Posts filed under 'Romanian Literature'

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

February 7, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng and MARGENTO

This week's latest news from Hong Kong, Belgium, and Romania!

This week our editors bring you news of the effects of coronavirus on cultural events in Hong Kong, as well as news of the Romanian writers taking center stage at a Belgian arts festival, and new publications in Romania that address its troubled but intellectually rich past. Read on to find out more!  

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

As China’s coronavirus pneumonia epidemic shows no signs of slowing down, Hong Kong is now under the threat of the wide-spreading virus and the possibility of a community outbreak of the disease. While the Hong Kong government refuses to take decisive measures to close the border to ban visitors from the Mainland even in face of a strike from the medical workers, many art and cultural events have been cancelled due to the temporary closure of venues managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, including the programs at the Hong Kong Arts Festival and Art Basel.

Meanwhile, local poetry publication Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine is calling for submissions for its special issue on “Virus,” which is going to address the recent virus panic from a poetic perspective. The deadline for submission is March 15, 2020. The magazine accepts both Chinese and English works. Moreover, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal is going to host a session on “Poetic Women in Translation” to explore how female sensibility is reflected in poetry and its translation. The event will feature translator Jennifer Feeley, Hong Kong poet Ng Mei-kwan, and Cha’s founder and editor Tammy Ho. READ MORE…

The Troubling Biography of Corneliu M. Popescu

November 21, 2019  |  in Essays  |  by Andreea Scridon

Rhyming “outblaze” with “always” suggests an intuitive understanding of the English language.

In 1977, a massive earthquake erupted from sinister pith of the Vrancea Mountains, with a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter Scale. The city of Bucharest partially crumbled on top of itself. In weight of damage, that meant destruction to approximately 33,000 buildings, wounds to 11,300 people, and death to 1,578 people—including actors, singers, film directors, writers . . . and a nineteen-year-old translator named Corneliu M. Popescu.

Born at the end of the 1950s, a decade that represented the height of communist censorship, Corneliu Popescu was ultimately swept away by the violent waves of the era he lived in. The sporty and sociable son of a lawyer, “Cornel” was offered a good education: while most people studied Russian in school, Cornel studied English with Ion Kleanthe Gheorghiu, who had been Romania’s ambassador in London, shortly before being imprisoned for anti-communist activities. Much of the boy’s short life seemed governed by the power of the moment, polymorphous in its guise as coincidence or destiny: perhaps subconsciously aware of the importance of now, he was effectively a savant, translating Treasure Island into Romanian at age ten. At around sixteen, enamored with the foamy intensity of Mihai Eminescu’s poetry, he began translating the poet, something only his parents and teachers knew about. Agreeing to postpone publication so that he could fully dedicate himself to preparing for medical school (a scholarship at Humboldt University had been lined up for him), Cornel edited his manuscript up to the day of his death: March 4, 1977. As he had arrived home from a tutoring session earlier than expected, the earthquake caught up to him at home. He was found in the arms of his mother the next day, amidst the rubble.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

May 31, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Barbara Halla and MARGENTO

Bucharest makes waves and the Man Booker International hits headlines.

News of the Man Booker International winner has made its way around the senses of the literary-minded public around the world, but we are here with a personal take on its winner, and why this unprecedented win has earned its accolades and perhaps could also potentially earn a place on your shelf. Also on our list is the incredibly poetic nation of Romania, who presented a manifold of verse champions for Bucharest’s International Poetry Festival. Reporting from amongst the greats are our editors at the front.

Barbara Halla, Editor-at-Large, covering the Man Booker International 2019

I was many things the night of the Man Booker International announcement, but gracious wasn’t one of them. Before the announcement was made on May 21, I wrote for Asymptote about my thoughts on the longlist and (correctly) predicted that Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth and published by Scottish indie Sandstone Press, would win it. Celestial Bodies represents many firsts in the prize’s history: it is the first book written in Arabic to win the prize, as well as the first book by an Omani author (in fact, Jokha Alharthi is the first female Omani author to ever be translated into English) and with a Scottish press to do so. Although its win was a bit of a surprise to others (being as it was surrounded by books receiving a lot more press and praise), the judges seemed quite taken with it. Talking to Five Books, and even during her announcement, chair of the judges, Bettany Hughes, highlighted one particular line from Celestial Bodies that she believed embodies the spirit of the prize itself: “We get to know ourselves better in new, strange places.”

