Translations

Translation Tuesday: “Glass Apples” by Lidmila Kábrtová

September 8, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Graeme Dibble

So I leaned against him, resting my head on his chest, and looked up. But the sky was like burnt porridge.

A game of magical thinking leads to a teen’s traumatic coming-of-age in Lidmila Kábrtová’s short story “Glass Apples,” this week’s Translation Tuesday selection. Decay and growth surround our speaker as she pursues a crush, though her excitement and anticipation betray her as she discovers a sinister and predatory side to young love. Of note is the speaker’s voice, initially full of hyperbole and youthful naiveté. A first-person narrative of meandering thoughts segues into a moment of subtle disembodiment (CW: sexual assault) as the speaker refers to “the body” instead of “my body,” and all the while rotting “forbidden” fruit provides a literal background to our protagonist’s fear and disillusionment.

It’s pitch black. Even though I’m being very careful, I can still feel myself standing on apples. There are so many that it’s impossible to avoid them, so I don’t. They crunch underfoot, turning into a sticky, sour-smelling mush. They are summer apples, but Gran, who I’m staying with over the summer holidays, calls them glass apples because they have such fine white skins that they almost look like they’re made of glass. They bruise easily—in fact, all you have to do is handle them a bit roughly and almost at once horrid marks appear on their soft apple skin and quickly turn brown. These apples don’t even taste very nice: at first they’re hard, bitter and tart, and then almost instantly they become floury and not nearly as sweet as, say Holovousy or reinettes, so they’re no good for anything except strudel. Gran bakes strudel with them regularly, twice a week. Even with the bashed and rotten ones. Which is just about all of them. The two of us always have a lot of coring to do. Gran even knows how to core the really, really bad ones. But not even Gran could make anything out of these ones.

My skin is really delicate too. Like glass. Gran says it’s like those apples. She says it all the time. I liked her saying it to me when I was ten, but now that I’m sixteen it’s really annoying. It’s also annoying how she’s always checking up on where I’m going, who with, and what time I’ll be back. I’m sixteen and I don’t want my Gran on my back all the time!

Last year I could still talk to her about a lot of things. But now I don’t want to talk to her about anything. Not about apples and certainly not about Štěpán. Definitely not him. Or anything to do with tonight. I just want to get home quietly so Gran doesn’t hear me. I’ll have to wash my shoes too, as they’ll be filthy from all of the apple mush.

I know I promised Gran I wouldn’t go to the dance. And then I climbed out my bedroom window. It’s on the ground floor, so you don’t have to jump from very high up. I’ve never tricked Gran before—well, at least never this much. But I just had to. Going out was a matter of life and death. Gran wouldn’t have understood. She would have said: Tereza, there’ll be other dances. In a year or two when you’re older and more responsible . . .

But how could Gran know what it was like not to see Štěpán, when it was obvious he’d be at the party? How could I lie under the duvet and try to close my eyes when all I could see going round my head were all the girls around him squealing, just so he’d notice them?

I didn’t have to squeal. He whistled over to me this afternoon when I was in the garden: “Are you coming, Tereza? It’s just a stupid dance, but better than nothing . . .” And he had his head tilted to one side in a really cute way and was kicking a stone on the ground.

Štěpán, the best-looking boy in the village. All of the girls were after him. Of course I was aware of him too, but the past two years he had acted as if I meant less than nothing to him. As if he didn’t register me. As if I didn’t exist.

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

“See you at nine then,” he said and disappeared. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Excerpt from Hwang Chini by Hong Sŏkchung

September 1, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Bruce Fulton and Ju-Chan Fulton

Satisfying one’s curiosity is like drinking salt water: the more of it you take, the thirstier you become.

This week’s Translation Tuesday transports us to sixteenth-century Korea in this excerpt from Hong Sŏkchung’s historical novel Hwang Chini. In this particular passage, our titular protagonist dons a disguise and explores the common neighborhoods of her city. Raised within an aristocratic family but soon to be made aware of her mother’s outcaste status, Chini is shocked and frightened by this formerly hidden underbelly of society. The legendary figure’s wit and daring are outpaced only by her curiosity, but the more she sees and hears, the more she is overwhelmed and unprepared. In language that is comedic, anachronistic, and surprisingly transgressive, Hwang Chini offers a contemporary take on a legendary historical figure. The novel’s fame also breaks political precedents: author Hong Sŏkchung received the Manhae Literature Prize, marking the first time a major South Korean literary award was bestowed upon a North Korean writer.  

