Place: France

Our Summer 2020 Issue Is Here!

July 16, 2020  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Discover Yang Lian, Frédéric Beigbeder, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and a "Vignettes" Special Feature alongside new work from 31 countries

Asymptote’s Summer 2020 Edition, “This Strange Stillness,” confronts our troubled moment head-on, and yet displays the world’s creative wealth and resilience. Discover timely poetry on the pandemic by Misty School cofounder Yang Lian, a shout-out to George Floyd and #BlackLivesMatter in Gonçalo M. Tavares’s “Plague Diary,” and new translations of Pessoa’s eternal heteronym Alberto Caeiro in a knockout issue spanning 31 countries and 23 languages.

Everything seems to stop or slow down during a pandemic, even as the mind rushes ahead. In our exclusive interview, Frédéric Beigbeder talks candidly about the unexpected thrills of lockdown, his desire for immortality, and the xenophobia of English readers. Koko Hubara knows xenophobia all too well: she writes to her white-skinned daughter as a “Brown” Jewish woman in ethnically homogenous Finland trying to live in difference. This fear of standing out turns into an urgent question of survival in Tomáš Forró’s heart-thumping first-hand account from the frontlines of the War in Donbass, or in Balam Rodrigo’s heartbreaking evocations of the existential plight facing Central American migrants.

In the weird calm we may yearn for adventure, like acclaimed Cuban writer—and friend of Hemingway—Enrique Serpa’s narrator, who turns from fishing to smuggling in his novel Contraband, introduced to English readers for the first time. American artist Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s verbo-visual collage is adventurous also: grocery lists and metro tickets collide with piercing, crystalline aphorisms. Translator Fortunato Salazar, for his part, shatters and reconstructs Sophocles through distinctly modern eyes; there, we slip between ancient Greece and our own present. When, in truth, are we?

Whenever and wherever we are, we can all spread the news of Asymptote’s latest wonders on Facebook or Twitter, where we will be plugging every single article in a 48-hour tweetathon. If you’re out and about, brave reader, feel free to distribute this magnificent flyer of the issue in real life. We live in interesting times—and that surely makes for interesting reading. Enjoy, with many thanks from us at Asymptote!

Read the issue

Announcing our June Book Club Selection: A Hundred Million Years and a Day by Jean-Baptiste Andrea

June 29, 2020  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Barbara Halla

It’s a humbling, bittersweet experience, a beauty so terrible that you can’t quite bear to be in its presence for too long.

With expansive beauty and imaginative observance, Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s A Hundred Million Years and a Day has swept up a enormous amount of praise in its homeland of France, including being shortlisted for the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française and the Prix Joseph Kessel, and we are now proud to present it to our readers as our Book Club selection for the month of June. Andrea’s story of a man’s hunt for lost creatures pays equal tribute to the earth’s natural wonders and to human persistence and urge for discovery, culminating in a majestic and magnetic tale of what happens when the personal meets the eternal. Within its pages lies a thrilling poetry.

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, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page! 

A Hundred Million Years and a Day by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, Gallic Books, 2020

Stan, a middling French palaeontologist, is convinced that the skeleton of a “dragon” hides in the belly of the mountains that delineate the porous border between France and Italy. He heard about this dragon years ago, in a second-hand summary of the ramblings of a sour Italian man—the seemingly outlandish contents of someone’s childhood memories. Haunted by this skeleton, Stan drops everything in its pursuit: he quits his university job as a professor, sells his Parisian apartment, and self-finances an expensive expedition to these majestic mountains in the company of his former assistant Umberto, Umberto’s own mentee Paul, and Gio, a taciturn guide for whom the mountains are a second home. 

