Posts filed under 'translation tuesday'

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Ghayath Almadhoun

March 12, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Catherine Cobham

All the metaphors in this poem are based on a true story that has not happened before

This Translation Tuesday, prose poems come in from Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun, translated with care by Catherine Cobham. A warning label alerts us to the peculiar nature of the metaphors in “Poet in Berlin”. Almadhoun’s poet starts, stops, and starts over, as if trying to get the metaphors in his head to express the correct thing. His slow progress perplexes the detective trapped in the poem’s dense and mazey interior—he needs that warning as much as we do. In “Everything’s the Same” the sorrow of a sudden disappearance is ‘green’, ‘still fresh’, and we find grief and shock doing their customary thing. The poet stalks the house he once shared with the absent presence. Time is either stopped dead or winding backwards, his senses are heightened, and household objects take on a sudden, dangerous redolence.

Poet in Berlin

All the metaphors in this poem are based on a true story that has not happened before

A lonely man with green eyes and a blue gaze, searching for a woman carrying a forest, who went into the sea and did not return.

Lonely as a bench in a public park, most of those who have touched his wound think he is a poet from Berlin, but he is in fact a poet in Berlin.

He resembles a park bench, and therefore, he used to swear to passers-by that a woman he loved took him to the sea and brought him back thirsty, and in another account, in a poem they found in a pocket of his blue shirt, he said she brought him back from the sea thirsty, but she did not return. On the other hand, the Poetry Foundation in Chicago has not been able to verify the truth of the information contained in this poem.

A lonely man, in a city crowded with lonely people, he assured the German police that he took full responsibility for the disappearance of a woman as ripe as a peach tree.

The detective asked him to stop using metaphor, because the investigation report was not a postmodern poem, and in any case the sea could not possibly be a crime scene in this city, for even in David Bowie’s most defiant songs there was no sea in Berlin, then he added as calmly as an abandoned house, I cannot bring any charges against you at the present time, for as of the date of the writing of this poem, no official reports have been submitted about the disappearance of a woman who looks like the sunset, walks like a herd of gazelles, and loves summer and children. Furthermore, according to German law, there is no crime if there is no body.

A lonely man with green eyes and a blue gaze went into the sea to look for a woman who went into the sea and did not return, and he did not return.

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Translation Tuesday: “Is That You, Seryozha?” by Mikhail Zemskov

February 13, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Yuliya Gubanova

He exhaled into the receiver one more time and smiled happily. The tip of his nose trembled slightly.

This Translation Tuesday, a short story from Kazakhstani author Mikhail Zemskov, brought into English by Yuliya Gubanova. Alone in his dirty apartment, an oddball takes a creepy enjoyment from cold-calling strangers on his Soviet-era landline. Never speaking, only breathing suggestively into the receiver, he becomes the missing, longed-for person in another family’s domestic drama – a ghost, even – before hanging up and dialing his next victim. A grim prank, inflicting his loneliness on others.

He set his plate aside. The Korean-style carrots from a nearby cooking shop turned out to be just carrots, finely chopped, dusted with red pepper, and drizzled with vinegar. And stale, too. He suspected they would be… but for some reason he craved something spicy today.

He turned on the TV (an old Soviet one, still functioning, so why should he throw it away?). He switched channels, and turned the TV off.

He rubbed his stubble, which was coming up in gray patches. “I’d better shave, or it’ll be harder to do in a few days. Or should I grow the beard again?” But with those specks of gray, the beard – even when washed and carefully brushed – looked shaggy and unkempt.

It would have been nice to clean the flat today. But he was tired and did not want to get up from the deep armchair which had already been sagged by his parents. In fact, it had been a week since he first thought of tidying up. But in previous days, he had been just as reluctant to get out of the deep armchair.

He pulled up an old disc telephone set, also left over from his parents. He took a stack of small bills out of his jeans pocket, pulled one out at random. A ten-ruble bill. He put it on the table next to the telephone. He picked up the receiver. He dialed the numbers from the serial number of the dark green paper carefully and slowly. He cleared his throat.

Three rings, and somebody answered on the other end.

“Hello. Hello?” there was the uncertain voice of a young guy. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Thief” by Osamu Dazai

January 30, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Laurie Raye

I didn’t know any French. No matter the question, I intended to write “Flaubert was a spoiled little rich boy.”

A sensitive college flunker enacts sweet, obscure revenge in this excellent short story by Osamu Dazai. Here’s how it’s done: saunter into the finals of a year you’ve as good as failed; sit triumphant among your more studious peers; inflict an essay on your professor that pantses his sacred cows. The rush of emotions touched off by this act of gratuitous non-conformity is exhilarating, palpable, and very possibly contagious—anomie-struck flunkers, take note; professors of said flunkers, prepare yourselves. Major credit must go to Laurie Raye for rendering Dazai’s Japanese in a vivid, sparking English.

