Languages of Silence: Mohamed Choukri and Abdellah Taïa Desacralising Adab and Isnad

January 12, 2022  |  in Essays  |  by Alex Tan

Nothing about a translated novel—or anything that has warranted the fraught label of “world literature”—can be taken for granted.

Mohamed Choukri and Abdellah Taïa have been celebrated by the literary world as writers defying tradition in their transgressive tellings of migration, sexuality, and selfhood; yet, in the Anglophone sphere, their works have also been exoticised and misappropriated in Orientalist contexts, filtered through the othering perspectives of a western literary hierarchy. In this following essay, Assistant Editor Alex Tan delineates a reading of these two Moroccan writers that situates them in the vehicles of their own language and cultural context, with the unique ways their writing interrogates the borders of being. This essay is part one of two, the second of which can be read here.

 “The Maghrebin is always elsewhere. That’s where he makes himself come true.”

— Habib Tengour, Exile is My Trade (tr. Pierre Joris)

1998, Cairo. Midway through her Modern Arabic literature class at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Professor Samia Mehrez receives urgent missives from the university administration. Though she does not yet suspect the storm to come, she is compelled to cease the lecture and dismiss the students. Walking over to the administrative office, she is greeted with the news that several parents have complained about the inclusion of “pornography” on her syllabus, sufficiently blasphemous to “corrupt an entire generation.”

What text could claim such power? At the heart of the controversy was Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri’s Al-Khubz Al-Hafi (translated by Paul Bowles into English as For Bread Alone), which would soon precipitate the eruption of a nation-wide culture war over the uses of literature in the classroom.

Fast forward to 2012—El Jadida in Morocco, six years after Abdellah Taïa comes out as gay in the magazine Tel Quel and is hailed as the first Arab writer to be open about his homosexuality. Certain Islamist groups, anxious about moral taint, are clamouring for the outlawing of his oeuvre. Taïa had been invited to speak at a university about his latest work to be translated from French into Arabic; unfortunately, before it could happen, professors and students organised a protest to shut down the event. Slogans such as “don’t spread homosexuality on campus” were intoned.

It has become, by now, somewhat commonplace for the West to fetishize Arab writers and intellectuals who suffer widespread condemnation in their countries of origin—particularly from Islamist quarters—before enshrining them in the exclusive club of world literature. One thinks of works like Sonallah Ibrahim’s That Smell, banned immediately upon its 1966 publication in Egypt, or Haidar Haidar’s A Banquet of Seaweed, which induced accusations of heresy from Al-Azhar clerics and protests by university students against its inclusion on syllabi. At times, it almost seems as if censorship, political oppression, and exile are a rite of passage for international renown—a disturbing reality that signals to us what Anglophone literary markets value in a work from the Arab world. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Three Poems by Jesús Cos Causse

January 11, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Kristin Dykstra

The fisherman knows something of sundown’s sorrow: / fire who loves the sea

Recipient of the prestigious Julián del Casal, Cuba’s National Poetry Prize, Afro-Cuban poet Jesús Cos Causse (1945–2007) was one of the country’s most prolific ambassadors for her arts and literature internationally. This Translation Tuesday, we are thrilled to feature three of Cos Causse’s poems from the collection Los años, los sueños: Poesía, 1970–1994, edited by the Panamanian writer Pedro Correa Vásquez. Cos Causse’s poetic language is direct and evocative, and these poems—keenly attuned to the legacies of slavery in the Caribbean—serve as a site of historical memory and resistance. Kristin Dykstra’s translation brings out the austere music of Cos Causse’s poems that sing collectively of a landscape inflected and transmuted by its violent histories and attendant movements: of setting out, fleeing, and summoning.

Fisherman

The fisherman sets out with his nets, his recollections
and dreams, for his encounter with the sea.

On the high sea, night resembles some unremembered port.

During the voyage he sings on deck,
confuses the moon for a beacon
and thinks of a woman, tattered surf.

The fisherman knows something of sundown’s sorrow:
fire who loves the sea.

At sunrise he returns, so tired that he leaves
his heart on the horizon, only to set out
once again on the same night.
READ MORE…

Commodifying the Woman’s Body: On Sofi Oksanen’s Dog Park

January 10, 2022  |  in Reviews  |  by Megan Sungyoon

When a system fails, along with its sustaining ideology and its citizen's lives, how does the unstable society make use of its minority population?

