Posts filed under 'Post-Soviet history'

Writing from the Ghosthouse: Maria Stepanova on Postmemory and the Russian Skaz

Now I understand that catastrophe is never a one-time event; it’s a sort of a pendulum, destined for a comeback.

Maria Stepanova’s award-winning work, In Memory of Memory (2021), translated into English by Sasha Dugdale from the Russian original Pamiati, pamiati (2017), seamlessly blends transnational history, private archives, and memoir-in-essay—an oscillation beyond autofiction that the nonfiction reader in me had previously thought impossible. Also embedded in the novel are texts from various sources—from Phaedrus to Paul Celan, Heraclitus to Thomas Mann’s diaries, Orhan Pamuk to Nikolai Gogol—blended smoothly in Stepanova’s sinuous prose.

Already an author of ten volumes of poetry, Stepanova’s debut was described by Dmitry Kuzmin as a display of “brilliant poetic technique and a purity of style.” Now, known as a chronicler of her Russian-Jewish lineage, Stepanova had written: “I would become a stranger, a teller of tales, a selector and a sifter, the one who decides what part of the huge volume of the unsaid must fit in the spotlight’s circle, and what part will remain outside it in the darkness.” She is now widely regarded as both an important and popular contemporary writer—or in the words of Irina Shevelenko, “one of the most original and complex poets on the literary scene in Russia today.”

In this interview, I asked Maria about the genre-defying In Memory of Memory, political poetry since the Silver Age of Russian literature, and the literary tradition of folktales.

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): In a previous interview, you spoke about being an eyewitness to a generation of writers who “were traumatized by the crash of the Soviet system of literary education and literary work,” stating: “You could live for three years after publishing a book, but it had to be a bad book, because it was the result of an inner compromise.”

Can you speak on that moment in time—when literary bureaucracy and censorship was prevalent, when Social Realism and traditional genres and forms were requisite, and at the same time, artists thrived?

Maria Stepanova (MS): Well, it was not exactly a good time from an artist’s point of view, as practically all the significant writers—not even mentioning the really big names—were pushed into the margins by this system. Some of them were killed, some jailed, some scared into silencing themselves, some forced to start writing in a “normal” realistic mode. And there are a couple of individuals who were appreciated by the Soviet system; though heavily censored, they were published after a lifetime of fear and loss, like Akhmatova—whose first husband was killed, third husband died in jail, and only son spent years and years in the concentration camps. It was long before the 1990s, but the Soviet utopia of Writer’s Unions, those big honorariums and that enormous audience, was actually shaped in the 1930s, over the backdrop of so many deaths, and it never transformed into anything that would allow arts or artists to thrive. Even later on, when the times became more or less vegetarian, there was an enormous split between independent culture and the official, “publishable” one that appeared in state-funded exhibition spaces or in bookshops. If you were willing to make an official career out of writing, you had to prepare yourself for the lifetime of compromises—to agree that your writing would get cropped and reshaped according to the Party line. But, of course, the benefits were significant, and the life of an underground author was not the easiest—still, the most interesting poetry and prose being written in Russia in the twentieth century were produced by the authors who had chosen such a life, who were writing “v stol”: unpublishable books that were kept in the desk.

It’s important for me to say it, banal as it is, because lately, one might hear people referring to the Soviet times with some weird sort of nostalgia; as if the books we are able to read and quote now were a result of that system, and not a desperate attempt to resist it. The very names of the writers who had perished or were silenced in the 1930s (or remained in danger and unpublished in the 70s and 80s, until the Soviet empire crashed) are used as showcases for how an oppressive society might produce great works of literature. It somehow reminds me of the way ducks are tortured to produce foie gras: the amount of pain involved in the process is unjustifiable, whatever the results are. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

In which we discuss the International Booker Prize longlist and bring you literary news from Poland and Uzbekistan!

This week, our editors from around the world discuss the 2022 International Booker longlist (released just yesterday), the Polish literary world’s reaction to the war in Ukraine, and literary nationalism in Uzbekistan. Read on to find out more!

Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief, on the 2022 International Booker Prize Longlist

The longlist for the 2022 International Booker Prize landed yesterday and we’re chuffed to see so many of our past contributors (20!), former team members (five!), and Book club titles (two!) on it! We’re especially thrilled for Anton Hur, who debuted in a big way by making the cover of our Fall 2016 edition with his translation of Jung Young Su’s “Aficionados” (we are proud to have played a small role in ”changing his life,” as he himself attests). Hur has not one but two titles on the 13-book list—a feat which, as far as we know, has never been accomplished before in the (admittedly short) history of the International Booker Prize. You can find his very smart metafictional essay on translating Bora Chung from our Winter 2021 issue here (accompanied by a translation into the Korean by Chung herself!); Hur also facilitates Rose Bialer’s interview with Sang Young Park here (both Chung and Park appear respectively with Cursed Bunny and Love in a Big City).

