Laughter, anguish, pain, and beauty are all sensations Rodrigo Lira’s poetry arouses. Though his life was cut short by suicide in 1981, he continues to influence contemporary Chilean poetry today, establishing an essential point of reference between experimental neo-avant garde movements of the 1970s and 80s and younger generations of post-dictatorship poets. Combining erudite literary knowledge, intense language, and dark burlesque humor, Lira’s work is often read in comparison to contemporaries Nicanor Parra and Enrique Lihn, both of whom greatly admired his poetry.
From a historical and political perspective, Lira offers a glimpse into the suffocating environment of Augusto Pinochet’s right-wing dictatorship (1973-90). Shifting between explicit and more concealed political criticism, Lira’s poetry profoundly reflects the psychology of living under dictatorship, as expressed in “4 Three Hundred and Sixty-Fives and One 366 Elevens,” one of his longer poems whose obscure title refers to the number of years past since the military coup of September 11, 1973. In this poem, Santiago is on the verge of dystopia and, despite attempts to resist repression, the lyric personae only finds consolation in death, albeit through humor.
Interest in the poetry and figure of Rodrigo Lira has yet to spread much beyond the borders of Chile, due mainly to the difficulty of translating his work into other languages. While exploiting Chilean slang and complex wordplay, Lira also develops a particular way of integrating pop and popular culture into his writing. The effort to transfer such poetry into another language, with its own distant cultural references, must forsake certain interpretations and possible impacts among Chilean readers. These translations attempt to break down those barriers and bring Lira’s poetry closer to an English-speaking audience.
- Thomas Rothe
Bulgaria | Bulgarian | Short Fiction
February, 2016Yordan Yovkov’s short stories blend polished descriptions of people and places with the modest speech of Bulgarian peasants. “Seraphim’s Overcoat,” like many Yovkov works, depicts senseless suffering met with benevolence. Much like a biblical parable, the tragedy’s cause is unimportant, but the human response is. For Yovkov, loving compassion is the most remarkable human trait, and it is not embodied in urban life or among the rich but only in the sophisticated simplicity of ordinary moments and people. Very little occurs in “Seraphim’s Overcoat” other than an unassuming man’s act of extraordinary empathy. Thus when translating Yovkov, one must carefully fluctuate between creating common speech and uncommon descriptions to make the ordinary, momentous.
- David M. Jones
Czar Gutiérrez's book-length poem La caída del equlibrista (The Fall of the Tightrope Walker), originally published in 1997, is divided into nine acts, each of which depicts a moment in the tragic fall of its central character, the eponymous tightrope walker. One could say the poem enacts its speaker's attempt to reconnect through a sustained lyric to God, to his parents and loved ones, and to his own psychic principle. If we pay heed to one of Gutiérrez's most important influences Nietzsche, then it's possible to see ourselves as a tightrope walker, moving from one pole to another, seeking, as the book's epigram announces, fraternity over the abyss (Paz).
- Nick Rattner
The acclaimed Taiwanese writer Chen Li is best known for his poetry, and is regarded as one of the most innovative and exciting poets writing in Chinese today. Less known, however, is the fact that he is also a prolific essayist, and has published seven collections of essays in addition to his fourteen books of poetry. Although his poems have been translated into English and some other languages, his essays are largely unknown to non-Chinese readers. His essays—both lyric and personal—exude no less elegant and artful poetics than his poetry. In Voice Clocks, his exquisite and tantalizing essay that was selected to be included in the standard textbook for junior high school students across Taiwan, the fluidity and musicality of his language—accessible, effortless, yet enchanting—is on full display. He’s a master at capturing and distilling the poetic grace from the most mundane aspects of everyday life. As Chen Li once observed, “Any time you look at something from a different perspective, you will see it in a whole new light.” Reading his writing, this essay in particular, one can’t help taking another look at the inevitable earthly tedium of our existence through his imaginative lens, and savoring its innate beauty. Hualien, Chen Li’s beloved hometown on the mountainous east coast of Taiwan, has been the central locale of his writing. His deep love and pride for his native land, as reflected in this piece, are palpable. The main challenge, as well as joy, of translating this essay was to seek to render its incredible euphony into English while at the same time retaining the rich flavors of Taiwanese culture.