Dazai’s works are filled with irreverence, animus, and snippets of autobiographical detail. Knowledge of his life enhances readings of his works, as Raye explains in their translator’s note:

“I’ll stab him! I thought. What an absolute scoundrel!” So Dazai wrote to Yasunari Kawabata, one of the judges for the first Akutagawa Prize, when his story Retrogression failed to win. A collection of intertwined autobiographical tales from the author’s life, Retrogression starts with the protagonist’s death as an ‘old man’ of twenty-five and regresses back through a life of sin and decadence. Out of all these stories, The Thief is the odd one out. It was added later, as part of his first short story collection paradoxically named The Final Years. This paradox defined his career, culminating in fiction that explored what it meant to feel world-weary, disassociated from conventional society, and—in the titular spirit of his most famous book—‘no longer human’.

Dazai fills his autobiographical stories with obscure references and The Thief is no exception. The red-faced professor was most likely Yutaka Tatsuno, professor of modern French literature at Tokyo University from 1921 to 1948. Based on what we know about Tatsuno’s students, the ‘number one poet’ could have been a reference to Tatsuji Miyoshi who studied French literature with Tatsuno from 1925-1928. The ‘number one literary critic’ seems likely to have been Hideo Kobayashi, generally regarded as one of Japan’s foremost literary critics, but could also refer to Hidemi Kon, another critic and essayist who studied in this fateful cohort. Given how Dazai left us with enough breadcrumbs to work out the identities of the aforementioned students, it is unfortunate that the up-and-coming, rabbit-hearted writer remains a mystery. It is tempting to think he was based on Ibuse Masuji, his longtime friend whom he met the same month the story is set. Though older than Dazai, Ibuse studied French and was known to be so shy as to avoid eye contact when talking to others.

– Laurie Raye

The Thief

There was no doubt that I’d failed the year, but I was still going to take the exam. The beauty of a worthless effort. I was fascinated by that beauty. This morning I had woken up early, and for the first time in a year I put my arms through my school uniform and walked through those bright iron gates, big and tall and emblazoned with the Imperial chrysanthemum. I found myself passing under them with some trepidation. Immediately upon entering the grounds there are rows of gingko trees. Ten trees on the right side and another ten trees on the left, all of them giants. When the leaves are in full bloom the road ahead becomes so dim that it’s like a tunnel. Now, though, there isn’t a single leaf. At the end of the boulevard there sat a large, red-bricked building. This was the auditorium. I had only seen the inside of this building once, during the entrance ceremony, and it had given me the impression of a temple. I looked up at the electric clock on the top of the auditorium tower. There were still fifteen minutes left until the exam. Affection filled my eyes as I passed the bronze statue dedicated to the father of a detective fiction novelist and headed down the gentle slope to my right, coming out into the park. Once upon a time this had been the garden of a renowned daimyo. In the pond were common carp, scarlet carp and softshell turtles. Around five or six years ago a pair of cranes were seen frolicking here, and snakes still slither in the grass. Migratory wild geese and ducks also stop to rest their wings in this pond. The whole garden is actually less than 200 tsubo in size, but looks more like 1000 tsubo – an excellent landscaping trick. I sat down on the bamboo grass by the edge of the pond, put my back against the stump of an old oak tree, and stretched both legs out in front of me. Where the path forked lay a line of rocks of various shapes and sizes, beyond which spread the wide open water. The surface of the pond shone white under the cloudy sky and rippled as if tickled by the furrows of tiny waves. After casually crossing my legs, I muttered to myself.

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Translation Tuesday: “His Type” by Laura Marcos

January 16, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Robin Munby

Everything was set up: the chains, the handcuffs, the gag, and the bath, one of those adapted ones for disabled people.

We’re in sunny rural Asturias on the northern tip of Spain this Translation Tuesday, courtesy of Laura Marcos, where a happy afternoon with pals is starting to drag on. It really has been nice, but David has to go. He makes his excuses, bats away the protests of his mates, and hurries home in quiet relief. The lie that David offers his mates is unconvincing, but the truth, the real reason he must leave so abruptly, is scarcely believable.

Marcos’s characters chatter, banter, spar, and deflect; their speech has been translated from the Asturian by Robin Munby into a kinetic, quipping English with a marked Scouse inflection. He explains:

“One of the great pleasures in working on this piece was building a textual bridge stretching across the thousand or so kilometres that separate Mieres from my own hometown of Liverpool. […] This is the English I most commonly speak myself, and so it is the form that comes most naturally to me when rendering the kind of informal dialogue present in Laura’s story. Choosing to use it here was also a conscious attempt to forge a textual link, to narrow distances, as well as to reject the universality of supposedly ‘standard’ forms of English.”