Of course, being a scientist, what Stan is looking for is not really a dragon. From the vague details he has heard, he surmises that the skeleton the caretaker had come across in fact belonged to a brontosaurus—a species that palaeontologists had agreed on being nonexistent, being simply a variation on the apatosaurus. While the book establishes early the love that Stan has for his discipline, for the fossils that he used to meticulously collect and treat as his friends during his lonely childhood spent in another set of mountains, the motives behind this expedition are not necessarily pure. For Stan, having lain forgotten, himself collecting dust in a basement office, this expedition presents his last chance at some glory. If he does find his brontosaurus, proving a theory disputed by palaeontologists for almost a century, the creature will bear his name, articles will be written about Stan, the “animal will give him back his voice.” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Daughter from Jannina” by Vassilis Alexakis

June 16, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Rebecca Dehner-Armand

It feels as if I’m using this story just to see if I am able to write a more personal piece.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, a proposed coffee date unearths secrets and regrets in Vassilis Alexakis’ “The Daughter from Jannina.” Our protagonist is a journalist awaiting the arrival of a young woman claiming to be his daughter. A conversation about the veracity of the woman’s claim reveals a bittersweet history of personal mistakes. Here we have the trademarks of Alexakis’ writing: straightforward exposition, quotidian detail, and a dryly comic voice, all of which belie a deeply complex interiority and emotional self-awareness. With emotional subtlety and humour, our protagonist weighs the importance of love and family life against the backdrop of national displacement. Translator Rebecca Dehner-Armand writes: “[Alexakis] has composed a singular œuvre, marked by his particular staccato and wry style, that illuminates the experience of a growing sector of French society: immigrants, exiles, and foreigners.” 

A cloud of smoke floats above the ping-pong table. I am seated at my desk, at the other end of the room. At the moment, I am not smoking. On the ping-pong table there is a mostly used-up roll of toilet paper, a paddle, and Lina’s camera, as well as a Tupperware container that I should return to Grigoris’ mother. A few days ago, she brought me some garbanzo bean soup in this container. Where has the other paddle gone? I don’t see the ball either. I played ping-pong last night with Vasso. The match was shit. Lina came over afterwards, around midnight. She slept here last night. It hasn’t been long now since she left.

I am listening to The Turk in Italy, a joyful opera by Rossini. The Turk falls in love with a married Italian woman and begins plotting to purchase her. She gently explains to him that this type of transaction is not done in Italy. In reality, I am not really paying attention to the opera. My mind is elsewhere. It seems the cloud of smoke is headed for the open French doors. It is quite chilly, but I don’t have the strength to get up and close the doors. Lina will no doubt come by sometime during the day to pick up her camera.

Normally, I should be prepping for my TV show by now – I am going to be interviewing the minister of maritime trade—or writing my column for The Investor. These notes surprise me; I am not used to recording my comings and goings. I am writing in pencil, which surprises me even more: for a long time now, I’ve typed out everything. Maybe I chose a pencil precisely because I ascribe no importance to this story, because I can envision a quick abandonment. I can see myself throwing it in the trash after ripping it to shreds. A little piece of paper will fall to the floor. Once I bend to pick it up, there will be a knock at my door: it will be Stavroula, this young girl who was not at our get-together last night and who thinks she’s my daughter. READ MORE…

How Do We Remember Translators? The Many Lives of Barbara Bray

June 11, 2020  |  in Essays  |  by Nathan H. Dize

There must be a way of acknowledging the care that Bray brought to her translations while simultaneously reckoning with their faults.

Barbara Bray was a British translator and recipient of the PEN Translation Prize in 1986. In addition to having translated leading French authors of her time, including Marguerite Duras, Julia Kristeva, and the correspondence of George Sand, she also translated works by two renowned female Guadeloupian writers: Simone Schwarz-Bart and Maryse Condé. Though her work has undergone criticism—notably by Condé’s husband and translator, Richard Philcox in an recent interview with us at Asymptote—the importance of her legacy and contributions to global literature, as Nathan H. Dize proposes in the following essay, should not be undermined. 

In late December, I decided to go browsing at a used bookstore outside of Nashville to take a much-needed break from writing my dissertation. There are few things in this world more comforting than perusing the spines of books, never knowing what you might stumble upon. A few minutes into my trip, I found a hardcover copy of Maryse Condé’s Segu, translated by the late Barbara Bray. The dust jacket was pristine and its cover depicted a dying African man surrounded by his family beneath a pulpy font. I instantly knew that I had to buy it, having recently talked about the novel’s translator with a friend. Unfortunately, Barbara Bray’s name appears nowhere on the cover of Segu—not on its first edition or any subsequent editions—which led me to wonder, how do we remember translators when they are gone? What becomes of the many lives they’ve lived through the words of others? Since that day in the warehouse-sized bookstore in Middle Tennessee, I’ve considered how Bray’s translations of Maryse Condé and Simone Schwarz-Bart, Guadeloupe’s most prolific writers, might help us to remember her life and her contribution to Caribbean literature in translation.