- Ting Wang
Oddly enough, I first entertained the idea of translating poetry while reading Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics. I say "oddly" because it is a tract whose aesthetic import is predominantly restricted to its allegations concerning the end of art and--as far as I know--rarely referenced in expositions of literary aspirations. Hegel also, however, opines briefly on “bad poetry,” that is to say prosaic thought coerced into poetic form, and its opposition to true poetry, which is of course a unified act of poiesis. It is from these--albeit enigmatic--musings that I believe two conflicting ideals can be derived and subsequently made available to the translator who finds themselves faced with the challenge of translating poetry: the translated poem and the poetic translation. For me, this aspirational bifurcation is not a difficult one to approach; I would much rather be remembered as an adequate translator than a poetaster, and as such it is towards the poetic translation (and to a form fitting of the translation) that I aim. With ends thus determined there are certain repercussions that permeate directly into questions of form versus sense. This dialectic is, I believe, especially pertinent when attempting to translate Edith Södergran with the reverence this particular poet is due. There is a poem by another canonical Swedish poet, Karin Boye, that I like to imagine, despite a conspicuous lack of philological or historical evidence, is in fact an ode to Södergran and her poetry. The second stanza closes with the following lines:
A redness hovers
behind paleness of cheek.
A sea of fire burns
in secret
where no one knows,
where no one reaches.
It is these words (reminiscent of when Södergran herself--in the guise of the last flower of autumn--proclaims, “red flames erupted on my white cheek”) I have tried to keep somewhere in the back of my mind when working with Södergran’s works; it is this eruption, this sea of fire burning below the surface, that I have attempted to know, and to reach, when translating Södergran; and it is a dedication to this sense which I believe justifies certain formal sacrifices. All this is not to say that I believe myself to have a kind of supernatural ability to grasp the artistic intentions of a consciousness not my own, an ability to once and for all unearth the true meaning of Södergran’s poems. What I am referring to is the sense that Edith Södergran has for me (as an avid reader and aspiring translator). In my eyes, the true sense of Edith Södergran is not that of the meek victim, one subject to a fate decided by debilitating illness and crippling circumstance; rather it is that of the wickedly ironic benefactor of conditions beyond her control, conditions she would continue to vigorously resist despite no hope of victory. I hope that a dedication to just this sense has allowed me to render poetic translations worthy of Edith Södergran the poet.
- Nicholas Lawrence
Hindi | India | Short Fiction
February, 2016As a lifelong Indian civil servant, Shrilal Shukla was intimately familiar with every aspect of government in his native state of Uttar Pradesh in North India. This story showcases not only his often very subtle satire—he was not the sort to look for belly laughs, inspiring something more along the lines of wry smiles—but also his detailed knowledge of the daily life of the Chief Minister of a state (the equivalent of an American governor). Here he leads us into the mind of an extremely powerful man surrounded by sycophants, who is really no better than the members of his entourage. The title of the story ‘A Few News Items’ suggests that each incident that occurs in the story might be something one would read the next day in the morning paper. One of these, the inspection of an enormous natural disaster, leads the Chief Minister to a moment of true humanity, as he remembers a similar flood in his own childhood. As he becomes overwhelmed by what he sees, he suddenly loses his ability to think like a politician, an ability that he is sure to recover soon enough.
Many thanks to Aftab Ahmad for his help on this translation, and to Sadhna Shukla for granting permission to publish it.
- Daisy Rockwell
Albania | Albanian | Austria | Bulgaria | Bulgarian | Danish | Denmark | German | Germany | Novel (excerpts) | Poland | Polish | Reportage (excerpt) | Romania | Romanian | Short Fiction
November, 2015InTranslation is pleased to be collaborating for the fifth time with the New Literature from Europe (NLE) Festival, which took place November 6-9 in New York. Our November issues in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 were likewise dedicated to the festival and its participating authors.
Our current issue features translations of fiction and nonfiction prose by this year's authors from Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Romania.
For more information about the festival, its events, and its partners, visit: http://newlitfromeurope.org.