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Translation Tuesday: Excerpts from Tempodrome by Simona Popescu

September 26, 2017  |  in Translations  |  by MARGENTO

"You have as many countries as the languages you speak."

Today’s Translation Tuesday is brought to you by MARGENTO, Asymptote Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova. The lyrical excerpts from Romanian essayist and poet Simona Popescu’s writing explore a mood—memories of the nineties related as if at a remove, stating plainly what the narrator saw, while encapsulating the myriad complications simmering beneath the still surface of the narration. 

“I confess I do not believe in time. I like
to fold my magic carpet, after use,
in such a way as to superimpose one part
of the pattern upon another.”
—Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

“Then everything regroups as if in a hot fog
where things recover among the obscure
plantations of the accidental.”
—Gellu Naum, The Blue Riverbank

“I have no idea of time, and I don’t wish to have”
—Wislawa Szymborska, On the Tower of Babel

In the house of my childhood, somewhere in my parents’ mixed up bookcase, leaning on a couple of books stood a black teddy bear in a white sash ribbon with some red lettering on it saying Grüsse aus Berlin. On other shelves there were other “souvenirs” from Abroad. For instance, a wooden cylinder with a lid in the shape of a Russian church dome, with a rose and the word “Bulgaria” burnt onto it. Inside was a vial of Bulgarian rose perfume. My folks never traveled Abroad. In fact, nobody in our little town ever traveled Abroad. Not even the Saxons and the Hungarians who, judging by the language they spoke, had to have another country somewhere, if push came to shove, right? You have as many countries as the languages you speak, the saying went. The Hungarians and the Saxons were therefore half foreign. But even so, even they never got Abroad—it was only the old people that sometimes went, but they always returned. Nobody needed them and they didn’t need anybody or anything except a quiet life in their homes. Only old people returned. They and the migrating birds.

It was me who had brought the rose perfume home. I was 12 when I went, without my parents, on a trip—well, yes—Abroad. I don’t recall much. It was I think in spring, there was I think a crisp sun, I was on a terrace I think by the sea, somewhere on a cliff, there were breakers I think in front of me, not very close though, I think I never went down the stairs to dip my toes in the sea. In the “vision” conjured by the word “Bulgaria” in which I’m a child a milky light and a bluish expanse approach me. And I’m all alone there, for a second, my back turned on everybody else. And I can hear a roaring wind. (I am back there anytime I want. I’m 12 and then—as I keep adding now—44. I hold an invisible butterfly net in my hand and collect images with it.) READ MORE…

Crowdsourcing a Poet

January 28, 2016  |  in Essays  |  by MARGENTO

"...I asked a number of significant writers for an input on the place of this writer in our literature..."

Have you ever thought of starting a poetry crowdsourcing? While contemplating writing on Alexandru Muşina’s magnetic personality (as a tie in to Ruxandra Cesereanu’s article in our July issue), the idea presented itself to me as the best way of introducing him to Asymptote’s readers; definitely an exciting opportunity to bring people together around the work of this amazing poet. Why? For at least two reasons. First, Muşina is one of the most important poets of Generation 80 (the poets that changed the face of Romanian poetry starting back in the 1980s), and arguably its most influential theorist, teacher, and public figure. Therefore, given the writer’s impressive public profile, crowdsourcing arises as a truly viable option in trying to unveil the many facets of his personality as mirrored by poets, critics, and theorists from various schools and walks of life. Second, taking the pulse of the current literary scene by asking some of its most outstanding representatives for input on the matter would obviously provide remarkably candid insights into the writer’s legacy, but it may also add up to a quick x-ray of Romanian letters, a sort of present-day portrayal of a young literature as revisiting an established man…; this latter aspect may prove of interest particularly since Cesereanu’s article focuses mainly on the place of Muşina’s poetry (and specifically his poem “Budila Express”) in the historical context of the communist regime and Ceausescu’s dictatorship (when the poem was first published). READ MORE…