Posts filed under 'microfiction'

Translation Tuesday: “a day (like any other)” by Carla Bessa

November 22, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Elton Uliana

walk the dog, here comes the neighbour, hello!, help!, sorry?, how are you?

This Translation Tuesday, the inimitable Carla Bessa plunges us into the frantic interior of a woman (like any other) and her everyday frenzy. If you’ve read Bessa’s work in our pages, you’ll recognise her work as mining the dramatic possibilities of text to revelatory effect; today’s story is another stellar instance. Drawn from her recent book Todas Umas, which explores the effacement of women after marriage and motherhood, Elton Uliana offers us the gushing rhythms of an inundated mind in his tightly woven translation. Read while listening to a recording of the Jabuti Prize winner’s new microfiction!  

a day (like any other)

get up early, have a shower, make some coffee, wake up the kids, kiss them, wake up the husband, kiss him, welcome the housekeeper, good morning!, help!, hi?, good morning!, have breakfast with the husband and kids, help!, did you say anything, honey?, me?, strange I heard something too mum, come on, time to go to school, take the husband and kids to the car, say goodbye, help! walk the dog, here comes the neighbour, hello!, help!, sorry?, how are you?, very well thank you, see you later, help!, turn around, keep walking, go to the bank, go to the hairdresser, help!, help!, go to the beautician, go to the shops, come back home, cook, iron, clean the house, no need for the cleaner it’s done already, visit the mother, help!, help!, help!, make an appointment at the gynaecologist, smile to the doorman, help!, all right, ma’am?, all great and you?, give the car park man some change, help!, help!, take the blender for repair, help!, come home, help!, hang the new painting in the dining room, or perhaps in the bedroom, help!, help!, help!, pick up the kids from school, help with their homework, help!, help!, help!, help!, help!, dinner, put the children to bed, read them a story, sing them a lullaby, stroke them, smother them with the pillow, welcome the husband, poison the husband, go to sleep.

wake up in the middle of the night thinking, shit, forgot the dog.

Translated from the Portuguese by Elton Uliana READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Heimat Who Lives in a Box” by A.E. Sadeghipour

March 10, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by A.E. Sadeghipour

The service was horrible or maybe we were never supposed to be there.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, inexplicable shapeshifting, bad table service, tangible numerals, and a loving friendship that defies spatial logic are on the menu in “Heimat who Lives in a Box,” written and translated from the German by A.E. Sadeghipour. In this surreal microfiction, a dinner date is marred by embarrassment and a rude (and seemingly inhuman) waitstaff. Sadeghipour’s ability to flout realism while preserving the conventions of the short narrative leads us to a conclusion that is both ironic and “happily ever after”-esque.

My friend Heimat lives in a box which she wears everywhere we go. It constantly causes conflicts when making dinner reservations. The last time we made a dinner reservation and crossed the threshold of the restaurant, she grew larger than the door and continuously banged into the door frame. She grew embarrassed and shriveled down into a matchbox. I picked her up, kissed her, walked in, and was escorted to our table.

The service was horrible or maybe we were never supposed to be there. The other guests closed their eyes as they ate, and the waitstaff’s heads were always transfixed on our position regardless of where their bodies were moving. When the food arrived, it was cold and had a hair in it.

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Translation Tuesday: “Theory of Affections” by Luca Argel

November 19, 2019  |  in Translations  |  by Daniel Persia

I always thought that this was a universal truth.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, Luca Argel spins a simple observation into a theory of relation and attachment. Trafficking in clichés that are made vivid by honest prose, this piece of micro-fiction outlines an order of love in what is often considered an extremely sterile place, devoid of culture: the supermarket. For the narrator, the simple task of prioritizing food on a shelf based on the date it was produced or purchased leads to a revelation about duration and relationships. It is not often that fiction so accurately represents the metonymic understandings that are developed at young ages by considering relations between things and people. Argel’s writing suggests that metaphor is alive and well in the mind of a child; and these metaphors stay with us as comforting touchstones throughout our lives.

I’ve enjoyed supermarkets a lot more ever since I left my parents’ house. I remember my mother telling me that they always place the almost-expired products in the front, and the newer ones in the back. I always thought that this was a universal truth: “all supermarkets have a policy of storing newer products in the back and older products in the front, so customers grab the older ones first.” But that’s not always the case. Today, for instance, the peas on the back of the shelf have the same expiration date as the peas on the front of the shelf. Generally, in the canned goods section, this rule doesn’t apply. But it does in the bakery section; in the bakery section, it never fails! You always need to look for the fresher products, for the ones that will last longer. When we got home, my father would arrange the groceries like that: recently purchased food went to the back of the pantry, while everything that had been there for a while came to the front. At a certain point in my childhood, I began to suspect that my parents had met at a supermarket. One day, she was looking for the freshest heart of palm; he was in the aisle behind her, looking for the freshest mayonnaise, and when they got to the back of the shelf, they realized that the shelf didn’t have a back, one looking right at the other.