Dog Park by Sofi Oksanen, translated from the Finnish by Owen F. Witesman, Knopf, 2021

A woman sitting on a park bench, pretending to read to avoid unwanted conversation while gazing at people playing with their dogs in the park. Translated from the Finnish by Owen F. Witesman, Sofi Oksanen’s novel Dog Park begins with this image redolent of solitude, set to unravel the narrative that flickers between two main time-spaces filled with sociohistorical references. The year that marks the first scene of the novel is 2016, two years after the break of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war over Crimea and the Donbas region of Ukraine. Afterwards, the author guides us back and forth between the 1990s–2000s and 2016, continuously indicating to which year and location each chapter belongs. The invisible third spaciotemporal layer would be, of course, the readers’—who are inevitably made aware that the weight of the narrative depends on their own year and location. In Dog Park, Oksanen deftly interweaves the lives of Ukrainian women in the mid-2000s, a happy Finnish family in 2016, and readers in 2021 through overlaps of intentions, memories, and citizenships.

So the story begins. The identity of the woman sitting on the park bench is gradually revealed. Then the narrative flashes back to the late 2000s when she matches potential donors to desiring would-be-parents who shop the eggs under the premise that they are genetically infallible, meaning their producers should be free of not only heritable diseases but also physical unattractiveness, mental health issues in the family, and experience of poverty. Our protagonist, Olenka, jumps into this line of business after failing to make a living as a fashion model in the West, having been desperate to leave her home in Snizhne, where her mother and aunt run a small poppy farm that produces compote (homemade heroine). She contrives a new life in Dnipro, which allows her much-desired urban extravagance and upward social mobility. In the process, Olenka gets reintroduced to a long-time family friend, contacts the Kravetes, a family from Ukraine’s upper echelon, and meets “you,” who is constantly addressed throughout the novel. How Olenka’s plans are laid out, at times successfully and at others catastrophically, keeps the narrative going until the end. There’s not a single moment when the novel leaves readers sure of what’s happened, happening, or going to happen. At the end of almost every chapter begins a new suspense, usually marked by Olenka’s gradual revelation of an unmentioned aspect of the main narrative. These mini-plot twists—a death, a birth, or a warped relationship—turn the pages to the very end.

The main narrative of Dog Park extends from three key concepts: social turmoil of post-Soviet Ukraine, the economic codependency between the peripheral East and the central West, and commodification of women’s bodies amid such social and economic unrest. Olenka’s family moved from Tallinn, Estonia, to Snizhne, Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, mostly for her father’s dream of scoring big in his rural hometown by operating kopanka, an illegal and hazardous coal mine. Olenka grows up to despise Snizhne because of her traumatic memory and the label of poverty associated with it. She strives to leave the town both physically and mentally, only to find herself unable to ever return even if she wanted. Having lived in Finland for a decade, Olenka keeps comparing the lives of the Finns with her own and of those who were close to her in Ukraine. The carefree lives in the safe, affluent states of the West are illustrated in stark contrast to the disorderly, corrupted, and murderous lives in Ukraine, mostly to emphasize her contempt toward her air-polluted home of Snizhne. Americans and West Europeans disguising themselves as tourists to buy eggs, Finns who can afford to be sympathetic to an immigrant woman, and the cutthroat yet glamorous fashion industry in Paris are sources and traces of Olenka’s desire for a stable life that once seemed to be within her reach. Deliberately retained in Witesman’s English translation, Oksanen’s use of Ukrainian terms and Slavic slang demonstrates the unrelenting grip of Olenka’s origins, which she can neither reclaim nor be completely rid of at any point in the narrative. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

January 7, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, José García Escobar, and Suhasini Patni

The latest from India, Central America, and Palestine!

Despite the pandemic, literary festivals and magazines around the world continue to highlight important voices, both emerging and established. In India, the Bangalore Literature Festival presented a series of literary conversations, while the Sahitya Akademi announced the winners of its various awards. In Guatemala, the literary community mourned the loss of the beloved writer and editor, Julio Calvo Drago. In Palestine, the first-ever edition of Granta in Arabic was published. Read on to find out more!

Suhasini Patni, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India

Despite the restrictions COVID imposed, 2021 was a successful year for literature in India, with many virtual festivals and award ceremonies.

