Editor's Note
Ready to dive into our Summer 2016 edition? We have many rich pickings from the underwater world of translation (video trailer here), including: memoirs of childhood submerged in ghosts and television; in-depth interviews with Paul Celan translator Pierre Joris and Sawako Nakayasu, winner of the 2016 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; our colorful coral-reef Multilingual Writing Feature, this time incorporating ten different languages from as far afield as Puerto Rico, South Africa, and India; as well as fifteen fresh-from-the-sea translations of Pedro Novoa's devastating cuento breve, which, at 997 words, took first place in Peru's "Story of 1,000 Words" contest.
It's not hard to see why. At once a nautical thriller and drama-filled family saga, Pedro Novoa's masterful story delivers a powerful allegory about the blood ties that bind even when they're broken—the concatenation of islands we will nevertheless always be. The subsequent intergenerational stories by Philippe Sollers, Alessandro Cinquegrani, and Edi Matić also feature the same beating (if shrieking, squalling) heart; and we round off the Fiction section with Mahsa Mohebali's delightful take on interconnectedness via a love-story-in-footnotes.
Elsewhere, we are thrilled to give you Patrick Chamoiseau's also-very-hyphenated introduction to Martiniquais writers, both an important theoretical work and a masterpiece of creative writing. Along with David Shook's essay on translating multilingual writer Jorge Canese, it provides the perfect bungee-jumping off point to the adventurous experimentations in our Multilingual Writing Feature. Borne from a certain "multiplicity of being," these projects blur the lines between translation and original; monolingual and multilingual. Audio recordings in this section, editor Ellen Jones notes, uniquely reveal actual sounds of different languages riffing off one another.
A new sound (Xitsonga, a South African language) and some very existential investigations can be found in the Poetry section: Czech Surrealist Vítězslav Nezval, for example, presents a man composing a self-portrait out of objects, while Mikhail Eremin, of the Russian "philological school," interrogates nature, time, and myth in dense free verse octaves; and Nurduran Duman responds to Rumi's "Song of the Reed" in her urgent, questioning poems about the self's place in the world. In the aftermath of May 1968, Italian poet Elsa Morante asserts, "Fare ye well measures, directions, five senses. Fare ye well slavish duties & slavish rights & slavish judgments."
As you plumb the rest of the issue, illustrated gloriously by Andrea Popyordanova, don't miss Brian Vinero's new drama translation of Euripides (in rhymed-verse!); Trisha Gupta's review of Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay's delightfully counter-current novel, Panty; as well as a spotlight on artist Jakub Woynarowski, who repurposes images from Polish history to create spatial experiences ranging from the subtle to the sublime.
In other magazine-related news, we are adapting Daniel Hahn's popular 'Ask a Translator' column to a live event on July 20 at Waterstones Piccadilly (RSVP to the event here), and also live-streaming it on Facebook (in a first for Asymptote!) so catch us there at 1930hrs (GMT) and ask your questions from all over the world. For our Special Feature in January 2017, our sixth anniversary issue, we are looking for contemporary work from Indian languages. Find the details here, along with our call for Canadian Poetry (deadline: 1 Aug 2016).
As Asymptote prepares to turn six (without financial support from any government body or educational institution all these years), we are now urgently looking to secure our future so that we can continue operating beyond January 2017.
That's why we are rolling out a new sustaining membership program. Subscription takes just a few moments (and $10 a month), but allows us to continue bringing the freshest world literature to an audience that grows exponentially with each passing year. In return for pledging a year’s support, you will receive an Asymptote Moleskine notebook, perfect for you and your loved ones. If you value our work and our mission, become a sustaining member today. Thank you so much for your support!
Ready to dive into our Summer 2016 edition? We have many rich pickings from the underwater world of translation (video trailer here), including: memoirs of childhood submerged in ghosts and television; in-depth interviews with Paul Celan translator Pierre Joris and Sawako Nakayasu, winner of the 2016 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; our colorful coral-reef Multilingual Writing Feature, this time incorporating ten different languages from as far afield as Puerto Rico, South Africa, and India; as well as fifteen fresh-from-the-sea translations of Pedro Novoa's devastating cuento breve, which, at 997 words, took first place in Peru's "Story of 1,000 Words" contest.