The afternoon had passed by in a happy haze of sunshine, laughter and more than a few drops of sidra, but for the last while, David had been shuffling about in his seat, stealing glances at his watch. He was getting restless. As well as his frustration at having to go home so soon, he knew he’d be in for some grief. It was always the same when he made an early exit. The best he could do was to let it all wash over him, try and get through it as quickly as possible without it turning into an argument. Arguments weren’t his thing, even if the others – Frechi especially – seemed to treat them as sport. Without them noticing, David had been gently edging his chair back with his bum so he’d have enough room to stand up. He waited for the opportune moment – one of those slight pauses between conversations – then said:

‘Okay, time for me to head off…’

‘What? We’ve only been here five minutes!’ Frechi shot back.

‘Yeah, yeah, but I’ve got Paula waiting at ours…’

‘Why don’t you call her and tell her to come and join us? We can go and get some food, it’s ages since we’ve seen you,’ said Tamara, Frechi’s girlfriend.

‘I know, it’s just I can’t today. Next weekend, maybe…’

‘I can’t, I can’t. Go on then, why can’t you?’ said Frechi. ‘Give her a call! And if she wants to stay in, no problem, but at least you can stay here. Just for once, try being your own man…’

‘Thing is we’re up at the crack of dawn tomorrow…’ David was standing now, and he was getting tired of having to explain himself.

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Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Peter Nielsen

December 12, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Matt Travers

One lives, / or goes feral in other ways.

Moments from the lives of small animals are captured and made into poetry by Peter Nielsen (tr. Matt Travers). In “A Little Understanding” a story emerges from tracks in thick snow. A mouse’s footprints meet those of something larger, and then the footprints disappear. Cooperation is surmised—an unexpected and heart-warming interpretation of the spoor. The titular bench of Nielsen’s second poem peeks out from a thicket of scenes and memories, where we see people together and birds in concert, each spreading messages with their bodies.

A Little Understanding

Animals help each other. It’s not always seen,
but if one goes out when there’s newly fallen snow,
you’ll often be able to follow a trail. You’ll see, for example,
the faint trace of a mouse that has come running.
Further on you may see another larger set of tracks
cross the mouse’s path. Often, you’ll now experience that the big
animal has helped the little animal on its way in the
cumbersome snow, since it’s only the big tracks
that continue. This is how the animals help each other.

A Parsley-green Bench

I anxiously greeted a friend who passed with the car window rolled down.
He registered me fleetingly and proceeded to stop in the middle of the traffic,
but I waved him on. Can you spread a message in any other way? A comforting
letter perhaps? Besides, my masseuse is waiting. And she doesn’t wait. She’s kind of there,
dawdling across the body, finding what the rest of us are looking for shortly before we begin
to search.

The episodes in one’s day like to go along, not across. One lives,
or goes feral in other ways. A bench peeks out from the edge of the forest.
The waders are flying up in formation, passing close together
in a rush over the sandbank. White undersides. After a lightning fast
twist of the body: black-grey. The moment after: white again.

Translated from the Danish by Matt Travers

Peter Nielsen is a Danish poet’s poet. Educated as an administrator in
the local counci’s wages department, Nielsen began to write full-time after earning the three-year Danish Arts Foundation Grant in 1980 for his first major poetry collection ‘Kan sparsommelighed redde proletariatet?’ (‘Can Economising Save the Proletariat?’). Since then, he has been extremely productive writer who has published over twenty poetry collections, half a dozen novels, a set of children’s books and is the Danish translator for several major poets of international repute, including Paul Celan and the Swedish Nobel prize winner, Tomas Tranströmer. He was awarded the Danish Arts Foundation Lifelong Honorary Grant in 1999, and was the recipient of the Adam Oehlenschlaeger, Emil Aarestrup, Herman Bang and Johannes Ewald Fund in 2016. 

Yet despite critical renown, he has also proved extremely reluctant to play along with the literary promotions machine and is consequently largely unknown to the wider Danish reading public. Instead of engaging in public readings of his work, which he believes spoils a reader’s internal understanding of a poem, he lives with his wife in a distant country suburb of Aarhus and divides his time between writing poetry, translating literature and pursing a keen amateur interest in ornithology, with all three activities arguably being a part of a singular overlapping creative practice, as if his poetry is always only out there in the rushes, waiting for their time to take flight.

The poems here come from his later works. A LITTLE UNDERSTANDING comes from his 2003 collection ‘Livet foreslår’ (’Life Advises’, nominated for Nordic Council Literature Prize) and A PARSELY-GREEN BENCH can be found in his most recent 2020 collection ‘Inden årstiderne; Regnlys’ (Before the Seasons; Rainlight).

Matt Travers is a poet and translator whose works have featured in 3:AM magazine, Tripwire Journal, Firmament Magazine, Minor Literature(s), and Mercury Firs, among others. Originally from Huddersfield, England, he now lives and dwells in Aarhus, Denmark.

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Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Tomas Venclova

November 28, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Diana Senechal

So death recedes. Morning approaches with a rooster’s cry / And a swallow takes heed

This Translation Tuesday, we find Lithuanian master Tomas Venclova sea-watching in a pair of entrancing poems, translated with beauty and guile by Diana Senechal. Lashes of brine, mist and cloud rise up from these chilly autumn seas, as do—so often the case—a soft sadness, and the observer’s most tender preoccupations.

August Elegy
For Z. B.

How are you, how is it to live
in the zone unknown to us still?
Forgetful and wet to the full,
the seasons float over the gulf.

Heat presses the narrow pavement,
the helicopter hones its direction,
takes notice: someone is absent.
This barely was able to happen.

Caught in the battered ships’ crush,
the whirlpools thrash the pavement,
and midyear soon comes to the seventh
year of your growing absence.

From that silent place what will I glean
on the balcony, pouring my wine
without you—who conquered alien
beds and bodies, you, skeptic, twin,

soul-likeness of mine? Almost always
you guessed what I had up my sleeve.
Now nature is all you have left—
the one God in whom you believed,

who always offered a safe
retreat from the State and its madness,
and whom—thrush’s skill, lynx’s craftiness—
you held higher than yourself.

Perhaps you are really in the fog,
in the film of glittering oil,
in scattered letters and logs,
by the promenade, where yachts jostle,

where road-loops are etched on the slope,
where the bell is contained in a breath
(a friend does not stay there long,
while an enemy stays to the death).

Perhaps you are really in the rays
where mollusks polish the deep,
in Vingis’s rusty pines,
and in Kotor’s salt molecules,

over here, where the sea vapor clears,
and in sands a thousand versts away.
“It is good,” you yourself would say,
“that nature gets by without tears.”

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “I Abandoned All Desire” by Mirza Abdul Qadir Baidel

November 14, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Homa Mojadidi

O ascetic, why take such pride in your purified heart?

This Translation Tuesday, a poem from one of the Indo-Persian masters. From the throes of a love denied, Mirza Abdul Qadir Baidel conjures cataclysms of desire and—intriguing subversion—the life-giving powers of heartbreak. The poem ranges across subjects and across geography like a river, and turns to face its creator in a thrilling final stanza, Baidel reflected in its surface, unhappy with what he sees.

I abandoned all desire—the pain of existence eased
I ceased the arrogant fluttering of my wings
my cage became an orchard full of flowers

The heat of my passion rendered this world
a flat plain. The flood of my tears made
the mountains and deserts into verdant valleys

Silence poured into my lap with the blare
of a hundred eschatons. The breath I suppressed
within my chest, gave root to a thousand reed beds

Wherever I looked, thoughts of the self waylaid me
until—this branch clad in flowers pointed me
towards the beloved’s door

O ascetic, why take such pride in your purified heart?
Whatever turns into a clear mirror simply becomes
a means for arrogance and ostentation

Love is the beginning of all sorrows. It pained
my heart so today—the flood receded in despair
finding my house already in ruins

If I rent my shirt out of my obsessive love, I will
try to hold on to the hem of my beloved’s dress. O love –
head towards the desert—see how the spring reveals itself there

Compelled by destiny—we act and speak
in helplessness and humility. Our imagination longs for
and soars towards what it cannot reach

I feel alive, electrified. Is it because I am about to lose my senses
or is it the thought of seeing the beloved? Like the mustard seeds,
the smoke rising from me betrays being burnt by a hidden fire

Baidel, once you retreated from worldly cares
saved yourself from all its snares—the world became
shrouded in shame—ashamed to show its guilty face

Translated from the Persian by Homa Mojadidi

Mirza Abdul Qadir Baidel, also known as Bedil Dehlavi, is considered one of the greatest Indo-Persian poets. He was born in Azimabad, India, in 1642 to a Muslim family who migrated from Central Asia. He was well-versed in Islamic scholarship and lived a humble life, avoiding court politics and wealthy patrons. He wrote ghazals, rubayees (quatrains), and prose. His famous works include Char Ansur, Talismi Hairat, Toor Marifat, Ruqa’at. While well-regarded in Tajikistan, Pakistan, and India, he is especially revered in Afghanistan, where a genre is dedicated to studying his unique poetics, called Baidelshenasi (Baidel studies). He is acclaimed for his simple language, unique compound expressions, literary riddles, and mystical insights.