***

Barbara Bray (née Jacobs) was born along with her identical twin, Olive, on November 24, 1924 in Maida Vale, not far from Regent’s Park in London. She was educated close to Maida Vale at the Preston Manor Grammar School in Brent and later studied English, French, and Italian at Girton College, Cambridge. After her university studies, Barbara married John Bray, a former Royal Air Force pilot, and they went to live together in Egypt, where Barbara took a position as an English teacher at the University of Alexandria in Cairo. In 1953, the couple moved back to London, where Barbara began a new job as a script editor for the BBC. In his obituary for Barbara Bray in the Journal of Beckett Studies, John Knowlson recalls conversations with Bray about her time at the BBC, when she and other producers had to fight with BBC executives and department heads to air avant-garde radio plays and programs, such as Harold Pinter’s radio plays. Three years before Barbara Bray left the BCC in 1961, her husband John died in a car accident, leaving her widowed and tasked with raising their two daughters, Francesca and Julia. After John Bray’s passing, Barbara met Samuel Beckett and the two began a multi-decade love affair in Paris that coincided with Bray’s entrée into the world of translation. READ MORE…

Ideology and Imagination in the Unequal Twenty-First Century: Thomas Piketty and the Global Fight Against Economic Inequality

June 3, 2020  |  in Reviews  |  by Ian Thompson

. . . thinkers like Piketty generate and agitate the kind of discussions needed to address our collective woes.

Capital and Ideology by Thomas Piketty, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2020

It’s rare for an economics book to make much inroad into non-academic circles, but the French economist Thomas Piketty did just that with his surprise success Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published in 2014 with an English translation by Arthur Goldhammer. This impressive work warns of the corrosive impacts of economic inequality, which has spiraled out of control in the last few decades. Piketty’s thesis—and perhaps the greatest success of the study—boils down to a simple equation: r > g, where r represents the rate of return on capital and g represents the rate of economic growth. Piketty warns of a future where returns on wealth will outpace all new forms of economic growth, entrenching all existing fortunes ever deeper, and only further those with more meagre supplies of capital. Piketty’s warnings seem to have struck a chord, although not without criticism. The global and historic scope of this study left many corners of the world understudied and with little room to understand the roots of inequality before the nineteenth century.

Piketty’s newest book, Capital and Ideology, again translated by Arthur Goldhammer, serves as a logical continuation of the project undertaken in his earlier research. If anything, it takes an even more ambitious approach to the seemingly intractable problem of economic inequality, offering both a diagnosis and potential treatments of our global malaise. Despite Piketty’s disciplinary background in economics, Capital and Ideology emphasizes the central importance of political and ideological change rather than changes in monetary policy or trade agreements. At his best, Piketty draws the potential dry discussion of economic systems into the complex interplay of human systems of politics, ideology, and history, and into the manifold ways these systems have taken shape throughout time and place. Perhaps most invigorating of all is the degree of faith Piketty places in human imagination and the ability to right wrongs and make active decisions to shape our collective future.

As he reminds us throughout Capital and Ideology, the accumulated wealth and power of the European elites in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may have seemed intractable, and the political deference to the propertied classes total, but the century played out differently than many could have predicted at its onset. If the twenty-first century is to take such a path, global political and economic reforms will be necessary, and the range of ideological possibilities needs to be widened from those of the previous century. The crisis of the world wars and Great Depression coupled with new political mobilizations to rein in the influence of wealthy elites brought inequality to its lowest point ever. As Piketty likes to remind us, even Sweden, often bandied about as the paramount example of egalitarianism did not begin the twentieth century as such. In fact, he shows quite the opposite, where the amount of political representation in Sweden was proportionate to wealth. Nevertheless, the relative successes of social democracy were able to transform Swedish society in only a few generations. On the other hand, the relative equality of the postwar era has rapidly given way over the last few decades, showing no sign of slowing down.  READ MORE…

Conversing on Paper: Richard Philcox on the Living Art of Translation

June 1, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Sarah Timmer Harvey

. . . by translating Maryse I am conversing with her, sometimes talking back to her, telling her fond thoughts, sometimes arguing with her.