Part One, section 12

After Chini has offered greetings of the evening to her mother she visits the kitchen maid’s room. This room has been kept heated, even now in the dog days of summer, ever since the maid suffered a stroke. Granny is there trying to sweat out a cold.

Chini feels a blast of heat as she opens the door to the cavernous room. Granny has burrowed into her bedding on the warmer section of the heated floor.

“How are you feeling?”

“Well, look who’s here! You came by earlier, and here you are again?” But Granny, face streaming with perspiration, is happy like a child at the sight of Chini.

“I gave Igŭm some ch’ŏngshimhwan for you,” says Chini. “It’s supposed to work miracles—did you try it?”

“I did! And I’ve broken into a good sweat and feel much better. But I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep without me tonight. You’ll have Igŭm, though.”

“That’s fine. Just make sure to take care of yourself!”

Chini stops in the kitchen to ask the maid to look after Granny, then leaves for her quarters. The moment she sets foot in the rear gardens, her proper-young-lady persona evaporates and the seething vigor and bursting vitality of a curious teen reveal themselves in a naughty, sparkling grin. She scurries off. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “My Friend Daniele’s Flight” by Ernesto Franco

August 25, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Anne Milano Appel

His hands were so clenched on the wheel that the knuckles stood out white from the force and concentration.

A flying lesson allegorizes the lifework of Italian writer Daniele Del Giudice in “My Friend Daniele’s Flight,” our selection for this week’s Translation Tuesday. In this philosophical essay, writer and editor Ernesto Franco recounts Del Giudice’s views on the writer’s vocation, a discipline defined by the responsibilities of precise language and careful attention to the world. Del Giudice gives Franco the controls of his plane—upon which we are guided through Del Giudice’s philosophies on writing, friendship, and ways of knowing the world. Franco turns to three key words to describe Del Giudice’s enterprise: Sentire, the feeling that relies upon lived knowledge and experience to avoid sentimentality; Mania, the obsessive energy that demands precision and allows one to know the world; and Phantasia, a creative contrast to shallow, mimetic ways of writing. Franco’s memoir comes to a tragic revelation, but the allegory nonetheless has Del Giudice safely returning us from our flight, illustrating what his philosophies can teach us outside of literature.

“Here, now you take it,” Daniele tells me, continuing to look straight ahead while at the same time taking both hands off the controls. It is a cold, sunny autumn morning toward the end of the nineties. We have just taken off from Nicelli Airport in Venice-Lido aboard a single-engine touring plane, whose model I don’t remember, and which Daniele has stabilized to maintain altitude. I had just experienced the words that I have not forgotten and that I won’t ever forget: “The run-up to take-off is a metamorphosis; here is a pile of metal transforming itself into an aeroplane by the power of the air itself, each take-off is the birth of an aircraft, this time like all the others you had had the same experience, the same wonder at each metamorphosis.” The precise, imaginative words of Staccando l’ombra da terra for something I had never experienced before, because taking off on the grass aboard a small airplane, a small “machine” as Daniele would say, sitting beside the pilot, is something completely different from taking off on a normal airliner. Among other things, with the title Staccando l’ombra da terra he formulated for all of us non-pilots an action and an emotion that did not exist before, and did so with the paradoxical effect (how can a shadow take off from the ground?) of the precision of the words concurrent with the added “shadow” of meaning which they alluded to. I actually felt as if wings had sprouted from my shoulders, but I didn’t dare move. “Go on . . .” Daniele says with a knowing smile. And I place two hands on the control wheel, remaining stock-still amidst the roar of the “machine.” Who knows why, but I feel like I have to be ready to make a move and resist with a decisive, forceful action. Perhaps, simply, my body is thinking about the powerful, rotational thrust of the rudder of a sailboat, with which I am much more familiar. But that’s not the case. The flight control is very light. You can practically move it just by thinking of moving it, but doing so moves the entire world in which we find ourselves. Steering on the edge of a subtle, brand new sense of equilibrium. That’s the sensation that I will have the whole time spent inside Daniele’s mania.