It's not hard to see why. At once a nautical thriller and drama-filled family saga, Pedro Novoa's masterful story delivers a powerful allegory about the blood ties that bind even when they're broken—the concatenation of islands we will nevertheless always be. The subsequent intergenerational stories by Philippe Sollers, Alessandro Cinquegrani, and Edi Matić also feature the same beating (if shrieking, squalling) heart; and we round off the Fiction section with Mahsa Mohebali's delightful take on interconnectedness via a love-story-in-footnotes.
Elsewhere, we are thrilled to give you Patrick Chamoiseau's also-very-hyphenated introduction to Martiniquais writers, both an important theoretical work and a masterpiece of creative writing. Along with David Shook's essay on translating multilingual writer Jorge Canese, it provides the perfect bungee-jumping off point to the adventurous experimentations in our Multilingual Writing Feature. Borne from a certain "multiplicity of being," these projects blur the lines between translation and original; monolingual and multilingual. Audio recordings in this section, editor Ellen Jones notes, uniquely reveal actual sounds of different languages riffing off one another.
A new sound (Xitsonga, a South African language) and some very existential investigations can be found in the Poetry section: Czech Surrealist Vítězslav Nezval, for example, presents a man composing a self-portrait out of objects, while Mikhail Eremin, of the Russian "philological school," interrogates nature, time, and myth in dense free verse octaves; and Nurduran Duman responds to Rumi's "Song of the Reed" in her urgent, questioning poems about the self's place in the world. In the aftermath of May 1968, Italian poet Elsa Morante asserts, "Fare ye well measures, directions, five senses. Fare ye well slavish duties & slavish rights & slavish judgments."
As you plumb the rest of the issue, illustrated gloriously by Andrea Popyordanova, don't miss Brian Vinero's new drama translation of Euripides (in rhymed-verse!); Trisha Gupta's review of Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay's delightfully counter-current novel, Panty; as well as a spotlight on artist Jakub Woynarowski, who repurposes images from Polish history to create spatial experiences ranging from the subtle to the sublime.
In other magazine-related news, we are adapting Daniel Hahn's popular 'Ask a Translator' column to a live event on July 20 at Waterstones Piccadilly (RSVP to the event here), and also live-streaming it on Facebook (in a first for Asymptote!) so catch us there at 1930hrs (GMT) and ask your questions from all over the world. For our Special Feature in January 2017, our sixth anniversary issue, we are looking for contemporary work from Indian languages. Find the details here, along with our call for Canadian Poetry (deadline: 1 Aug 2016).
As Asymptote prepares to turn six (without financial support from any government body or educational institution all these years), we are now urgently looking to secure our future so that we can continue operating beyond January 2017.
That's why we are rolling out a new sustaining membership program. Subscription takes just a few moments (and $10 a month), but allows us to continue bringing the freshest world literature to an audience that grows exponentially with each passing year. In return for pledging a year’s support, you will receive an Asymptote Moleskine notebook, perfect for you and your loved ones. If you value our work and our mission, become a sustaining member today. Thank you so much for your support!
Buttérflyçion
by Șerban Foarță
Mariposa
petaluda
papaotl
and so forth,
all three enclosed
in a bottle,
in a bottle without a horse.
Bottle capped by Don Ruys, señor
de Medina y de Posa,
qui the birdsong doeth adore
et admires the mariposa.
Petaluda
papaotl
mariposa
schmmeterling
all four trapped,
trapped in a bottle
capped by Mr. Maeterlinck
(in the French langue, Materlenk),
Grand cordon of the Order de
Léopold—whom Timur Leng
did not provoque: “To us, à nous deux!”
Mariposa
papaotl
farfallo...
In Orlamonde,—
in his bottle
with no throttle,
alle die men are jerks and suckers,
gaga gems, that’s all le monde.
petaluda
papaotl
and so forth,
all three enclosed
in a bottle,
in a bottle without a horse.
Bottle capped by Don Ruys, señor
de Medina y de Posa,
qui the birdsong doeth adore
et admires the mariposa.
Petaluda
papaotl
mariposa
schmmeterling
all four trapped,
trapped in a bottle
capped by Mr. Maeterlinck
(in the French langue, Materlenk),
Grand cordon of the Order de
Léopold—whom Timur Leng
did not provoque: “To us, à nous deux!”
Mariposa
papaotl
farfallo...
In Orlamonde,—
in his bottle
with no throttle,
alle die men are jerks and suckers,
gaga gems, that’s all le monde.
translated from the Romanian by MARGENTO
Papillonage
de Șerban Foarță
Mariposa
petaluda
papaotl
and so forth,
all three closed,
closed in a bottle,
in a bottle without horse.
