When Asymptote’s October issue came out nearly a month ago, I (that is to say, your trusty blog editor Patty Nash, with my co-editor Eva Richter) promised that the favorites we had picked were merely the tip of the iceberg. That there were more where those came from, which is to say that they weren’t favorites at all, per se, because the word “favorite” implies absoluteness. And in an issue as large and diverse as ours, sticking to one or two final picks feels like an unnecessary burden: as blog editors, we do make the rules, after all. READ MORE…
Translations
October Issue Highlight: from “Against the Current,” by Tedi López Mills
Another in-depth look at our most recent issue
Marcel Schwob’s “Mimes” – Mime XVIII
Sam Gordon and Katie Assef with two very different translations of one of Schwob’s most captivating pieces.
Read all previous posts in Asymptote’s “Mimes” translation project here.
Mime XVIII. Hermes the Psychagôgos
(trans. Sam Gordon)
I conduct the dead, whether they be shut up in sculpted stone sarcophagi or contained in the bellies of metal or clay urns, bedecked or gilded, or painted in blue, or eviscerated and without brains, or wrapped in strips of linen, and with my herald’s staff I guide their step as I usher them on.
We continue along a rapid way men cannot see. Courtesans press against virgins and murderers against philosophers, and mothers against those who refused to give birth, and priests against perjurers. For they are seeking forgiveness for their crimes, whether they imagined them in their heads, or committed them with their hands. And having not been free in life, bound as they were by laws and customs, or by their own memory, they fear isolation and lend one another support. She who slept naked amongst men in flagstoned chambers consoles a young girl who died before her wedding, and who dreams determinedly of love. One who used to kill at the roadside—face sullied with ash and soot—places a hand on the brow of a thinker who wanted to renew the world, who foretold death. The woman who loved her children and suffered by them hides her head in the breast of a Hetaira who was willfully sterile. The man draped in a long robe who had convinced himself to believe in his god, forcing himself down on bended knee, weeps on the shoulder of the cynic who had broken the oaths of the flesh and mind before the eyes of the citizens. In this way, they help each other throughout their journey, walking beneath the yoke of memory.
A Winter’s Night in Sydney: Poetry Plurilingual
Reporting from the front lines of poetry, translation, and performance
I walked through Sydney’s back streets and upstairs to the crowded room where “Poetry Plurilingual” was about to begin. We sat on mismatched armchairs and wooden benches and squeezed up against each other. The night started with a series of readings of poems in foreign languages, followed by English-language translations. The focus of these readings was on the “original,” foreign, text. But the night took a sharp turn when two readers—Jack Breukelaar and Toby Fitch—boldly shifted the audience’s attention to the process and text of translation.
Jack introduced the audience to the work of Japanese writer and manga artist Kiriko Nananan, showing us a “1994 cool female authors” edition of Garo, an avant-garde manga periodical that began in the sixties, that he bought for a dollar at a discount bookshop. The book was visually striking—Jack didn’t know the work’s significance when he bought it—“but was drawn to [the] cover image by Nananan, reminiscent of Schiele or Baudelaire.” More of Nananan’s work has been translated into French than into English, and Jack had not found any previous English translation of his chosen poem: READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: Three Contemporary Russian Poets
Work by Evgeny Nikitin, Andrey Tavrov, and Sergei Shestakov—translated by Kat Shapiro
I. Evgeny Nikitin
The candle flame is trembling and in sway
As, catching fire, a moth melts in to kiss her.
My friend stopped writing—he is like a whisper,
A beast that runs his hunter’s way.
Winter is closing in, drawing its shutters.
The timid gas with little azure tongue
Spurts from the burner, lightly stutters,
The dying moth forgotten before long.
I Chain Myself to the Origins
I chain myself to the origins
of light,
I undo a sunset,
just as poetry touches me,
with my lips I create the fate
of a horizon that glorifies
cemeteries filled with bones.
I rest in the sudden vibration
of a cloud,
intersecting rivers of silence
at the whimsical azure of a crowd
of instants.
Embodied in the exile
of earth and water,
I bind myself to the wind, I yield to the flames.
To eyes permeated by the world
surrounding the sun,
I make myself eternal
like Daphne. I make myself
a forest of olive trees.
Marcel Schwob’s “Mimes” – Mime XVI and XVII
“Translating a poem from 1894 into a language that has evolved and cast off as much as English has is no easy task.”
Read all previous posts in Asymptote’s “Mimes” translation project here.