In stark contrast to last year’s longlist, which saw only one work from Asia included, this year was a bumper year for Asian representation, with five titles—among these, nominees Norman Erikson Pasaribu and translator Tiffany Tsao also first appeared together in Asymptote (read their debut in English here). We extend our warmest congratulations to editor-at-large David Boyd, whose co-translation, with Samuel Bett, of Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven—Kawakami’s inclusion this year makes up for the glaring omission of Breasts and Eggs last year—is also nominated. Before we let you check out the list on your own, we note, with no small measure of delight, that Phenotypes, our Book Club pick for January 2022, and After the Sun, our Book Club pick for August 2021, were also selected for the longlist, proving that joining our Book Club is one of the best ways to encounter tomorrow’s prizewinners today. Find our interviews with the two respective author-and-translator duos here (Paulo Scott and Daniel Hahn) and here (Jonas Eika and Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg). Best of luck to all nominees—and may the worthiest pair (or trio) win!

Erica X Eisen, Blog Editor, reporting on Uzbekistan

The month of February saw celebrations in honor of the 581st birthday of the poet Alisher Navoi, a key figure in the history of Central Asian literature who was born in 1441 in what was then the Timurid Empire. While festivities occurred in several countries of the former Soviet Union, they were most pronounced in Uzbekistan, where Navoi’s work is seen as foundational for the country’s national literature. In various parts of the country, admirers of the poet held readings of his ghazals and reflected on his life and legacy.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

This week's latest news from Czech Republic, Moldova, and El Salvador!

The engines of global literature churn on amidst a summer full of suspensions, and our editors on the ground are here to bring you the latest in their developments. Though the Czech Republic and El Salvador mourn the losses of two literary heroes, their legacies are apparent in the multiple peregrinations of their works, continuing. Furthermore: an exciting new Moldovan translation and a resurfaced scandal implicating the widely-lauded Milan Kundera.

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Czech Republic

Poet and essayist Petr Král, who died on June 17 at the age of seventy-eight, was not only an original poet continuing the surrealist tradition, but also a distinguished translator who moved freely between his native Czech and French, the language he adopted after emigrating to Paris in 1968, following the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Král’s translations introduced key poets of the French avant-garde to Czech readers, and the three anthologies he translated and published also helped to put Czech poetry on the map in France. After 1989, he moved back to Prague, and in 2016 was honoured with the Czech State Prize for Literature, while in 2019 he was awarded the Grand Prix de la Francophonie by the Académie française. His loss is mourned equally in Prague and in Paris.

Just over ten years ago, another great Czech-born writer who has made Paris his home, Milan Kundera, was embroiled in a huge controversy after an article in the Czech weekly Respekt alleged that, as a student and an ardent communist, the future writer had denounced another young man to the secret police, resulting in the latter’s arrest and years spent in labour camps. These allegations, which Kundera has always strenuously denied, reared their ugly head again last month, when Czech-American writer Jan Novák published Kundera’s unauthorized biography. As the title suggests, Kundera. Český život a doba (Kundera. His Czech Life and Times) concentrates on the writer’s early life and career before his emigration to France and purports to lift the veil further on “the moral relativist’s” infatuation with communism. The book has caused quite a stir, with some critics hailing it as well-researched and highly readable, while others, including journalist Petr Fischer and author and former Asymptote contributor Radka Denemarková, regard it as little more than a hatchet job, questioning Novák’s use of secret police files as a reliable source of information. Milan Kundera has maintained silence.

On the other hand, underground writer and philosopher Egon Bondy (1930–2007), the enfant terrible of Czech literature and lyricist for the punk band Plastic People of the Universe, never denounced his left-wing beliefs and took revelations of his collaboration with the secret police on the chin. In protest against the splitting of Czechoslovakia, Bondy moved to the Slovak capital, Bratislava, where he devoted himself to the study and translation of Chinese philosophy. In 1997 he wrote his final book, inspired by the life of Lao Tzu. Dlouhé ucho (The Long Ear), which had long been considered lost, was finally published this May, thirteen years after Bondy’s death in a fire that broke out in his flat when he fell asleep with a burning cigarette. READ MORE…

A Conversation with Norwegian-to-Azerbaijani Translator Anar Rahimov

There was not a single moment when I said to myself, “Stop”—even when I spent 10 to 15 minutes on one sentence!