For centuries, the process of translating literature has been likened to the art of acting, perhaps most famously by Ralph Manheim, who claimed “translators are like actors: we speak lines by someone else.” In his 2001 essay “Translating Maryse Condé: A Personal Itinerary,” translator Richard Philcox takes this idea a step further, writing that, when reading his translations of Condé’s work in front of an audience: “I become the author, and the translation becomes the text. I thus become Maryse Condé.” Certainly, as Condé’s husband and translator, Philcox has built an impressive career living and working with the Guadeloupean winner of the 2018 Alternative Nobel Prize, their personal and professional lives so enmeshed that Philcox and Condé share an email address. Yet, their divergent opinions on the importance of translation mean that Philcox has always approached his work with a surprising degree of independence. On the eve of the North American publication of Condé’s novel The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana, I corresponded with Philcox about “conversing” with Condé on paper, translating French Creole, and his long-held secret desire to become an actor.

—Sarah Timmer Harvey, May 2020

Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): How did you come to translation as a career? Was it a path that you always intended to follow?

Richard Philcox (RP): I began my career as a technical translator with Kodak-Pathé, the French affiliate of Eastman Kodak, in Paris. The task of the technical translator was to translate into English the company’s annual, technical, and financial reports, instruction leaflets, and general correspondence that had to be sent back to the US headquarters in Rochester. It was when Maryse Condé’s novel Heremakhonon was published in 1976 that I launched into literary translation. I was approached by Three Continents Press in Washington DC for an English translation and used my time in the office to work on it. At the time I hadn’t much thought about the history and theory of translation and adapted much of the rules of technical translation to a literary work: i.e. absolute clarity, no ambiguity, short sentences, no time for lyricism, and nothing left to the imagination. None of this corresponded to a novel like Heremakhonon or for that matter anything literary or poetical. I think that if I had to redo the translation, it would be very different today. It was much later when I came to teach translation that I researched the many theories and history of translation and endeavored to convey my enthusiasm to the students.

STH: When and how did you first meet Maryse Condé?

RP: We met in Kaolack, Senegal in 1969 when we were both teaching at the Lycée Gaston Berger. At that time Maryse had not become a writer and had no published work to her name. I had little idea that I would become her translator. Maryse had gone through many difficult and harrowing experiences during her life in West Africa (see What is Africa to Me? Fragments of a True-to-Life Autobiography, Seagull Press) and it was she who taught me, a naïve Englishman, the politics of colonialism and its impact throughout the developing world. This helped me enormously later on while translating Frantz Fanon since he had put into theory what Maryse was writing in her novels.

STH: In 2018, Condé was awarded the New Academy Prize for Literature (the Alternative Nobel Prize) for her body of work. What has winning this prize meant for both of you?

RP: The award came to Maryse as a total surprise. Besides being happy and proud, she was relieved. For the first time, she was at peace with herself. She had been writing for many years without any special recognition, never having been awarded any of France’s prestigious prizes such as the Goncourt or the Renaudot. Now the voice of Guadeloupe, a powerful and magical voice, could be heard internationally. READ MORE…

Reflections on the Daily: Jean Giono’s Occupation Journal

May 25, 2020  |  in Reviews  |  by Sarah Moore

This is the journal of an established writer, who, even within these pages, grapples between his own identity and the "legend" of Jean Giono.

Occupation Journal by Jean Giono, translated from the French by Jody Gladding, Archipelago Books, 2020

This is not a journal. It’s simply a tool of the trade. My life is not completely depicted. Nor would I want it to be. As I’ve said, here I practise scales, I break up my sentences, I try to stick as closely as possible to the truth. But sometimes events are so rich with drama or pathos . . . that practising scales—my scales— isn’t sufficient and I have to invent. For me, anyway, expressing truths of this order is impossible without inventing. Moreover, it’s to be able to express them simply that I force myself to do this daily work.

—Jean Giono, “December 25, Christmas”

In his own words, this book is an exercise: a series of attempts to train himself in writing, for when his “trade” is truly called upon. His goal? Simplicity and truth. Yet, reading this work in 2020, now available for the first time in English and translated by Jody Gladding, it is so much more than a mere exercise. Jean Giono’s Occupation Journal is a fascinating record of life under Nazi occupation in France, and an insight into the daily reading and writing practices of a dedicated author. Written between September 1943 and September 1944 whilst living in the town of Manosque in the south of France, it was only published in French in 1995 (by Gallimard, as Journal de l’Occupation). The diary entries are a fascinating historical record as well as immensely clever insights into the presence and importance of literature in a writer’s life.

By the time he began Occupation Journal, Giono was already a well-known writer, with over ten works published, including his famous “Pan trilogy.” He was also equally famous for his pacifism. Having been called up to fight on the frontline in WW1, Giono would never forget the horrors of his experience, and the resulting principles influence all of his early work. This journal, therefore, comes at a crucial time in his development; the majority of his work published after the war left behind pacifism, whose failure he witnessed in the coming of a second war, and adopted a greater pessimism with regards to human nature. Certain writers, including Stendhal and Balzac, also heavily impacted his later writing. This journal is a key into discovering this period of transition—a period so evidently crucial in the development of his thinking that its importance cannot be underestimated.

The infusion of literature into his daily living is remarkable. Giono notes profusely what he is reading, what he intends to read, and his reflections on what he has read. His reading is structured and often consists of long classics: Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma, Balzac, Homer, Virgil. It’s almost enviable in its attention to detail and its scope—”I’ve read all of Proust carefully ten times”! Fascinatingly, he often views literature as a model, a possibility of this world, and he judges the world by the standards of those encountered in fiction. He views “nobility” and “grandeur,” for example, in terms of Lancelot and Don Quixote and applies this to war taking place in the “modern, mechanical world,” where, of course, society falls short:

But the quest for the Grail made the knights-errant gallop in a straight line. Even Don Quixote walks straight. Today it seems as though the Grail has shattered and they are chasing all the scattered bits of it in every direction.

READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (May 2020)

May 20, 2020  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

From hypermedia performances to publications, Asymptote staff have been keeping busy—even under lockdown!

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow’s co-translation, with Sean T. Reynolds, of Gustave Roud’s “Air of Solitude” followed by “Requiem” is now out with Seagull Books.

Executive Assistant Austyn Wohlers, who has just been admitted into Notre Dame’s MFA program in Fiction, recently published a story, “Lila,” in Short Fiction.

Editor-at-large for Romania and Moldova Chris Tanasescu (aka MARGENTO) will be presenting in late May a Twitter-based (@GraphPoem) hypermedia performance preview of a computationally assembled Belgian poetry anthology he is editing in French and in English translation and in early June an interactive coding computational poetry performance at Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2020.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursać’s translation of Robert Perišić’s novel No-Signal Area, out recently with Seven Stories Press, was reviewed by Ken Kalfus in The New York Times.  

Editor-at-large for Guatemala José García recently published the final instalment of a four-parter about the migrant caravan at The Evergreen Review. Click here, here, here, and here for the full series.

Editor-at-large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood recently translated an essay by Czech journalist Apolena Rychlíková for the anthology Europa28: Writing by Women on the Future of Europe published by Comma Press in March 2020.

READ MORE…

In This Together: Writers From Around the World Respond to the COVID-19 Outbreak

May 16, 2020  |  in In This Together, Translations  |  by Sarah Moore

I remember that when everything starts to crumble, there are always people you can rely on, people who heal...who make everyday life more bearable.

For this week’s edition of In This Together, we present a text from the French writer, journalist, and musician Tania de Montaigne. Sarah Moore, translator and Assistant Blog Editor at Asymptote, introduces the piece:

This week, France ended its national lockdown that had been in place for almost two months. Yet, of course, life has not returned to normal and people have been adapting to the déconfinement, along with the many changes it has brought. During the lockdown, French daily newspaper Libération (popularly known as Libé) continued to publish its weekly column “Écritures” in its weekend edition, written alternately by four French writers including Tania de Montaigne. This particular article, “Pour mémoire” (“For the record”) looks back on everyday life before the COVID-19 pandemic, recalling past normality. Saying something ‘for the record’ is to let a voice ring out, to publicly declare that these words have value and should be remembered. The text’s power lies in its simplicity and honesty—evoking nostalgia for a pleasurable but naïve innocence that has been lost. 