In Bangalore, the tenth edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival commenced in a hybrid form at the Bangalore International Center. Featuring authors such as Chitra Divakaruni, Dolly Kikon, Jahnavi Barua, Vivek Shanbhag, and Rijula Das, the festival was spread over two days. In one conversation, sociologist Arshia Sattar and filmmaker Anmol Tikoo introduced a new literary podcast on the life of Kannada playwright Girish Karnad. Titled “The River Has No Fear of Memories,” a line taken from the English translation of the play Hayavadana, the podcast follows the life of Karnad, including his work, inspirations, and personal life.

Sahitya Akademi also announced the winners of its prestigious awards: the Sahitya Akademi Award, Yuva Puraskar, and Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2021 on December 30. Twenty authors writing in different Indian languages were awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award. The award for the Sahitya Akademi in the Tamil language was given to Ambai for her short story collection Sivappu Kazhuththudan Oru Pachai Paravai (A Red-Necked Green Bird). Born in 1944 in Coimbatore, Ambai is only the fourth woman to win the award in her category, in the sixty-six years of the award’s history.

READ MORE…

Domestic and National Dramas: On Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judite de Carvalho

January 6, 2022  |  in Reviews  |  by Lindsay Semel

The novella manages to cast the eye of a worried oracle on an entire nation.

Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judite de Carvalho, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, Two Lines Press, 2021

The year is 1966. Conservative Portuguese dictator António Salazar is advancing in age. During his thirty-four-year reign, economic policies have failed to fulfill their initial promise, the regime’s supposed “political stability” has stifled the nation, and costly colonial wars have wearied its citizens. The Carnation Revolution, which will end his corporatist Estado Novo with virtually no blood spilled, is still eight years away. Into this climate of looming uncertainty and cautious hope, Maria Judite de Carvalho inserts her simmering novella, Empty Wardrobes, asking impossible questions about the nature of self-determination, ambition, and love. On the eve of a revolution, it dares to doubt whether or not the people will be brave enough to support each other, rather than the powers that be.

Empty Wardrobes sets its existential drama in the domestic sphere. Dora Rosário is a young widow with a daughter, Lisa—young by today’s standards, but “both ageless and hopeless” to the onlooker. She had loved her husband Duarte desperately while he lived, upheld his purity of character, and believed their life together to be a happy one—albeit with some financial troubles.

An egotistical Christ, she used to think; a secular, unbelieving Christ who had only come into the world in order to save himself. But save himself from what, from what hell? She felt no bitterness, though, when she thought all this, only a slight bittersweetness, or a secret sense of contentment because she did love him. He was a good man, a pure man, untouched by the surrounding malice and greed. He remained uncontaminated.

In his death, she devotes herself to his goodness like a nun. Her name, after all, means “rosary”’ and indeed she does seem to be ticking off days like beads. She passes one to get to the next, her mind wholly focused on “the good times”—the happy days of her marriage, which she hopes neither to retrieve nor improve upon.

We come to know Dora as a rather pitiable creature—self-effacing, above all. The precarious period of early widowhood leaves her with the impression that “she and Lisa were on one side, and all the others were on the other side. The others were the enemy from whom she could expect nothing good, only evil.” Isolation and poverty, however, degrade her pride much more easily than the memory of her late husband; ultimately, one cannot live on integrity alone. A lingering acquaintance gets her a job at an antique shop, though her husband had never wanted her to work. She raises Lisa in a bourgeois manner of which he would surely disapprove. There’s an inconsistency between Dora’s idolization of her husband and the actions she takes in order to survive—a paradox analogous to that of her fellow citizens, and of anyone who has been failed by a beloved ideology. An ideology, whether implemented on the national or domestic level, is not necessarily flexible enough to meet the challenges of daily life. Though she may toe the party line in public—and even in private—it’s a less obedient resourcefulness that allows her to prepare her daughter for a more optimistic future.

READ MORE…

Translating Past Into Future: Joshua Lee Solomon and Megumi Tada on Dialect Storytelling in Northeastern Japan

January 5, 2022  |  in Interviews  |  by Mary Hillis

No matter how different the languages are, there are similar emotions.