When I think of Daniele, of his books, his writing, his idea of literature, his way of thinking and understanding, even when I think of our friendship, the feeling I had at that moment comes back to me. I think about it even now, when I arrive in Venice and instead of San Polo or the hangar, I head for Giudecca, make my way through the maze of calle to the residence where he is housed, and speak my name into the intercom. Everyone here is very kind, the grounds, which overlook the lagoon and the Lido, are beautiful, but of no use to Daniele now, whom I always find in his room. A room that I could not distinguish from the outside, a room that is his, so to speak, in a neutral way: containing him, but without any trace of him. It seems strange only to me. His traces can be found, however, not only in his books, but in some universal words that speak of Daniele Del Giudice better than any other utterance. I will choose three. Sentire, to feel, to experience, has been one of “his” words since Lo stadio di Wimbledon and Atlante occidentale in fact. He applies it, I’ve always thought, not so much as an antidote to sentiment, but to sentimentality employed as an element, as recourse, rhetoric, to compensate for the aphasia of a lack, or absence, of experience. Sentire, on the other hand, is like improvisation in jazz: you can’t do it if you don’t know all the music, but you can’t do it if you don’t venture to the edge of the music you know, and from there love and know in one sound, in one action. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Excerpt from Naulakhi Kothi by Ali Akbar Natiq

August 18, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Naima Rashid

Maulvi Karamat would be furious and ask him why he had returned so late. Sometimes, he would give him a few whacks in anger.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, a slice of rural life frames decades of a family’s history in this excerpt from Ali Akbar Natiq’s acclaimed novel, Naulakhi Kothi. We’re treated to an abridged biography of Maulvi Karamat, an imam at a small village mosque. Maulvi Karamat is heir to his patriarchs’ accumulated knowledge, which he bestows upon his dutiful (but much abused) son, Fazal Din. An arduous errand to collect food (and consequently, money) unfolds into a lively character study of a mother, a father, and a street savvy son. Natiq deftly contextualises the present by manipulating narrative time, weaving generations into concise pockets of exposition.

“Maulvi Karamat”

When Maulvi Karamat left home, he could barely walk straight. Every few minutes, he would lean his full weight on his staff, and had a sharp headache. He had developed a slight fever because of being on an empty stomach for long. At intervals, he felt a renewed bout of anger against Fazal Din, who had still not returned with the rotis. Maulvi Karamat was afraid he might fall while leading the prayer. It was hard to sustain oneself till Zuhar on the glass of sweet buttermilk he had had at Fajr. As a result, he wasn’t too sure of what he had recited during prayer. In fact, at one point, he had said one verse out of place. It was a good thing that Zuhar prayers were not recited aloud, otherwise, he would have suffered a lot of humiliation, and the attendees would have begun to doubt his sanity. Performing the motions of sujood, ruqooh, and qayaam, he swore at Fazal Din countless times, and also thought ill of the attendees behind him, who were content to line up in prayer behind him, but could not tell whether he was hungry or not. In this state, he thought of the hadith that said, ‘If the time for prayer conflicts with the time for a meal, take your meal first, for one cannot pray on an empty stomach.’

For the past thirty years, Maulvi Karamat was the head imam of this small mosque. More than a village, it was a small cluster of around fifty to a hundred houses. Maulvi Karamat’s great grandfather, Khudayaar, had come here first, seeking alms from people who lived here. At that time, this mosque was an empty and unmarked spot. He was the first to mark the precincts as his own by throwing his patched quilt of rags on the floor here, and started saying a prayer. At first, the villagers would give him two square meals out of pity. Then slowly, some more people, seeing the earlier ones, began to join him there for prayers. Khudayaar had spent a year attending religious lectures in an institution. As a result of that experience, he had memorised some verses of the Quran, and also knew how to pray. On the basis of this knowledge, he started performing his duties as imam, and declared himself the maulvi of the village. Little by little, the functions of the mosque began to shape up around this. After his death, Maulvi Karamat’s father, Ahmed Din, succeeded him. Since that day, from generation to generation, they had remained here. Showing great foresight, Ahmed Deen had taught Karamat a few initial books of the Quran, and sent him off to attend religious lectures in Qasoor. Maulvi Karamat spent six years here. By the time he was fifteen, he was fairly fluent in Urdu, Arabic, and Persian. During this time, Maulvi Karamat’s father, Ahmed Din, passed away at the age of sixty. After his father’s death, instead of going elsewhere, he had preferred to stay in this humble mosque at Chak Rahra. He was sixty-five years of age now.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Jacques Viau Renaud

August 11, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Ariel Francisco

opening a furrow/to pour our blood/and maybe,/who knows, our lives.

