The unspoken cliché that writing should reflect the world in accurate language unveils itself provocatively in Mexican poet Jorge Fernández Granados's poem "Principle of Uncertainty." Its speaker posits that to perceive something like truth in "unreliable hiding-in-plain-sight / reality" you have to witness, and do your best, because "(the closest) proximity or (furthest) / distance are the error / from which we love or judge."
Another unspoken cliché that the collection Principio de incertidumbre (2007) voices aloud is that poetry can speak the world at all, since writing ultimately is a translation of experience. Principio, Granados's seventh book, whose title I translate literally as "Principle of Uncertainty," wishes to suggest that this is not a treatise on Heisenberg, but rather an experiment with how his principle might work in poetry. Thus, we read the "hurried notes" of an observer faced with the uncertainty of knowing anything precisely. And knowingly, Fernández Granados's free verse of mostly unpunctuated lines that wobble between phrases and across line breaks expresses uncertainty, but in ways that lead the reader into surprising detours and notable arrivals.
In a seeming contradiction to the preceding, a matter of punctuation appears in the ars poetica, "F(l)echas en la noche / D(a)rt(e)s in the Night," which underscores the poet's denial that he can write at all, even while he writes. A parenthesis as lexical item opens a window for the use of the same variable in English translation: F(l)echas - fechas" almost mirror each other, as do "Da(r)tes - dates," with the minor enormity of the lazy "e" in "dartes," hence "da(r)t(e)s," a manuever almost compensating for the size differential between "flechas" ("arrows") and "darts." I have calculated that adding an additional "( )" to bound the "e" could be an intelligible, even an aesthetic choice, though I recognize it is a kind of error.
The real issue comes into focus in the variously stated refrain "no podría escribir" / "I could not write," the resulting clause of a statement contrary to fact: "As if there were in words something able /to translate it." The world, that is, and I couldn't, says the poet. But the implied meaning of such "if" statements is present tense, in other words, the poet "can't write," he can only "transcribe / excavate" what the lyric says in the end: "in the difficult words that are nothing / surely but inseparable shadows hard / ruins teeth or darts in the night / that project things / the singular things of this world..." all clarified in the light of another morning. Even though the meaning of the refrain changes in the course of the poem, I (am bound to) render it as written grammatically, and all the while know that its meaning is variable, uncertain, and significant. Though I have done my best, I am not able to translate it, I can only approximate it.
(W. Nick Hill)
Valerio Magrelli was born in Rome in 1957. He is the author of four poetry collections and has received the Mondello Prize, the Viareggio Prize for Poetry, and the Montale Prize. He is a professor of French literature at the University of Cassino. His poems have been widely translated around the globe.
Pakistan | Poems | Punjabi | Urdu
April, 2012Munir Niazi writes wistfully of the past, but he is also a poet of our times. He cherishes both the old and the new, and creates rhythms that evoke the feeling of being on the brink of a possible happy future that remains elusive. In addition to his specific family circumstances, Niazi's migration from East Punjab to West Punjab was a critical event of his early years and affected his life and work deeply. His imaginative world is a living lyric of warm relationships and moments of peace all too often shattered by conflict, violence, or indifference.
Marco Aurelio Ángel-Lara (Mexico, 1970) is a Mexican writer whose book of aphorisms, El atril de la luciérnaga, was published in 2011 by Arlequín. Marco has been anthologized in collections of Hispanoamerican poetry and awarded with poetry, essay, and short script international prizes. He obtained a Ph.D. in Critical and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He has taught philosophy and Latin American literature for several years at different universities in Mexico and Europe.
Short Fiction | Spain | Spanish
April, 2012As part of a collection of short stories in which each protagonist is presented with the opportunity to evaluate her life by what she has or what she perceives to be missing, "Ursula," occupying the imprecise realm between short story and novella, is a quiet story of the tension in a marriage threatened by personal goals and serves as a strong reminder that the seemingly small decisions are what come to define who we are and have the power to change the course of our lives.
Croatia | Croatian | Four-part Short Fiction
January, 2012A musicologist and classical music editor on Zagreb's Third Program, Đurđa Otržan has also written stories, novels, and screenplays, examining an intellectual universe of great breadth. This four-part short story, written during the 1980s and published in 2002, ventures into the Samos of Pythagoras, the Athens of Phidias, the nether world of Rilke's posthumous correspondence with Tsvetaeva, and after these three most still, plunges into the life of a porn writer with aspirations to contribute to Partisan Review.
Chinese | Novel (excerpt) | Taiwan
January, 2012Notes of a Crocodile (1994) is a coming-of-age novel and a cult classic of queer literature by the late Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin. Set at one of the nation's most elite universities in cosmopolitan Taipei in the late 1980s, it tells the story of a burgeoning romance between two female students. Sardonic, honest, and painful, the novel takes the ostensible form of a series of journals written by one of the young women--the masculine, defiant Lazi--as she recounts the struggle to realize selfhood and reconcile her deeply taboo desires under the watchful gaze of an authoritarian society.
Arabic | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
January, 2012The sibling rivalry between Yusuf and Yunus is already toxic in their childhood and goes ballistic as they mature, swap wives, trade identities, and adopt multiple additional aliases. The bleak setting for this tale of Cain and Abel is Iraq during the last years of Baath Party rule and the beginning of the American Occupation. Much of the story is recounted in flashbacks recorded on cassettes by Yusuf, but the "live" action occurs during only a few days as the hero traverses Baghdad to locate those responsible for a series of phone calls threatening him with punishment for crimes committed by his brother. Although Yunus has been declared dead by Iraqi authorities, Yusuf suspects that he may still be alive, may have returned with the Americans, and may want him dead. While both looking for and fleeing from his brother, after living under so many aliases, Yusuf finds that the one person hardest to get a clear picture of is himself.
Most of the characters' names in this novel have some extra layer of meaning. In a tribute to Kafka, one character refers to himself as Josef K. Yusuf is the name of the Biblical patriarch and the Qur'anic prophet Joseph, who in Sufism stands as an exemplar of human perfection. Yusuf's wife is Sarab, whose name means mirage. Yunus is Jonah, and his second wife, Maryam, whose child brings hope to the novel, is Mary. His four daughters by his first wife take their names from the cries for mercy of prisoners he has tortured. Harun Wali, the hero's friend who has fled Iraq, has a name that is suspiciously reminiscent of the author's, suggesting there may be some autobiographical scenes--like the one where children are thrown into Yusuf's cell--to this novel, which is this tribute to a lost generation of Iraqis.
China | Chinese | Novel (excerpt)
January, 2012"The Adventures of Monkey King" comprises the first seven chapters of Journey to the West, the great epic of pre-modern China. The book was first published anonymously in the late 16th century during the waning years of the Ming Dynasty, but the story of Monkey is based on folk legend and a much older oral tradition. Wu Cheng En, a poet who published during his lifetime under the pen name "She Yang Hermit," is generally credited as the author.
Opera Libretto | Russia | Russian
January, 2012This was the first English translation of Victory over the Sun, which was originally performed in 1913. A re-creation of the original 1913 production using Larissa Shmailo's translation was held in conjunction with the exhibition The Avant-Garde in Russia, 1910-1930: New Perspectives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (July 8 - September 28, 1980), and at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. November 20, 1980 - February 15, 1981. This translation has also been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and at theaters and museums internationally.
Original production credits: text by Alexei Kruchenykh; prologue by Velimir Khlebnikov; music by Mikhail Matiushin; and stage and costume designs by Kazimir Malevich.
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