De Montaigne alludes to the many small cultural references that can stir and unite a collective memory—song lyrics, TV shows, books, exhibitions—as well as our old habits and the importance of touch, which we perhaps took for granted. She also draws a link with the AIDS crisis and our various responses to something that is frightening, new, and unknown—that will inevitably be used politically. Most importantly, referencing other times of hardship, including the terrorist attacks in Paris and Nelson Mandela’s apartheid resistance, de Montaigne upholds the continual value of powerful words, voice, and support during times of crisis. 

For the record

by Tania de Montaigne

I remember the day when the word ‘AIDS’ entered our lives.
I remember Barbara’s song, “Maladie d’amour / Où l’on meurt d’aimer / Seul et sans amour, / Sid’abandonné”. (“Love sickness / Where you die from loving / Alone and loveless, / Aidsabandoned”.)
I remember fear.
I remember people who had first-hand info through “my mother’s aunt’s cousin who works at the hospital” or “my brother-in-law’s cousin’s best friend who works for the government”.
I remember the National Front saying: “People with AIDS are like lepers, they should be locked up in an Aidsatorium.” And how they also said: “It’s a lie, condoms don’t protect you from the disease.”
I remember how some people claimed that there were miracle cures.
I remember Hervé Guibert’s book, To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life.
I remember a philosophy exam and this quote from Aristotle: “The ignorant man affirms, the learned man doubts, the wise man reflects.”
I remember when Corona was a Mexican beer that you drank with a slice of lemon.
I remember the quiz you always found at the end of summer magazine editions: “What about you, what would you take with you to a desert island?” I went crazy trying to decide.
I remember how we used to go to the theatre, to concerts, how everyone was packed tight, focused, emotional, vibrating in unison and how that’s what was beautiful. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

May 8, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Eva Wissting, MARGENTO, and Shelly Bhoil

This week’s latest news from Sweden, France, United States, and Tibet!

This week, our writers bring you news from Sweden, where readers have been mourning the loss of two esteemed writers, Per Olov Enquist and Maj Sjöwall; the United States and Europe, where writers and artists have been collaborating for online exhibitions; and Tibet, where the Festival of Tibet has organized an unprecedented “Poets Speak from Their Caves” online event. Read on to find out more! 

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

Recently, Sweden lost two of its most prominent writers. On April 25, writer and journalist Per Olov Enquist, also known as P. O. Enquist, died at the age of eighty-five. He first became known to readers outside of Sweden with the novel The Legionnaires (in English translation by Alan Blair) which was awarded the Nordic Prize in 1969. In fact, many of his over twenty novels were awarded, including The Royal Physician’s Visit (translated by Tiina Nunnally), for which he received The August Prize in 1999, the most prestigious literary prize in Sweden. Enquist was also a literary critic, an essayist, a screenwriter, as well as a playwright. Several of his plays premiered on The Royal Dramatic Theatre and were directed by Ingmar Bergman. Furthermore, Enquist translated Friedrich Schiller’s play Mary Stuart and Henrik Ibsen’s Rosmersholm. READ MORE…

Au Diable Vauvert: the French publishing house championing translation

April 6, 2020  |  in Essays  |  by Alexander Dickow

Au Diable Vauvert ought to be a model for all American publishers of speculative fiction . . .

Au Diable Vauvert is a French publishing house, founded in 2000 in the Camargue in the South of France. Its mission has always been to widen the concept of literary genre and to champion the translation of emerging voices in pop culture. In this essay, Alexander Dickow introduces us to Au Diable Vauvert’s impressive history of translations, as well as discussing his own experience of their writers-in-residency programme. 

There I was, translating the inchoate into sentences amongst the black bulls and white horses of the Petite Camargue. Here I was, watching the mosquitos drink my hands dry, admiring the rows of cypress trees and bent grapevines. And then came coronavirus, and I had to find some way back to Blacksburg, Virginia, through the crowded train stations and the petri-dish airports.

