Arabic | Poetry (excerpts) | Tunisia
February, 2019The four poems featured here are from Adam Fethi's 2011 collection The Blind Glassblower. I selected the shortest pieces because they condense the major aesthetic and thematic orientations in this volume of poetry. Adam Fethi's consistent use of prose poetry shows a subversive aesthetic stance that confronts the traditional Arabic poem. His texts offer a new arrangement of the poetic textual space wherein rhythm is not necessarily provided by rhymes, but rather created by the visual distribution of lines on the page, the flow and suspension of words, and a playful use of punctuation.
The Blind Glassblower is a chronicle of a poet's life and works. Blindness is used as an extended metaphor to refer to the poet's alienation from a world that claims sight but is completely deprived of insight. Fethi defines poetry as an act of glassblowing, referring, on one level, to poetry as a craft, an idea found in ancient Arabic descriptions of poetry as sina'a (craft, trade, profession). On a deeper level, the act of blowing refers to the divine act of creation. The Islamic story of genesis turns to God's enunciation: "I blow into him [Adam] from my own spirit" (Surat al-Hajar, The Stone). Adam Fethi departs from the Romantic image of the poet-prophet emphasized in Tunisian Abu al-Qasssim al-Shabi's work, to appropriate the divine creative gesture.
Written in a simple language, divested from embellishment, these four poems use the voice of a young girl, who represents innocence and the potential for wonderment. The figure of the child joins the metaphor of blindness to designate a poetic agency free from corruption and capable of innovation. The simple language, however, provokes deep thought and meditation. The three first poems create an eerie world wherein acts of writing and reading are fused. The poet/glassblower, who is engulfed by a hole or lost in a path not trodden, enacts the act of reading wherein the reader may also be engulfed by the poem.
Tunisian poetry in English translation is rather rare. My translation stems from the urge to provide more visibility to Adam Fethi's wonderful work, already translated into French and Spanish.
- Hager Ben Driss
Arabic | Poetry (excerpts) | Tunisia
September, 2017The language of Ines Abassi is pregnant with simplicity and at the same time with depth. Her poetry relies on narratorial techniques to convey the pain of memory, trying to gather its bits in a transparent language that is imbued with symbolism and surreal flavours. Abassi’s fascination with storytelling is palpable throughout the body of her poems. She strongly believes in the story's power to expand the poem's investigative abilities, letting her explore the places that live on in her memory and are transformed by it. For instance, “A Whoop of Kohl,” the poem from which the collection takes its title, is written from the persona of an artist, perhaps Ines Abassi herself. In this poem, Abassi contemplates all the objects the artist needs in the art-making practice, relying on details, especially that of kohl, a natural cosmetic product cherished in the Middle East. Not only does the poem’s accumulation of images suggest a picture of a wounded memory, but also its internal rhythm, through the repetition of the word "memory," which heightens the theme of nostalgia that pervades the poem. In translating “A Whoop of Kohl” and the other poems, I have tried my best to preserve the beauty of nostalgia and to convey all those scarred pieces of memories portrayed by the poet. This is a humble attempt to present, in the English language, the wondrous complexity of Abassi’s poetry, which is tied up with poeticity and narration in such a way that it becomes a work of erasure and collage, highlighting the role of memory both in real life and in poetry writing.
- Ali Znaidi
Arabic | Short Fiction | Tunisia
September, 2015Hassouna Mosbahi's fiction often sounds somewhat autobiographical, and this is certainly true for these two short stories. Each of them illuminates the character of the same type of contemporary Tunisian intellectual, who is a person torn between the cool comforts of Europe and the frustrating warmth of Tunisia.
- William Hutchins
Arabic | Short Fiction | Tunisia
June, 2012Hassan Nasr was born in 1937 in Tunis. He has been active in Tunisian literary life since Independence in 1956, and started publishing short stories in magazines in 1959. He studied literature in Tunis and Baghdad, and lived for two years in Mauritania. He worked mainly as a high school teacher while writing short stories and novels. He lives in Tunis. The translation by William Hutchins of his novel Return to Dar al-Basha was published in 2006 by Syracuse University Press. His other novels include Sijillat Ra's al-Dik (Mr. Cockhead's Files, 2001), Dahaliz al-Layl (Corridors of the Night, 1977), Khubz al-Ard (Bread from the Earth, 1987) and Ka'inat al-Mujannaha (Winged Creatures, 2010). His short story collections include: Layali al-Matar (Rainy Nights, 1978), 52 Layla (52 Nights, 1979), al-Sahar wa-l-Jurh (Insomnia and the Wound, 1989), and Khuyul al-Fajr (Pipe-dreams, 1997).
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
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