Translations

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.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: An Excerpt from “Something Folksy” by Krisztián Grecsó

September 5, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Fruzsina Gál

although I’m always full of pregnant suspicions, I didn’t think up until the pine cone battlefield that God had challenged us with that kitten

A memory of a journey along a riverbed told in a singular, unabating sentence gives new meaning to ‘stream of consciousness’ this Translation Tuesday. The following excerpt from Krisztián Grecsó’s Something Folksy is exemplary of the unique voice and experimental approach of the celebrated contemporary writer, as revealed by translator Fruzsina Gál: “Something Folksy – and Grecsó’s writing style in general – reminds me of the power of language, the precise, delicious craft of writing, and it made me want to instantly translate and share these stories with the wider world. I decided to translate this particular chapter as I was fascinated by the way he made it work in Hungarian, and I was intrigued to find out if the same effect could be replicated in English. The challenge was making his localised language understandable to a wider audience, all the while keeping its decidedly Hungarian style integral to the end result.”

You carried me in your arms for years
Pine cone slivers lay on the bottom of the dried up riverbed, covering it like a rug woven from knots the size of a baby’s fist, but if I managed to shift perspectives, and I didn’t even have to squint my eyes to be able to do so, then I could see from the imagined altitude of a drone camera that this section of the National Blue Trail is in reality a battlefield, the space after a winning or losing combat, it doesn’t matter which, there lay the pine cone corpses, victims, then with time heroes, but I couldn’t keep playing with perspectives, we wandered on, it was already questionable what I was staring at for so long and I didn’t want to ruin the afternoon, because we had just emerged from the first challenge of our budding love, the kitten that had joined us next to a forest ranger’s loft, and it really was lovely, gentle and vulnerable, and you were set on bringing it home, but there was no such thing as home, you still lived in a studio apartment on the outskirts of Miskolc, while I was once again sleeping on the couch of a friend, where I always end up when my life comes off its hinges, or to put it more simply, when I’m in trouble, that palatine building and the windy corridor of the quay in Újpest being the Golgotha for me, so where could the ranger’s stolen kitten have come home to, but you had dug your heels in, you thought that the forest, destiny, or the Creator himself had sent us that puny animal, “we can’t leave it behind” you kept saying, while I kept pointing at the ranger’s wallpapered home, saying that maybe a grandchild, a loving little girl comes here to pet it each afternoon, and of course I was just looking for excuses, because I couldn’t have brought cat litter to my friend’s apartment, but with the image of a crying child I surprised even myself, and I was moved by how creative and empathetic I was being, but you couldn’t believe that I didn’t feel that it wasn’t just a kitten, but a challenge, a question, a deep dive of an interview, and God was curious about us, you were so sure that this animal had been born because of us, and we had to bring it home, it couldn’t be fateless, an orphan, and I had finally played my ace as a last resort, that it would be stealing, after which you kept walking in silent despondence in the riverbed, like someone who’d lost something, like someone who’d miscarried, and in the first house of Óbánya, in the old post office’s courtyard, matted horses were eating grass, the water in their buckets ebbing, at that time you were still going horse riding to the mountain, you weren’t afraid to sit on a horse, you sought the saddle, and I hadn’t been afraid either, although I’m always full of pregnant suspicions, I didn’t think up until the pine cone battlefield that God had challenged us with that kitten, in reality I was happy to settle for the small things, for example the fact that I finally lived and existed in a moment without wishing to be elsewhere, at that point I had been surrounded by lies for close to a decade, in a constant state of remorse, and I always wanted to be somewhere different, so it was a cellularly new experience to be able to exist entirely there with you, where I’d chosen to be, and no matter how hard I try to remember it differently, that kitten hadn’t been a bad omen to me even past the pine cones, or at least not any worse than the pine cone battlefield in-between the river’s pebble-cliffs, after all, there was something ominous about that too, and there, as I surveyed the expanded land from high up I shuddered, that it was too much, that something bad was to follow, we were too happy and the binding balance of good and bad was missing, and the riverbed was beginning to look like a model of a movie being filmed, and our eyes were level with the slowly receding aerial shot, two thirsty people drunk on love, who, in the village’s only pub, when they slotted the first coin into the vinyl jukebox and sat down next to the crackling tiled stove, already knew that they were going to live out their lives together, which was guaranteed by Attila Pataki’s sublime voice, you pressed the button and the bartender piped up, “forty-three,” and took a sip of his beer, “Edda blues,” and I couldn’t believe that you’d chosen the band Edda, you hadn’t yet known that you were going to leave the city, there was no subtle metaphor in that musty old hit, there was only us, and the regulars, and with us a naked, impudent happiness, that in an abandoned village’s only pub we’d be listening to Edda on a jukebox, which can’t get any better, we were choking on laughter, and then silence, silence again, and I thought to myself in the bathroom, with my eyes trained on the endless depth of the urinal, that I needed to change, that I couldn’t continue to expect the worst during the happiest moments, that it shouldn’t be a problem when something fits so perfectly, or when for once it happens so easily, like a long awaited resolution; so we picked our way through the riverbed towards the empty village, the old church of Óbánya gleaming like a crone dressed in her Sunday best, and I had already forgotten or wanted to forget the kitten, but I could still see a captivating sadness in your eyes, and I realised only years later, once I’d pricked your belly full of injections, and once they’d put me in that mesh mask of historic horrors for the first time, wheeling me into the machine under the burn of radiation, I realised only then that all our hopes for a child were gone, and just how naive I’d been, but by then I was only envious of our necessarily and rightfully infantile hopes of the past, we walked on in the pine cone pellets, in the view of a seriously thought-out, long and happy life, knotted sounds floating from the mountain, our shoes sticky with resin, and it didn’t even occurr to me that God could’ve shaken his head when we left that kitten, shaken it and turned his eyes from us for years, and now I know that it was the last time we’d been childishly and cluelessly untouchable, and every subsequent explanation and over-thought suspicion about pine cone corpses and kittens had been in vain, we wouldn’t have believed it truly and deeply even if the Prophet himself told us, even if he appeared on our way home and sat down next to us at the small pub, slotting a coin into the jukebox himself and pressing forty-four, and Slamó would’ve thundered you carried me in your arms for years, and I was a prisoner of your will in vain, because if Jesus himself had revealed it under the truth of that song, we still wouldn’t have believed that something wouldn’t work for us, something all-important, not the way we would want it, not the way it should be, nor, as people would whisper about it in the stairwell, the proper way.