As a translator of Norwegian, I travelled to the Gothenburg Book Fair in September to meet with Scandinavian authors, publishers, and fellow translators. One of the translators I met there was Anar Rahimov, a translator of contemporary Norwegian prose into Azerbaijani.

I was intrigued by Anar’s story as one of only two translators of Norwegian in Azerbaijan. I translate into English, probably the world’s most dominant language, and I was curious about the exchange between two relatively small languages, Norwegian and Azerbaijani. I wanted to ask Anar a little more about his work as a translator and how it fits into the literary culture of Azerbaijan. 

David Smith (DS): How did you come to learn Norwegian and what inspired you to translate literature?

Anar Rahimov (AR): Well . . . it was quite accidental, I have to admit. I was working at the University of Languages in Baku as an English language teacher. Then an event took place that changed my whole career, priorities, and future standing in life. In 2010, I heard about an interview that included financing two and half years’ study in Oslo. Ever since childhood, Norway has appealed to me as a northern, far away, and very cold land. Besides, studying in the prestigious universities of Europe was tempting in itself. After a little hesitation, I applied and was selected.

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Translation Tuesday: A Poem by Elena Fanailova

No one can bear it, physiologically, Except for perverted aesthetes

Elena Fanailova has been one of the most boundary-pushing poets in the contemporary Russian poetry scene for over twenty years. Known for her keen observations of both Russian authorities and her own peers in the intelligentsia and art world, Fanailova shows off the height of her incisive yet colloquial, even witty, narration style in “masha and lars von trier,” a poem in which everyone is complicit in the crimes of their culture. 

—Madeline Jones, Blog Editor

masha and lars von trier

          Diary, summer 2006

1.

The Russian after-party is fucking up the championship
Russian Masha is losing Wimbledon
To a wooden machine by the name of Amélie
Behind whom stands a thousand-year-old blitzkrieg
And all of France, the Church’s eldest daughter

Russian Masha is getting nervous, you can tell,
No matter how loud you yell.
Her powerful serves splinter against the mechanics
Of the still more powerful machine and its instruments
Here nothing will come of it
Except her volleys,
Lesser versions, knockoffs,
Pitiful byzantinism

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A Lexicon Like No Other

“The crushing of the Prague Spring was followed by another communist party crackdown. Dozens of translations...were banned."

Oľga Kovačičová, PhD is a Slovak literature scholar and specialist in old Russian literature and translation studies. She works at the Institute for Literary Studies at the Slovak Academy of Sciences where for the past few years she has been the driving force behind a unique project, “The Lexicon of 20th century Slovak translators,“ which she co-edited and contributed some 80 of the total 400 entries. She has agreed to share some reflections on the special role literary translation played in shaping Slovak language and culture with Asymptote’s Editor-at-large Julia Sherwood, who then translated her insights into English.

Translated literature necessarily plays a more important role in smaller countries compared with bigger nations where much of the reading public’s literary and general cultural needs are met by local literary output. When it comes to a really small country like Slovakia, even without citing statistical data it is obvious that the ratio of translated to domestic literary production is roughly the converse of that in Western Europe, where translations represent 12% (Germany) or 20% (Italy) of book publishing overall, let alone English speaking countries with the notorious 3-4% of translated books.

Lexicon cover

Another big difference is that while the major European cultures have had access to the great works of world literature in their own language for many centuries, in Slovakia the process of reception was basically condensed into the 20th century, since Slovak as a literary language was only constituted in the second half of the 1840s.  Volume I of the Lexicon of Slovak 20th century Literary Translators (Slovník slovenských prekladateľov umeleckej literatúry 20. storočia), published in 2015 by the Slovak Academy of Sciences (volume II is almost complete), provides a fascinating glimpse of this frantic catching up process.

There are lexicons and then there are lexicons. Unlike pragmatic manuals of the “Who’s Who” type, the profiles of some 400 translators featured in The Lexicon aim to chart the trajectory of literary translation in the 20th century and through this, the history of reception of world literature in Slovakia. Individual entries are between three and five pages long, and apart from basic biographical details and each translator’s bibliography, they look at the works each of them translated and how he/she translated them.  The fruit of the painstaking labour of over 30 linguists and translation studies scholars, the book includes Katarína Bednárová’s comprehensive introductory essay on the history of literary translation in Slovakia and its international context, a bibliography of secondary sources, and an index. Volume II will feature an illustrated supplement, showcasing a selection of around 200 book covers, which doubles as a comprehensive survey of the evolution of Slovak book design, as well as lists of translators by source country.

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