Homa Mojadidi is an Afghan American poet and translator. Her translation work focuses on the works of Sufi poets such as Rumi, Baidel, and Hafiz. She grew up listening to the ghazals of these great poets being sung by famous singers and has been studying Persian classics like Saadi’s Bustaan and Gulistaan since age six. In her own poetry, Homa is interested in exploring the themes of loss, exile, memory, and mysticism. She is fluent in English, Farsi, and Urdu. Homa has an M.A. in English Literature from the University of North Florida and is pursuing an M.F.A. in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry from George Mason University. She has taught English Composition and Literature classes at the University of Florida where she was pursuing her Ph.D. in Postcolonial Literature and currently teaches English Composition at George Mason University.

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Translation Tuesday: from “My Father’s Cité: An Adolescence in Social Housing” by Mehdi Charef

November 7, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Clayton McKee

My mom, my sister, my brother, and I have waited in France for ten years to get this privilege.

This Translation Tuesday, Mehdi Charef recounts his father’s teenage experiences in a newly-built Parisian banlieue. Social housing holds undreamed of comforts for his migrant family, and apprehension quickly turns to delight. Comfort! Safety! Privacy! Hot water! A new, fuller life beckons in the projects, and it involves quantities of rock ‘n’ roll, girlfriends and Carson McCullers.

It’s the Chinese building manager who told us that we had to move.  The immigrant families who had lived in shacks—think shipping containers turned ruins with wear and tear over the past eight years—in the cité de transit, or transitional social housing, on Rue de Valenciennes in Nanterre would now need to pack their bags. Two feelings arise with the announcement of the news: anxiety and melancholy. This move represents a separation. We know where we came from but not where they are taking us. They didn’t ask us about anything, and they aren’t telling us about anything. We are leaving our most recent safe place.

In the bidonville, I had learned that there were Algerians outside of the ones in the village where I was born. In the cité de transit, I had learned Berber and African expressions as well as all the Portuguese curse words.

It isn’t the shacks that I liked but the people who lived in them. In front of them, I kept my head held high because I was like them. It’s only in front of my French classmates that I was ashamed…

Our housing project is going to be demolished. The construction of a large industrial park is set to take its place:  la Défense.

Our new apartment is in Cité Rouge. The neighborhood is named that because of the brick façades of the buildings. It’s in the city Gennevilliers surrounded by small, old houses. We are no longer the isolated immigrant population. People walk down our alleys, underneath our windows. We are no longer the shame of those who were kind to us. We became visible before we were heard… READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Midnight Falls Like a Bird” by Félix Francisco Casanova

October 17, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Adelaida Vida

wounded with sleeplessness...

This Translation Tuesday, a poem from the Canary Island poet Félix Francisco Casanova charts a journey from exhaustion to the brink of a balmy doziness. A page is turned, and the process begins. All the forces of wakefulness are surmounted by the dreamy, inexorable course of a perfect poem read on the cusp of dawn.

Midnight falls like a bird

wounded with sleeplessness,
tediously you turn the page
and the poem wends its course
like a river without end,
it dilates and narrows the eyes
enrages and pacifies you
while the wood’s burning wanes
drowsiness arrives with the dawn.

translated from the Spanish by Adelaida Vida

Félix Francisco Casanova was born in Santa Cruz de la Palma, in the Canary Islands, in 1956, and passed away in 1976 at the age of nineteen. In 1973, at the age of seventeen, he won the Canary Islands’ main poetry prize, Julio Tovar, with his book El conservatorio. In 1974 he won the Pérez Armas novel with Demipage’s reissued work, El don de Vorace. A month before his death, he won a contest sponsored by the newspaper La Tarde for his poetry collection, A suitcase full of leaves. The translated poem, “Midnight Falls Like a Bird,” is from Félix Francisco Casanova’s book, Cuarenta contra el agua, compiled by Francisco Javier Irazoki, and published by Demipage.

Adelaida Vida is a writer, translator, and student in San Francisco, California. She first read Casanova’s work when she was living in the Canary Islands.

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Translation Tuesday: From “A Bathtub in the Desert” by Jadd Hilal

October 10, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Bryan Flavin

His shell was gigantic and green, with glints of bronze, copper, and gold.