Mime XVI. Sismé
She whom you see withered before you was named Sismé, a daughter of Thratta. First, she came to know of bees and flocks; then she tasted the salt of the sea; finally, a merchant trader lured her to the white houses of Syria. Now she remains enshrined like a precious statuette upon a stone plinth. Count the rings sparkling on her fingers: she has lived as many years. See the bandeau, taut about her crown: here, so timid, she received her first loving kiss. Touch the star of pale rubies that sleeps where her bosom once lay: there rested the head of a beloved. Near Sismé have been placed her faded mirror, her silver jackstones and the long amber pins that once wound through her hair; as come her twentieth year (there are twenty rings), she was adorned with treasures. A wealthy magistrate gave her all a woman could desire. Sismé will never forget him, and his jewels are not spurned by her fragile, white bones. In kind, he built this ornate tomb to protect his tender departed, and he surrounds her with perfumed jars and golden vessels for his fallen tears. Sismé is grateful to him. Yet you, if you wish to glimpse the secret of an embalmed heart, unclench the tiny joints of this left hand: here you will find a small, humble glass ring. This ring was once transparent; but with the years it has become hazy and obscure. Sismé loves it. Be silent and see.
An unpredictable cloud of smoke forced him to move around constantly. He had nowhere to stand to avoid it. That day, grandpa mentioned how every January 1st, the wind blew in all four directions. The rest of the family watched him start the fire for the barbecue and his theory, once again, was proven.
It was a thick and humid beginning of the year. After eating, the family rested under the ombu tree like animals waiting for the storm. When the sky turned black, the women hurried to take everything inside: cups, chairs and the clothes hanging on the line. Then it began to rain, just like that, a curtain of water, hard and even. READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: “The Space Between” by Christos Asteriou
“We slip between the spaces left by bodies, through the holes in the teeth, and slide down the subway escalators upside down.”
I’ve been living with Lata since the beginning of the summer. It’s true that I’m only fifteen and she’s around the same age, that we don’t have a single thing to call our own yet—no money, no nothing—but what’s the big deal? Lata and I, we know how to make things work no matter what. We haven’t found a long-term place yet, that’s true, too. We’re usually all over the map—on rooftops, in warehouses—but not every day of the week because we go back home often. I go to my mom’s and she goes to hers. She’s the one that really makes a scene, screaming and crying and saying a whole bunch of things I can’t understand. Of course, she always ends up cooling it and putting her arms around Lata; once she starts in with her broken Greek, everything goes back to normal. My mom, on the other hand, cooks dinner whether I’m there or not in the evening, and waits for me to show up with my stories about the outside world. It’s hard out there, I tell her, the old buildings are really tough and they chase us away. Her eyes open wide and she gives me a strange look. They put up scarecrows and wooden signs on the rooftops, as if we were unwanted birds, and if, after all this, we don’t heed their warning and lie down to sleep up there, there’s always someone who busts in and breaks it up with a gunshot in the air. On the other hand, you’ve got to have real balls to vault the obstacles on those new places, they’re super difficult, and they too want us out of there. I show her with my hands how you’re supposed to do the moves, how to jump over obstacles rhythmically, one-by-one. Like a primitive beast lost in the crowds of civilization, a mad rabbit let loose in the megalopolis. My body taut, my calves like stone, my lungs full of grimy air: that’s how I make it through the heart of the storm, see? That’s how the mind opens when you jump into space, how your thoughts breathe in oxygen. She starts yelling at me about how if I don’t shape up and get it together I will never find a job, about how I’ll get killed one day—all the usual babble. Don’t shout, I tell her, you don’t know what you’re talking about. How could you? Don’t worry—there’s no reason to. Everything will be fine: you see me now, there’s no obstacle anywhere that scares me anymore. And you know what, I like living like this; I like having you and Lata; I like walking on air. And if anyone asks me, I’ll tell them straight to their face: I don’t want to change anything at all, I want to stay like this forever.
Translation Tuesday: “Conference,” by Naja Marie Aidt
From the short-story collection Baboon, translated by Denise Newman
For an exclusive Asymptote blog interview with Naja Marie Aidt, click here.
It’s strange to meet you here, after so many years, and to still feel disturbed just being near your body. The way you’re settled in the chair like a large contented animal, like a large wild cat licking itself in the sun, or an elephant bathing in a river, like a person resting on top of another after pleasurable sex, it has an intimidating and shameless effect on me. My complete attention turns toward you and I’m unable to relax. It’s as if I am overflowing my own banks. READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: An Excerpt from “Kvachi,” by Mikheil Javakhishvili
A feature from Dalkey Archive Press’s forthcoming Georgian Literature Series, translated by Donald Rayfield
On the first of April that year the weather in Samtredia was stranger than usual. A pitch-black cloud hung over the earth from the morning onwards. Snow, hail, rain and, sometimes, spring sunshine alternated; after a while there was such a gale that the whole township rattled and shook, then a calm silence would descend and you wouldn’t see the slightest movement of a cloud in the sky.
So the first of April in Samtredia started in confusion: it was a deceitful, false, and treacherous day. READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: Poems by Felix Nicolau
"had no idea literature is about what you drink / with whom and where when I found that out I was already too old"
rhumba
the tapping july hail
puts me in mind
of how this salsa dancer used
to break my windows twice a month
with the stiletto flipped off her lil left foot
Marcel Schwob’s “Mimes” – Mime XIV and XV
"Labourer of lesser forms, he translated us into his clay language […] but failed to comprehend the pent-up desire of things."