In their work introducing the rich tradition of oral storytelling in the Tsugaru dialect, Joshua Lee Solomon and Megumi Tada of Hirosaki University are moving beyond traditional geographic and linguistic boundaries. Having translated the unique folklore of northeastern Japan from its local vernacular into English, they’ve also facilitated a workshop combining English language education and studies of the region. In the workshop, students learned to perform the tales under the guidance of master storytellers from the preservation society Wa no mukashi-ko, and eventually performed in English alongside the storytellers performing in dialect. We discussed, via Zoom, the interrelated areas of translation, cultural preservation, and language education. Listening to their retellings of favorite folktales, I experienced firsthand how the emotions of storytelling—nostalgia, laughter, heartache—transcend space and time.

Mary Hillis (MH): Could you give some background information about the local Japanese dialect in Tsugaru?

Joshua Lee Solomon (JS): There is a lingering perception that the Tsugaru dialect is used by uneducated or somehow uncivilized people, and this is connected to a long history of prejudice against the poorer regions in northeastern Japan. The Tsugaru region was historically isolated for a very long time by mountains and its relative distance from the political and economic centers of the country, so it’s a repository of very old Japanese words.

One of my favorite examples of this is the word in the Tsugaru dialect of “udade.” Depending on the age of the person you’re talking to, they might say this word only means something really bad or uncomfortable, whereas young people are more likely to use it meaning cool and good—the same way you use “yabai” in contemporary standard Japanese (like certain expletives in English used in either positive or negative connotations). But actually, I think this word comes from the Manyoshu, which is an ancient collection of poetry. In the text, there’s the word “utate” and that word is an intensifier—meaning “extreme” or “very much.” In this way, there are older Japanese words that are kept in the current language.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Véronique Bergen

January 4, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by MARGENTO

in the ocean of tattoos / sea urchins shaped like fully loaded syringes

In our first Translation Tuesday feature for the new year, revel in two outrightly explosive and psychedelic poems by the Belgian poet, novelist and philosopher Véronique Bergen. “I petal blue,” is how Bergen begins one of these poems and it is in this frenzied flowering of one’s subjectivity that we meet the speaker in their radiant and radical metamorphosis. Following her own warped and dynamic syntax, Bergen’s poems lay bare an “orgy of guns”: she construes a poetic world that riots our senses and, in her turbulent re-contextualisation of the technologies that engender this anarchy, refracts a history of global violence. Always, they combust with a frank and freakish sexuality. Translated by our very own Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, MARGENTO brings to our readers the spectrum of technicolour brilliance and virtuosic world-building that is Bergen’s verse. 

Suave Blue 

I petal blue
looking for the way out of my maze
safe behind the bat my effigy

I curaçao
at the bottom of a swimming pool
in search of Isabelle A. of a Gin Cloud
inhaling vapors
of methylene blue
to deoxidize my moths

In the hollow of my sex
my sunken Atlantis
the Amazon of Mytilene
rapes me Lesbos earthquake
a touch of futuristic pornography
to stifle
my desire to sink
among water lilies
where Opheliacs drift

My mission is
to bleed out my blue blood
daily autistic drip
at the time when the sun
deviates into indigo

Periwinkle-colored
death
will have Isabelle A.’s eyes
an amniotic liquid
released from a cosmic uterus
will flow over my wounds
Yves Klein’s patented Tuareg blues.

Dirty Banditry Hour 

Capital Execution
would you like it in black and white crystalline powder
or technicolor pills?
The syringe between your teeth
stereophonic host
for a reality check
who does what
who empties the septic tanks
shoots the rainbow

From the magazine to the barrel
the same current is flowing through the revolver
long cartridges slipped under the tongue
loaded with electromagnetic whisky

The boa girl, smoke lens glasses, bare shoulders
is going to blow up the world’s leadership
decapsulate the tragedy of the spheres
her chain necklace says “yes” to the finger squeezing the trigger
her naked flesh a trap
the new Salome shoots the way we love doing it
point-blank range
firing a life-giving bullet
in the backs of the heads of order apostles
a poppy bullet spouting out
lost weapons undergrowth

Never forget to say
to heaven and earth
yin and yang
who does what
what nerd gives him the heads-up
on the dum-dum bullet rain
on a hero-in shoot-
up white as a fucking shroud

Never forget
in strip poker
blue orgasm cards lose
chemical mutations in language
give birth to counter-letters READ MORE…

Of the Quotidian and the Epic: On Daniel Lipara’s Another Life

January 3, 2022  |  in Reviews  |  by José García Escobar

"Another Life" is a tiny cosmos, a subtle and refined explosion, a bursting ocean with waves crashing on a nearby and familial shore . . .