But as Magritte wrote (more or less), ceci n’est pas un journal de confinement: no need to dread a deluge of pandemic-inspired prattle (there’s only a trickle of that here), for I intend instead to pay homage to an intrepid publisher, Au Diable Vauvert. The name comes from the identical expression, which in French means something close to “in the middle of nowhere.” Indeed, this house is located in La Laune, a mere cluster of houses ten minutes beyond the town of Vauvert, between Arles and Nîmes. It’s a strange location for a publishing house: a mostly rural and right-wing community where the publishing house’s founder Marion Mazauric’s left-wing intellectual background stands out. But Marion stands out anywhere: she’s a force of nature, which brought her the moniker “The Red Tigress” as a student in the 1970s. READ MORE…

In This Together: Writers From Around the World Respond to the COVID-19 Outbreak

April 4, 2020  |  in In This Together, Translations  |  by Sarah Moore

Defeating lockdown with what makes us human. The shared word—Ariadne's thread that allowed Theseus to find his way.

As COVID-19 continues to leave devastation in its wake, one is reminded of the importance of bearing witness. As Paul Celan said: “It, the language, remained, not lost, yes, in spite of everything.” In our new Saturday column, In This Together, we at Asymptote are gathering a series of texts from writers around the world—poetry, journals, essays, and all the other tools language gives us to see beyond the surface of things. Today, in our inaugural post, we present diary entries from French theatre director Wajdi Mouawad, translated by assistant blog editor Sarah Moore. Below, Moore gives us an introduction and context to Mouawad’s life and work:

Wajdi Mouawad has been the director of La Colline theatre in Paris since 2016. One of five national theatres in France, La Colline is renowned for its mission to stage contemporary works. Since taking up this role, Mouawad has programmed work by writers such as Édouard Louis, Vincent Macaigne, Elfriede Jelinek, and Angélica Liddell. Last month, I went to see Anne-Marie la Beauté (Anne-Marie the Beauty), a nostalgic, bittersweet monologue written by Yasmina Reza, one of France’s most successful contemporary playwrights. The following week, Friday March 13, I had tickets to see the new play by Peter Handke, Les Innocents, Moi, et l’Inconnue au bord de la route départementale (The Innocents, I, and the Stranger on the side of the departmental road). Handke, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a contentious figure, and I was curious to see what I’d make of this new text. However, hours before the performance was due to start, the French government limited gatherings to fewer than one hundred people in an attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus. And since March 17, the country has been on a strict lockdown. Now, beside each listing for Reza and Handke’s plays reads “—annulé.” Mouawad, like everyone else, is on lockdown, with life on pause. How does a playwright and director respond when his theatre must close its doors to the public? Since the first day of this lockdown, Mouawad has been keeping an audio diary, published on the website of La Colline. Through his diary, Mouawad reflects on this unprecedented situation, on how he can continue to write and engage with communities, and as he says, “how to turn the time of lockdown into a time that’s alive.”

Excerpts from “Lockdown Diary — Day One”

by Wajdi Mouawad

Washing them twice an hour and for thirty seconds each time. I’ve never had such clean hands as during these days of solitude. And yet, despite the cleanliness of my hands, I must be responsible for something. Lady Macbeth, unwittingly. But then, what is this stain which won’t go and which I can’t stop scrubbing? What crime have I committed? What king have I slain? Unless, reflecting my own era, I’m nothing more than one of the thousands of Pontius Pilates (another character obsessed by the cleanliness of their ten fingers,) who is wondering what all this has to do with them. In this case, what is it about washing my hands that today carries the risk of being put to death? Which Christ am I sending to his crucifixion? What is sublime and who dies? What departs? What spirit of the forest is deserting the world? What must I, from now on, mourn? Carefreeness. It’s been two weeks since I can say I’ve been feeling carefree: climate, fire, violence against women, liberalism. If the world I’m giving up through lockdown was that one, why wish this lockdown to end as quickly as possible? To return to what kind of world? Between a world that crushes me, and one that turns me today into a statue, how to prevent a state of shock, without a reply to this question: what to do with this lockdown? I open my eyes this morning after wandering all night long in the bois de Vincennes. What is happening to us? On this first day of lockdown, taking stock of the situation is impossible. It’s like writing yourself in reverse. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I don’t know where the measure of everything is. I don’t know if my lucidity is panic. In the evening, I go to bed and tell myself that without even knowing, I perhaps won’t see summer. So many of us won’t see it. Overwhelming and collective sorrow. I can’t reassure myself with the idea, increasingly fragile, that this only affects the elderly. And even if that were true, how can the death of others be reassuring? And anyway, how could we live in a world without the elderly if all the elderly were to disappear? For an hour, I’m overcome by unease and everything comes back to me. A civil war won’t stop the epidemic and misfortune doesn’t wait its turn. The gods don’t exist. No logic, other than nature and her disruption. Confused thoughts. Feelings in disarray. Multiple sensations. Like so many pieces of a puzzle, of no precise image except a fog, none of which fit perfectly together. Fear, sadness, anxiety, and memories. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

