Language: English

In Review: Two New Books Mark a French Author’s English Debut

November 17, 2016  |  in Reviews  |  by Poupeh Missaghi and Thea Hawlin

A network of veins, ponds, ferns, a system of gray stills saturated with a reddish glow in which, like a rainbow...suddenly appeared the Angel.

Asymptote reviews two new publications—a collection of short stories and a novel—by Roger Lewinter, born in 1941 in Montauban, France. The author currently lives in Switzerland and has worked as a writer, editor, and translator. These are two of his three works of fiction to date, and their publication with New Directions is Lewinter’s first appearance in English, in translations by Rachel Careau. 

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Story of Love in Solitude by Roger Lewinter, tr. Rachel Careau, New Directions

Review: Thea Hawlin, Social Media Manager

New Directions certainly lives up to their name with this exciting new foray into the work of a long neglected French author. Story of Love in Solitude marks the first translation of Roger Lewinter into English. Lorenzo Valentin has compared Lewinter’s writing to “a Kashmir shawl in its infinite interlacing, woven in one piece and from a single thread” and the description is apt. The continual lacing of Lewinter’s prose is a beguiling process; it may confuse and frustrate, but in its complexity it also points to beauty.

This short but sweet collection combines three of Lewinter’s tales, ‘Story of Love in Solitude’, of the title, ‘Passion’, and ‘Nameless’. Intriguingly, rather than a facing-page translation, the publishers have decided to starkly separate the translation and its original counterpart in the book. This makes cross-referencing a lot more of a challenge, but equally forces the reader to take time with the translations and appreciate them as independent from their origin.

The first, and most lyrically titled of the three, begins with an all-too familiar scenario—spotting a spider before heading to bed. Except this occurrence becomes a sinister loop. The next night, another appears and the pattern continues. The scenario is episodic, a simple commentary in which the brevity of the encounters is such that they hardly have room to develop before being suddenly cut off.

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Translating Iranian Poetry: A Conversation with Siavash Saadlou

November 16, 2016  |  in Interviews, Translator's Profile  |  by Ryan Mihaly

As human beings, we need to truly acknowledge that we all are different hues of the same spectrum—that is the human spectrum.

Siavash Saadlou was born in Tehran, Iran. He started learning English at the age of 17, and has since worked as a sports journalist, translator, simultaneous interpreter, editor, and college professor. His English translations of the minimalist Iranian poet, Rasool Yoonan, have appeared in Washington Square Review, Blue Lyra Review, Visions International, The Writing Disorder, Indian Review, and in Asymptote’s Fall 2016 issue. He was also a finalist for Slice Magazine’s 2015 Bridging the Gap writing contest for his creative non-fiction piece I Didn’t Mean It. Saadlou is currently a second-year MFA creative writing student and a teaching fellow at Saint Mary’s College of California.

Shortly before and after the US election, Asymptote’s Ryan Mihaly spoke with Saadlou about translating Persian, meeting Yoonan, and the importance of literature in breaking down barriers and transporting culture—now more than ever. 

Ryan Mihaly (RM): Yoonan’s humor seems to translate well into English. You’ve captured the dark humor of reassuring a friend that his corpse will be buried, and the silliness of a ‘Don Quixote’ who ‘wears a saucepan on his head’. Were these literal translations? How did you capture them in English?

Siavash Saadlou (SS): When it comes to translating Yoonan, I try to maintain a balance between literal and figurative language, although in the cases you mentioned, I have translated the text verbatim. I should mention that in the first example, the word ‘friend’ has been used sarcastically. There’s a lot of witty sarcasm in the Persian language and literature, and in this poem Yoonan is using a wry tone to describe tyranny by using the word ‘friend’. I have also tried to maintain Yoonan’s diction. For that purpose, I first read all of his poems over and over again and took note of his word choice. For example, the word mozhek could be translated as ‘absurd’, ‘ridiculous’, ‘ludicrous’, ‘inane’, or ‘preposterous’, but since I happened to have a holistic cognizance of Yoonan’s plain and unadorned tone, I chose the word ‘absurd’.

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Translation Tuesday: “Shadow Puppets” by Wong Yoon Wah

November 15, 2016  |  in Translations  |  by Theophilus Kwek

With a dab of paint I become the singing, dancing doll everyone loves.