Another Life by Daniel Lipara, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers, Eulialia Books, 2021

The first poem in Daniel Lipara’s debut collection Otra vida, released in English as Another Life (Eulalia Books, 2021), is a page and a half long. Entitled “Susana, lotus flower,” it lasts a lifetime. Many lifetimes. The poem is sweet and painful, excruciating and grotesque, charged with fragility and hope and tenderness and memory (“her father the son of a butcher who fled the pogroms all the way to Argentina”), visceral with pain (“they shrank her stomach with a belt the belt snapped open scratched her innards”), and void of commas. It’s as vivid as it is memorable, and it sets the tone for the rest of the book.

Another Life is a family album laced with beautiful writing; I like to think of the poems as spotless, multichapter vignettes, quickly spun by a well-oiled stereoscope. In Lipara’s ranging collection, we follow a family—a very real and flawed family—moved and motivated by love, grief, and hope, as told to us by a narrator in awe with his surroundings.

After pious aunt Susana of the opening poem, we read about Jorge—the father, “the tiller (. . .) and master griller,” and later Aeolus, the god of the wind. As personal and intimate as Lipara’s work feels, the narrator also becomes preoccupied with what plays out in the greater background, with its history, characters, tales, and myths. In this, Another Life feels both quotidian and epic. Soon after, we meet Liliana, the mother, who is “five foot nine she has big bones and bleach blond hair” and is dying of cancer, though we don’t learn about this until later. (It is hinted at subtly, however, during her first appearance: “(she) lays her hands onto my mother’s vengeful cells.”)

After this introduction, we meet Sai Baba of India; Liliana will travel to his ashram looking to cure her cancer. This journey is first introduced as a premonition: “I dreamed we went to India and your mother was healed,” says Susana. Then we see the family waiting at the airport, on the plane, and reaching Indira Gandhi Airport. We see water buffalos. We see rice fields. We see India through the eyes of a young Daniel, and we see him experiencing the country, silently amazed by its colors, odors, sights, and sounds—again being drawn into the background with its world of fascination, again merging the quotidian and the epic.

READ MORE…

Announcing Our December Book Club Selection: In Case of Emergency by Mahsa Mohebali

December 30, 2021  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Lindsay Semel

In Case of Emergency displays a gift for description and a masterful knack for challenging the expectations of structure.

What’s more pressing than a natural disaster? An opium addiction. The titular “emergency” in Mahsa Mohebali’s award-winning novel refers simultaneously to shuddering Tehran and the pressing urge of its protagonist, Shadi. In vernacular as electric as it is poetic, In Case of Emergency paints a mad portrait of Iran and its electrifying counterculture, as we follow the brilliantly acerbic Shadi on dissolving boundaries of need and want, of gender, of revolution. The Asymptote Book Club is proud to select this defining text as our last selection of 2021.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.  

In Case of Emergency by Mahsa Mohebali, translated from the Farsi by Mariam Rahmani, The Feminist Press, 2021

Shadi wakes up to a brutal comedown in her family’s Tehran home. The earth’s been “dancing Bandari”—shimmying, stamping, and shaking, all night, which she actually wouldn’t have minded so much if it weren’t for her mother’s screaming “ten times for each tremor: How many screams does that make?” After a night of earthquakes that show no sign of stopping, her family is preparing for an exodus, but Shadi only has two opium balls left, and that won’t do in the middle of a crisis—or any other day. So she, the well-off daughter of a philandering university professor and a revolutionary-turned-housewife who absentmindedly clicks digital prayer beads, dons masculine clothing, setting off through the upended streets of Tehran to find her next fix.

Shadi, like many of her peers who grew up in post-revolutionary Iran—the majority of the population—is well-educated, jobless, and disillusioned with the repressive regime that hasn’t delivered on its promises. Mahsa Mohebali’s In Case of Emergency (“Don’t Worry” is closer to the Farsi title) was released just one year before the thirtieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, and its fictional earthquake, as well as the ensuing chaos and the repeated refrain of the city’s hardened youth—“Everybody relax. This city is ours”—was said to have foreshadowed the real-life Green Movement protests soon to come. Shadi herself, however, is a far cry from either the revolutionaries of her mother’s generation or the protestors of her own: “Arash’s dumb-ass logic is spreading like a breed of Barbapapa,” she laments. “Was the earth fractured or just these idiots’ skulls? This city is ours—I’d really like to know what that actually means.”

