Place: Russia

Translation Tuesday: “Going off to America” by Irina Mashinski

May 5, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Irina Mashinski and Maria Bloshteyn

. . . nothing in this world could ever be as lonely as that fall, dry firing a sweep of its cerulean blue leaves across the crumbling ochre sky.

In this week’s Translation Tuesday, writer and translator Irina Mashinski presents a lyrical and impressionistic account of finding new sanctuaries in “Going off to America.” Through a quasi-epistolary stream-of-consciousness, our narrator adopts logical wordplay to reorient a new life, illustrating the otherworldliness of an immigrant experience through the inherent strangeness and malleability of language. Words are dissected and negated, leading to a string of neologisms which hint at death, negation, and rebirth: “Amortica,” “A-merica,” “Unmerica.” These altered words speak to a sense of spatial inversion as our speaker confesses to the loneliness of living in a seemingly inverted world, and how one can find a parallel home in its seemingly foreign comforts.

Dear friend—well, yes, of course, that possibility always remains: to go off to America (if only you’re not there to begin with). When even the Symphonie fantastique sounds predictable—then, maybe, yes, the time has come. Then you can hang down, head first, press your ribcage painfully against the metal ribs of the bedframe, lean against the mattressed matrix of the elevator, peer into the elevator shaft in that far—faaar—away entrance, which smells of the shoe cabinet and someone else’s cooking, and to guess at the hammock sagging into the netherworld below, that’s right, to guess rather than see—all of it, to the overturned concave horizon, the unfamiliar underside of the world, with its excruciatingly embossed rhomboid plexus, all the sea stripes, interlaced with terra incognita or tabulae rasae, and black birds with their uneven jagged edges, hollering in the language that you’ve yet to learn—and only then can you cautiously touch the stiff satin dome, punctured by the pattern of beaks and knots. You won’t believe how quickly things will start to happen then, how nimbly the glinting sun will twist and turn to face you, like a polished coin’s head, balancing on its ribbed edge, and the next moment the sailors are already peering mistrustfully into your documents, as if they’re looking out at some finely enamelled horizon, and then the timeworn propeller winds up, and the movie projector begins to whir, and then the phantom called city M disappears in the foam of salty snow whipped up by the trolley buses.

Of course, it’s entirely possible to revive in Amortica, to begin anew and never be reborn again. What you are asking about, what you are calling A-merica is neither this, nor that, nor the other, but a trying of the otherness, which is a priori impossible. Believe me, the negating A- is not accidental—it’s that ironic little taglet, a tag that chases you right into the heart of the nonexistent. Should you also try all that happened to me and to others like me—with my family, dragged to the other side, with a guitar made in a small Russian town with blue shutters and abnormally large apples, and, most vitally, with a carefully selected load of dusty vinyl records, oh, yes, and with another possession: a portable Yugoslavian typewriter with its now forsaken Cyrillic and broken memories? You’re thinking that to go off to America means to return all the cards to the dealer and to take new ones from the deck that contains everything, as we know, except cabbages and kings, including a river that flows through its improbable south and contains more s’s than any other word. That’s why (you’ve heard) the poet gave the name to the cat—the poet is dead, but Morton Street is there, with a symmetrical No.44 at its bended elbow—and there you are, starting from scratch.    READ MORE…

Intimate Work: Lisa C. Hayden on Translating Narine Abgaryan

April 23, 2020  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Josefina Massot

Translation is a very intimate line of work and translating an author’s text tells you a lot about them as people.

Of her award-winning novel, Three Apples Fell From the Sky, Armenian-Russian author Narine Abgaryan said: “I wanted to write a story that ends on a note of hope.” We at Asymptote were proud to present, as our March Book Club selection, this magical realist folktale exploring both the merciless procession of worldly tragedies and the human capacity for courage and imagination. In the following interview, our own Josefina Massot speaks to Lisa C. Hayden, the translator of Three Apples Fell From the Sky and other renowned Russian fictions, about the book’s internal logic, the relief of routine amidst a global strangeness, and the instinct of switching between narrative voices.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page! 

Josefina Massot (JM): You’ve made a point of only translating books you love, and many of them delve into the concept of history. Vladislav Otroshenko’s Addendum to a Photo Album and Marina Stepnova’s The Women of Lazarus seem to specifically explore it through the lens of family, which is also the case with Abgaryan’s Three Apples Fell From the Sky—the story of Maran is reflected in a series of family sagas: Anatolia’s, Vasily’s, Vano’s, and Valinka’s, etc. Tolstoy’s own War and Peace, which you’ve referred to as your favorite novel, chronicles early-nineteenth-century Tsarist society by honing in on five aristocratic clans . . . Could you elaborate on why you’ve been so consistently drawn to the theme of family history, and whether there’s something eminently “Russian” about it?

Lisa C. Hayden (LCH): I’m not sure I have a good direct answer to your questions! I’ll try to approach them from a slightly different angle, though. One of the elements I look for in books is a solid sense of internal logic: ideally, I want each piece of a novel, each layer, each word, to fit together harmoniously. That doesn’t mean they can’t be chaotic, but the chaos should fit the book’s logic. I wonder if perhaps fictional families—be they functional or dysfunctional, chaotic or calm—inherently bring a natural order to a novel. And if that order, which may at least hint at genre- and/or family-related hierarchies, structures, and motifs, might give the novelist a sort of head start on writing a book where all the pieces fit together. All that said, other aspects of novels draw me, too. Psychology and even a certain voyeurism are important to me as is (always!) interesting writing that innovates without becoming overwritten, purple prose.  READ MORE…

Announcing our March Book Club Selection: Three Apples Fell From the Sky by Narine Abgaryan

April 2, 2020  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Josefina Massot

Given the array of epic horrors she alludes to, Abgaryan could’ve opted for fast-paced . . . narration; instead, she goes for delicate portraiture.

On the tails of its celebrated success in Russia, Narine Abgaryan’s award-winning novel, Three Apples Fell From the Sky, is now available to English-language readers in Lisa C. Hayden’s expert translation. This tripartite tale takes on the form and mysticism of fable to spin a narrative of a village constantly at the mercy of catastrophe, and, as Josefina Massot points out in this following review, may act as a poignant response to our current age of precarity. With its characteristically sensitive descriptions, Abgaryan’s work explores the human things that evolve in the aftermath of disaster; in times that teeter on the edge of dystopia, it invites us to read our lives into them—a reminder that one of literature’s most enduring gifts is its expansiveness.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page!

Three Apples From the Sky by Narine Abgaryan, translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden, Oneworld Publications, 2020

They say the best way to ward off anxiety is to focus on the here and now. At the moment, though, “here” is a seemingly shrinking apartment and “now” is any time I hit refresh on decidedly growing pandemic statistics. It’s been that way for weeks, so when Abgaryan’s novel hit my inbox (my locked down city’s impermeable to foreign paperbacks), I was desperate for a folktale. What better than a nowhere, no-when land to flee the grim here-and-now—a tale that would end happily, or at the very least end, flouting the boundless infection curves that plagued my feeds and fed my dread?

Three Apples Fell From the Sky isn’t the strictly uchronic utopia I’d expected: most of it unfolds in the Armenian village of Maran during the twentieth century. When I googled “Maran Armenia,” however, I found no such place, and the search I then ran on “Մառան Հայաստան,” courtesy of Google Translate, yielded a stub on a village for which “no population data had been retained.” In fact, there seems to be no data at all—just an unverified note on villagers’ deaths and deportations during the Genocide. As far as I was concerned, Maran might as well have been fictional. Grounding the novel in time proved equally tricky: save for a few scattered references to telegrams or left-wing revolutions, its protagonists could’ve just as easily lived through the 2015 constitutional referendum or the Russo-Persian Wars. My sense of chronology was further challenged by recurring flashbacks, occasional changes in verb tense, and the Maranians’ own cluelessness regarding dates. Near perfect fodder for escapism, you’d think, but by the time I’d put it down, I was more firmly rooted in the times than ever. READ MORE…

Asymptote at the Movies: Solaris

March 30, 2020  |  in Asymptote at the Movies  |  by Sarah Moore and Xiao Yue Shan

[Tarkovsky's] films are not designed to entertain—their pleasure comes from the possibility of being forever changed by seeing them.

Our second feature for Asymptote at the Movies is Andrei Tarkvosky’s Solaris, a 1972 Soviet masterpiece based on Polish writer Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel of the same name. Arguably one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, the plot focuses on psychologist Kris Kelvin and his arrival at the space station orbiting Solaris, a planet whose ocean had been the focus of intense scientific study for decades. As the two other scientists aboard behave increasingly strangely, Kelvin discovers that they are being “visited” by figures of their past, resurrected in the space station. A complex exploration of man’s place in the universe, his quest for knowledge, and the meaning of love and life, Solaris is a triumph.

Sarah Moore (SM): Sometimes it appears that a novel exists, destined for a certain filmmaker, as if it had in fact been written for such a connection. So it is with Lem’s novel and Tarkvosky; Solaris lends itself perfectly to Tarkovsky’s slow, profound meditations on human nature, the purpose of existence, memory, and the function of art. Lem’s novel is classified as science fiction but (as with many works of science fiction) incorporates a wealth of philosophy and spirituality. Tarkovsky unabashedly confronted the big questions. His films are not designed to entertain—their pleasure comes from the possibility of being forever changed by seeing them. Both the novel and the film are immensely detailed; whenever I watch Tarkovsky’s film, I am always struck by how much there is to comprehend, how much more there is to be contemplated each time. Perhaps a good place to begin this discussion, therefore, is with Tarkovsky’s own impression of Lem:

When I read Lem’s novel, what struck me above all were the moral problems evident in the relationship between Kelvin and his conscience, as manifested in the form of Hari. In fact if I understood, and greatly admired, the second half of the novel—the technology, the atmosphere of the space station, the scientific questions—it was entirely because of that situation, which seems to me to be fundamental to the work. Inner, hidden, human problems, moral problems, always engage me far more than any questions of technology; and in any case technology, and how it develops, invariably relates to moral issues, in the end that is what it rests upon. My prime sources are always the real state of the human soul, and the conflicts that are expressed in spiritual problems.

Tarkovsky’s preference for the human problems over the technological is clear in his huge re-structuring of the plot—or rather, his ability to lengthen the chronology. Whilst the action of Lem’s novel is restricted solely to the space station, such action contributes only three-quarters of Tarkovsky’s film. In a forty-minute prelude, the day before Kelvin’s departure to Solaris, we see him at his parents’ home, surrounded by lush nature. Long sequences of forests, flowing streams, underwater reeds, and large ponds contrast with the sparse, sterile settings of the space station that will appear later. Here, his complicated relationship with his father is introduced and he burns documents over an outside fire, preparing for a total rupture from his life on earth. For a text that so explicitly posits the choice between remaining on Solaris in the pursuit of scientific study and returning to earth, beginning the film in such a naturalistic setting is a huge gesture that places the human at its centre. How do you feel about the tension between “the scientific questions” and the “hidden, human problems” in the film? READ MORE…

Bringing the World Into the Classroom: The Winter 2020 Educator’s Guide

March 4, 2020  |  in Asymptote for Educators  |  by Barbara Thimm

One focus of these lesson plans is that students engage in deep thinking and writing, another is to connect reading with their own experience.

Often, our love for literature is catalyzed by a journey taken within a classroom. No matter where and how we teach literature, it is always an opportunity for our students to engage with their world in a new way. The Asymptote Educator’s Guide is a resource we’ve developed to facilitate more of these expeditions, bringing important, diverse works from our issues into the classroom by way of a curated and detailed guide for teachers. In the following essay, Barbara Thimm, Assistant Director of Asymptote’s Educational Arm, discusses the immense potentials and applications of the Winter 2020 Educator’s Guide.

Jerome Bruner, the famous cognitive psychologist and one of the most important contributors to the theory of education, likened reading to a journey into new terrains without the help of a map: “As our readers read, as they begin to construct a virtual text of their own, it is as if they are embarking on a journey without maps.“ Yet that emerging virtual text is shaped by our previous reading experiences, “based on older journeys already taken . . .” Eventually, that journey becomes a thing of its own, a generator of new maps and thus an extension of the reader’s world, an addition to her repository of maps.

World literatures are particularly apt in expanding their readers’ collections of maps, that is, to enrich their reading of the world, not only literally in the sense that they raise awareness of writing and thinking in parts of the world more likely to be “known” via externalized news reports, if at all. Through their defined difference, world literatures confront us with names, places, and narrative patterns that are farther removed from the “older journeys already taken,” and thus extend the routes we can travel in the future. It follows that world literature can be made uniquely productive in encouraging our students to expand their horizons by adding to the variety and reach of their reading maps.

Asymptote’s mission, “to unlock the literary treasures of the world,” thus becomes a rich resource for a variety of classrooms in the English language arts, not least because the vast majority of the pieces published here are contemporaneous—that is, they reflect the thinking, storytelling, and creativity of artists writing in our present moment. Often, these texts are not part of a canon, nor can they be found in print outside their countries of origin. What they have in common is that someone who speaks both English and the language of the original artist found them worthy of her or his attention and effort, and brought them forward so that we may connect their ideas, experiences, and visions of the world to ours. Bringing these voices to the attention of our students is an ever more urgent endeavor in a time where nationalist interests and perspectives crowd out more unifying visions.  READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: February 2020

February 17, 2020  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Andreea Scridon, Barbara Halla, and Daniel Persia

Staffers survey new releases from around the world.

Decisions about the books we read are more important than ever in the outpouring of the Information Age, so for this month, we bring you three texts of learning, authenticity, and artistry. An Argentine novel that rescues silence, a Hungarian volume that engages the incomprehensible, and a collection of Russian poetics from a master of Moscow Conceptualism—these works accentuate the diverse revelations and immense endeavours of world literature. 

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Include Me Out by María Sonia Cristoff, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver, Transit Books, 2020

Reviewed by Daniel Persia, Editor-at-Large for Brazil 

A mishap at an international conference prompts simultaneous interpreter Mara to change course in Include Me Out, by María Sonia Cristoff, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver. Mara, tired of the monotony of her everyday interpreting, designs an experiment: she will spend one year in silence, as a guard at a small provincial museum outside of Buenos Aires. It is a job that will allow her to interact with nothing but her chair, she thinks. A job that will allow for stillness, for time to plant in her garden, she hopes. But when an unwanted promotion forces Mara to assist the museum’s gregarious taxidermist as he restores two of Argentina’s heroic horses, Gato and Mancha, an experiment in silence quickly transforms into frustration over static noise. A careful and deliberate portrait, pointedly translated, Include Me Out paints a memorable, authentic cast that stays with us long after we have finished reading. 

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Other Worlds: Engaging Rajko Grlić (Part II)

February 6, 2020  |  in Essays  |  by Ellen Elias-Bursac

At the airport, Honorio confesses to his wife that he has neither the strength nor the enthusiasm for new revolutions.

This week, the Asymptote blog is excited to share a special two-part engagement with Croatian filmmaker Rajko Grlić. Yesterday in Part I, we featured an interview between Grlić and Ellen Elias-Bursać, who, in addition to being an Asymptote contributing editor, is also the editor of the first English translation of Grlić’s memoirs. Today, in Part II, we bring you an exclusive excerpt from that memoir, from a section called “Festival Selector.”

Croatian filmmaker Rajko Grlić organizes the material of his memoir, Long Story Short, like a lexicon of filmmaking terminology. Under each heading and definition, he includes a story from his life: his filmmaking; his struggles against nationalism in Croatia during the war of the 1990s; and his years of teaching at NYU, UCLA, and Ohio University. Grlić was known as one of the leading Yugoslav filmmakers in 1980s Croatia, celebrated for such box-office successes as You Love Only Once (1981); In the Jaws of Life (1984), which was based on a Dubravka Ugrešić novel; and That Summer of White Roses (1989). He left Croatia in the 1990s during its war for independence and has since gone on to make several more notable films, including The Border Post (2006) and The Constitution (2016). He collected stories during his many years of making movies and moving through the world, aware that he’d never have the opportunity to make every story he had to tell into a film, but refusing to lose them to oblivion.