The stories told with Southeast Asia’s shadow puppets, better known in the region as ‘Wayang Kulit’, range from adaptations of ancient epics to familiar, domestic sagas. This poem was written in 1977, when the Malayan-born Wong Yoon Wah (by then an outspoken scholar, critic, and award-winning writer) was appointed Director of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang University—just as higher education in Singapore was experiencing a period of upheaval. In this poem, Wong holds his own multiple identities up to the light, and a candid sense of his inner self shines through.

i. Birth

A sharp knife
pares the leather into shape.
A ruthless awl
carves each nub of my character.

With a dab of paint
I become the singing, dancing doll
everyone loves.

 

ii. Family Background

Though I’m a shadow
acting in the night’s mystery,
I am a child of light,
nothing without its beam.

The village’s earth is a white gauze.
In this soiled world, I can’t find myself.

I’ve never left a footprint
on the path.
I sing movingly
but never with my own voice.
At home, I’m a shadow on the screen.
On stage: a self you can see.

 

iii. Confession

Don’t take me
for one who loves fights,
schemes to be king,
or hankers
after Solomon’s princesses. 

A shapeless thread holds each of my four limbs.
Being superstitious, I can’t refuse being fate’s plaything.
The old man backstage
has my voice in his hands.
Whether I’m crying or laughing,
he decides.

 

iv. Fate

If you go backstage
when the show ends,
you’ll find us—heroes, ladies—all
in the arms of the ugly puppeteer.

After we’ve been played,
our heads are taken down,
bodies folded and stacked again
in his box, secured with string
where patiently, like prisoners,
we’ll wait to see the sun.

November, 1977

Translated from the Chinese by Theophilus Kwek

Born in Malaysia, Professor Wong Yoon Wah has won Singapore’s Cultural Medallion (1986), Thailand’s South-East Asia Write Award (1984), and the ASEAN Cultural Award (1993). He has published more than twenty books as well as over fifty articles on modern and postcolonial Chinese literature, and is presently Senior Vice President of Southern University College, Malaysia.

Theophilus Kwek has published three collections of poetry, most recently Giving Ground (2016). He won the Jane Martin Prize in 2015 and the New Poets’ Prize in 2016, and his translation of ‘Moving House’ by Wong Yoon Wah placed second in this year’s Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation.

*****

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In Review: Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich

November 14, 2016  |  in Reviews  |  by Lori Feathers

Secondhand Time’s arrival in English serves as a timely antidote to reports in the Western press about Russian nationalism

Secondhand Time is one of the four books shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, UK’s most prestigious prize for nonfiction, the winner of which will be announced tomorrow. 

Russian thinkers in the nineteenth century began referring to the Russian soul (Russkaya dusha) as a way to crystalize a national identity around the idea that Russia and its people possess a singular, exceptional destiny. Be it Dostoevsky’s high-strung and philosophical protagonists, Goncharov’s ambitionless, sensitive Oblomov, or Tolstoy’s nature-inspired, contemplative heroes, Russia’s iconic authors portrayed their countrymen as uninterested in replicating Europe’s then burgeoning industrial capitalism and its protestant work ethic; rather, these characters’ thoughts and actions sprang from a loftier, more spiritual sensibility.

Today, Russians’ views of their country’s tumultuous history and uncertain, post-Soviet future are shaped, in no small part, by whether or not they believe in Russian exceptionalism, and this question frames Belarussian author Svetlana Alexievich’s latest book to be published in English, Secondhand Time. As she did earlier with Voices from Chernobyl (1997), the work that precipitated her winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, in Secondhand Time, originally published in 2013, Ms. Alexievich gives readers history “in miniature,” by presenting the reflections of ordinary Russians as told in their own voices. For this latest book Ms. Alexievich collected Russians’ thoughts about their post-World War II history that she recorded between 1991 and 2012. She writes that she specially sought to interview “sovaks,” a term that Russians use pejoratively to describe those who remain stuck in Soviet attitudes and behaviors.

Secondhand Time’s arrival in English (Random House, 2016) serves as a timely antidote to reports in the Western press about Russian nationalism. It is a necessary rejoinder not because the reports are false; rather, too little attention has been given to the complicated reasons behind the nationalistic sentiment.