Danish | Denmark | Novel (excerpt)
November, 2015Josefine Klougart’s One of Us Is Sleeping is a moving, mesmerizingly intense investigation of the power and pain of love, of loss and grief, disillusion and the yearning for emotional and physical homeland. Not obviously a novel in the traditional sense, it is a work of astonishing sensibility, and Klougart’s lyrically elegiac narrative is breathtaking and arresting. Twice abandoned by men she has loved, a young woman returns home from the city to the countryside in which she grew up, her devastation compounded by the discovery that her mother has cancer. In the silence of a landscape blanketed by snow, she reflects on what is lost and what, perhaps, remains to be gained, dwelling on seemingly mundane occurrences and states of affairs, details that in Klougart’s poetically crafted sentences become laden with beauty and significance. It is a work that does not rely on the momentum of what most usually is called plot, its narrative does not proceed in any unidirectional sense. Instead, it is fluid, molten, strangely intangible, its potency residing in the wealth and keenness of its observations, the fullness and sonority of its language. As such, it provides a quite singular challenge to any translator.
- Martin Aitken
Wojciech Jagielski spent over thirty years working as a war correspondent, reporting from more than fifty different wars. His firsthand knowledge of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and a number of African countries has led to books that have been translated and published around the world.
His English-language publications include Towers of Stone, a fascinating portrayal of the two Russian-Chechen wars, partly through Jagielski’s own experience of hiding in a Chechen village in an attempt to interview the commanders-in-chief, thus exposing himself to the risk of becoming a hostage, and The Night Wanderers, a harrowing account of the experiences of children kidnapped and forced to join the sinister Lord’s Resistance Army. In each book, while focusing on real, ordinary people whose lives are affected by global or national events, Jagielski indirectly tells us the entire history of the country concerned, placing modern-day events in their historical and political contexts. His books are gripping and fascinating, making us painfully but enthrallingly aware of unfamiliar countries.
Jagielski's latest book to appear in English translation is Burning the Grass (forthcoming from Seven Stories Press), which portrays the legacy of the apartheid system in South Africa through the lives of people whose experiences of it are very different. Focusing on a small town in the Boer heartland, his main characters are: the firebrand leader of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement who, despite an aggressive presence, is heading a redundant force; a black town counselor who fought against apartheid as a dissident, but though now in power, has no power at all; and a white farmer of British descent, whose attempts to act fairly toward his black farm workers as well as the local Boers are destined to fail.
In the related article featured here, Jagielski finds a Polish connection with the struggle against apartheid, in the form of a sinister assassin.
- Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Austria | German | Novel (excerpt)
November, 2015When I first read Bernhard Aichner’s Austrian crime novel Woman of the Dead, I found it a real page-turner. He sets up his heroine, Blum, so that she looks like a villain at first, avenging herself on the parents who adopted her solely so that she could carry on their family business, and who never understood a child’s need for affection. Then, once the happiness she has found in family life is destroyed by the murder of her police officer husband Mark, the reader comes to sympathize with her more and more. She finds a purpose in taking on the case that led to his death, continuing his unofficial investigations into a particularly sadistic group of killers and rapists exploiting Eastern European immigrants, and the storyline ingeniously unravels.
By the end I was rooting for her. Bernhard’s narrative skill shows in all kinds of ways, such as the practical details of an undertaker’s work, which he learned firsthand for this book. Most of all, however, its sheer readability lies in the heroine’s sense of natural justice. Her quarry includes such pillars of the community as a priest, a fashionable photographer, and a local politician. But Blum takes out only the truly guilty. One of those three, for instance, is a thoroughly unpleasant man, but not in fact a core member of the group she is pursuing, and she lets him go.
Then, in translating, I had the chance to appreciate Bernhard’s writing all over again. I like translating dialogue, and there is plenty of it here: short, snappy exchanges in between the passages of straight narrative. Those are in the historic present tense, which I also like for its immediacy. Bernhard uses it for most of the story, with occasional flashbacks in the ordinary past tense.
I admit that I was surprised when I found out that Woman of the Dead was the first of a trilogy, and wondered how, with so many main characters dead by the end of it, the story could continue. But Bernhard gave me a copy of the second novel, fresh off the press, when we met in London in June this year, and all I can say is that you’d be surprised--I was.
- Anthea Bell
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.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).