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Translation Tuesday: H-A-N-N-A by Hanna Riisager

August 29, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Kristina Andersson Bicher

Blissfully mute, / infatuated babbling / from a marble mouth.

An entrancing poem on babyhood commands our devotion this Translation Tuesday–a fitting muse for poet and critic Hanna Riisager, whose first collection wields overtly feminine symbols to subvert gender norms. In H-A-N-N-A, precisely translated from the Swedish by Kristina Andersson Bicher, a small subject wields a gravitational pull, overwhelming us in equal parts bewilderment and wonderment.

You are a plank you
are a bridge you are a bronze
railing. You are a
landing you are a
nook. You are a ramp
for baby carriages.
Head down feet up
Child’s position.
Perpendicular dominance
trimmed in lead. An
H in the heart.
Think: the scope
of this walk!

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “She Sits Beneath Her Father’s Olive Tree” by Audefroi Le Bastart

August 22, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Timothy Perry

Whoever has love’s grief and pain / Should also have love’s joy.

This Translation Tuesday, a melodic love story for the ages floats in the air, transporting us to a time of dueling knights and castle towers. Hear from Timothy Perry, translator of “She Sits Beneath Her Father’s Olive Tree” by Audefroi Le Bastart, on appropriation in the layered histories of France’s medieval weaving songs: an oral tradition of working women recorded in writing by men:

“The weaving songs of medieval France do not survive. Which is to say, the traditional songs of women engaged in textile work—a largely oral tradition—do not survive. In their place, we have approximations to this genre written by men in a purely literary context. These literary weaving songs, with their themes of courtly love, (artfully) simple language, and repetitive rhythms, attempt to preserve the ‘feel’ of the oral tradition, but their appropriation of it results in a problematic shift in perspective—narratives involving the objectification and abuse of women take on an entirely different tenor when taken from a context of women’s work and transformed into a male literary exercise. The resulting poems have been considered among the finest lyrical creations of medieval French literature, but their casual misogyny raises timely (and timeless) questions about how we should read aesthetically accomplished but morally tarnished works, and how we should translate them.