This Translation Tuesday, we present a fairy tale encounter amid dark signs of a war’s beginning, elegantly entwined and counterposed by Jadd Hilal. The lonely Adel discovers two improbable creatures in his wardrobe, and they become his first real friends. In the outside world, meanwhile, something horrible is unfolding: school is cancelled, the local protests are turning ugly, shots ring out at night, and militias have begun to roam the streets. 

We reproduce here a note from Hilal’s translator, Bryan Flavin, who tells us more about the author and his work. 

A note from the translator:

L’Orient du Jour described A Bathtub in the Desert, Jadd Hilal’s acclaimed second novel, as “The Other Little Prince…[its] endearing narrator reminiscent of Saint-Exupéry.” Yet while Saint-Exupéry and Hilal both confront the expectations assigned to childhood and adulthood, Hilal does so within a different context, one of war and exile:

When war breaks out, Adel’s life changes forever. Fortunately he still has his two giant imaginary insect friends, Darwin and Tardigrade, to help him escape. Strained to make decisions beyond his maturity, Adel finds himself at a desert outpost where the combatants act like children, and the sheikh, leader of the outpost, forces him to grow up. Throughout, Adel must learn what it means to be an adult, traversing war and exile, friendship and isolation, innocence and identity.

With emotion and stylistic minimalism, the novel challenges the typical Bildungsroman in two ways: 1) it asks readers to re-examine and contextualize the biases surrounding childhood and adulthood; and 2) it subverts the Bildungsroman’s gradual trajectory, instead marked by Adel’s navigation of traumatic experience. The following translation is an excerpt, starting when Adel first meets Darwin and ending right before the start of the war.

A Bathtub in the Desert

When I say I didn’t have any real friends, that’s not entirely true—I did have one friend: my giant beetle. He appeared the night my parents announced their divorce. I still remember that night—I opened the door to my massive wardrobe and found him there, next to the toy plane my father had given me for my third birthday, the dozens of stones I’d collected on the roads, and the cardboard box decorated with lentils I’d made for my mother at school, along with a number of other memories.

I should say, I only ever used my wardrobe for this—for keeping memories. I had convinced my parents to buy me a dresser for my clothes, but in exchange, I had to give up my large jar filled with the Chiclets I used to collect. Not a bad deal. Besides, I ended up needing the space. Without it, I would’ve missed out on my very first friend.

Even though he was definitely a beetle, the thing that made me slam the wardrobe shut and rush back to my bed—the thing I forgot to mention—he was as big and as tall as a grown-up.

“Who are you?”

I remember fumbling back to the wardrobe door and opening it. He was still there.

“What do you want?”

He didn’t speak, but his eyes told me he was scared. Now that I think of it—he didn’t really look like a beetle at all. Instead of tiny little legs, he had two long ones, like us. He wore midnight blue dress pants with white pinstripes and white polished shoes. Above that: nothing. All black with only a pair of eyes at the very top. Blue eyes with wrinkles around the corners. As if he were smiling.

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Translation Tuesday: “Mirror” by Blagoja Ivanov

September 19, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Pavlina Manavska

An earthquake is an indescribable event.

This Translation Tuesday, we present a short story from Macedonian author Blagoja Ivanov, about the niggling twists of fate in the wake of the earthquake that flattened Skopje in 1963. A young couple buy an antique mirror from a family about to leave for a holiday. The earthquake happens; the family’s apartment is leveled; miraculously, the mirror survives. The catastrophe is too enormous, too terrible for words, and it blurs accordingly in the memory, but its suddenness sharpens and sweetens the memories of the times before. We see the old Skopje in a hot summer, a city of “comfortable homes” and people with happy aspirations, heedless of the disaster.

“The summer of 1962 began with intense heatwaves. Everything was melting from the heat, acquiring a gray color, occasionally interspersed with the shades of dried grass. And yet,” says Martin, “for me and my wife, it was the start of a beautiful season. So, after a few years, in collaboration with a few friends, we built small houses at the foot of Gazi-baba, thus replacing the damp rented rooms with comfortable homes. After so many years since getting married, we still hadn’t had children, and today it seems funny that we were so unhappy wandering around the old neighborhoods of Skopje, searching for a more comfortable room, which, at a minimum, wouldn’t be in the basement and would have some sunlight. No matter how much our memory may have betrayed us, those difficulties are forgotten, just as we forget many unpleasant things from our youth.

“At first, we stayed at my parents’ place, not worrying about work, food, or clothing, but a person still feels constrained in such moments, struggling to reconcile their needs with those of the community they have lived in for so many years. It is, perhaps, the urge we know from birds — as soon as they hatch, they fly away from the nest. My wife and I were very happy in our new apartment,” says Martin. “Around the little house, there was a small garden or rather a place that still needed to be transformed into a garden. We were completely drained of money, two rooms remained empty, and the garden also required some funds, but the easy part was already ahead of us after we had passed the tricky part. We marveled at the view we had from the balcony — in front of us, below, the city extended towards the fortress Kale and the French cemeteries, while on the left, distant high-rise buildings showed us where the river Vardar was.