Ironically, most Soviets felt a sense of security under the old system, despite the government’s repression and cruelty. Without the dual rudders of government control over everyday life and the ideology that justified it, those who came of age under the Soviet system now feel uncomfortably adrift. There remains nothing to replace the old ideals that grounded their lives except empty consumerism:

“No one can convince me that we were given life just to eat and sleep to our hearts’ content.  That a hero is someone who buys something one place and sells it down the road for three kopecks more.”

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On Frantumaglia and the Real Mystery of Elena Ferrante

November 10, 2016  |  in Essays  |  by Jeanne Bonner

Nice little stories with happy endings or some kind of moral resolution? Not for La Ferrante!

As an Italophile and an Elena Ferrante fan, I’m thrilled to see her nonfiction work, La Frantumaglia, finally making it into English in the form of Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey, published this fall by Europa Editions.

I know the book will intrigue American readers with the backstory of her novels and her life as a writer (I’m also thrilled that the original title has largely crossed the Atlantic intact, particularly given the unusual provenance of the Italian word, “frantumaglia,” which Ferrante culled from her mother’s speech and which she defines as a jumble of ideas or thoughts).

One could nonetheless argue, given the nature of the book—a collection of manuscript drafts, interviews and letters—that it will surely fail to stir up the same excitement as did the Neapolitan series or her earlier novels. This is the author, after all, who launched her novel, The Days of Abandonment, with the line: “One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me.” Boom! Not to mention the creator of the frenzied, passionate scene between Nino and Elena in the bathroom of the house she shares with her husband, Pietro, from Book Three of the Neapolitan quartet (a scene Elena rushes into after rushing out of the arms of her young children). Whoa! How do you top that?

And of course, it’s not like Frantumaglia confirms (or denies) what Italian investigative reporter Claudio Gatti recently sprung on the literary world (if for no other reason than it had already gone to print). Gatti, as anyone remotely following Italian literature knows, believes he has pulled off an expose by studying real estate records and other documents to deduce that Ferrante is actually a translator named Anita Raja. (Edizioni E/o, Ferrante’s Italian publisher, has denied the claims.)

Yet I can confidently say the Ferrante lines that have made the biggest impressions on me are in La Frantumaglia, which was first published in Italy in 2003.

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The Happy Translator with Many Heads

November 9, 2016  |  in Essays  |  by Anne Marie Jackson

Because we were many, our golden moments were also many.

At the time of Teffi’s famous dinners with Rasputin in 1916 (memorialised in an unusual, humanising account), she was at the peak of her renown, one of the most celebrated and beloved of Russian writers. Her admirers came from across the political spectrum and included not only Vladimir Lenin and Tsar Nicholas II but also many writers. Following Teffi’s death in Paris in 1952, her work sank into oblivion—perhaps because she was a woman and an emigrée, and because some wrongly thought her work too witty to be serious. Fortunately, after long years of obscurity, Teffi is being rediscovered. Three volumes of her work are now available in English translation: Subtly Worded (2014), Memories (2016)[i], and Rasputin and Other Ironies (2016) (published as Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me by NYRB in the United States) This is largely thanks to the efforts of expert translator and my former mentor, Robert Chandler, who is one of the principal translators and a great advocate of collaborative translation.

Each book has been translated collaboratively and is the product of anywhere from three to six hands—or heads—and that’s only counting the translators named on the copyright page.In the case of ‘Rasputin’, the number is probably closer to ten, as Robert took the text to translation summer school and his entire group had a go at it, multiplying the golden moments in translation. While Robert and Elizabeth Chandler have been a central guiding presence throughout, the rest of us have been involved in some books but not in others or have played different roles from one book to the next.

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Translation Tuesday: Five Poems by Benito del Pliego

November 8, 2016  |  in Translations  |  by Sam Carter

Destruction/satisfaction: everything is a question of measurement.

Openly encouraging an oracular approach in which readers pose questions to a series of poems and identify either themselves or others through the answers they obtain, Fable showcases Benito del Pliego’s familiarly deft touch as he places puns alongside paradoxes and striking images next to penetrating insights in moving explorations of isolation and recollection. Continuing a career-long commitment to fostering meaningful interactions between a text and its interlocutors—whether readers, accompanying illustrations, or other poems in the collection—this Spanish poet highlights the unfamiliar in the familiar and makes poetry about the everyday seem anything but ordinary. These poems are taken from the collection Fable / Fábula, recently launched at McNally Jackson Books in New York.

 

THE SALMON

—It’s hard to move forward when you only want to go against the current.

Later you discover that nothing remains, that the future has countless origins.

Sometimes you feel like a shipwrecked sailor; sometimes you think anyone who wants to flee never goes further than herself.

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What’s New in Translation? November 2016

November 7, 2016  |  in New in Translation, News, Reviews  |  by Hanna Heiskanen, Nina Sparling, and Sam Carter

Asymptote reviews some of the best new books from French, Swedish, and German.

cabo-de-gata

Cabo de Gata, by Eugen Ruge, tr. Anthea Bell, Graywolf Press

Review: Sam Carter, Assistant Managing Editor, US

First published in German in 2013—when his In Times of Fading Light appeared in English—Eugen Ruge’s Cabo de Gata, out this month from Graywolf Press, might strike a familiar note for readers who have witnessed a surge in autobiographically-inflected works that frequently take the production of fiction as a subject worthy of novelistic exploration. Hailing from both the Anglophone world and beyond, such novels record the process of their creation or the struggles to even begin them, and Ruge quickly aligns himself with this approach in his tale of a writer’s attempt to get away from it all in the hope of figuring something out. “I made up this story so that I could tell it the way it was,” declares the dedication to this slender volume, and a more precise formulation arrives soon after as the narrator recalls a period in which “I was testing everything that I did or that happened to me at the same moment, or the next moment, or the moment after that, for its suitability as a subject … as I was living my life, I was beginning to describe it for the sake of experiment.”

While in Cabo de Gata, a small town on the Andalusian coast, the narrator quickly settles into routines designed to simultaneously distract him from blank pages and provide him with some inspiration to fill them. The local fishermen, whom the narrator visits on his daily stroll, can empathize with such difficulties: ¡Mucho trabajo, poco pescado! A lot of work for only a little fish—it’s a piscatory philosophy that applies just as well to the writing life. Ruge, however, proves to be an exceptionally gifted angler as he reels in catch after catch in what would seem to be difficult waters, namely a single man’s short trip to this seaside village.

Serving as a metronome marking out the rhythm of memories that constitute the novel, a refrain of “I remember” begins many of the paragraphs that have been expertly rendered by translator Anthea Bell. Far from repetitive or reductive, such a strategy instead seems somehow expansive, particularly when we are reminded that, “fundamentally memory reinvents all memories.” Both the vagaries and the vagueness of memories—“I remember all that only vaguely, however, like a film without a soundtrack,” remarks the narrator in a line that will be hard to forget—serve as the subjects of reflection that find their counterpart in the rhythms of the sea and the surrounding Spanish countryside.

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The Words Without Borders Gala was Honestly Heartwarming

November 4, 2016  |  in Dispatches  |  by Madeline Jones

I can’t quite remember what American writing was like before Words Without Borders—it was a dark and domestic place.

This Tuesday evening marked one of the most important nights for international literature in New York (which are few and far between), and what a star-studded, city-lit affair it was. The annual Words Without Borders Gala at the spacious TriBeCa Three Sixty kicked off with a cocktail hour featuring surround views of the Manhattan skyline, reunions of old friends and co-translators, and plenty of champagne-fueled gossip. I was feeling a bit out of place (unpublished, fluent enough in just one foreign language) and wary of the champagne (knowing I might need to form complete sentences in front of Edith Grossman later).

But the atmosphere overall was decidedly celebratory. When I chatted with Words Without Borders’s founding chairperson, the retired newspaper man Jim Ottaway, we noted that perhaps this air of goodwill reflects how literature in translation is motivated more by passion than profit—there was no business to be done, no egos in the room. Translators and the community that supports them are all rooting for a common cause. “I suppose it is a nonprofit,” I said of the organization. “Very nonprofit-y,” Mr. Ottaway agreed, surveying the room.