The ‘weaving song’ translated here tells the story of Idoine and the obstacles to her love. The poem upends the conventions of courtly love by presenting everything—even martial pursuits—though Idoine’s eyes, resulting in a complex layering of gender: a male poet writing in a female genre presents male activities through the eyes of a female character. Despite this complexity, the misogyny outlined above remains very much present and I have tried both to draw attention to and undercut it. For example, the French text mentions the aesthetic qualities of Idoine’s hair even as she is being dragged by it, but in an unemphatic way: ‘[the queen] takes her by the hair, which she has blonde like wool’. I have heightened this aestheticization of Idoine’s suffering by overtranslating the prosaic ‘takes’ as ‘grasps’ and by expanding the description of the hair from half a line to a whole line and setting it off between dashes. Elsewhere, however, I employ vocabulary not found in the French to undercut the poem’s ‘happy’ ending. Twice my translation describes Idoine as the ‘captive’ of her love Garsiles. On the first occasion, the French simply says that her love for him ‘preoccupies’ her; on the second, which occurs at a point in the poem when her father is literally holding her captive in a tower, the French simply says that she is still ‘taken with’ Garsiles. And when Garsiles fights to rescue Idoine, after which they will marry, I describe him as ‘an iron tower of strength’, though the French says merely that he has ‘prowess and strength’. By presenting Garsiles as a tower and Idoine as his captive, I try to suggest that Idoine’s plight as a wife may not be so different from what it was as a daughter.

Despite these changes in emphasis, my translation attempts to preserve the straightforward vocabulary and syntax of the original; to reflect the importance of rhythm in weaving songs, I have employed a fairly strict iambic pentameter.”

She sits beneath her father’s olive tree
And carries on a quarrel with her love.
Her sighing heart complains: ‘Such suffering!
No song, no flute, no music moves me now:
Without you here I have no will to live.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

How long must I endure this misery?
How long, my love, tormented by your love?
I am your captive, Count Garsiles, and I
Will waste my youth on weeping and on tears,
With no escape unless I feel your touch.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

I curse the hour in which my father called
For war, a war that brought your army to
This place, a war that you, by strength of arms,
Soon turned to peace—but not before it took
The lives of many knights. I curse the hour!
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

But all this country would have been laid waste
And all the common people left to die
If you had not brought peace—if you had not
With reckless charges, wild assaults, brought peace.
And now, in love, I lie awake at night.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

War at an end, peace in the land, and you,
Your army waiting, ready to depart,
Offered yourself, a blameless man, to me—
A blameless man, the robber of my heart.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

To trace your beauty is my greatest joy:
So elegant, so noble and refined—
You never seek to do me any harm.
Such is my love that I could never be
Distressed, or wish my heart my own again.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

What can I do, my love? I am in such
Distress! Your beauty, strength—your gentleness—
Have lodged love’s wounding arrow in my heart;
No one but you can cut it out again,
For both the arrow and the heart are yours.’
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

While beautiful Idoine weeps and laments
The man she loves, the man she would consume…
But look! Her servant, searching anxiously,
Comes running down the grassy path and finds
Her lady, overcome by misery.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

‘My lady, please, you must rein in your heart—
You have indulged your anger and your pain
Too much today. The king and queen have seen
How you behave. They say it lacks good sense.’
Too late! Now all is lost—her mother comes.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

The queen now grasps her hair—she has blonde hair,
Pale as a fleece—and makes her stand before
The king; she lists her faults—she knows them well—
And he replies: ‘Take her at once and lock
Her in the highest tower. But beat her first.’
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

He has the girl ungirdled and undressed
And any part of her his rein can reach
He strikes; he turns her flesh from white to red.
At last, believing that her punishment
Is just, he has her locked in a high tower.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

