Afternoons like these by Teodora Lalova, translated from the Bulgarian by Jason H. Spinks, Kalin Petkov, and Gabriela Manova, Ars and Scribens Publishing, 2021
The Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov writes in one of his books that “August is the afternoon of the year.” With this subtle line, he takes his rightful place next to other insatiable thinkers who have dwelled on the special character of this particular time of day, either attempting a convincing explanation for its beguiling qualities or giving up once and for all their efforts to figure it out. So, even if we choose to ignore the all too famous quote by Henry James about the aesthetic pleasure he derives from the phrase “summer afternoon,” we should at least pay attention to what Jorge Luis Borges had to say on the matter. In one of his short stories, “The End,” he notes that “There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says it, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is as untranslatable as music.”
While I was reading Teodora Lalova’s debut collection of poems, united under the title Afternoons like these, I similarly found myself on the brink of grasping a curious feeling, too elusive for me to fully comprehend. From my perspective, the text appeared to be very close to capturing that crucial essence of the hours preceding twilight that so often escapes our miserable efforts to express it in words. Each poem, as is to be expected, achieves this in its own way. Some prefer the ironic twist of fate, while others choose to shed light on the more delicate nuances of existence. There is also a third kind that tackles complex philosophical questions in an “unbearably light” manner. Nevertheless, once the piece has located the throbbing heart of the unique afternoon, it offers a single or several lines that are certain to remain with the reader:
On afternoons like these I want to write poems about the smell of chimney smoke,
about the unread books and about first loves.
Of course, on afternoons like these
I don’t have my notebook with me.
Born in 1992 in Varna, Bulgaria, Lalova grew up in Sofia, where she studied in the prestigious National Lyceum for Ancient Languages and Cultures. Later, she became the holder of a Master of Laws degree, followed by an LL.M. in International and European Business Law. At present, she is a Ph.D. researcher at KU Leuven in Brussels. The concept of her book is quite intriguing—the edition is bilingual, the first part in her native Bulgarian, while the second provides an interpretation in English. The translators Jason H. Spinks, Kalin Petkov, and Gabriela Manova have been credited for their work on the texts. The enchanting collaboration, one suspects, underscores the creative potential of the author and her awareness of the tidal force that is translation. And indeed, she is open to experiments and possesses a heightened understanding of the notion that despite their profuse experience, a single person may sometimes still not be able to unravel an author’s entire oeuvre—an inevitability of life, which demands the consideration of different voices. This idea is reflected by a note in the beginning of the book informing us that we owe the alternative version of We hadn’t been born yet to Gabriela Manova’s individual point of view.
In a recent conversation with the host and editor Valentin Dishev, aired on the Bulgarian National Radio, the talented poetess also brought attention to the fact that she had already tried her hand in this distinctive art. She admitted that she was still searching for her “translating self” and had a long way to go before she masters the craft. She went on to explain that Jason H. Spinks, who is in fact her fiancé, is also a fellow poet. When asked, however, if the Bulgarian audience would soon be able to appreciate her translations of his works, she made an insightful comment about the challenge of translating works by people you know well and how intimidatingly difficult the task could prove to be. A challenge, she assured us, that would not stop her from trying in the future.
Lalova may still not have honed her translation skills, but undoubtedly, has the eye and sensitivity of a painter. Her compositions reveal an abstract universe of colors and ideas that speak to the reader through very specific imagery. For example, July has a “yellow eye,” the trams are orange, the shoes happen to be blue, and the animals—wine-dark. The evening is at one place compared to a peach, which evokes the pinkish-yellow hues of the delicious fruit. A separate observation, however, argues that all evenings are actually verdant green. The different shades are of vital importance and suggest not only the consistency of the material world but also its metaphysical dimensions as experienced through the brush of an artist.
In addition to color, various points of geographical interest fall within the scope of the collection. Belgium shines through many of the lines, some of which even carry the telling titles “Oostduinkerke,” “Leuven,” or “Nieuwpoort,” while the markers of the author’s home country could be found in phrases as simple as “the bells of Nevsky,” a clear reference to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Bulgaria’s capital. There is also a quick transition between the two inhabited spaces that occurs over a lyrical meditation on sunsets:
that sticky heat of Sofia, that lingers long
after the last tram has passed; the sunsets
that are always too early. And there,at ten-thirty in the evening,
the sky still paces around the sun. When I arrive,
the Flemish summer will have quieted down to apples, wind and books.
Which brings us to another major theme Lalova explores throughout her work: the relativity of time, referenced when Einstein’s ghost not coincidentally haunts one of her poems. She plays with the theory of its linearity and, without explicitly asking if it goes forward or backward, is occupied with the blurred line between the ticking of the clocks and human memory in moments across the collection: “The day is some time in the past,” “My footsteps—a second and a half too late, a second and a half too early,” and “It’s Sunday where I am.” And as time is slipping away, we are reminded that it could be simultaneously measured in days, spaces (An Afternoon in My Palms), and physical distances:
It’s such a pleasant thought to have: that the middle of the week, at twilight
Would last so very long.
. . .
My body has grown wise and knows best: not too far away from here
I shall remember neither the room, nor the strings,
nor the book.
In a similar vein, seasons endlessly follow each other (“when the guards of the seasons are changing”) and the whole sequence of interconnected verses reads like a representation of the natural cycle of life, or at least like a truthful account of its shifty character.
When it comes to the English rendering of the texts, I was thrilled to discover that the translators have managed to convey very well the meaning of some unlikely lexical combinations. What’s more, they have done so without diverging from the original thought in a way that would obscure or fail to do it justice. For example, phrases such as “the time is drowsy,” “wind-blown words,” or “the sleepy velvet of the street noise” engage the imagination just as successfully as their original versions. Finally, one poem even envisions translators as people capable of seeing into the future, reflecting the belief that their work is an act of intimacy that extends far beyond the sentences scattered on the page:
I try to translate to him the roofs, the oranges, the Christmases, the Orthodox chants,
I try to convey to him my thought of this city and the city’s thought of us
and most of all I try not to reveal, not now, not yet,
how he himself will love it in patches, in eras, in fictions . . .
In a sense, Lalova’s poetry confirms that regardless of the Other’s differences, we could always try and reach them by explaining, with kindness and compassion, the unfamiliar details no one else would even dare contemplate. By way of words, gestures, glances. Sometimes it even takes the proverbial golden silence to get our point across. And, as the book would have it, this is perhaps best done on afternoons like these.
Andriana Hamas is Asymptote’s editor-at-large for Bulgaria.
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