to her younger self, feeling the essence of the text as “a statement and meditation on promise and dreams, and a hope for the future.” Thus, retaining this sense of harmony and balance is crucial to a faithful translation. Later, after giving a beautiful reading of a favorite passage from her own translation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Bernofsky highlighted the way her translation slowed down the action in order to depict the “dramatic horribleness,” and to be as “gruesome as possible.” Despite this, she described her fondness for Kafka’s “bittersweet comedy,” and the importance of translation to capturing Gregor’s melodramatic nature.

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Meeting Our Readers in the Flesh! (Part I/II)

January 29, 2015  |  in Dispatches  |  by Ellen Jones

With 18 hours remaining and a mere $2,843 left to raise before we reach our goal, Ellen Jones gives us a dispatch from our recent anniversary event in London

Being an online journal, we at Asymptote rarely get to meet our readers, or even our colleagues. Living in a large city like London makes it slightly easier—I’m lucky to have four or five other contributors and editors currently based here, all of whom have wide networks within magazine publishing, translation and the wider literary world. But nevertheless, the opportunity to have so many Asymptote enthusiasts in one room is a rare privilege.

Our reasons for hosting anniversary events each year are the same reasons why we continue to publish the magazine for free every quarter: our aim is to spur the transmission of literature to and from all corners of the world; to counter a lack of diversity in literature, and promote a global conversation.

This year’s London event went a long way to help us achieve those aims. For the second year running, the Free Word Centre in Farringdon generously hosted our celebration, and we were pleased to see a full house despite the cold weather. Stefan Tobler, translator from Portuguese and German as well as Founder of And Other Stories—a young publishing house with a majority of translated titles—kindly agreed to chair the evening’s discussion. He was joined by Adam Thirlwell, twice one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists; Daniel Hahn, a writer, editor and translator (from Portuguese, Spanish and French) with over forty books to his name; and Deborah Smith, translator from Korean, who is setting up a non-profit publishing company to promote titles originally written in Asian and African languages.

The model for the evening’s discussion was that each speaker would “praise” a favourite translated book, reading from it and explaining their admiration. These books were not the speakers’ own, nor were they even from a language they could read. This, I believe, is Asymptote’s forte: encouraging people to think and talk about books they would probably never have come across before.

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A Panorama of European Literature

December 15, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Sean Bye

A dispatch from the 2014 New Literature from Europe festival

On December 5 and 6, eight European authors, one translator, one publisher, and three leading American authors and critics gathered at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York for the 11th annual New Literature from Europe festival. For those anxious about the appeal of foreign literature to American audiences, the packed houses at the ACFNY were hopefully a reassuring sight.

NLE this year featured writing from nine countries: Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, and—for the first time at NLE—Bulgaria. This year’s theme, Crossing Borders: Europe Through the Lens of Time, reflected two aspects of this year’s writing. First was its trans-national character: many of the authors were writing about, or writing in, countries other than their nations of birth. Second was the theme of time—many of the writers dealt with European 20th century history directly, but each of the books featuring the past had a way of reaching into the present and remaining a vital, active force.

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Live from the NYPL: Tel Aviv and Tehran Noir

December 3, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Yardenne Greenspan

Honoring noir writing—and living—in two notoriously conflicted cities

It was a full house at the New York Public Library on Wednesday night, and I learned just how similar Iranians and Israelis are.

Rick Moody moderated a panel event for Live at NYPL, launching two new books from Akashic’s Noir Series: Tel Aviv Noir and Tehran Noir. Akashic Books’ Noir series includes over sixty anthologies of noir stories set in cities around the world. The panel guests included Tel Aviv Noir editors Assaf Gavron and Etgar Keret, Tehran Noir editor Salar Abdoh and Tehran Noir contributor Gina Nahai. Sitting in the audience, listening intently, I felt complicit.

I had translated eleven out of the fourteen stories in Tel Aviv Noir (two others were written originally in English, a third was translated from Spanish). I felt that where the book succeeded or failed, I shared some of the responsibility. I also felt simultaneously in and out of place: I’ve lived in Tel Aviv most of my life, but have never been to Tehran, though when I see pictures of its mountains I get that belly ache of longing.

These two facts are connected: as an Israeli Jew, much of that world is closed to me. READ MORE…

From the 2014 “Words Without Borders” Gala

November 24, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Eric M. B. Becker

On education initiatives, honoring Carol Brown Janeway, and who owns the English language at this remarkable annual event

On October 28, a crowd of more than 200 came out for Words Without Borders’ annual gala to celebrate the publication’s 11-year history of publishing and promoting international literature.