This week’s Translation Tuesday brings you two poems by Haitian-Dominican poet and revolutionary fighter Jacques Viau Renaud. In “Man Awakens,” our speaker pledges his lifeblood to resurrecting hope (an “assassinated seed”), urging his compatriots to appreciate the majesty of their homeland in the face of socioeconomic injustice. In “We Take Refuge,” the seed metaphor becomes even more corporeal, as the roots of love embed themselves in peoples’ hearts despite their “mutilated lives”—the speaker now pledges not only his blood, but his voice. Written during the rise of another U.S.-backed dictatorship (the Dominican Republic was still recovering from the terror of the Trujillo Era), Viau Renaud’s verse channels the natural beauty of his country to inspire resistance. Ariel Francisco’s superb translations sublimates the visceral and sometimes violent imagery of these poems into an enduring love in the speaker’s voice, a testament to Viau Renaud’s gifts as a poet who celebrated his homeland’s fragile democracy and honored those who defended it.

 

MAN AWAKENS

Man awakens sewing the assassinated seed
hope curdling in a cry.
Light escapes his hands.
The washer’s stream throws its loud laughter
rinsing in the trees
tightening the earth
possessing it
leaving the internal seed in the roots;
injecting his spirited youth
unearthing the buried love
all the tightened silences in the streets of my homeland
razed by hunger
assaulted by thieves
led towards the banks in fragments
where pieces of shit in disguise
monopolize the lilies and bread.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Night, wife, detergent” by Kaori Ekuni

August 4, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Sharni Wilson

I love my wife . . . But if she's asking for something that they don't sell at the convenience store, I don't know what to do.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, a husband construes his stubbornness as miscommunication in Kaori Ekuni’s “Night, wife, detergent.” Ekuni’s trademark wit guides us through this unreliable narrative: a self-assured husband thinks he’s tried everything to understand his wife—everything, that is, except actually listen to her. This messy “misunderstanding” reveals an even more unsettling truth about our narrator: he sees his relationship as a contest for dominance. A probingly comic take on gender dynamics and dysfunctional relationships.

My wife said she wanted to leave me. “We have to talk,” she said.

It was after 10:00 p.m. I was tired. We’ve been married five years, no kids.

“You can get along by pretending not to notice,” my wife said. “But pretending not to notice won’t make it go away.”

When I didn’t reply and kept looking at the TV, she turned it off. I had no idea what I was supposed to be pretending not to notice, or what wouldn’t go away. As always.

As she stood over me, glaring at me, I noticed that her pedicure was chipped. “Do you need nail polish remover?” I blurted out, with hope and relief mingled in my voice. You can’t remove nail polish without nail polish remover. Is that why she’s upset?

My wife shook her head.

“Well, then it must be those square cotton wipes. The ones you said you couldn’t do without, when I told you to use tissues instead—you’ve run out of those wipes.”

My wife sighed. “No. I don’t mean anything like that. I have nail polish remover and cotton wipes. The only reason my nail polish is chipped is that I’m so busy I haven’t had time to do my nails.” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Death of the Doll” by Viktor Dyk

July 28, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Frances Jackson

. . . she asked the doll whether she loved her and the doll very clearly said yes

This week’s Translation Tuesday brings you a modern moral fable from the nationalist Czech writer and politician Viktor Dyk. In “The Death of the Doll,” a child copes with loneliness and perpetual familial strife by finding kinship and love in a cherished doll; in the child’s imagination, the doll even becomes a voiced character. Dyk’s prose is deceptively sparse, mimicking the naïve and heartbreaking simplicity of the child’s worldview, which is brilliantly contrasted with the vitriolic dialogue of the parents. Translator Frances Jackson writes: “In another writer’s hands this could have all too easily descended into melodrama, but instead there is something satisfyingly understated about the text.”