Though her profile—including the opium addiction—matches many of her country’s youth, it isn’t often represented in Irani literature. This is due, on one hand, to political censorship. The original version of the novel made it to press with only limited edits, and won the prestigious Houshang Golshiri Award—before being banned on and off. Mohebali is also, as of this writing, prohibited from public speaking. However, social censorship is also at play; Shadi speaks the crass, cosmopolitan slang of the streets, not the lyrical Farsi of the page. Globally, in all four cardinal directions, the expansion of a literary establishment to include vernacular languages and subculture has been characterized by both resistance and fascination; this would be one such catalytic work.  READ MORE…

Motion and Emotion: Curtis Bauer on Home Reading Service

December 23, 2021  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Josefina Massot

As a poet, I need to hear how words sound to my ear, but also how they feel in my mouth.

Our November book club selection, Franco Morábito’s award-winning Home Reading Service, is a fast-paced tour de force rife with twists and turns. It seems fitting, then, that its discussion should touch upon various forms of change and movement. In the following abridged interview, Editor-at-Large Josefina Massot and translator Curtis Bauer talk about the possible shifts within an author’s oeuvre, the back-and-forths between translation drafts, the significance of a character’s subtle motions, travel’s impact on a poet’s work, and movement as great poetry’s defining trait—understood, among other things, as its ability to move us.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.

Josefina Massot (JM): I read somewhere that you discovered Morábito’s work through El idioma materno (2014), a collection of short pieces that he originally wrote for Argentine newspaper Clarín. You said you found it different from anything you’d encountered before; that it instantly struck you as something you wanted to engage with. What was your first reaction to El lector a domicilio? Did it seem to follow some kind of line relative to Morábito’s prior work, or was it fundamentally different?

Curtis Bauer (CB): It’s a great question—thinking about the movement an author can have across different kinds of work. I immediately loved El lector a domicilio, and I found it very “Morábito-like” in that I didn’t know what to expect but when it happened, it somehow made sense. What I love about his work, whether it’s the short prose pieces or stories or this novel, is that (and I believe you wrote about this in your review) the characters are just average, run-of-the-mill people that don’t seem to have such interesting lives—but of course they do. Morábito finds that aspect to them, or rather, he exposes it; he shows us that we’re surrounded by interesting things taking place all the time.

JM: I think that’s a good point, and for me, it’s one of the most appealing aspects of the book; the other is that it’s very much centered around poetry—there’s Fraire’s poem (which you did a stunning job of translating), a very whimsical piece by Gianni Rodari, and in between the two, all this varied prose. Given that you’re a poet yourself, and that you’ve translated both genres before, what was it like dealing with the two within the scope of a single work? Did you find that you shifted from one headspace to the other? Or was the translation process overarchingly similar?

CB: I wish! The Fraire poem seemed to change throughout the book, because it appears in different sections. I gave myself this framework or “rule” where I couldn’t go back and look at what I had translated previously, so I just tried to translate from memory as I was moving through the drafts. With each draft, it would change, and when I’d go back and look at the beginning of the book, I’d question my choices.

I started out translating poetry, and I still do, but it was the hardest part about translating this book. It does indeed require a different headspace for me, a different pace or breath, although I also recognize some similarities in how I translate the prose: I’m listening to the rhythm of the sentence, and I think about repetitions of sounds and other issues that a poet naturally takes into account. At any rate, yes, the Fraire poem was the most difficult part overall; I was making little tweaks to it up until the last edit, and I’m really thankful to my editor at Other Press for allowing me to do that.

As for the Rodari, it’s actually different in the Spanish original. I think I may have translated it directly from the Italian, because Morábito truncates it in the Spanish. In the novel, Eduardo talks about certain parts of the poem, certain rhymes, with the Vigil children; he has them moving their feet to the rhythm, and I didn’t think it was enough to have these seemingly deaf kids reacting to just a few fragments. Initially I was focusing only on preserving the poem’s meter, but my partner is a linguist and insisted that I do the end rhyme as well. So even though it’s more playful than the Fraire poem, it was equally as difficult to translate.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

December 17, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Andriana Hamas, and MARGENTO

The latest from Mexico, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Romania!