Now beautiful Idoine is left alone,
Locked in the tower; but even there her heart
Remains unchanged—such is her love for Count
Garsiles that she holds nothing dearer in
The world. He holds her captive and she weeps.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

Three years Idoine is kept locked in the tower,
Three years, three mournful, tearful, rueful years.
‘My love,’ she says, ‘how long I wait for you!
Such is my love—such is my rage—they hold
Me in this tower, where I will die for you.’
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

She cries aloud again; she weeps; she says:
‘Locked in this tower, my love, I have endured
For you so many weeks of pain-filled love…
I’m overcome by weakness…cannot stand…’
She speaks; she faints; she—voiceless, breathless—falls.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

The king now hears the cries and stands amazed—
He wonders that they do not die away.
Quick as a deer he comes, runs to the tower,
And finds Idoine, his daughter, in her faint.
He takes her in his arms, no longer glad.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

The king is speechless in his grief; the queen
Approaches, anguished, overcome. At last,
When beautiful Idoine, sighing, revives,
He says: ‘This love, Idoine, it sickens you.’
And when she can reply: ‘I know, my king,
That I must die, and die in misery.’
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

‘Daughter, how pale you have become, how changed—
This is no feigned, no counterfeited love!
A love so true that it will be your death.’
‘Without Garsiles I am already dead.
There is no need for this imprisonment.’
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

‘But if you wish to marry I could find
Some royal son, some proud and powerful prince.’
‘I will not marry any man but him,
The count Garsiles—so wise, so beautiful,
And (but for you) as brave as any knight.’
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

At last he understands—she will not look
Elsewhere. The king declares a tournament—
Why wait?—to be held there in the broad space
Beneath the tower. He offers as a prize
Idoine, refined, beyond the least reproach.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

Word of the trial—word of the prize—soon spreads,
More pleasing to the ear than harp or viol.
All say that they will go to win the girl,
To shatter lances in the name of love.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

The knights arrive from many far off lands—
Driven by love, not one remains behind.
Their gorgeous banners crowd around the tower—
Garsiles is there, and all his company.
The tournament begins and all fight hard.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

Idoine—is there a purer name in France?—
Now watches from her window as the knights
Advance and, out of love, she gives her love
Her sleeve; he throws himself into the fight—
No purer knight has ever held a lance.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

The Tournament beneath the Ancient Tower—
A noble tournament. Each does his best
To win Idoine, but she cries out for help:
‘Garsiles, you must not hesitate to fight
With any knight and throw him from his mount.’
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

An iron tower of strength, Garsiles fights well;
He breaks the shield of every knight he meets—
Breaks it like bark—and with the shield the man;
All this for love of beautiful Idoine.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

Garsiles has won the tournament; the king
Gives him the prize; the prize becomes his wife.
He takes her back in honour to his lands.
Their love is faithful, sweet, and true—at last
Idoine has won all that her heart desires.
XXXXXWhoever has love’s grief and pain
XXXXXShould also have love’s joy.

Translated from the French by Timothy Perry

Audefroi le Bastart was from Arras in Northern France and was active in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, but beyond that little is known of his life. Of the twenty or so poems identified as belonging to the genre of weaving song, five have been securely attributed to him, more than to any other poet. Arras was an important literary centre during Audefroi’s life and he may have had ties with other well-known poets from the town, including Jean Bodel, Conon de Béthune, and Adam de la Halle.

Timothy Perry is the Medieval Manuscript and Early Book Librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. He holds a PhD in Classics and has published on ancient and medieval Greek literature and the history of the book. His current project is a translation of the complete surviving corpus of Old French weaving songs.

***

Read more from Translation Tuesdays on the Asymptote blog:

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: Three Poems by Alberto Pellegatta

August 8, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Marco Malena

I will inhabit / luminous infrastructures.

Three glittering space-time poems from Alberto Pellegatta are in the spotlight for Translation Tuesday. The poems’ ambitions are vast: using words to give definition to the scale and depth of the universe, as if applying a coating of dust to an invisible wall. Pellegatta’s imaginative particulate adheres to and notices things beyond “intermittent actuality”: edges of space, time and experience. They make you feel very small, and very cold.

Pinwheels of gas in the concave vacuum
that contains us all. There is no centre and the rim
is sewn onto itself. Time is space, expanding.
Time is hunger and space is cold. I will inhabit
luminous infrastructures.
We will be further apart, worlds from worlds
and it will be colder, until it’s reabsorbed into a hole.
Or it will refocus until it reignites.

But now, this very moment, is the capital of Time.

*

In the beginning it was barely a stain
a neon. It was not vacuum
nor was it matter, or fire.
Now it expands and contracts
it refocuses. The mechanism, as a whole
is spherical, musical. Yet quantic
fragile and infinitesimal
in detail.

*

Memory has enormous rooms
rooms filled with mirrors
unviable dust. Whereas
actuality is intermittent
like a broken image.

Translated from the Italian by Marco Malena

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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Translation Tuesday: “Invasion” by Diego Lama

July 25, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Rose Facchini

The throng grew. There were people with greatcoats, mantles, furs, swords, sandals, wigs…

This Translation Tuesday, we present an oblique scrap of fiction from Diego Lama, translated into compact, equivocal English by Rose Facchini. An apparition disturbs Alfio from his espresso: his grandfather, dapper, smiling, and back from the dead. In the space of four hundred words, things only get stranger.

Alfio was sitting in the café when all of a sudden, he saw an old man appear. It was his grandfather.

“Hi, grandpa.” Alfio stood up, holding his demitasse.

His grandfather was a tall, thin gentleman of respectable appearance. He had big, blue eyes and a kind expression, reassuring, always elegant, always in a suit, always with polished shoes.

“Hi, grandpa,” Alfio repeated.

His grandfather had been dead for more than fifteen years. Alfio perfectly remembered the shoes and jacket they put on him the day of the funeral.

“Hi, grandpa,” he repeated a third time. “Weren’t you…?”

“Yes, I was,” the grandfather said, smiling in his own way, as if everything—even death—could be resolved with a witty remark. “I was. But now I’m alive!”

“I don’t get it.” Alfio sat down. “I just don’t get it.”

“Me neither, but I’m happy.” His grandfather remained standing. “Your grandmother’s also come back!”

“Grandma?” Alfio placed the demitasse on its saucer. “But… Grandma died more than sixty years ago, when dad was only a little boy.”

“A tragedy.” The grandfather smiled. “The important thing is that everything ended in the best possible way. We’ll just have to make do for a little while. Grandma and I need a place to stay, Alfio.”

“Go to dad’s house!”

“He’s too old. If he sees us, he’ll have a heart attack,” the grandfather smiled. “You’re not going to leave us high and dry, are you?”

“Of course not, grandpa. Where’s grandma?”

“There.” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “sailing to batavia” by Zen Hae

July 18, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by George A. Fowler

we have left the city that belittled us, the country that shall vanish in one smack of the hand.

This Translation Tuesday, to coincide with our Summer Issue and its standout Indonesian Special Feature, the spotlight is on the subtle, elegant prose of Zen Hae. A colonial administrator longs for the comforts of his nyai —his Indonesian concubine—and the febrile sensations of the land he has subjugated, plundered, and since departed. He has sucked hard on its every pleasure, and the taste has brought everything into question.

may you my nyai be always under the lord’s protection—who allows interest on loans and subjugation of new worlds. be well in your acceptance of all things.

if this lowly one sails to batavia, nyai, wear a blouse and the best batik cloth. and betel nut…chew it gaily—use gambier from barus and quicklime from banten to perfect its redness. there’s no need for a parasol. that’s because we’ve missed the batavia sun from the very start. that’s the eye that kisses our ancestors on the fourth day. under it they supposed the swampland was a future heaven and the bare-chested men were sheep with no shepherd. someday that is where our kingdom shall be made real.

related thereto, wait for this lowly one in jacatra’s bay. welcome him at the mouth of the ciliwung with a three-blossom smile.

we have left the city that belittled us, the country that shall vanish in one smack of the hand. we have swallowed months of curses at sea, and have crawled across almost the entire earth, with a map more wondrous than a dream. we have sojourned at the cape of hope, at goa, coromandel, columbo, malacca, also cities wiped out before dawn. a third of us are dead, another third sick and will die the moment we arrive, and one or two now gone mad. we, though, the strongest men, remain.

we smelled the scent of liquor in the brick houses in the south. that one was he who subdued the mountain wind and boiled our blood into adulthood. we have dreamed for you nyais to pour it into cups when we are tired of building this city and would like to know what will happen ten seconds before doomsday. if this unworthy one grows old, oh lord, even if he shuts his eyes, let it not be at the end of the sword or muzzle of a cannon, nor even from malaria or dysentery, let it be only in your embrace alone, amongst the fragrance and warmth of spices.

if this unworthy one steps foot in batavia, nyai, receive us, your children too: our blood has been tainted and given birth to across the ocean.

Translated from the Indonesian by George A. Fowler

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Translation Tuesday: “Broken Dreams” by Homvati Devi

July 11, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Tanvi Srivastava

Thoughts swirl in Gafoor’s mind. Pakistan...? I wonder how it will be.

This Translation Tuesday, we deliver a provincial story by Homvati Devi, a writer celebrated in her time, but since sadly overlooked. Following the daily routine of a junk shop keeper as he bears witness to his neighbors dreams of a better life in Pakistan, Devi beautifully captures a nation’s psyche – restless and uncertain– on the precipice of change. Hear translator Tanvi Srivastava’s first impression of Broken Dreams: “I found this story particularly interesting because it is a ‘partition story’—but set miles away from the borders of newly established Pakistan. It is one of the few stories I have read of the time which grapples with the critical question of citizenship and choice.”

Gafoor runs a junk shop; he travels across the city, from home to home, gathering unwanted items. He buys and sells broken boxes, punctured canisters, torn old blankets, discarded glass vials, cracked soap dishes, used brushes, dirty bottles, and so on. He even sells old mosquito nets and raincoats. Fine-quality objects—like flower vases, vacuum flasks, and toy vehicles—often fall into his hands, either discarded by rich Hindu households, or cajoled off memsahibs.

Over the last few days, work at his shop has increased substantially and so has his income. Those migrating to Pakistan are anxious to sell off their belongings. Gafoor promises to sell their items for more than they are worth, and so they end up giving all their junk to him. Soon his shop is crowded with broken vessels, old beds, musical instruments like tablas, footballs, wooden toys, used shoes and sandals; an unimaginable array of objects—from old burqas to a set of balance scales and weights; from damaged bird cages to nickel and brass jewellery. On the day of the weekly market, Gafoor’s shop is the busiest amongst all the shops on the mile-long road; he makes the most sales.

A traveller to Pakistan asks him, ‘Tell me, miya, how are you?’

‘I am well, by the grace of god,’ Gafoor immediately responds. The reason—the Hindu families he knows trust him implicitly; they agree to whatever price he quotes. To argue with Gafoor, people soon say, is to shoot oneself in the foot.

He knows how to keep his customers happy. He thrusts two cardamom pods into a child’s hand; he unwraps the shawl from his shoulders and lays it on the ground for his customers to sit on; he takes the trouble to arrange a paan for someone else. And in this manner, he reassures those who come to sell to him: ‘Ajji, I will recover at least two rupees from the torn pieces of this mat; this broken spittoon will sell for a full two and a half rupees; and spending twenty paise worth of polish on these sandals will make them as good as new.’

Gafoor rambles on, convincing people he will sell their items for a considerable sum before they leave for Pakistan.

And over there? Over there—it is heaven on earth; they will be given the best— beautifully decorated houses with electric fans and quality furniture, a retinue of servants, shining cars, the finest jobs. Those who stand on the margins of society today will be in a position of power tomorrow, enjoying the luxuries of life, marching ahead.

Hearing such tempting tales convinces many to sell off even the items they can easily carry, like handheld mirrors, cups and plates, knives and forks, coats and quilts.

Thoughts swirl in Gafoor’s mind. Pakistan…? I wonder how it will be. And the cities where so many people are rushing off to? Leaving their homes and jobs—they aren’t stupid, are they? They are all well-educated and intelligent. They say they’ll get large houses and bungalows to live in, jobs in prominent positions. An ordinary telegraph clerk or postman today will become a collector or commissioner tomorrow in Pakistan. Those staying in slums today will get palaces to live in, those who walk barefoot today will fly in motor vehicles, and then there’s me—despite twisting the truth, I still take home a pittance. Oh, the expenses have become unbearable. And Hamida doesn’t stop nagging me—get a necklace made for me, and so on. As if we’ll need such things over there—a land where gold is available at the price of silver. Here, even after slaving for a full year, one can only afford a nose ring worth a gram of gold. We’ve heard that the Congress party will make houses for the poor here; but a house is a house. Maybe they’ll build something better than a thatched hut, perhaps covering it with tin sheets or even levelling the roof flat. But in front of the palatial bungalows over there, what is a mere house?

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Translation Tuesday: “Procedure” by Brynja Hjálmsdóttir

July 4, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Rachel Britton

The foulest thing / to do to another person / is to pull out / their teeth

This Translation Tuesday, the sparse lines of Brynja Hjálmsdóttir express quiet horror at that most queasy and invasive of procedures, tooth extraction. Please: lie very still in the man’s chair, submit to the gassing, and let him pry your tooth from its socket.

A woman opens
her mouth
for the dentist

Gas thickens and shrouds the room

The foulest thing
to do to another person
is to pull out
their teeth

Yet it’s how
many good men
make a living

Translated from the Icelandic by Rachel Britton READ MORE…

Principle of Decision: Translation from Urdu

June 28, 2023  |  in Principle of Decision, Translations  |  by Farah Ali, Haider Shahbaz, Hammad Rind, Naima Rashid, and Sabyn Javeri

Each of the four translators interacts with the same, short poem through the filter of their individual personalities.

This edition of Principle of Decision—our column that highlights the decision-making processes of translators by asking several contributors to offer their own versions of the same passage—provides a look at how translators render the subtleties of a poem with multiple layers of meaning in a new language.

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I chose a poem by Iftikhar Arif, a revered Urdu poet. It was written for his son, Ali, and was published in his first volume of poetry, Mehr-e-Doneem (The Divided Sun, Daniyal Publications, 1983). This poem is a father’s sendoff; as he says a farewell to his son, he feels a lump in his throat and slips some blessings and lessons for the future into his farewell, barely masking his fear. A companion piece, the short poem “Dua” (Prayer), was written for his daughter, and published in the same volume, containing a similar wish of goodwill.

The poem is not to be read at face value. Defeat is baked into its premise, and what the poet is saying out loud, he knows to be the opposite of the truth. It is a prayer for the impossible, asking a grown man not to lose his innocence. There is rupture in the title itself: Aik tha raja chota sa—(once upon a time) there was a little prince. It’s the tone in which you speak to a child, who is uninitiated into the realities of life. It’s the tone of lullabies. There is a clinging to a make-believe world in the language, an attempt to soften the edges, to make the truth less harsh, to almost wish it away.

The first word of the first line starts with the son’s full name, Ali Iftikhar. The once-little prince is a grown man, which the poet acknowledges, but then slips back to addressing the grown man through his mother, a line repeated thrice in the poem: “I have told Ali Iftikhar’s mother not to let him…”.

Throughout the short poem, there is a push and pull. On one hand, there’s an attempt to glaze over the truth and to control the circumstances; on the other hand, there’s truth leaking through the veneer of denial. The repetition is like a broken record to convince the speaker himself. There is also a contrast between the naïveté of the language and the knowledge of truth beneath it—and bridging both, a father’s love. He tells the son to stay away from the corruption of the world by asking his mother to keep him from transgressing the different circles of protection: the garden, the neighbour’s garden, the street and the world beyond. Which grown man hasn’t transgressed these limits?

The four translators, sensitive to the central challenge posed by the poem, have found different solutions to address the tug in the original. Farah Ali is alert to the rhythm and pace in the original. Hammad Rind pays attention to calibrating the register and forms of address, important tonal considerations for the poem. Haider Shahbaz brings an experimental take to his reading, leaning into its dark undertones. Sabyn Javeri sees the poem through a feminist lens, asking questions that trouble her as a woman.

I’ve always seen translation as a conversation—a conversation between the author and the translator, the translator and the work, a translator and other translators, a translator and a reader. This folio shows how rich that conversation can be. Each of the four translators interacts with the same, short poem through the filter of their individual personalities.

—Naima Rashid READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Kazakh Culture” by Akhmet Baitursynuly

June 27, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Jake Zawlacki

Alash’s people all known: / Who was not measured?

The influential musings of Kazakh intellectual Akhmet Baitursynuly are sympathetically brought to light by translator Jake Zawlacki this Translation Tuesday. A letter to his people in the form of poignant free verse, Kazakh Culture reflects Baitursynuly’s deep care for Kazakh autonomy and the nationalist ideology that spurred his resounding contributions to Kazakh communities across the globe.

A goose might freeze flying, honking,
Landing in a dry lake, cooling.
A grassfire might break out,
Our bodies burned—what remains?

Alash’s people all known:
Who was not measured?
“I’m well,” they all say,
Wellness confined to themselves.

Chattering, feigning skilled speech,
Rushing, pushing, galloping.
Unbelted, a slack child coming
Like half-pressed felt, unfinished.

Hunched, old hunters seeking meat,
Searching, just one more honorable feast.
Sincere, they’re here and there
Counting few to many, simple but generous.

Unhelping, many rich misers
Like boats on rocking waves.
So many lie silent, sleeping,
Moving without purpose or ambition.

We line up with them, orderly,
Satisfied with sparkling buttons.
What use do you get from your talent,
If not struck in the right places?

These words, this letter I write with sorrow,
No value left, the lost Kazakh.
Rich worry wealth, educated worry rank,
Little worry left for the people.

*Alash encompasses the three historical tribal and territorial divisions of Kazakhs. It was also used in 1917 as the name of the provisional government Alash Orda, of which Baitursynuly was a member. The term is often used synonymously with “Kazakh.”

Translated from the Kazakh by Jake Zawlacki.

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Translation Tuesday: “Tachycardia” by Clara Muschietti

June 20, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Samantha Cosentino

when I’m alone in bed, and I have tachycardia, I don’t know if it’s that or if it’s the echo of my life rolling in the silence.

Disease brings life into sharp focus and shades last moments with a hazy, but resolute acceptance in Clara Muschietti’s Tachycardia. Elegantly translated from the Spanish by Samantha Cosentino, the following Translation Tuesday is a strikingly honest portrayal of coming to terms with all that is unknown and unfinished in the face of an absolute end. 

1

There can’t be wind stronger than this.
Outside, the leaves stirred up. Inside,
the certainty—all of this will come to an end.

We leave, at one point we’ll go. And for now,
we just leave most of our dark mane in a modern hair salon. We didn’t want to.

We don’t know whether to stay or run away,
we don’t know if you were lying.
We don’t know if we were lying.

That cat follows me indiscriminately, we
thank him so much
but he thanks us for domesticating him.

We think about the worst diseases,
and cry,
we meticulously inspect our body
we survey it with an unscientific rigor
we’re already certain
we will die

If we live to be old women we’ll be grateful.
If the sun comes out tomorrow we’ll be grateful.

If this home doesn’t fall apart tomorrow, we’ll be grateful.
The body weighs less—we attribute it to the disease we attribute to ourselves.
The more fear we have, the more we love life.

A few human figures in the distance,
I can’t make anyone out—there are no names
or birthdates—are they my brothers?

Up really close, faces warp,
become accessible.
Your face is there, when I wake it’s there, when I lie down it’s there,
when I’m sleeping it’s there. Your face from afar.
My body from afar feels
irreconcilable. The images you gave me
distracted me—we looked truly happy.
Up close I’m me. From afar I look like my mother.

We can’t know if this will last, we can’t
know until which day,
at which exact hour we’ll say goodbye.
We’ll go down one day for good,
we don’t know which. Hopefully it’ll be sunny
and we’ll be all grown up.

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