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Translation Tuesday: “The Hot-Air Balloon” by Vassilis Alexakis

November 5, 2019  |  in Translations  |  by Rebecca Dehner-Armand

In reality, it’s like all words, with good and bad attributes, capable of protecting a thought as much as betraying a meaning.

This week’s Translation Tuesday features microfiction by Vassilis Alexakis. “The Hot-Air Balloon” begins and ends in an ambiguity, thickly described. The prose is structured around a choice without mooring, a choice that presents itself only to give way to the realization that a language system is something that only appears all-encompassing. By intellectualizing the feeling of infinite choice within a closed system and the eventual choice to leave it, Alexakis acutely describes a weightlessness only obtainable by those who walk between epistemologies. In the end, it is the feeling of the transcendence of the system, thematized as an air-balloon, that prevails. It is only through a meditation on words that we can unmoor ourselves from a system. This airy story depicts well the critical posture, especially of those with multiple languages to rely on.

I was asked to write a definition for a word without knowing which one. I had no hesitation. The more arduous a task, the more it fills me with joy. If I’d been given a word, I would’ve felt some pressure; I would’ve felt trapped. Now that I’ve briefly surveyed the entirety of the lexicon, I feel free as if I were being carried in a hot-air balloon.

Is it a masculine or feminine-gendered word? From my point of view, this question is of no concern. Besides, it’s not uncommon for a word’s synonyms to be of the opposite gender. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Basketball, Tennis, and Swimming” by Régis Jauffret

September 17, 2019  |  in Translations  |  by Jonathan Woollen

Since then, everything has filled me with wonder. I dumped my entire fortune into this company, which doesn’t produce any more than it sells.

This week’s Translation Tuesday features the work of Régis Jauffret, a French writer working since the 1980s. “Basketball, Tennis, and Swimming” is a micro-fiction that takes a look into the lived experience of depression—specifically a depression borne under a lack of inspiration and connection. Deep colors, sweeping juxtapositions, and a certain simplicity of thought feed into a narrative that questions schedules, labor, and purpose. An anti-capitalist vision of work opposed to melancholic states gives purpose to the purposeless. Uplifting narratives do not always have to be grand, this story shows, and the structures of neoliberal life worlds and traditional values can be tweaked with the help of a proper and poetic angle (and some odd desires!).

The staff have access to basketball hoops, three tennis courts, and a big pool with a sunroof, allowing them to enjoy some fresh air over the summer. It matters to me that everyone’s happy. I didn’t create this company to earn money, but to let the hopeless reacquire a taste for life.

I myself have known periods when I’ve risen at five in the afternoon, only to immediately lie back down after drinking some orange juice and eating a slice of bread. Those were the only times I saw my children, when they weren’t with their soccer team or at school. I came in contact with my wife’s body whenever she’d happen to be in bed, but I spent whole weeks without seeing her face in broad daylight. Medications in every color were piled up on the bedside table. I swallowed them without counting, and recognized them by their shape or their taste. I had gray dreams, without peaks or valleys, without sea, snow, night, or sun. Dreams like landscapes so flat, so desolate, that to my eyes nothing like them exists on our planet. I didn’t even think about death, it was too desirable for me to think possible. I slowly sank into the mattress, which cradled me like a cockle shell cast around my imprint.
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Translation Tuesdays: Two Stories by Muzzafer Kale

August 7, 2018  |  in Translations  |  by Ralph Hubbell

And what on earth could that mean, to only want some water?

After Flavia Teoc took us to ancient Constantionople last week, I’m thrilled to present two microfictions by Turkish writer Muzzafer Kale. Deceptive in their outward simplicity, these perfectly poised stories hinge on the unsaid and work beautifully in English thanks to translator Ralph Hubbell’s precise language.

—Lee Yew Leong, Translation Tuesdays editor

 

Incident

I wasn’t from that mountain village.

What brought me there was work, and by work I mean looking at carpets and kilims. There were plenty of people from the village that I knew.

So we were sitting in the July heat, trying to cool ourselves off in the shade of a walnut tree—me, Ibrahim and Lazy-Eyed Salih.

That Salih, he was a cheerful one. He had a different way of looking at things. Leaping from one topic to the next, he talked of this, that and the other thing while we all laughed it up. These two friends of mine were good shots too. They were wagering who could hit a half-lira piece with a thirty-two caliber from forty meters away…

And then she appeared, with her donkeys, coming off the mountainside path. She’d loaded the animals piecemeal with some sagging goods, which swung all over the place.

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Translation Tuesday: Three stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

July 3, 2018  |  in Translations  |  by Ryan C. K. Choi and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

As I continued to stare at the drifting peaks, a peculiar scene from my past came to mind.

Today we bring you three enigmatic pieces by “the father of the Japanese short story.” You probably know Ryūnosuke Akutagawa without realizing it—one of his short stories served as the basis for Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashōmon. Each of these tales brings a quick punch of emotion, leaving an impression on the reader not unlike that of microfiction. 

Sennin[1]

There was once a sennin who worked as a jurist in O Town near Lake Biwa. His favorite pastime, more than anything else, was collecting gourds. Stored inside a giant closet on the upper floor of his rented home was his vast collection hanging from nails hammered into the posts and lintels.

Three years had gone by, when, one day, the sennin received a notice of transfer from the government. He was to relocate forthwith to his new post in H City. He made arrangements for all of his furniture and belongings except for his gourds, of which he had amassed over two hundred. He had no idea how to go about moving them, and he refused to part with a single one.

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Translation Tuesday: “Place” by Dmitry Danilov

February 13, 2018  |  in Translations  |  by Dmitry Danilov and Philippa Mullins

Sit at home, in the shadows, in the empty, shadowy flat. The empty, dark flat, things hung on the rail stir softly.

This week’s Translation Tuesday comes from the amazing Russian author Dmitry Danilov. For more microfiction, head over to the brand new Winter 2018 issue of Asymptote!

Sit at home, in the shadows, in the empty, shadowy flat. The empty, dark flat, things hung on the rail stir softly. Only in one corner of the empty, dark, shadowy flat does life smoulder with a red-yellowy glimmer. In the corner of the empty, dark flat nestles a human being, a calculating machine works. A lamp illuminates this space in the corner of the empty, shadowy flat; all the rest of the flat is empty and dark.

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Translation Tuesday: “The Chickens” by Ursula Foskolou

January 30, 2018  |  in Translations  |  by Pavlos Stavropoulos and Ursula Foskolou

My grandmother's head was cold and in places translucent, like ice that had started to melt.

This piece comes from a published collection of mostly short prose. Many of the stories draw on themes of childhood, memory, unrequited love, and inner conflict, often using strong imagery of hunger and smells. As a translator, what drew me to the stories was the author’s ability to take ordinary and daily experiences and display them in a way that is surreal or fantastical, with a focus on the physicality of our bodies and the objects around us—and to do it all in very short stories (100-150 words each). In this format the subtle differences in syntax and grammar between Greek and English become particularly pronounced. Foskolou often uses longer sentences with one or more dependent clauses, in a way that is not unusual in Greek but would sound awkward or wrong in English. Similarly, the author uses the Greek past imperfect tense to evoke a sense of time and events, and the emotions that surround these events, that is incomplete, deferred, imperfect. English does not have a past imperfect tense, forcing the translator to use other linguistic devices to create a similar effect.

—Pavlos Stavropoulos

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Translation Tuesday: “The Artist’s Life” by Pierre Autin-Grenier

January 23, 2018  |  in Translations  |  by Andrea Reece and Pierre Autin-Grenier

I will therefore continue to numb the sorrows of old age by manufacturing my hand-made lace in the shadows.

Playing with food imagery and writing in a jazzy rhythm, this metafictional musing on the economic reality of being a writer gives the reader a glimpse at the rationale behind microfiction. The sprinkling of French terms places us in a specific context, but the endeavor feels universal as the narrator works to eat. For more microfiction, head over to the brand new Winter 2018 issue of Asymptote!

Business is much too slack these days to imagine treating oneself to a simple sherbet dip after a day spent scribbling in the light of the desk lamp, and going off, just like that, to lick the liquorice stick while daydreaming under the moonlight. It’s drummed into me from all sides that one must breathe frugally and through clenched lips, measure my steps parsimoniously, mind the tallow on the end of the candle and above all cut down on my extravagances. Times are for cutting the kipper in quarters, you see, my wife said to me just yesterday and as we sat down to eat, and I won’t even go into how much your ciggies are costing us. I blushed slightly. Soon we’ll have to go up the stairs two by two to protect the steps, I thought in petto, not wanting to be outdone.

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Blog Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2018

January 22, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News  |  by David Smith, Sarah Booker, and Stefan Kielbasiewicz

Our blog editors pick their favorite pieces from the Winter 2018 issue!

To celebrate our seventh birthday here at Asymptote, the blog editors have chosen some of our favorite pieces from the Winter 2018 issue to showcase. This issue truly shines with a diversity of voices and literary styles, including a special feature on micro fiction, and it was such a pleasure for us to read through it. With work from thirty different countries, this issue has been gathered under the theme of “A Different Light.” Enjoy these highlights!

I’ve always admired Asymptote‘s advocacy for literatures that not only are underrepresented, but that take chances, resist easy reduction or interpretation by the reader. Poems that dare to be “the awkward spectacle of the untried move, not grace” (to borrow a phrase from American poet Don Byrd). Poets like Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine. The poems from Arachnid Sun shock me with their bold imagery, impelling me to read again and again. I latch on to certain repeated images: insect, illusion, blood. And definitely a noticeable theme of authoritarian rulers: “spider-eggs perfuming the silence the dictator” and “harpoon the king-shark who flees the riverbeds of polar scrubland.”

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