The doll was very beautiful, all slender and white in a little pink dress. Her name was Edda and she could move both her head and her eyes. She could be seen in the window from the street and often made passing children envious because of her great size and beauty. Otilka sat with her by the window for that very reason; it pleased her to know that, in spite of everything, someone could be envious of something of that belonged to her.

If it were not for the doll, Otilka would have been sad most of the time. The room was dim and gloomy; she did not like to be in here. The sun did not shine this way: there was a tall building directly opposite. And the street outside was straight and inhospitable. Really, Edda was all that she had.

Twice a day, of course, she had to take the dismal stairs to get to school. And it was always torture to Otilka. People frightened her and so did school. There was nobody there to play with, nobody who might comfort her; the other children did play games, but she didn’t like it when they did. The games were unpleasant and rough, and the children unpleasant and spiteful. It gave them pleasure to hurt her; Otilka often found herself crying. It was probably all down to the malice of a bad wizard who had cast her among bad people.

And lately, in particular, it was no different with her mother. She used to play with her sometimes, tell her fairy tales and would even laugh every now and again, but now it was as if she did not have any time or just a smile for Otilka. And yet it was just the three of them there. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “What I see” by Beatrice Cristalli

July 21, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Julia Pelosi-Thorpe

You see, even if I don’t see you / I know you’re breathing inside of us.

Love in the time of lockdown is given voice in Beatrice Cristalli’s “What I see,” this week’s Translation Tuesday selection. Written in response to the COVID-19 crisis in Italy, the poem’s speaker prefaces the piece with a philosophical declaration about fate—through subtle and clever enjambment (the power of the poem’s one punctuated line: “Right?”), this musing becomes the speaker’s guiding question. The poem flows through possibilities and memories, to and from that one pivotal inquiry. Seemingly mundane objects—a toothbrush, a comb, a jumper—are charged with new emotive meaning as they evoke the processes brought about by the lockdown: leaving. Absence. And remembering. The speaker, trapped in the moment when these objects were fixed in place by circumstance, longs for the safety of a missing love.

What I see 

They say all’s subjective
But things play parts in fate
Right?
READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Anatomy of a Servant” by Allan N. Derain

July 14, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Bernard Capinpin

“If you could only see me now, Mother,” she said to the only photograph stuck to the frame of her mirror.

In this week’s Translation Tuesday, a young woman’s sense of self-worth is prey to the forces of contemporary domestic servitude in Allan Derain’s “Anatomy of a Servant”. What begins as an endearing epistolary abruptly shifts to the perspective of our narrator, Asunta, as she seeks to build a better life for herself. The servant’s body becomes the target of dehumanization on the basis of class, gender, and nationality, until Asunta’s consciousness comes to internalize these repeated acts of violence as “necessary” and even “deserved”. Across these three short sections, Derain explores the classed anxieties of a dutiful daughter who longs for a brighter, freer future, though who also longs for home.


I. Empty-Headed

May 4, 2004

My Dear Asunta,

Before anything else, how is my good daughter? I hope you’re doing well. Are you eating on time? If you’re wondering, don’t worry about us. Marissa will be in high school the following school year. Your sister is looking for cash, so she now mans Tonga’s store. The money you have sent is enough, but we know that you are saving for something important. More people are asking me to sew, now that school is about to start.

You wrote in your last letter that the old man you attended to has already passed away. Does that mean that you can now come back home? Our fiesta will begin next week. I am part of the dancing group who will perform the Alembong in the parade. Don’t worry, and I’ll send you a picture so that it’ll be as if you were here in the fiesta . . .

This was what she always did: gazing out the window early in the morning. It was only yesterday she received the letter but by now, she had already read it countless of times as she faced the window. She glanced at her watch. She had thirty more minutes left to have the world to herself. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Flickers of Light” by Yasumi Tsuhara

July 7, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Toshiya Kamei

“In that case, you should avoid that tunnel. It’s known for ghost sightings.”

This week’s Translation Tuesday brings you a contemporary ghost story from best-selling author Yasumi Tsuhara. In “Flickers of Light,” our everyman protagonist believes he’s stumbled across a stroke of good fortune when the car of his dreams comes into his possession. But this supposed luck harbours a decidedly unlucky secret. Warned to avoid Kaerimi Tunnel, our protagonist finds himself encountering a chilling memory that may not actually be his own.