The gala is known for being a who’s who of writers, translators, and publishing bigwigs. Everyone mingled in the rare, low-pressure environment to celebrate the online magazine that put literature from elsewhere on the United States’ map for the first time, at least in a consistent and visible way. As acclaimed translator Susan Bernofsky put it to me, “Words Without Borders has been the pioneer of this kind of publishing—it sort of gave rise to all these other great journals and now there’s a whole fantastic landscape, which I’m really happy about.”

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WWB translators reading poetry both in the original language and in English for the guests

Throughout the cocktail portion, groups of guests taking advantage of the unusually formal occasion, by publishing standards, to dress in understated black ensembles and sensible heels posed for photos in front of a red-carpet-style, Words Without Borders backdrop. Calls of “how have you been?” bounced off the floor-to-ceiling windows as familiar faces caught sight of more familiar faces, reinforcing the completely true notion that everyone in publishing—especially of translated literature—knows each other. Refined cheek pecks were quickly followed by earnest probes of “what are you working on now?” in keeping with the crowd. We all wanted to know what we had to look forward to next season or next year. María José Jiménez told WWB Communications Coordinator Savannah Whiting about translating a novel by Uruguayan writer Rafael Courtoisie with Anna Rosenwong. Ms. Bernofsky had just turned in a new Jenny Erpenbeck translation the day before. Natasha Wimmer and agent Cristóbal Pera chattered in Spanish about the Wimmer’s current project—translating El Comensal by Grabriela Ybarra, which is also in development for a film, according to Pera. I felt very excited and also as if I were just assigned a lot of homework—a feeling familiar to any avid reader.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

November 4, 2016  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Janani Ganesan, Layla Benitez-James, and Naheed Patel

The latest in reports on arts and culture from Spain, India, and Bangladesh

This week, as ever, we are eager to share stories from around the globe. Today we’re checking in with Podcast Editor Layla Benitez-James in Spain, Editor-at-Large Naheed Patel in Bangladesh, and Assistant Managing Editor Janani Ganesan in India. 

And don’t forget to check out our Fall 2016 issue here!

First, we drop in on Layla Benitez-James, Podcast Editor, with the scoop on Spain:

2016 marked the 400th Anniversary of Cervantes’s Death, but much of the Spanish public felt more time was moving in between their two rounds of inconclusive elections, so much so that they decided to avoid a third one, projected over Christmas, and are able now to focus on their budding literary scene. In Madrid, the Prado Museum is making history in the visual arts with a show dedicated to the art of painter Clara Peeters. She will be the first female artist with her own show in the museum’s two-hundred-year history.

In another surprise turn, Spain’s major poetry festival in the city of Córdoba, Cosmopoética, celebrated its lucky thirteenth iteration from September 25 through October 8. The theme this year was Dada and the festival welcomed international and homegrown writers alike, such as Julieta Valero, Fani Papageorgiou, and  Chantal Maillard.

While Spain harbors many fans of Bob Dylan, a good deal of the Spanish literary community was puzzled by the Nobel Prize news. Some, however, took the announcement with great humor, imagining the messages between the silent winner and an increasingly desperate Swedish Academy. READ MORE…

Mid-autumn News from the Asymptote Team

November 3, 2016  |  in News  |  by Theophilus Kwek

From poetry to graph theory to dance, we've been keeping busy.

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado‘s poem ‘Route: Desert’ was recently published in Poor Claudia.

Drama Editor Caridad Svich‘s new play, Archipelago, premieres in the UK on 24th November at the Lighthouse in Poole, directed by Stephen Wrentmore. Her essay, ‘Six Hundred and Ninety-Two Million: On Art, Ethics and Activism’ recently appeared on Howlround.

Romania and Moldova Editor-at-Large Chris Tanasescu, aka MARGENTO, co-authored an academic article on artificial intelligence with Bryan Paget and Diana Inkpen that has recently been published in the Journal of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. This is part of an ongoing research project, The Graph Poem, led by MARGENTO that applies graph theory to poetry computational analysis and poetry composition or generation.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursac‘s translation of Hotel Tito by Ivana Bodrožić will be published by Seven Stories Press. Read an exclusive excerpt in Asymptote‘s Spring Issue! She has also just been elected Vice-President of the American Literary Translators’ Association.

