Language: Kazakh

Translation Tuesday: “Kazakh Culture” by Akhmet Baitursynuly

Alash’s people all known: / Who was not measured?

The influential musings of Kazakh intellectual Akhmet Baitursynuly are sympathetically brought to light by translator Jake Zawlacki this Translation Tuesday. A letter to his people in the form of poignant free verse, Kazakh Culture reflects Baitursynuly’s deep care for Kazakh autonomy and the nationalist ideology that spurred his resounding contributions to Kazakh communities across the globe.

A goose might freeze flying, honking,
Landing in a dry lake, cooling.
A grassfire might break out,
Our bodies burned—what remains?

Alash’s people all known:
Who was not measured?
“I’m well,” they all say,
Wellness confined to themselves.

Chattering, feigning skilled speech,
Rushing, pushing, galloping.
Unbelted, a slack child coming
Like half-pressed felt, unfinished.

Hunched, old hunters seeking meat,
Searching, just one more honorable feast.
Sincere, they’re here and there
Counting few to many, simple but generous.

Unhelping, many rich misers
Like boats on rocking waves.
So many lie silent, sleeping,
Moving without purpose or ambition.

We line up with them, orderly,
Satisfied with sparkling buttons.
What use do you get from your talent,
If not struck in the right places?

These words, this letter I write with sorrow,
No value left, the lost Kazakh.
Rich worry wealth, educated worry rank,
Little worry left for the people.

*Alash encompasses the three historical tribal and territorial divisions of Kazakhs. It was also used in 1917 as the name of the provisional government Alash Orda, of which Baitursynuly was a member. The term is often used synonymously with “Kazakh.”

Translated from the Kazakh by Jake Zawlacki.

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Our Winter 2022 Issue Is Here!

Featuring new work from a record 43 countries!

Shout it from the rooftops: Asymptote turns eleven today! We celebrate our 43rd issue with new work from a record 43 countries in our most bountiful edition yet. Highlights include an exclusive interview with acclaimed poet George Szirtes and a Flemish Literature Special Feature organized in partnership with Flanders Literature, showcasing new translations of International Booker Prize nominee Stefan Hertmans, YA superstar author Bart Moeyaert, and up-and-coming raconteur Rachida Lamrabet.

Our Winter 2022 edition not only puts the “world” in “world literature,” it also interrogates the meaning of it. Take the case of Aaron Zeitlin, the Yiddish poet who was stranded overseas when the Nazis invaded his native Poland and killed his entire family. Written in a language “half of whose speakers had been wiped off the face of the earth,” Zeitlin’s grief-stricken poetry appears to be without a world, and therefore can not, as Yeshua G.B. Tolle argues beautifully, be classified as world literature. In her fiction, Jasna Jasna Žmak imagines a similar apocalyptic fate for the speakers of her language in a thought experiment inspired by Barthes, only to emerge with a newfound appreciation for all the words in her language, including the ones she hates. After all, words can summon entire civilizations—even the bygone ones—as they do in Gesualdo Bufalino’s thrilling list of extinct professions (the lady with the bloodsuckers, among them!). “The disappearing world” is also the subject of visual artist—and the first public figure in Spain to openly discuss his HIV status—Pepe Espaliú’s devastating poems evoking his final days under a sky dense like “the mouth of black clouds.” By contrast, bilingual Kazakh poet Anuar Duisenbinov’s exuberant “overloved, overdosed” narrator “float[s] in exultation” through his “luminous and windy capital,” contemplating “the ability of speech to sprout.” As it turns out, speech does sprout everywhere all over the world. Alongside Duisenbinov, we’re thrilled to debut in English Emil-Iulian Sude, one of the first award-winning writers of Roma ethnicity in Romania; Rachid Djaïdani, a French filmmaker whose 1999 bestselling novel and classic of banlieue writing is only now available, thanks to frequent contributor Matt Reeck; and Kim Su-on, a young Korean writer whose dazzlingly atmospheric story is a masterclass in worldbuilding.

