For this week’s edition of In This Together, we present a text from the Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov. Translator Teodora Gandeva, introduces the piece:
In the cruelest month of April, under the sky of Berlin, acclaimed Bulgarian poet, writer, and playwright, Georgi Gospodinov (who gained world recognition for his novel The Physics of Sorrow) wrote about the things that save us during the personal and collective pandemic experience of anxiety and grief.
In the chaos and uncertainty, “Only simple things can save us” . . . The poem is reminiscent of one of his first texts about COVID-19, written as a note on the fridge, a list of the things we shouldn’t forget when we get out of our isolation and current state of “islands entire of ourselves”:
“When we get out of here, the only thing we should carry with us will be an invisible survival suitcase with the most important personal belongings, small enough not to accumulate unnecessary rubbish. А small first aid kit for after the end of a world, which we will have to compose again.”
Where do we find shelter and consolation from the constant reminders of our sudden mortality? When the future and the present have been cancelled, as Gospodinov wrote, we are left with our past. But are we welcome there? These are also the questions he asks in his third novel. A few weeks ago, during this unprecedented crisis, the novel was published in Bulgarian under the title Time Shelter. Just in time. When I wrote to Georgi Gospodinov about this series in Asymptote’s blog, he was already following it and was glad to ask me to translate one of his last poems, written especially for In This Together.
What Is the World Doing While Waiting For the End?
by Georgi Gospodinov
Cleaning its windows. To see more clearly what it is losing.
Arranging books in the library. Taking them out one by one. Starting to read. Then putting them back again.
Sweeping up the dust everywhere. Life accumulates dust. So does death, they say . . . dust to dust, and so on.
Turning on the vacuum cleaner—while it is wailing, you can let loose and wail, too. Just clean and cry, like my mother used to do.
What else is the world doing . . .
Checking the kids’ homework. Making
a biscuit cake with the last dry biscuits it has.
Only simple things can save us.
Imagining dogs and walking them down the old streets.
Watching movies it has already watched. Liking them all. People are kissing there, for God’s sake, they are kissing, going to the park, sitting on the benches . . .
Reading The Gardener’s Handbook and Letters to Lucilius.
Chronically surfing the web.
Opening the family albums, here I am at four, here we are all together one summer in Sozopol.
Sewing a button for ages . . .
Sharpening pencils, breaking them, and sharpening them again.
Then lying in the dark for hours and trying
just not to count numbers,
just not to count,
just not to . . .
Translated from the Bulgarian by Teodora Gandeva
Interested in submitting work to this Feature? We’re looking for literature in translation—specifically fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—that addresses the current pandemic. Send work under 2,500 words directly to blog@asymptotejournal.com. General submission guidelines apply.
Georgi Gospodinov (1968, Bulgaria) is the author of Natural Novel and The Physics of Sorrow, winner of Central European Angelus Award (2019) and Jan Michalski Prize (2016), finalist for American PEN Translation Prize and Best Translated Book Award. His novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. According to the New Yorker, “Georgi’s real quest in The Physics of Sorrow is to find a way to live with sadness, to allow it to be a source of empathy and salutary hesitation . . .” Gospodinov writes in different genres including poetry, essays, plays, nonfiction books, etc. He has a graphic novel, Libretto for Space Opera (2015, Poznan), scripts for short feature films, two social video projects “The Slap Factory” and “Future Cancelled,” and some projects in the field of memory of the recent past, everyday life, and ideological traumas. He was awarded The Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library (2017/18). In 2019/20 Georgi Gospodinov is fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin. His new novel Time Shelter has just come out in Bulgaria.
Teodora Gandeva is a literary translator, living and working in Bulgaria. She holds a B.A. in English and American studies and an M.A. in translation and editing, both from Sofia University. Before she got involved with literary translation, she worked as an interpreter and lecturer at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering, and Geodesy in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has also worked for the Bulgarian edition of L’Europeo magazine.
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