“When a person is young, there are so many trivial things that make life difficult. For example, arranging the apartment. We somehow arranged the few objects and furniture we had in the kitchen and two rooms, while the others remained empty. During the first winter, in one room, we pondered earnestly about what to do next. Ideas were born and multiplied. To be this way or that way. In any case, it would be best if it happened immediately. If not immediately, at least by tomorrow. Those conversations were, in fact, essentially wonderful. We constantly drew sketches of furniture pieces and rearranged parts of the apartment. We knew by heart all the measurements of the rooms, all the angles and uneven spots. Sometimes there would be disagreements between my wife and me, but they passed quickly. Nervousness and impatience would sometimes take hold, then pass like a spring breeze, with one side always giving in… which one? It doesn’t matter,” says Martin, smiling, as he takes a bite of the mezze and sips on the rakija.

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Translation Tuesday: “Hems” by Ana María del Río

September 12, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Justin Sergi

Each day she appears to get larger. More thunderous in her love. More outrageous in her furies.

This Translation Tuesday, a short story about an odd couple. A husband is shrinking—physically eroded by the force of his domineering wife. In a lesser author’s hands, things would quickly turn risible: think grimacing stories of shrews and their nebbishes, or cheap, queasy raunch with betas and Amazons. But Chilean author Ana María del Río elevates the material by treating it with a disturbing, straight-faced intensity. Wife is elemental: she loves, cares, rages, panics, resents, and fucks with the same unremitting, meteorological violence. She is”thunderous” a natural disaster, yet possessed also of a brute guile for suffocation with which she strips her husband of his independence and dignity, as exhausted sentences attest.

Suddenly, I feel myself getting smaller. Little by little. I took my pants to the tailor to get the hem raised. She told me that it’s because of my shoes. In the summer people change to wearing low-tops or flats which make the pants seem longer. It isn’t that you’re getting smaller, she jokes, and tells me not to worry. She’s sweet. Her eyes are the color of roasted chestnuts. She raises the hem a bit anyway, just to humor me. She doesn’t seem to notice.

Still, I feel myself getting smaller. My wife tells me it’s nonsense.

It’s because of her. Each day she appears to get larger. More thunderous in her love. More outrageous in her furies. Larger eyes opening wider in the heat of more extreme panics. She’s on medication, but there are days when it doesn’t take. It’s because you don’t love me as you ought to, she says. And how ought I? Suddenly, I notice that I can barely get my arms around her, trembling with a violence I haven’t seen even in the most horrific withdrawals. Her muscles seem to slap against the bone. She kicks wildly. Her eyes, terrified, dart around the room, ah, that room, which is slowly becoming my prison. She knows. She bought padlocks for the closet. To protect us, she says, you should thank me. She fears they will come to kill her in the night. The tenants we evicted are murderers and drug-addicts, capable of anything, she says. It’s true we heard gunshots once or twice from down river. But it’s possible they were hunting rabbits. They were left homeless, after all. They were rude, she says. And if someone is rude to me, well, they’re in trouble. She hired a lawyer. Informed me we would split the bill. To throw them out. In the end, we did. All that’s missing is the judge’s order. When that day comes, she says, I’m gonna throw a fiesta. But who knows what fresh hell will arise that day. I’m exhausted, always a little more exhausted, waiting for days that never come and nice moments that only exist in the future. But she dreams of those moments constantly. When you realize all that I’ve done for you and return the favor. Scares the hell out of me. I don’t think we’re ever going to begin. Everything for us seems either to wither or to end completely. Or, in her case, to get larger. When the judge finally makes it official, I think we’re gonna find rats, huge ones, in the tenants’ place. But at least we’ll be able to go in—why are you always so negative that you have to wreck my dreams, she says. You don’t know how difficult it was to watch you fall off the wagon. Of course I know. She tells me all the time.

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Translation Tuesday: “Matryoshka” by Marzia Grillo

August 15, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Julia Pelosi-Thorpe and Lourdes Contreras

Mothers’ lease contracts are printed in tiny, almost illegible fonts, punctuation arbitrary.

Rounding off our Translation Tuesday feature’s little Italian sojourn, we present the lilting prose of Marzia Grillo. “Mother” and “shelter” are her twinned themes—each contains the other perfectly, like synonyms, tautology, or an infinite matryoshka, and she demonstrates her point neatly with a text full of recursions, in which a mother’s housing houses housing mothers. Cosy!