Though Asymptote is winding down with the year, literary events and going-ons continue to thrive around the globe. In Mexico, the Guadalajara International Book Fair presents its impressive line-up, and Polish female poets are celebrated in a new collection. In Bulgaria, the Christmas Book Fair returns to delight the locals. and in Romania, the Gaudeamus Book Fair features over one hundred exciting events. Read on to find out more!

Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Mexico

On December 10, Mexican editor, poet, and translator Isabel Zapata presented Dentro del bosque, an English-Spanish translation of the autobiographical essay Into the Woods by American author Emily Gould. The essay reflects on contemporary capitalist precarity through Gould’s personal experience as a young woman trying to make a living as a writer in New York City. Originally published in 2014, its translation into Spanish is part of the Editor’s Collection from Gris Tormenta, an independent publisher based in Querétaro, a rapidly growing state three hours north of Mexico City. Gris Tormenta has published several Asymptote contributors in the past, including Yuri Herrera, Tedi López Mills, and Thomas Bernhard.

On December 4, Mexican poet Rocío Cerón and Polish poet Marta Eloy Cichocka presented Luz que fue sombra, a Polish-Spanish bilingual collection of seventeen Polish female poets born between 1963 and 1981, translated by Abel Murcia and Gerardo Beltrán. The book was published in the Spanish independent press Vaso Roto, which has published Spanish translations of important authors such as Anne Carson, John Ashbery, and Ocean Vuong. It includes poems by Justyna Bargielska, Barbara Klicka, Krystyna Dąbrowska, and Urszula Zajączkowska. Julia Fiedorczuk, whose book Oxygen was reviewed for Asymptote by Elisa González, is one of the most renowned authors in the collection. The event took place in Talleres de Arte Contemporáneo (TACO), a cultural centre south of Mexico City dedicated to promoting and teaching contemporary art.

The 35th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair took place in Guadalajara, one of Mexico’s largest cities, between November 27 and December 5. It is considered one of the most important book festivals in Latin America. This year, the guest of honor was Peru, from where several important authors and artists travelled to Mexico to present their work, lead workshops, and host panels. Among them was Asymptote contributor Victoria Guerrero. Importantly, the events featuring Peru offered significant representation of literature written in indigenous languages, including books by Dina Ananco Ahuananchi, Gabriel Pacheco, Cha’ska Ninawaman, and Washington Córdova. The fair also featured both emerging and established authors from all over the world. Many of them have previously appeared in Asymptote, such as Ana Luísa Amaral, Georgi Gospodinov, Abdellah Taïa, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, and Alejandro Zambra.

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

Bulgaria has, for a long time now, been in the grips of mass paranoia, an all-encompassing misinformation campaign, and political turmoil. The health situation also not looking up; according to official statistics, the COVID-19 deaths are, sadly, approaching the chilling number of 30 000 since the beginning of the pandemic—a figure that definitely cannot be trivialised given the overall population. READ MORE…

Thoroughly Mainstream or Decidedly Alternative: An Interview with František Malík

December 16, 2021  |  in Interviews  |  by Julia Sherwood

The arts are indispensable as a way of sensitizing people, contributing to equality, pointing out what is truly important, and setting priorities.

František Malík is an extremely busy man. Just over the past few months, he has organized several book festivals; the Martinus Literature Tent at Slovakia’s largest music festival, Pohoda; and several episodes of the literature review podcast, LQ (Literárny kvocient)—to name just a few. Editor-at-Large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood has managed to catch him in a rare moment of respite, and in the following interview, they discuss various facets of arts and literature in Slovakia today.

Julia Sherwood (JS): For a country of five million, Slovakia has a quite an astonishing number of literary festivals taking place throughout the year. You have been associated with several of them, most notably the BRaK Literature Festival. How did this festival start, and what makes it different from all the others? 

František Malík (FM): Eight years ago, when we started BRaK, the Slovak literary scene was far less diversified than it is today. While it is true that we now have more literary festivals than we used to, I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that it’s a disproportionate amount for a country of five million. Not long ago, I visited Iceland with a group of Slovak writers; Iceland’s population is less than one-tenth the size of Slovakia’s, and yet its cultural and literature policies are much more advanced and the arts receive far more funding. They also have quite a few literary festivals. This is just one example; a similar trend can be seen in all developed countries.