Assistant Editor K.T. Billey, who also edited Asymptote‘s recent Special Feature on Canadian Poetry, has three new poems in the latest issue of the Denver Quarterly. 

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Ask a Translator with Daniel Hahn

November 2, 2016  |  in Ask a Translator, Interviews  |  by Daniel Hahn

We look for what works as a piece of excellent English writing on its own terms

Acclaimed author, editor, and translator Daniel Hahn is back again with an insider’s perspective on all things related to translation. This week, he responds to a question from Belgian reader Karel Caals and reveals the inner workings of judging translation contests, grants, and prizes. 

Have you ever judged a translation for a contest or a grant? If so, what was the process like; what do you look for, especially, to separate the wheat from the chaff?

One day I’m going to write one of these columns that won’t just say, essentially, “it depends”.

But since you ask: It depends.

Yes, I’ve been on judging panels for translated fiction (such as the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for adult fiction, the Marsh Award for children’s); or for fiction in English for which translations are eligible alongside originally Anglophone work (the IMPAC Dublin Award for adults, the UKLA Book Awards for children); as well as grant-making committees for organisations like English PEN, which for some years has supported the translation of international literature and the promotion of translated work in the UK. And, yes, each is looking for something subtly or drastically different, and each has quite distinct criteria, and so it depends.

In most cases, the aim is to find a really good translation (I’ll pretend for a moment that we’d all agree what that is), though not infrequently the translations are judged in such a way that the act of translation per se, and the translator her/himself, aren’t mentioned in the evaluation process at all.

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Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Philippe Beck

November 1, 2016  |  in Translations  |  by Nicola Marae Allain

Space creates grammar. (And in itself creates is said in space.)

Complex, haunting, and profoundly literary, Didactic Poetries is French poet Philippe Beck’s response to Schiller’s statement: “We are still waiting for a didactic poem where thought itself would be and would remain poetic.” In recognition of his entire oeuvre, Beck was awarded the French Academy’s Grand Prix de Poésie [Grand Poetry Prize] in 2015. We present two poems from his debut publication in English, released by Univocal Publishing today.

 

Liminal Poem

If an I does not begin,
it is because of the sum
of strong concerns
that make and unmake
someone’s history
in the history of some ones
in the history of many
and not in everyone’s.
For a someone differs
in the sum of possible exchanges
with everyone
(the big I is also
theoretically absent, and
the ordinary you and I
strive to become a You
before the imagined arrival
of the big I
that does not exist);
discussions begin
because of discussions.
What must be said
is not already spoken
in the individual’s brain,
nor in the Collective,
but it is said
because of the conversation
which creates necessity
all around brains
and hearts.
And the world is not everyone’s
negative rough draft.

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Indigenous Languages, Migration, and Multilingualism in Fall 2016 Canadian Poetry Special Feature

October 31, 2016  |  in News  |  by K.T. Billey

A country that takes pride in a mosaic model of multiculturalism becomes home to an abundance of languages

In “Verisimilitude,” the Fall 2016 issue of Asymptote, Assistant Editor K.T. Billey edited a stellar special feature on Canadian Poetry. Reaching far beyond the exchange between French and English, this section presents a diverse group of authors and translators that reflects a multitude of cultural and historical intersections and conflicts. Now, Billey situates and introduces the poets and translators. Delve into the special feature here.

Global readers likely are aware of Canada’s official French/English bilingualism. What the literary world may not know about—and what Asymptote is delighted to spotlight in our Fall 2016 issue—is the range of Aboriginal and First Nations voices that are fundamental to Canada’s evolving identity. The Special Feature on Canadian Poetry introduces readers to three of the approximately sixty distinct Indigenous languages spoken in Canada.

Multilingual poems by acclaimed poet Duncan Mercredi are a crystalline example of the verisimilarity that unites the Fall issue. Duncan’s brother Joe translated the English portions of Duncan’s poems into their native Cree, a language whose dialects nearly span the entire North American continent. Joe’s line-by-line translations became, and are recognized as, part of the poems rather than separate works. The poems are unified though their dual-linguistic nature, exacerbating and expressing the ambivalence of a First Nations poet writing in English.

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