In Omiya lives a man dubbed “Count Dracula”—he goes by “Count” among his friends. He makes a living churning out mystery novels. They say he’s well known in his field; you might recognize his name if I were to mention it.

On the other hand, I’m a ne’er-do-well thirty-something man who has never held a regular job, partly because a succession of calamities befell me while I was still in my twenties. Needless to say, my life has nothing whatsoever to do with the publishing industry. Even so, whenever the Count and his hangers-on invite me to unofficial after-parties following movie premieres and award presentations named after somebody famous, I show up just for the fun of it, feeling like a fish out of water. Once I’m there, various hands shove their business cards into mine, dazing me with their illustrious names and titles, while I shove back my card that lists no job title and give them a self-mocking sneer while thinking my life isn’t bad at all.

Speaking of mystery, I met the Count under mysterious circumstances. I almost ran over him. Even though I wasn’t drunk or half asleep behind the wheel, I didn’t see him until it was almost too late. A tall, black-coated figure stood in the flood of crisscrossing headlights as if sprouting out of the road’s surface.

The near miss took place inside a tunnel on the outskirts of Omiya. I was on my way back to Tokyo after removing the sound equipment from an event site. I drove a company-branded Toyota HiAce that belonged to a former college classmate of mine. The president and only full-time employee, he often sent me to this kind of gig.

As I braked hard and skidded to a screeching halt, all the equipment went flying toward the driver’s seat. Even though the Count nimbly stepped aside, I ended up grazing him with the front bumper, pushing him down to the ground. When I jumped out of the car, he was already on his feet.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “On How to Be a Good Immigrant” by Elvira Mujčić

June 30, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Matilda Colarossi

Don’t worry about it, somebody had to cry. What the heck kind of story on immigration would it be if nobody cried?

In this week’s Translation Tuesday, two immigrants bare the wounds of their respective traumas in this excerpt from Elvira Mujčić’s novel On How to Be a Good Immigrant. Our narrator, a Bosnian immigrant haunted by the atrocities that robbed her of her family and her home, finds kinship with an immigrant from Mali, who opens up about the systemic racism he endures in Italy. Colarossi’s superb translation captures the subtleties of Mujčić’s prose: the uncomfortable silences, the hesitant divulgences, and the quiet pain that follows when the narrator’s emotional walls break down. A meditation on the myriad ways immigrants face trauma and are expected to appease Western stereotypes.

Chapter X

“Can you light a fire wherever you like in Italy?” asked Mele, a friend of my brother’s whom I had met the last time I was in Bosnia.

“What do you mean?” I asked surprised by the sudden turn the conversation had taken from the surreal dissertation on the non-existence of God of just a few minutes ago.

“I mean: can a man light a fire wherever he likes and cook lamb on a spit?”

“No, you can’t.”

“Well, life isn’t worth living in a country like that!”

Why did everything have to take a folkloristic hue, I wondered, annoyed and uncomfortable, like some sort of Austro-Hungarian elementary teacher sitting on an Oriental futon. I was going to meet Ismail when I remembered the incident. It was probably because of our last discussion and the African proverb with which we had greeted each other: “When you don’t know where you’re headed, remember where you came from.” You should have instructions on how to be a good immigrant when you go back to your homeland, I thought. And suddenly I realized that the longing I had felt for tens of years was gone, replaced with a renewed curiosity for that country’s present. But I only loved it if it was set in the past, because it couldn’t harm me from that distant place. My curiosity was not, however, light and untroubled: it was often laden with overwhelming sorrow and paralyzing fear. It was a visceral bond I could do absolutely nothing about, an incessant alternating of thoughts that went from the conviction that I had left something there that I absolutely needed to find, and the realization that what I was looking for was made of the same substance as fog. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “A Sentimental Education in March” by Pavel Vilikovský

June 23, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Charles Sabatos

We’ve all dreamed about it before. At least it seems like it. Falling from a tower. Down the stairs. From the bottom.