If I may correct you slightly—what we have emphasized right from the start is that BRaK is a book festival. This is not just a terminological difference, it also has to do with the content. We try to see a book—an aggregate of various artistic approaches—in a holistic way, rather than focusing solely on the literary element. At BRaK, we highlight all the constituent parts of the book—from publishers at the centre of the festival, graphic designers and illustrators who often host workshops, to copyeditors and translators, as well as writers. BRaK has always striven to be international and to showcase the greatest names throughout the book world, not just from Slovakia and the neighbouring countries.

JS: Of the various festivals you have organized, which do you regard as the most successful and which were the most fun?

FM: In the course of eleven years on the scene, I’ve helped to launch several festivals, and I’ve also been fortunate to work with some great teams. I like your question—having fun, and enjoying something in the broadest sense is what really matters, although the COVID-19 pandemic has taken some of the fun out of it.

I enjoy organizing everything I’m involved in. For example, I really enjoyed the first edition of the Slovak/Czech festival Cez prah/Přes práh (Over the Doorstep), an apartment festival now in its fifth year. It’s held in actual homes in the centre of the capital, Bratislava, but also in apartments that have since gained the status of institutions, as there is a growing trend to hold cultural events in flats. In the previous regime, flats played a specific cultural role. They served as educational and cultural institutions, as venues for lectures in philosophy, theatre performances, exhibitions . . . People were driven out of official venues and into their homes. Over the Doorstep aims to commemorate these flats and the role they played.

READ MORE…

Afternoons—A Case Study: On Teodora Lalova’s Afternoons like these

December 15, 2021  |  in Reviews  |  by Andriana Hamas

Lalova’s poetry confirms that regardless of the Other’s differences, we could always try and reach them by explaining . . . the unfamiliar details.

Afternoons like these by Teodora Lalova, translated from the Bulgarian by Jason H. Spinks, Kalin Petkov, and Gabriela Manova, Ars and Scribens Publishing, 2021

The Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov writes in one of his books that “August is the afternoon of the year.” With this subtle line, he takes his rightful place next to other insatiable thinkers who have dwelled on the special character of this particular time of day, either attempting a convincing explanation for its beguiling qualities or giving up once and for all their efforts to figure it out. So, even if we choose to ignore the all too famous quote by Henry James about the aesthetic pleasure he derives from the phrase “summer afternoon,” we should at least pay attention to what Jorge Luis Borges had to say on the matter. In one of his short stories, “The End,” he notes that “There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says it, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is as untranslatable as music.”

While I was reading Teodora Lalova’s debut collection of poems, united under the title Afternoons like these, I similarly found myself on the brink of grasping a curious feeling, too elusive for me to fully comprehend. From my perspective, the text appeared to be very close to capturing that crucial essence of the hours preceding twilight that so often escapes our miserable efforts to express it in words. Each poem, as is to be expected, achieves this in its own way. Some prefer the ironic twist of fate, while others choose to shed light on the more delicate nuances of existence. There is also a third kind that tackles complex philosophical questions in an “unbearably light” manner. Nevertheless, once the piece has located the throbbing heart of the unique afternoon, it offers a single or several lines that are certain to remain with the reader:

On afternoons like these I want to write poems about the smell of chimney smoke,
about the unread books and about first loves.
Of course, on afternoons like these
I don’t have my notebook with me.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Sara Shagufta

December 14, 2021  |  in Translations  |  by Patricia Hartland

my moon owes a debt to the sky / [i loaned this / moon from the sky]

This Translation Tuesday, we feature two exquisite poems of love and loss that take the moon as their emotional core. Drawn from the posthumously published collection Aankhein, this tender pair of poems by the Pakistani writer Sara Shagufta (1954–1984) wrestles with the experiences of mortality with an equal penchant for directness and metaphor: “death bore a child / left her in my lap.” Translated from the Urdu by Patricia Hartland, Shagufta’s poems here are suffused with a rollicking rhythm and a profusion of internal rhymes that move the ear as much as the heart. 

moon’s debt

tears carved our eyes into being

in our
          own
tidal tumult

we pulled at the ropes

             our own deathwailing

the earth hears
the stars’ screams loudest
                              not the sky’s

i unbraided death’s hair
                            and was stretched out on a bed of lies

eyes, a game of marbles
                                                        in sleep’s keep

not-morning-not-night
the between-space
withstood its own duality

my moon owes a debt to the sky
[i loaned this
moon from the sky] READ MORE…