Grlić’s memoir was translated by Vesna Radovanović and edited by Asymptote contributing editor Ellen Elias-Bursać. Elias-Bursać spoke recently to Grlić about the life that led to Long Story Short, an interview that was published yesterday as Part I of this series. In the excerpt that follows, “Festival Selector,” Grlić tells of his decades-long friendship with Honorio Rancaño, the selector for movies shown at Mostra, a film festival that was held for many years in Valencia, Spain.

Festival Selector: the person who chooses the films, conceptualizes and shapes the festival creatively.

Cannes, 1981

In the hall of Palais des Festivals in Cannes, someone taps me on the shoulder and, before I have a chance to turn, starts talking about my movie You Love Only Once, in a jumble of Czech, Russian, and Spanish.

“Honorio Rancaño, selector for the Valencia Film Festival,” the man finally introduces himself, unshaven and chewing on a long, wet cigar. READ MORE…

My 2019: Katarzyna Bartoszyńska

December 23, 2019  |  in Essays  |  by Katarzyna Bartoszyńska

What follows is not a reckoning of everything I read this year, but rather a contemplation of the different ways that books assign themselves to me

Flaubert once said that one should read not for the purpose of instruction, but “in order to live.” Continuing our staff summations of 2019 in literature, Asymptote’s Educational Arm Assistant Katarzyna Bartoszyńska outlines an abundant year of reading, ranging from feminist favourites to autofiction to books about books, and in doing so, considers the sense of how books find their way to us, perhaps so that we may live.

Reflecting on my year in reading, I started to think about how various books came into my hands. I’m a literature professor, so a lot of what I read is determined by the classes I’m teaching, the syllabi I create. But making assigned book lists seems to have become a habit that spills over into the rest of my life as well—much of my reading seems to be part of various projects with lists of their own. It’s rare for me to randomly grab a book off my to-read shelf and just dive in, though I did just that with Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins, and it ended up being one of my favorite books of the year; a collection of formally dazzling short stories, whose pleasure was heightened for me, perhaps, because I entered it with almost no previous knowledge, and so was all the more delighted by every surprising twist and turn. I had a similar experience with Yiyun Li’s breathtaking A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. But as often as not, the result of such serendipity will be the creation of a new list—for instance, I’ve now resolved to read everything else Yiyun Li has written. What follows, then, is not a reckoning of everything I read this year, but rather a contemplation of the different ways that books assign themselves to me, and the highlights of these circumlocutious processes. READ MORE…

Section Editors’ Highlights: Fall 2019

October 28, 2019  |  in News  |  by Ah-reum Han, Caridad Svich, Ellen Jones, Henry Ace Knight, Lee Yew Leong, Varun Nayar, and Victoria Livingstone

Our Section Editors pick their favorite pieces from the Fall 2019 issue!

Eleven days after its launch, Asymptote’s Fall 2019 issue continues to capture the zeitgeist. Many of its pieces, drawn from a record thirty-six countries, simmer with polyvocal discontent at the modern world, taking aim squarely at its seamy underbelly: the ravages of environmental degradation, colonial resource extraction, and media sensationalism of violence, in particular. If you’re still looking for a way in, perhaps our Section Editors can be of some assistance. Their highlights from the edition follow:

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction, Poetry, and Microfiction Special Feature Editor:

Via frequent contributors Julia and Peter Sherwood, an excerpt from Czech writer and dramaturg Radka Denemarková’s latest Magnesia Litera Prize-winning novel, Hours of Lead, brings us into the bowels of a Chinese prison, bearing witness to a dissident girl’s defiance of state repression and censorship. Inspired by Václav Havel, the protagonist’s struggle is entirely private and self-motivated, untethered from any broader democratic collective or underground movement. Her guards are driven mad by her equanimity and individuality in the face of savage interrogation: “Even her diffident politeness is regarded as provocative. As is her decency. Restraint. Self-control. Humility. . . The guards find her very existence provocative.” Renounced by her parents and rendered persona non grata, “a one-person ghetto,” by the state, her isolation is both liberating and the ultimate gesture of self-sacrifice.

Meanwhile, poet Fabián Severo—the only Uruguayan writing in Portunhol, the language of the Uruguayan frontier with Brazil—revels in an act of presence just as radical and defiant of the mainstream, resisting the state’s attempted erasure of his language. Laura Cesarco Eglin and Jesse Lee Kercheval’s translation sings: “This language of mine sticks out its tongue at the dictionary/ dances a cumbia on top of the maps / and from the school tunic and bow tie / makes a kite / that flies / loose and free through the sky.” Don’t overlook the luminous poems of prolific French and Martinican Creole writer Monchoachi, whom Derek Walcott has credited for “completely renewing our vision of the Creole language.” “The Caribbean could be considered a workshop for the modern world,” he conveys in Eric Fishman’s English translation, “with its deportations, its exterminations, and also its ‘wildly multiple’ side, its ‘ubiquity of voices and sounds.’” READ MORE…

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Fall 2019

October 21, 2019  |  in News  |  by Andrea Blatz, Rachel Allen, Sarah Moore, and Xiao Yue Shan

Our blog editors pick their favorite pieces from the Fall 2019 issue!

Another issue, another record broken: Asymptote’s Fall 2019 issue features work from an unprecedented thirty-six countries. Looking for a point of entry? Consider our blog editors your guides. Their selections here, which range from Korean poetry to Russian drama, will set you off on the right foot. 

“Why do I think October is beautiful? / It is not, is not beautiful.” So goes a poem by the late Bill Berkson. It is not—as we know when the grey settles and looks to stay—a particularly delightful month, but if all the poems featuring October attests to something, it is that this time, its late and sedate arrival, is one that enamors poets. So it is that a vein of poetics runs through our Fall 2019 issue, and the poetry section itself is one of tremendous artistry and vitality. From the stoic and enduring lines of Osip Mandelstam to a brilliant translation of Sun Tzu-Ping’s strikingly visual language, Asymptote has once again gathered the great poets from far reaches. 

READ MORE…

Our Fall 2019 Issue Is Here!

October 17, 2019  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Featuring Radka Denemarková, Sylvia Molloy, Monchoachi, and a Spotlight on International Microfiction

Welcome to our spectacular Fall 2019 edition gathering never-before-published work from a record-breaking 36 countries, including, for the first time, Azerbaijan via our spotlight on International Microfiction. Uncontained, this issue’s theme, may refer to escape either from literal prisons—the setting of some of these pieces—or from other acts of containment: A pair of texts by Czech author Radka Denemarková and Hong Kong essayist Stuart Lee tackle the timely subject of Chinese authoritarianism. In “The Container,” Thomas Boberg performs the literary equivalent of “unboxing” so popular on YouTube these days, itemizing a list of things in a container shipped from Denmark to the Gambia—all in a withering critique of global capitalism.

The container lends itself to several metaphors but none as poignant or as on point as—you guessed it, dear Asymptote reader—the container of language itself, as suggested by London-based photographer Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee’s brilliant cover highlighting the symbolism of the humble rice grain. This commodity has, like language, been exported, exchanged, enhanced, and expressed in various forms from its various origins across the planet. Even when a state attempts to erase language, resistance remains possible, as poet Fabián Severo—the only Uruguayan writing in Portunhol, the language of the country’s frontier with Brazil—demonstrates: “This language of mine sticks out its tongue at the / dictionary,” he sings, “dances a cumbia on top of the maps / and from the school tunic and bow tie / makes a kite / that flies / loose and free through the sky.” In one of Argentine writer Sylvia Molloy’s many profound riffs on the bilingual condition, Molloy claims that “one must always be bilingual from one language, the heimlich one, if only for a moment, since heim or home can change.” READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: October 2019

October 14, 2019  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Andreea Scridon, Garrett Phelps, and Shelly Bhoil

October's new translations, selected by the Asymptote staff to shed light on the best recent offerings of world literature.

A new month brings an abundance of fresh translations, and our writers have chosen three of the most engaging, important works: a Japanese novella recounting the monotony of modern working life as the three narrators begin employment in a factory, the memoir of a Russian political prisoner and filmmaker, as well as the first comprehensive English translation of Giorgio de Chirico’s Italian poems. Read on to find out more!

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The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd, New Directions, 2019

Review by Andreea Scridon, Assistant Editor

Drawn from the author’s own experience as a temporary worker in Japan, The Factory strikes one as being a laconic metaphor for the psychologically brutalizing nature of the modern workplace. There is more than meets the eye in this seemingly mundane narrative of three characters who find work at a huge factory (reticent Yoshiko as a shredder, dissatisfied Ushiyama as a proofreader, and disoriented Furufue as a researcher), as they become increasingly absorbed and eventually almost consumed by its all-encompassing and panoptic nature. Coincidentally wandering into a job for the city’s biggest industry, or finding themselves driven there—against their instincts—by necessity, the three alternating narrators chronicle the various aspects of their working experience and the deeply bizarre undertones that lie beneath the banal surface. READ MORE…

Narrative Repatriation: Inari Sámi Folklore: Stories from Aanaar in Review

April 1, 2019  |  in Reviews  |  by Paul M. Worley

Frandy’s edition openly rebels against the moment when these stories were first recorded.

Inari Sámi Folklore: Stories from Aanaar by August V. Koskimies and Toivo I. Itkonen, revised by Lea Laitinen, and edited and translated by Tim Frandy, University of Wisconsin Press, 2019

Whatever the cosmopolitan politics of many people living in cities like London, New York, or Paris, the majority of museums in such places continue to struggle with the colonizing narratives forwarded not only by the layout of the physical space of the museum—a prime example being the room dedicated solely to Egypt, separate from the rest of the African continent—but also by the fact that many objects within these collections were stolen, looted, or otherwise removed from the communities that produced them.

Should these objects be returned or, in an argument that many see as dripping with colonial paternalism, are they indeed “safer” under the protection of Western institutions? One only need think of the ongoing controversy surrounding the so-called “Elgin” Marbles and their possible repatriation, or any number of recent developments concerning Native American peoples in the United States requesting the return of sacred objects, to understand how such objects touch on themes like intellectual and cultural sovereignty in the twenty-first century. The “Elgin” Marbles may have inspired Keats’s meditation on truth and beauty, but how would these same marbles appear, at a distance, to a poet writing from Greece during the Romantic period or in the age of Brexit? How would the nature of the marbles’ famed “truth” and “beauty” appear to someone who understood them as a piece of cultural heritage that had been looted for the express benefit of a cosmopolitan other? What would the return, or so-called repatriation, of such objects mean not only for those who have been robbed of such items, but for the descendants of those who stole them in the first place?

READ MORE…

Ambiguity and Bilingual Art: Pavel Arseniev’s Reported Speech in Review

February 27, 2019  |  in Reviews  |  by Paul Worley

Through art like Arseniev’s poetry, we gain a toehold, however momentary, from which we are better able to grasp the present and prepare a future.

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Reported Speech by Pavel Arseniev, Cicada Press, 2018

Reviewed by Paul Worley, Editor-at-Large

I tell my students that literature does things, but I prefer to do so in even less polished terms. From a more abstract perspective, I see current attacks on the humanities (especially literature) in the United States and elsewhere as being so vicious precisely because of the fact that literature does do things. It changes how we, as humans, relate to and understand others, as well as ourselves.

That said, there are moments when I profoundly doubt this. For example, I was recently discussing the fabricated crisis at the US-Mexico border and Trump’s wall with someone I had just met. During our discussion, this person informed me that Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s nonfiction All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the US Borderlands, a work that gives a nuanced, highly sensitive portrait of the US-Mexico border, actually serves to justify that border’s further militarization. It was like being told by someone with a very serious face that Shelley’s “Ozymandius” is a laudatory poem on the subject of indelible human achievement or that Swift’s A Modest Proposal provided a brilliant roadmap for the betterment of the Irish economy. And yet, even when my doubts about literature and its power dominate my thoughts, events like the murder of Iraqi novelist Alaa Mashzoub snap me back to reality. Literature matters, so much so that in other parts of the world literature can get you killed, even as I safely type this up in my home in the United States. Perhaps this will soon be the case here, too.

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