(Inter)Artistic Dialogues in Contemporary Macedonian Poetry

December 27, 2019 | in Essays | by Vladimir Martinovski

Contemporary Macedonian poetry is dialogical—a spiritual fruit on the literary crossroads between the East and the West

The interplay between different art forms has long been a subject of poetry. How can visual art, color, or sound be translated into the medium of language? In the following essay, Vladimir Martinovski reflects upon such meeting points in contemporary Macedonian poetry: the poetic dialogue between Mateja Matevski and the Japanese haiku-master Kobayashi Issa; ekphrasis in the poetry of Blaze Koneski; musical instruments in the poems of Jovan Strezovski, Slavko Janevski, Jovan Koteski, and Bogomil Gjuzel; medieval Byzantium sacred art in the poems of Mihail Rendzov. Through a selection of extracts from his essay collection Literary Cross/roads, Martinovski explores the rich and subtle interaction between words and the artistic forms that inspired them.

Contemporary Macedonian poetry is dialogical—a spiritual fruit on the literary crossroads between the East and the West, between tradition and modernity, between different artistic forms of expression and the art of the poetic images. A dialogue is established between poetry and different modes of artistic expression. In the attempt to transform paintings into a poetic text, poets must inevitably choose which pieces of visual information is to be transposed into poetic discourse. During the process, the semantics of ekphrastic poetic text is inseparable from—even incomplete without—the connection with the work of art that is the subject of literary description. The poem always depends on the role of the viewer that the reader receives, connecting the words from the poem with the work of art to which they refer.Therefore, a work of art could be treated as a “visual catalyst” of the poem, whereas the poem is an opportunity—thanks to the art of language—to see the work of art in a new way. READ MORE…

Contributor:

Vladimir Martinovski

Language:

Macedonian

Place:

Macedonia

Writers:

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Postcolonial Philosophy in Idlir Azizi’s Novel Terxhuman

August 1, 2019 | in Essays | by Adem Ferizaj

Building Terxhuman on postcolonial thinking, hitherto absent in Albanian literature, Idlir Azizi has created a new literary genre.

By rebelling against his country’s dominant Euro-centric discourse and disobeying the fundamental rules of Albanian grammar, writer Idlir Azizi has created a new kind of Albanian literature. In today’s essay, researcher Adem Ferizaj analyzes Azizi’s Terxhuman and helps us understand the implications it might have for Albanian-language literature and Albania as a whole.

The pyramid crisis in Albania and the Kosovo Liberation War are the only two Albanian incidents that simultaneously made headlines in The New York Times, Le Monde, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in the 1990s. Since Western journalists’ interest in the Albanian lands depends on political turmoil in the Balkans that could ruin European “geopolitical stability,” this comes as no surprise. When Western editorial offices are urgently in need of articles about this region, the local who organizes meetings, provides information on the addressed issue, and translates interviews becomes indispensable for them.

In Albania, this local is often referred to as a “fixer,” although the word terxhuman (which shares a root with the English “dragoman”) is used as well. The latter is also the title of Idlir Azizi’s 2010 novel, which takes this profession as a starting point to address Western arrogance towards Albanians and to provide an unprecedented analysis of Albanian society. In a very original way, Azizi deconstructs the mainstream Albanian discourses that are based on Eurocentric concepts, or, to put it differently, on Western arrogance towards Albanians. In this way, Terxhuman (which has yet to be translated into English) interprets Albanian reality in an alternative and postcolonial way. Such an analysis did not previously exist in contemporary Albanian literature.

Translation Tuesday: “Punctuation of Life” by Lidija Dimkovska

June 20, 2017 | in Translations | by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh

Now we meet in front of the immigration desks

In this poem by Lidija Dimkovska, the full stops at the end of each word raise more questions than the simple answers they appear to be. These categories create both lack and excess in meaning when stripped from their contexts—there is a sense of isolation but at the same time a certain kind of clarity that in life, for better or worse, we often move from having just one home to having many.

Punctuation of Life

“Those who forgot me would make a city.”
Joseph Brodsky, May 24, 1980

Home.
Fatherland.
Language.
Family tree.
Individual and collective memory.
Archetypes.
Atavism.
Uniqueness.

Ah, a misprint.

Home?
“Fatherland”
Language!
Family tree;
Individual and collective memory…
Archetypes –
Atavism:
Uniqueness.

Complaint.

Those who have forgotten me, Joseph,
would make not one but three cities,
except the citizens have either died or moved away.
Now we meet in front of the immigration desks
at the border of the earthly, or the heavenly kingdom.
One alien is akin to another,
so we all fill in the forms together
passing the same pen from one to another.
It’s only the punctuation of life
that we all, covering the form with our hand,
write
for ourselves.

Translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh

Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Skopje, Macedonia. She is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. She competed her PhD in Romanian literature at the University of Bucharest, Romania where she worked as a lecturer of Macedonian language and literature. She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia and translates Romanian and Slovenian literature to Macedonian. She has published six books of poetry and three novels, translated to more than 20 languages. She received the German poetry prize “Hubert Burda,” the Romanian poetry prizes “Poesis” and “Tudor Arghezi”, the European Prize for Poetry “Petru Krdu” and the European Union Prize for Literature, among others. In the States, The American Poetry Review in 2003 dedicated the cover page and the Special Supplement to her. In 2006 Ugly Duckling Presse from N.Y. published her first collection of poetry in English, Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers, and in 2012 Copper Canyon Press published her second book of poetry pH Neutral History (short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award 2013).

Ljubica Arsovska is editor-in-chief of the long-established Skopje cultural magazine Kulturen Život and a distinguished literary translator from English into Macedonian, and vice versa. Her translations from English into Macedonian include books by Isaiah Berlin, Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, and plays of Lope De Vega, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Tom Stoppard, and Tennessee Williams. Her translations from Macedonian into English include works by Lidija Dimkovska, Dejan Dukovski, Tomislav Osmanli, Ilija Petrushevski, Sotir Golabovski, Dimitar Bashevski, Radovan Pavlovski, Gordana Mihailova Boshnakoska, Katica Kulafkova, and Liljana Dirjan, among others.

Patricia Marsh is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, author of The Scribe of the Soul and The Enigma of the Margate Shell Grotto, and translator of a number of plays and poems from Macedonian into English. She lectured in English at the University of Skopje for a long period before returning to live and work in the UK in 1992.

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