With a crowd from across the New York literary world, the evening was hosted by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh. True to Words Without Borders form, the evening featured bilingual readings in English and from Belarusian, Chinese, and Sinhala by Valzhyna Mort, Yiyun Li, and Ru Freeman.

Emphasizing the importance of translation to cultivate conversation across time and place, Li read two poems from Liu Xia, the wife of imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, herself under house arrest. Freeman drew a parallel between translation and the Sistine Chapel, suggesting translation is like Michelangelo’s depiction of the hands of God and Saint Michael, not quite touching yet still beautiful. READ MORE…

Octavio Paz New York Centennial: Perpetually Creating Rhythm

November 19, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Cristiane de Oliveira

A dispatch honoring one of Mexico's most celebrated poets

From October 1st to the 8th, the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York paid tribute to the centennial of Octavio Paz’s birth with a series of discussions, readings, concerts, and film screenings. A prolific poet, essayist, intellectual, translator, editor, publisher, and diplomat, Paz published his first poetry collection, Luna Silvestre (Wild Moon, 1933) at 19 years old, penning over 26 volumes of poetry until his death in 1998. Paz was also an accomplished essayist: his 1950 treatise on Mexican identity, El laberinto de la soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude) is considered a seminal work of literature. The recipient of the Cervantes award in 1981, the American Neustadt Prize in 1982, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990, Paz founded three literary magazines, Taller, Plural, and Vuelta; Vuelta is still published as Letras Libres.

Now that we’ve gotten that dry but necessary introduction out of the way, let me truly begin.

The centennial celebration was a sumptuous banquet I wanted to gorge myself on until I developed gout, like those rich men of old. I eagerly chased Paz throughout New York City, from the second-floor gallery of the Mexican Consulate in Midtown to the ornate ballroom of the Americas Society in the Upper East Side, and finally to where the river meets the city, the “navel of the poetic universe,” as Paz’s translator Eliot Weinberger playfully referred to the Poets House in TriBeCa.

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A Winter’s Night in Sydney: Poetry Plurilingual

November 10, 2014  |  in Dispatches, Translations  |  by Stephanie Guest

Reporting from the front lines of poetry, translation, and performance

I walked through Sydney’s back streets and upstairs to the crowded room where “Poetry Plurilingual” was about to begin. We sat on mismatched armchairs and wooden benches and squeezed up against each other. The night started with a series of readings of poems in foreign languages, followed by English-language translations. The focus of these readings was on the “original,” foreign, text. But the night took a sharp turn when two readers—Jack Breukelaar and Toby Fitch—boldly shifted the audience’s attention to the process and text of translation.

Jack introduced the audience to the work of Japanese writer and manga artist Kiriko Nananan, showing us a “1994 cool female authors” edition of Garo, an avant-garde manga periodical that began in the sixties, that he bought for a dollar at a discount bookshop. The book was visually striking—Jack didn’t know the work’s significance when he bought it—“but was drawn to [the] cover image by Nananan, reminiscent of Schiele or Baudelaire.” More of Nananan’s work has been translated into French than into English, and Jack had not found any previous English translation of his chosen poem:   READ MORE…

Literary Sweden: A Dispatch

October 22, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Jasmine Heydari

Jasmine Heydari reports back from the Södermalms Poetry Festival and Gothenburg Book Fair

September and October are the months for literary events in Sweden, and this year I started my literary adventures with the Södermalms Poetry Festival, which partly took place on an old steamboat cruising through Stockholm’s archipelago, the Skärgården.

Festival director Boel Schenlaer is a well-known poet herself; she often attends national and international festivals, and the Södermalms Poetry Festival is her baby. Running for the 12th year in a row, the festival is three days long. Poets from countries including Israel, Egypt, USA, Syria, and Norway (thirteen nationalities in total) were all invited. As we boated through a dark blue surface shimmering with sunlight, Boel started the poetry cruise, offering everyone a buffet for lunch.

As we ate, Boel told me that her motivation with the festival was to build a bridge between Swedish and international poets.

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Notes from the Field: Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2014

October 13, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Tiffany Tsao

“Is it possible to celebrate linguistic diversity while using one language only—that same language of global hegemony—to do so?”

The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, held annually in Bali, Indonesia, is Southeast Asia’s largest (and arguably its most well-known) literary festival. This year, the festival featured about 150 writers hailing from more than 25 different countries. Its eleventh iteration, however, proved an even more festive occasion than usual, overlapping with both Saraswati Day—a holy day in the Balinese Hindu calendar dedicated to Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge—and a series of religious ceremonies held at the nearby Gunung Lebah Temple. The sun was hot, spirits were high, and the roads were packed as religious and literary pilgrims crisscrossed the small town of Ubud from morning to evening to attend their respective events.