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The tagline of this eleventh anniversary edition is “The Worlds We Live In”—pointedly not “The World We Live In”—meant to express the simultaneity of all our myriad existences, such as those inhabited by George Szirtes, who discusses his new collection of poems, the state of Hungarian literature, and translation in the age of Brexit. Also working from the liminal space of migration is Jamaican-born artist Cosmo Whyte, who explains why Barbados’s recent renouncement of the Queen is only the first of many necessary steps in healing (since, according to him, there is no “post” to colonialism). Neske Beks also performs a necessary act toward healing on behalf of Black women everywhere by centering the story of Ann Lowe, the Black designer responsible for Jackie Kennedy’s bridal gown in 1953, in her retelling of haute couture’s history. Pair her 2020 essay sparked by an exhibition with Charlotte Van den Broeck’s nonfiction excavating the curious real-life case of the Princess Caraboo of Javasu aka Mary Wilcocks—who might very well be the first yellowface captured in any artistic medium (an 1817 oil painting that shared a moment with Van den Broeck at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in her last gallery visit before the pandemic). All of this is illustrated in talented Singaporean guest artist Yeow Su Xian (Shu)’s irresistible palette and forms—I dare you to say hers isn’t the most fun cover we’ve had in a while!

For more Asymptote goodness, subscribe to our newsletter or Book Club, follow us on FacebookTwitter, and our two Instagram accounts, and consider submitting work (Swedish-English translators take note: our recently announced call for submissions to a paid Swedish literature feature ends Mar 1). And of course, we’d be delighted if you’d like to come on board as a team member (apply by Feb 1) or, to honor our eleven full years in world literature perhaps, as one of our generous sustaining members! As always, thank you for your readership and support.

BECOME A SUSTAINING MEMBER TODAY

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

Translation Tuesday: “The Notes of a Writer” by Almaz Myrzakhmet

Don’t writers employ souls of innocent people?

Our Summer 2018 issue launched a few days ago and it is filled with gems from around the world. This Translation Tuesday we bring you another fabulous translation from a language and country never before featured on the blog! Translator Mirgul Kali introduces us to the piece:

Kazakh writer Almaz Myrzakhmet’s brilliant prose is often described as detached, but this is the detachment of a sharp and skillful writer confident in his ability to lure an unsuspecting reader into his story and play with their mind. “The Notes of a Writer,” which follows a young author who is anguished by the visions of his own unwritten story, is both a puzzle and a taste of the joys and struggles of the creative process.

The most delightful and challenging moments in translating this short story concern the old Kazakh expressions which refer to images that might not be easily invoked in an English-language reader’s mind. Yet they offer a rare and intimate glimpse into the culture and history of the nomadic people who had for centuries roamed the steppes of Central Asia. The language of the Kazakhs, who bred horses, maintains that misery can be “the size of a long trough,” evoking an image of an old wooden tub filled with putrid water; that the laughter of happy lovers sounds like a “jingle of coins,” perhaps at a lively, colorful market in a town along the Silk Route; and that fear feels like “a snake coiled in your bosom.” You are invited to discover these expressions, scattered like vintage jewels throughout Myrzakhmet’s striking post-modernist story.

The sound of her heels—like a tongue clicking—would begin at the bottom of a staircase, eventually reach the brown door of my rental apartment on the third floor, reverberate weakly and pause. At this point, she would become unusually still as if she was holding her breath and listening. A moment later she should tap the door timidly with the tips of her fingers.

I would open the door immediately. Acting as if she came to her own place, she barely looked at me and walked in, grazing me with her shoulder. The usual moves. Her, glancing over a picture of a bear playing with cubs, listlessly flipping through scribbled pieces of paper on my desk, walking over to a window and looking out—these actions were her daily routine. A bed would squeak as she sat on it. I would lock the door and take a cigarette from the desk.

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