Posts featuring Ruxandra Cesereanu

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

Dispatches from Romania, Sweden, and North Macedonia!

In this week’s dispatches, our editors report on the continual remembrance of iconic poets, interdisciplinary festivals, and writing that draws attention to the climate crisis. Read on to find out more!

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

Sixty years after the tragic passing of Danica Ručigaj, iconic poet and pioneer of écriture féminine in North Macedonia, an anniversary edition containing the entirety of her oeuvre was published this month. The collection, entitled Srebreni nokjni igri i zarobenici na vetrot (Silver Nighttime Games and Prisoners of the Wind) was prepared by two prominent publicists and journalists working at Radio Skopje, Sveto Stamenov and Iskra Cholovikj, who have dedicated over two decades to researching Ručigaj’s reception and sustaining the vivacity of her legacy.

Ručigaj (1934–1963), sometimes referred to as the Sylvia Plath of North Macedonia for the unabashed vulnerability of her writing, studied ancient Greek, Latin, and Southern Slavic literature, and also worked for the Cultural Ministry of North Macedonia. She passed away at the age of twenty-nine in the 1963 Skopje earthquake—a devastating event that resulted in numerous casualties and left the entire city in ruins. Two poems famously discovered in the ruins of Ručigaj’s home—“Circles” and “Untitled”—will be featured in the anthology, along with essays about her work by prominent scholars and a complete bibliography of publications containing Ručigaj’s writing.

Ručigaj’s poetry, informed by her academic background and nonconformist, taboo-defying artistic attitude, occupies a prominent position in Macedonian literary history. Her refusal to comply with patriarchal norms continues to retain its relevance, as anti-equality sentiments are rising amidst the public. In one of her best-known poems, “No, Do Not Speak to Me” (“Ne, Ne Zboruvaj Mi”), a feminine voice laments the death of a bird who lived “within eyes that have now dried up”, simultaneously noting that its death might be a relief to some: “Come hither, do not fear / Those eyes no longer shine / And so, come hither.” As the poem progresses, we begin to realize that the owner of the eyes is the feminine speaker herself; without the bird—their inner songsmith—they no longer pose a threat to the Other that the poem is directed to. This poem remains an accurate image of gender relations in Macedonian society, where equality is still considered a threat to the “sanctity of the family”. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

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

Our writers bring you the latest literary news this week from Lebanon, where writers have been responding in the aftermath of the devastating port explosion. In Japan, literary journals have published essays centred upon literature and illness, responding to the ongoing pandemic. Romanian literature has been thriving in European literary initiatives and in Hong Kong, faced with a third wave of COVID-19, the city’s open mic nights and reading series have been taking place online. Read on to find out more! 

MK Harb, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Lebanon

This week, as French President, Emmanuel Macron, began his Lebanon tour by meeting the iconic Lebanese diva, Fairuz, the literary world continued to grieve for Beirut in the aftermath of the explosion. Author Nasri Atallah, writing for GQ Magazine, recounts the cataclysmic impact of “Beirut’s Broken Heart.” Writer and translator Lina Mounzer and writer, Mirene Arsanios, exchanged a series of letters to each other for Lithub, talking about the anguish of distance and the pain of witnessing tragedy.Writer Reem Joudi also wrote an intimate essay exclusively for Asymptote, reflecting on her experience of the explosion and the uncertain future that Beirut now faces. Naji Bakhti, a young Lebanese writer, made his literary debut with Between Beirut and the Moon. Published on August 27 with Influx Press, the book is a sardonic coming of age story in post-civil-war Beirut (1975-1990). While Bakhti was chronicling the past, reading it now feels eerily relevant.

In translation news, writer and transgender activist, Veronica Esposito, interviewed Yasmine Seale about her upcoming translation of the Thousand and One Nights. Seale, whose English translation of Aladdin is beautiful in the most transgressive sense, will be the first woman to translate the Thousand and One Nights into English. In the interview, she discusses the colonial and class legacy of translating classics and the wild possibility of re-translating and re-imagining many Arabic classics. Lastly, here at Asymptote, we are excited about acclaimed Egyptian author, Mansoura Ez-Eldin’s new novel, Basateen Al-Basra from Dar El-Shourouk publishing house. Her previous novel, Beyond Paradise, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2010. We eagerly await its translation from Arabic!

David Boyd, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Japan

This month, Japan’s major literary journals continue to showcase writing that deals with illness. The September issue of Subaru features several essays on the intersection between literature and illness, including “Masuku no sekai wo ikiru” (Living in the World of the Masque), in which Ujitaka Ito connects Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman to the current pandemic. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Our weekly roundup lands us in Romania, Moldova, India and Egypt.

Prizes, events, book publications, festivals—whatever you can think of, our Weekly Dispatches have you covered from one end of the world to the other. This week our editors are focusing on the most exciting news from India, Romania and Moldova, and Egypt. 

Janani Ganesan, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from India: 

When everything is sponsored by a multinational company, from football to governments, literature is no different. India’s richest literary award was announced this March by JCB group. An annual prize money of INR twenty-five lakhs (USD 38,400) for a fiction book could have only come from a company manufacturing construction equipment.

(The DSC Prize, which was the most generous literary award in the country till its prize money was reduced from USD 50,000 to USD 25,000 in 2017, is also funded by a company specializing in infrastructure.)

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Your literary update from Romania, Cuba, and the UK

This week, we dock first in Romania, where Editor-at-Large MARGENTO updates us on the political climate and how it’s influencing literary output. Then we sail southwest to Cuba, where we’ll hear from Blog Editor Madeline Jones about the foreign diplomats barred from an awards ceremony, as well as highlights from the International Book Fair in Havana. Finally, back across the Atlantic, M. René Bradshaw, Editor-at-Large for the UK, maps out the best literary events taking place in and around the capital throughout March and April.

MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova, catches us up on the Romanian literary scene:

The recent wave of rallies that have swept Romania, where hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest the government’s decrees decriminalizing certain corruption-related offences, has sparked reactions both on social media and in literary and creative circles.  The “light revolution” received huge global media coverage when tens of thousands of smartphones converged their glows outside the government building in Bucharest, sending a blinding anti-graft message while also forming the image of a huge national flag.  The true hallmark of this revolution has been internationally perceived as the deployment of digital apps and catchy, pun-filled slogans in both English and Romanian, inundating social and mass media with what hip-hop star Călin “Rimaru” Ionescu has termed the new “OUGmented reality” (OUG being the Romanian acronym for a governmental decree).  As #Rezist has gone viral across digital media channels, it is apt to share from our past archives a celebration by Asymptote contributor Ruxandra Cesereanu of what she sees as a revival of the anti-Soviet and anti-communist rezistance, a Romanian partisan movement that heroically lasted from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s.

In a similar vein, American poet and translator Tara Skurtu—currently in Romania on a Fulbright grant—has revisited the Romanian gulag in a poem inspired by the recent protests and published in the Huffington Post. A couple of days later, the same publication ran an interview on similar issues with Radu Vancu, also an Asymptote contributor.  Still, one of the authorities on modern and post-communist history Mircea Stănescu, who has consistently and shrewdly chronicled and analyzed the protests, maintained a cautionary stance, pointing out the generation gap strongly manifest in the current movement and warning about deeper political and educational issues that might remain unaddressed and resurface later.  Yet it seems that the ongoing rallies and sense of solidarity are a breath of fresh air that has already inspired a great deal of writers. Poet, novelist, and essayist Cosmin Perța has already announced a forthcoming #Rezist literary anthology.

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