April 3, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Andreea Scridon, Barbara Halla, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest news from Albania, France, and Japan!

Many countries around the world are now weeks into their lockdown, but literature continues to thrive and is necessarily concerned with the current crisis. In Albania, literary events are moved online whilst booksellers are expected to continue working; in France, a Romanian writer and opponent of the Romanian communist regime sadly passed away from coronavirus. In Tokyo, pandemic literature sees a revival. Read on to find out more! 

Barbara Halla, Assistant Editor, reporting from Albania

There was a moment when it felt like an early April literary dispatch from Albania would just be a chance to mourn the events that I was excited about but that never came to pass. Albania registered its first cases of COVID-19 on March 8 and went into full lockdown less than 48 hours after. That obviously means that for almost the entire duration of March, literary news and activities have been scarce. There was one event that I was sad to see postponed: a panel and discussion to be held on the lost voices of Albanian women writers, something that was long overdue.

That being said, Albanians with a literary inclination have found other ways to remain engaged with their reading lists or interests. Radical Sense is a reading group that meets weekly in Tirana to read and discuss radical leftist texts at 28 November, a versatile bookstore/safe space for readers and activists, among its many other uses. Although the physicality of the charming attic where these discussions are held is sacred to the group, participants have taken a page from universities and workplaces across the globe and have just held their first online book club meeting through Zoom. Readings and discussion happen in English, so for those who live in Albania and are interested in participating, you can check in with the lovely owners of 28 November here for more details. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

March 27, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, José García Escobar, and Sarah Moore

The latest news from France, Hong Kong, and Nicaragua!

“Our clocks strike the hour of courage,” wrote Anna Akhmatova in the winter of 1942. Now, as countries around the world go into lockdown and hospital teams battle against coronavirus, the hour of courage is called upon once again. Our writers bring you news this week from France, where literary festivals find innovative solutions to cancellations; Hong Kong, where launch events and publishers move online; and Nicaragua, where writers and the public have been mourning the passing of celebrated writer Ernesto Cardenal. Read on to find out more!

Sarah Moore, Assistant Blog Editor, reporting from France

France has been under a strict lockdown since March 17, and with all non-essential establishments now closed—including bookshops, theatres, libraries, and cultural centers—writers and organizers have had to be creative in finding new ways to engage with the public.

The annual Printemps des Poètes was due to be held from March 7 to 23. Its theme for this twenty-second edition was “Courage” and its poster design featured an original artwork by Pierre Soulages. The festival’s director, Sophie Nauleau, published a text on the festival website, “Espère en ton courage” (“Hope in your courage”) from her collection of the same name:

It’s a verse by Corneille. An old, famous alexandrine, right at the end of The Cid, which speaks of the heart, hope, and triumph of time somewhere in Seville:

Hope in your courage, hope in my promise . . .

Of course, none of us knew how much more pertinent her words would become after the new security measures taken by the French government caused the festival to close early. Suddenly, her words took on an additional meaning:

And in this hemistich, all the world’s bravery assaults centuries, with so much constancy. So much patience passed down into posterity, like a bequeathed secret, like a more efficient mantra than the coarse rule of blood.

READ MORE…