Among the many recurring topics of conversation and debate at the festival was the growing global dominance of the English language. Japanese novelist Minae Mizumura confided her regrets about choosing to write in Japanese rather than English (she was capable of doing both, having spent twenty formative years in the United States), thus forgoing the opportunity to reach the wider audience that writing in English would have afforded her.

And yet, despite initial regrets, Mizumura affirmed her commitment to write in Japanese, noting not only that she has had a far greater impact on Japanese literature than she could have ever had on English literature, but also that she regards writing in a non-English language as a sort of personal moral obligation. Asking her audience to imagine a world in which the best and brightest spoke only English—a horrible, pitiful world, she opined—she regarded her writing as an attempt to save us from that awful fate. READ MORE…

Dispatch: International Translation Day 2014

October 6, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Ellen Jones

Our criticism editor goes to UK’s annual celebration of translation

International Translation Day is the UK’s annual event for its translation community. Now in its fifth year, it is an opportunity for translators, writers, publishers, students, booksellers, librarians, and critics to gather and debate significant issues, developments in the industry, to network, learn, and exchange ideas. This year it was held in the conference centre at the British Library in London—quite the upgrade from Farringdon’s Free Word Centre—meaning more guests can benefit from the seminars on offer.

The day kicked off with a panel discussion on continuing professional development, chaired by the nervily impatient Jo Glanville, Director of English PEN. On the panel were non-fiction translator Michael Cunningham, who specialises in translating social policy documents; Lucille Desblache, Director of the Centre for Research in Translation and Transcultural Studies at the University of Roehampton; and Daniel Hahn, tireless champion of all things translation-related, newly elected chair of the Society of Authors, and recent translator of Paulo Scott’s wonderful novel Nowhere People (of note: Hahn somehow found the patience to greet a growing queue of acquaintances and admirers after the panel discussion, before dashing off to catch a flight to Dublin).  READ MORE…

The Festival that Won by Knockout

June 16, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Ervin Felić

A dispatch from the Festival of the European Short Story in Zagreb and Šibenik, Croatia

Zagreb’s vibrant cultural scene was home to the Festival of the European Short Story last week: an appropriate end to what has certainly been a great season of culture, music, and activism in Croatia’s small (yet exciting!) capital.

This was the festival’s thirteenth year running, and the festival featured Brazil as its partner country. The festival was delightfully lively and action-packed, featuring not only readings and discussion panels, but also a charitable football game, an introduction to Brazilian fiction, a Portuguese translation workshop, and a cook-off (?). Some of the festival took place in Šibenik, a town on the Croatian coast (a sound decision, as the Croatian culture scene is becoming notoriously monocentric, with virtually all of the events and manifestations happening in Zagreb).

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This is also a Center-Point

May 19, 2014  |  in Dispatches, Essays  |  by Julia Gronnevet

"Her presence, her voice and her body language when communicating, was the key I had been missing."

I confess: I thought the most interesting thing about Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble was the cover. My edition had an old sepia-toned picture of two children—“the [something] sisters.” One has a boy’s haircut, and looks very unhappy. The other stands sweetly beside her. I found it so much more eloquent than the book itself, which seemed to me denser than a loaf of pumpernickel bread, denser than a steel ingot, denser than a white dwarf star. I don’t think I made it through the preface. If I did, it made the same kind of sense to me as reading À la recherche du temps perdu backwards, in French, while drunk. That is to say: the occasional glimmers of understanding felt fabulous, but it was all so ephemeral.

So when Judith Butler, together with fellow feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti on Monday evening in Oslo, met two members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot for a talk about politics, art and feminism, I was not expecting fireworks. Except for Pussy Riot, of course, who spoke through a balaclava and a voice distorter the last time I saw them. This time, they had ditched the disguises and spoke only through a translator. But I’m getting ahead of myself. And ahead of Judith Butler. READ MORE…

Dispatch from Scotland’s International Poetry Festival

May 12, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Jasmine Heydari

Editor-at-large Jasmine Heydari tackles Welsh poetry, language and war, and a Haggis breakfast in her dispatch from StAnza

Earlier this spring I attended StAnza, one of Scotland’s major international poetry festivals. After an early flight from Stockholm to Edinburgh, I boarded a bus taking me to the east coast of Scotland. The bus made its way through twisty and narrow roads, overlooking green hills on one side, while the other faced long, golden sand dunes and black rocks coated in seaweed. Two hours later, I arrived at the city of St. Andrews, or as the Scots say it, Saunt Aundraes, the home of the festival.

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