Closed by Don Ruys, señor
de Medina y de Posa,
qui écoute el ruiseñor
et admire la mariposa.
Petaluda
papaotl
mariposa
schmmeterling
all four closed,
closed in a bottle
closed by Mr. Maeterlinck
(in Französisch : materlenk),
Grand cordon de l’Ordre de
Léopold,—que Timour Lenk
ne provoque pas: „A nous deux!”
Mariposa
papaotl
farfallo...
In Orlamonde, —
in his bottle
without throttle,
alle Menschen sind so trottel,
gagâteux [sic!] est tout le monde.
petaluda
papaotl
and so forth,
all three closed,
closed in a bottle,
in a bottle without horse.
Closed by Don Ruys, señor
de Medina y de Posa,
qui écoute el ruiseñor
et admire la mariposa.
Petaluda
papaotl
mariposa
schmmeterling
all four closed,
closed in a bottle
closed by Mr. Maeterlinck
(in Französisch : materlenk),
Grand cordon de l’Ordre de
Léopold,—que Timour Lenk
ne provoque pas: „A nous deux!”
Mariposa
papaotl
farfallo...
In Orlamonde, —
in his bottle
without throttle,
alle Menschen sind so trottel,
gagâteux [sic!] est tout le monde.
Șerban Foarță (b. 1942) is a poet, translator,
essayist, playwright, and author/editor of over eighty titles. His work
ranges from formal experimentalism to multilingual and conceptual
writing to translational poetics to innovative transcriptions of classic
literature to parodies and “jokes” to palindromes and “holo-rhymes.”
The recipient of many awards and distinctions, he has been a freelancer
for over sixty years, dedicating his life entirely to literature. He
lives in Timișoara, Romania.
Translator's Note
I was 16 when I was first mesmerized by Serban Foarță’s poetry—while
listening to the greatest Romanian rock band of all times, Phoenix,
whose lyrics he had written. The band was, at that time, banned by the
communist regime for ‘defecting’ to the ‘imperialist enemy’ (illegally
escaping to western Germany), but some connoisseurs still had the vinyl
records. Foarță’s lyrics—mellifluous and sophisticated, mixing Romanian
folklore and Western medieval folk books with alchemical references and
modern poetic experimentalism—are still known by heart by millions of
fans across Romania and beyond.
Later, as a younger poet, I got to dive into the incredible richness and complexity of Foarță’s oeuvre. He is arguably Romania’s most spectacular and diverse formal experimentalist since WWII. He also is formidably erudite; in the blink of an eye, his references can span the most distant and apparently incompatible areas and ages, but his ludic restlessness is always backed up by focused profundity and intellectual lucidity. One of his most recent feats is an impeccable Romanian version of Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes (Hundred Thousand Billion Poems).
The challenges of translating ‘Papillonage’ (‘Buttérflyçion’) have been considerable, especially since the author takes advantage here of the special relationship between Romanian and French languages and cultures. I had to invent ‘English’ words to echo that relationship, while maintaining the poetic form and finding equivalents to the infectious puns and cross-cultural references. It is interesting to note that, paradoxically, when translating a multilingual poem and trying to render the various special (inter)lingual connections and interactions, it is the ‘main’ language (in this particular case Romanian) that disappears, since that is the most ‘translatable’ one, the one most exposed to rendition and foreignization.
Later, as a younger poet, I got to dive into the incredible richness and complexity of Foarță’s oeuvre. He is arguably Romania’s most spectacular and diverse formal experimentalist since WWII. He also is formidably erudite; in the blink of an eye, his references can span the most distant and apparently incompatible areas and ages, but his ludic restlessness is always backed up by focused profundity and intellectual lucidity. One of his most recent feats is an impeccable Romanian version of Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes (Hundred Thousand Billion Poems).
The challenges of translating ‘Papillonage’ (‘Buttérflyçion’) have been considerable, especially since the author takes advantage here of the special relationship between Romanian and French languages and cultures. I had to invent ‘English’ words to echo that relationship, while maintaining the poetic form and finding equivalents to the infectious puns and cross-cultural references. It is interesting to note that, paradoxically, when translating a multilingual poem and trying to render the various special (inter)lingual connections and interactions, it is the ‘main’ language (in this particular case Romanian) that disappears, since that is the most ‘translatable’ one, the one most exposed to rendition and foreignization.
More HERE.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment