Posts featuring Olivier Domerg

The Movement of Language: Matt Reeck on the Best Unexpressed

But holding two languages ‘open’ at once is imperfect . . . you can get lost in between these two natures.

Matt Reeck’s rich, sonically layered translation of Olivier Domerg’s psychogeographic writing, from Portrait of the Puy de Manse, was published in Asymptote’s January 2025 issue as part of its special feature on new forms. In the piece, we leap from prose to verse, stepping with each new utterance from alignment to alignment, just as the puy becomes a stream becomes another mountain. “Collapse: debris,” writes Domerg in Reeck’s precise, pensive hand. Does translation depend on a similar, geological rhythm of change? In this interview, Asymptote’s Senior Assistant Editor of Fiction Michelle Chan Schmidt speaks with Reeck about his translative art, the sonic aura of language and space, and the process of decolonising knowledge.

Michelle Chan Schmidt (MCS): In an interview with Asymptote from 2014—eleven years ago!—you state that your translation philosophy is ‘best left unexpressed’. Yet in a brilliant 2019 essay for Public Books, ‘Translation’s Burden’, you highlight what you call the ‘Hermeneutic Truth’, deconstructing the cliché of ‘semantic invariance’, or the so-called untranslatable element—apparently intrinsic to each text—that causes their translations to wither. How would you express your translation philosophy today? What role might ‘unnecessary original language words’ play in translated texts?

Matt Reeck (MR): First, I have to say that while I know people use the word ‘philosophy’ in this context, I tend to avoid it; why does everything have to have a philosophy when ‘practice’ would do, when intelligence and sensitivity would do? That word also tends to make ‘practice’ appear uniform and to regularise what is naturally variable. Even if there are guidelines, choices are always particular and individual. I think that means translation is an art and not a philosophy (and is not governed by a philosophy).

These days, I think about the role editors take. (Patrick Hersant has a great essay forthcoming called ‘The Third Hand’, translated by me (!), that talks about the role editors play in the publication of translations.) I think about any book’s birth as a collaboration. So many people are involved, and the relationship with editors can be good or bad. READ MORE…

Our Winter 2025 Issue Has Landed!

New forms abound in our bountiful 14th anniversary issue, from Robin Munby’s “parasite poem” to Elsa Gribinski’s absurdist diary entries. 

With Trump’s inauguration, the world’s strange turn continues apace in the new year and the old ways of apprehending reality are struggling, as ever, to keep up. As Olivier Domerg puts it succinctly: “What can language do face to face with the inertia and the power of something?” This pressing question finds an enjoinder in #NewForms, our 14th anniversary issue, featuring never-before-published writing from 32 countries, by some of the most beloved names in world literature—Osip MandelstamNatsume SōsekiAndrey PlatonovAgustín Fernández Mallo, and Damion Searls in our wildcard feature on new forms. Organized in memory of the recently deceased postmodernist Robert Coover, this Special Feature highlights works that transgress the boundaries of the literary form, opening our eyes to new aesthetic and ethical possibilities. From Robin Munby’s “parasite poem” whose hyperbolic language tests the boundary between translation and original authorship, to the laconic and darkly absurd diary entries of Elsa Gribinski’s “A Finger of Blue,” these pieces chafe against the strictures of traditional form (the poem, the journal, the letter) even as they pay homage to the artists who have shaped them.This spirit of formal ambition is by no means limited to our Special Feature. After all, “as the reality of each time changes,” says Fernández Mallo in an illuminating interview, “so does the notion of realism that the works of each era explore.” Thus, Vietnamese poet Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng splices words and fragments into a manifesto for a new writing and both Macedonian novelist Lidija Dimkovska and Syrian author Jurj Salem put their fingers on an unexplored aspect of the contemporary condition—the urge to retreat from society—and envision new ways of being. Elsewhere in FictionJohanna Sebauer’s Pickled presents the anatomy of a cancelling in rural Austria, when a journalist splashed by acid pickle juice launches a media crusade against Big Gherkin. Notable among our nonfiction entries is frequent contributor Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s The House of Termites, a slow-burning, lyrical meditation on her “unstoppable nomadism,” which finds an echo in award-winning Singaporean director Tan Pin Pin’s many evolving versions of banjia (Moving House) from the Visual section. Finally, in our Criticism lineup, Tomoé Hill trawls the thrilling concepts—around truth, and storytelling, and immortality—buried in Douglas Penick’s The Oceans of Cruelty, while Samuel notes the arrival of a new wave of talented young Korean poets on the shores of the United States and distills the lessons their work might hold for their Asian American counterparts.

For all the world really. The lessons that Samuel comes away with apply just as well to those not writing from a hegemonic position but who have to pitch themselves to a readership unfamiliar with their culture. It’s a conundrum we know all too well, having been the first point of contact between countless authors and readers in our fourteen years’ of work in world literature. If you’ve personally benefitted from the “Asymptote effect” (which former President of ALTA Aron Aji cited in 2017 as one of the key factors contributing to the ever-growing reception of international literature in translation), we hope you’ll consider standing with us as we enter our fifteenth year. The best way to support us is to sign up as a sustaining member from as little as USD5 a month. If you are able to afford it, come aboard as a masthead member, as wonderful readers like Yann Martel have done. Finally, if you would like to be part of an upcoming issue or even our dynamic volunteer team, check out our submission guidelines (Korean translators, take note: submissions to our upcoming paid Special Feature, organized in partnership with LTI Korea, closes Feb 15) and our latest recruitment drive (we’re on a lookout for a new Nonfiction Editor, among others; deadline: Feb 2). Thank you for your readership and your support, which have made this all worthwhile.

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