My mother called to tell me my mother is dead?
—A.M. Homes

Houses were this: mothers. And matryoshkas were: continents, countries, cities, and wooden apartments—mothers’ furnished rooms.

All around she could see women carrying the future forward. Newborns hiding newborns yet to come, life germinating deep in springtime.

*

Seated at a coffee shop belonging to another generation, she leafed absent-mindedly through PortaPortese. The rentals section was filled with ads for mothers—one-bedroom apartments, studios, central heating, fireplaces. She’d have liked some above-fireplace shelving, for knick knacks and keepsakes. As she warmed herself she could watch a parade of her old mothers inside the Panasonic frame they’d given her years ago. Mothers small, big, bright, ancient. Mothers different to one another; some welcoming, others bare. She’d not need a television.

On her finger she wore a wedding ring that wasn’t hers: inheritance or hereditary? Her parents had been as mistaken about her as they had about themselves, cradling after their own bad choices as if she could right a wrong. And since apples don’t fall far from the trees that nourished them, she’d decided to live in a rose garden. She’d covered herself with thorns, starving but intoxicated by her self-sufficiency.

*

Since receiving the eviction notice, she’d started losing weight. At first strikingly, and then gradually, one pound at a time. Her first step was to stop drinking alcohol, as if she were pregnant. She’d say to waiters: “I can’t drink. It’s not official yet, but…” They’d congratulate her, serve more attentively, with fervour, voraciously beaming, dazzled by life. Since hearing she’d no longer have a home, she’d become hope in the eyes of the world. She carried this in her womb as she dwindled.

Do you remember sardines? she’d say to the mirror. She remembered this was what you called the residents of crowded houses but it was a misnomer. Cans aren’t mothers. They are just cans, no matter how crowded. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “to make a world habitable” by Mireille Gansel

August 1, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Joan Seliger Sidney

A Heimat-country. Where to put your cries without words emotions memories traumas beyond all languages.

This Translation Tuesday, we present Mireille Gansel’s account of a visit to a “Heimatmuseum” in Montafon, Austria, whose purpose it is to change what we mean by “Heimat”—a charged, tainted word—and to demonstrate its kinder, hearth-like, more inclusive connotations. We present also a note from the translator, Joan Seliger Sidney:

After reading several of Mireille Gansel’s poems about the Holocaust—we are both second generation survivors—I chose to translate them. The more I read, the more I saw how broad her scope, including translating all of Nelly Sachs’ poems, as well as the correspondence between Sachs and Celan; also translating and anthologizing Vietnamese poets; in addition, writing her own poems about refugees, and about their migrations as well as bird migrations, and our everyday environment. Gansel is a much-awarded poet, translator, and memoirist. Her Traduire Comme Transhumer (translated by Ros Schwartz) has contributed significantly to the field of translation studies. Translating her poems is an honor.

to make a word habitable focuses on centuries of “migrations of misery and survival,” and how this Heimatmuseum—once taken over by the Nazis but since restored by its director and the community—with its “humble objects” bears witness to these migrations. This poem also shows us how these “asylum seekers” were welcomed by their neighbors and have become contributing partners to their new village. This poem makes us question, why, in our country, founded by both indigenous peoples and immigrants, refugee populations are being randomly picked up coming home from doing jobs Americans refuse to do, and being deported.

We have much to learn from this Heimat country and from Mireille Gansel’s poems and memoir.

— Joan Seliger Sidney

to make a word habitable

                                                                                                     a thousand times more native…
              the earth where all is free and fraternal
my earth
—Aimé Césaire

like a letter to Bruno Winkler
historian and educator at Montafon in the Vorarlberg

this winter morning. The village of Schruns of the municipality of Montafon. Mountains around and narrow streets all buried in the snow. And up to the small square where one finds the museum. Heimatmuseum: how to translate this word? and then Heimat? The native country and the house, home, the home. A word where there is intimacy: perhaps because in the Middle Ages the strong accent was put on the vowel that preceded the “t,” and was pronounced “o,” thus creating a misunderstanding with Mut. A word that speaks of qualms.

Heimat oscillates between the intimate and the collective, between the spiritual and the terrestrial. A “sensitive” word of the sort that exists in every language, marked with the stamp of a History. So the German language forged in the spiritual, moral, political hearth of the translation Luther made of the Bible.

Yes, how to translate today: Heimatmuseum? And first, how to understand it? Doubtless by taking into account the layers of history deposited in the word Heimat and this museum subjugated by Nazism. Perhaps also by on-the-spot visits. Taking the pulse. In the field.

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