This week’s Translation Tuesday honours one of Slovakia’s greatest writers on the eve of what would have been his seventy-ninth birthday (June 27). Translator Charles Sabatos writes:

The title story of Pavel Vilikovský‘s debut collection, A Sentimental Education in March (Citová výchova v marci, 1965), translated here for the first time, features the introspective meditation on everyday events that can be found in his later work, but in a more fragmentary style.  A group of young people take a trip to Popradské pleso, a lake resort in the Tatra mountains, where two of them have a brief sexual encounter that leaves the young man disillusioned with intimacy and alienated from reality.

Pavel Vilikovský (1941-2020) had a distinctively ironic style that was rooted in Central European culture yet parodied the national myths of the region. He spent most of his life in Bratislava, although he briefly studied film in Prague before returning to Slovakia, where he became an editor and translator from English. During the “normalization” period of the 1970s and 1980s, Vilikovský preferred self-imposed silence to self-censorship, although he was never officially banned.  He made up for this period of near invisibility with the appearance of three volumes during the last months of the Communist regime in 1989, including Ever Green is . . . (Večne je zelený) and A Horse Upstairs, a Blind Man in Vráble (Kôň na poschodí, slepec vo Vrábľoch), his first works translated into English (by Charles Sabatos for Northwestern University Press in 2002). His collection An Escalation of Feeling (Eskalácia citu), also published that year, was a mix of new and previously published stories, including a slightly revised version of “A Sentimental Education in March.” This reappearance was followed by three decades of prolific output, during which he won the prestigious Anasoft Litera award twice. Perhaps the most acclaimed of his later works was Fleeting Snow (Letmý sneh, 2014, translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood for Istros Books in 2018) which depicts a narrator dealing with his wife’s gradual loss of memory.  After writing five novels between 2013 and 2018, the last of which was The Thrill is Gone (RAJc je preč, 2018), Vilikovský (who always resisted technology and never used the internet) lost a completed text due to a computer error, leaving him so demoralized that he stopped writing entirely. Upon his death a few months later, friends and colleagues remembered his lifelong modesty and generosity along with his artistic brilliance. According to the critic Peter Darovec, Vilikovský “never stopped viewing sentiment as the most important part of how a person functions, whether in communicating with others or with the world. He was able to rationalize it, to think about it analytically . . . Before him no one else had managed that in Slovak literature, no one had even come close.”

At the station, they were waiting. Waiting and waiting.

“One, two, three,” cried the black locomotives. “Ohh. Ohh.”

“Then I cried,” he said. “I cried up there in that cottage, at the lake in the mountains, and it flowed down the Váh River. She told me no, I can’t, no. Then: those three years. That was in the hallway. She went up the steps. Yes? I asked. Yes. Then I cried. Those three years. Those three years. It all froze down my cheeks.”

They stopped to get some water. “Whoo-hoo,” cried the locomotive.

“When I cried,” he said, “everyone saw it. All night. Yes? Yes. And up the steps. And down my cheeks.” READ MORE…

In This Together: Writers From Around the World Respond to the COVID-19 Outbreak

June 20, 2020  |  in In This Together, Translations  |  by Sarah Moses

The mind is a strange and powerful mollusk, a flexible thing that gropes around in the depths until it takes hold.

As life—though never aptly described by that inadequate adjective, “normal”—begins its uneasy adjustment into a new reality, we here at Asymptote are wrapping up In This Together. Though the world has by no means seen the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are proud to have collected a selection of literature that bears witness to its beginning, and we continue to look forward to the texts that will surely continue to bring enlightenment and poetry to our circumstances. For our final edition, we present a text by Argentinian author and journalist, Cristina Macjus. Sarah Moses, translator, writer, and Asymptote’s co-Editor-at-Large for Argentina, introduces the piece:

In confinement in Buenos Aires, Cristina Macjus travels far from her apartment in the city via long-distance conversations with a high school friend. They imagine a return to their hometown in the northeast of the country, to the scents and sights that remain intact in their memory, though the town has long since changed. An acclaimed author of numerous books for children and young adults, Macjus began keeping a diary on March 20, when Argentina entered into quarantine in the early stages of the pandemic. “Walking with Agustín” brings together excerpts she wrote in lockdown, which continues to this day in the country.

Walking with Agustín

By Cristina Macjus

When the president said “quarantine,” I went blank. I’d been feeling all manner of things since social distancing measures had been put into place, but on March 20, when mandatory isolation was announced, I could feel nothing more.