Read all previous posts in Asymptote’s “Mimes” translation project here.
Mime XIV. The Parasol of Tanagra
Thus extended by my moulded rods, plaited with clay straw or woven with earthen fabric reddened by firing, I am held to the rear and towards the sun by a young girl with beautiful breasts. With the other hand she lifts her tunic of white yarn, and above her Persian sandals one may perceive ankles fashioned for electron rings to adorn. Her hair is wavy and a large pin traverses it at the nape of her neck. Averting her head she reveals her fear of the sun; she resembles Aphrodite come to incline her head.
Such is my mistress and earlier we have roamed through the meadows strewn with hyacinths, when she was in the rosy flesh and I made of yellow straw: the white sunshine kissed me on the outside, and below my dome I was embraced by the fragrance of the virgin’s hair. And the Goddess who transforms things having granted my wish, akin to a water-swallow falling with spread wings to caress with its beak a blossom born in the midst of a pond, I gently plunged onto her head. I lost the reed maintaining me far from her in the air, and became the hat covering her with a quivering roof.
Translation Tuesday: Poems by Andra Rotaru
Searing poems by Romanian poet Andra Rotaru, translated by Florin Bican
36 days
less than 36 days since we haven’t talked to each other.
by less
than 360 degrees can the body rotate still.
and, there –
when we no longer know.
I had before my eyes the heavy skin.
it had uncovered itself thoroughly,
like some sort of shock-proof wood.
it had developed a sheen and enamel.
it had sunk deep into the earth
since the earth patch I’m standing on
has the hue of a man’s flesh
since my skin’s ever whiter
do not wake up. a man’s body is attaining perfection.
green wood turns to black wood,
the texture gets rougher.
I’d stir my hands and they’d uncover themselves
I’d press them till neither the blood nor the lymph.
then, after a lengthy detour from my own body,
they’d fill up my tissues, they’d pile up,
no induration, nor rubber wood,
but soft wood we can keep banging on.
you tell me take care what you dream.
since the earth patch I am standing on
has the hue of a man’s flesh
since my skin’s ever whiter.
Translation Tuesday: “Beyond the Point” by Caio Fernando Abreu
Distinct and powerful short fiction from Brazil, translated by Elisa Wouk Almino
It rained, rained, rained and I went on inside the rain to meet him, without an umbrella or anything, I always lost them all at the bars, I only carried a bottle of cheap cognac pressed against the chest, it seems insincere said this way, but it was how I went through the rain, a bottle of cognac in hand and a bundle of wet cigarettes in my pocket. There was one point when I could have taken a taxi, but it wasn’t very far, and if I took a taxi I wouldn’t be able to buy cigarettes or cognac, and I thought firmly that it would be better to arrive wet from the rain, because that way we would drink the cognac, it was cold, not that cold, it was more the humidity entering through the fabric of clothes, through the thin, worn soles of shoes, and we’d smoke drink without limits, there’d be music, always those hoarse voices, that moaning sax and his eye set upon me, warm shower distending my muscles. But it still rained, my eyes stinging from the cold, my nose began to run, I would clean it with the backs of my hands and the liquid from my nose would harden instantly over the hairs, I’d tuck my reddened hands into the depths of my pockets and I would keep going, keep going and jumping the puddles of water with frozen legs. So frozen were my legs and arms and face that I thought of opening the bottle to take a sip, but I didn’t want to arrive at his house half-drunk, with bad breath, I didn’t want him thinking I had been drinking, and I had, every day a good pretext, and I also went on thinking that he’d think I had no money, arriving by foot in all that rain, and I had none, my stomach hurting with hunger, and I didn’t want him thinking I had been walking like an insomniac, and I had, purple bags under my eyes, I would have to be careful with my lower lip when smiling, if I smiled, and I almost certainly would, when I met him, so that he wouldn’t see the broken tooth and think I had been slacking, not seeing a dentist, and I had, and everything I was doing and being I didn’t want him to see or know, but after thinking this it brought me grief because I went on realizing realizing, inside the rain, that maybe I didn’t want him to know that I was me, and I was. Something confusing started to happen inside my head, this idea of I not wanting him to know that I was me, drenched in all that rain that fell, fell, fell and I had the urge to return to some place dry and warm, if there was such a place, and I didn’t remember any, or to stop forever right there on that gray corner that I attempted to cross without being able to, the cars throwing water and mud at me as they passed, but I couldn’t, or I could but shouldn’t, or I could but didn’t want to or no longer knew how one stops or goes back, I had to continue going to meet him, who would open the door for me, the moaning sax in the background and who knows a fireplace, pine nuts, warm wine with cloves and cinnamon, those winter things, and even more, I needed to avert my desire to go back or stay in place, for there is a point, I discovered, in which you lose control of your own legs, it’s not really like that, a torturous discovery that the cold and the rain wouldn’t let me chew properly, I merely began to know that there is a point, and I, divided, wanting to see what was after the point and also the pleasure of him waiting for me warm and ready.