I was in a haze for the first few weeks. I spent long periods of time seated in front of the mirror looking at my birthmarks as one would a galaxy. My WhatsApp messages accumulated; I’d answer, but my voice was faint, as though my head were inside a pillow.

In this state, I began to go for walks with Agustín.

Agustín and I had gone to high school together in the town we grew up in, close to the Iguazú Falls. Later, he moved to Bariloche, and I to Buenos Aires, and we lost touch. We remain thousands of kilometres away from each other, but the pandemic reconnected us during those first moments of turmoil on social media when everyone was asking about those they knew. Right away, we began to talk about our hometown. It’s not that we’d been particularly good friends, it’s that we took to walking.

“Do you remember how if you turned left, you’d get to Julito’s house?”

“Oh yeah, the one with that evil dog!”

“That’s the one. And if you kept going along that street you’d reach the park.”

This went on for hours over WhatsApp. We know, because others have told us so, that the town has changed, but since neither of us has returned, our memories remain intact. We walked each of our favourite routes. For example, the dirt road I’d bike along to get to English class. It was a good dusty run downhill followed immediately by a curve to the left where the pine forest began, the temperature changed, the air turned damp and smelled of resin, and you had to be careful so your bike wouldn’t slip on the red earth, which along that stretch of the road seemed a piece of recently polished ceramic. I can remember each of the turns in the road perfectly with my body; I could mould the topography in plasticine. Agustín remembers it as well. Together, the two of us possess a town that’s real, we confirm it to one another, and yet it no longer exists. His favourite spot is the country club, so we leave the town and walk the five kilometres it takes to get there, the final stretch along Highway 12 is one of the most dangerous in the province because of the trucks that drive by transporting logs. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Daughter from Jannina” by Vassilis Alexakis

June 16, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Rebecca Dehner-Armand

It feels as if I’m using this story just to see if I am able to write a more personal piece.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, a proposed coffee date unearths secrets and regrets in Vassilis Alexakis’ “The Daughter from Jannina.” Our protagonist is a journalist awaiting the arrival of a young woman claiming to be his daughter. A conversation about the veracity of the woman’s claim reveals a bittersweet history of personal mistakes. Here we have the trademarks of Alexakis’ writing: straightforward exposition, quotidian detail, and a dryly comic voice, all of which belie a deeply complex interiority and emotional self-awareness. With emotional subtlety and humour, our protagonist weighs the importance of love and family life against the backdrop of national displacement. Translator Rebecca Dehner-Armand writes: “[Alexakis] has composed a singular œuvre, marked by his particular staccato and wry style, that illuminates the experience of a growing sector of French society: immigrants, exiles, and foreigners.” 

A cloud of smoke floats above the ping-pong table. I am seated at my desk, at the other end of the room. At the moment, I am not smoking. On the ping-pong table there is a mostly used-up roll of toilet paper, a paddle, and Lina’s camera, as well as a Tupperware container that I should return to Grigoris’ mother. A few days ago, she brought me some garbanzo bean soup in this container. Where has the other paddle gone? I don’t see the ball either. I played ping-pong last night with Vasso. The match was shit. Lina came over afterwards, around midnight. She slept here last night. It hasn’t been long now since she left.

I am listening to The Turk in Italy, a joyful opera by Rossini. The Turk falls in love with a married Italian woman and begins plotting to purchase her. She gently explains to him that this type of transaction is not done in Italy. In reality, I am not really paying attention to the opera. My mind is elsewhere. It seems the cloud of smoke is headed for the open French doors. It is quite chilly, but I don’t have the strength to get up and close the doors. Lina will no doubt come by sometime during the day to pick up her camera.

Normally, I should be prepping for my TV show by now – I am going to be interviewing the minister of maritime trade—or writing my column for The Investor. These notes surprise me; I am not used to recording my comings and goings. I am writing in pencil, which surprises me even more: for a long time now, I’ve typed out everything. Maybe I chose a pencil precisely because I ascribe no importance to this story, because I can envision a quick abandonment. I can see myself throwing it in the trash after ripping it to shreds. A little piece of paper will fall to the floor. Once I bend to pick it up, there will be a knock at my door: it will be Stavroula, this young girl who was not at our get-together last night and who thinks she’s my daughter. READ MORE…