Armenia | Armenian | Short Fiction
August, 2018Susanna Harutyunyan began her literary career when the Soviet Union was collapsing. She belongs to the generation of writers who were tasked with the critical and inevitable role of recording the fall of the Soviet Union, the transition period, and post-Soviet afterlife. She is best known for her short stories, some humorous, others verging on the macabre and a special kind of ruthlessness, reminiscent of the notable Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov. The story featured here (Original title: "Aysteghov antsel e astvatse") was first published in a collection titled Zharangabar pokhantsvogh garun ("Hereditary Spring") in 2007.
- Shushan Avagyan
The two poems featured here come from Andrea Cote Botero’s first book, Puerto calcinado [Port in Ashes] (2013), winner of the Puentes de Sturga International Poetry Prize. At first glance, this title seems out of place given that the poet’s native Barrancabermeja conjures up no images of coastline, but rather is most known for a 1998 civilian massacre, one of the most deadly of Colombia’s armed conflict. The poetic voice’s reflection around the port as a place of both arrival and departure, turns illusory, no more than a fleeting bridge to someplace else, or perhaps this place itself. What most stands out, then, is uncertainty, destruction of space, searches for lost identities, labyrinthine memory, and longings for gods--and others--gone missing. The poems take on rhythm and pace while the poetic self explores all this from every possible angle. For Cote Botero’s poetic subject, the port is connection--to now barren terrain, a lost homeland, and María--a connection only truly achieved in the ephemeral uttering of a poem.
Likewise, emphasis on connection, on bridge-building, guides my approach to translating Cote Botero. She has been doubly underrepresented in translation: first, as a woman, given that women are far less likely than men to be translated into English (and even less frequently by a woman); and, second, as a Colombian, since poetry from the region is the second-least translated into English among all Spanish-speaking countries. In fact, according to the Three Percent Translation Database, from 2008 to 2018 no book-length translation of a Colombian woman poet has been published in the United States. Given these conditions, I view the choice of who to translate as an act of bridge-building, forging connections between places and readerships that might not otherwise come into contact. The question of how to translate this voice, then, becomes bridge-crossing, the process of carrying what makes Cote Botero’s poetry so compelling into English, allowing its complexity to find its footing in new linguistic terrain. In this way, the bridge Cote Botero and I build through translation is far from illusory: these two poems intend to highlight marginalized voices, complicate notions of how Colombians--and women--are expected to write, and forge strong, long-lasting literary connections.
- Olivia Lott
German | Novel (excerpt) | Switzerland
August, 2018Quarter Past Never (Original title: Viertel Nach Handgelenk) began as a series of blog posts written while the author was in rehab. First published in 2008, it became a cult success, selling out its first printing. It now stands as a document of not-so-carefree youth in the mid-2000s, a chronicle of excess set against the incongruous backdrop of sleepy Switzerland. The sheer exuberance of Wigglesworth's prose masks in an artful manner the deep melancholy of the novel as the narrator, Pippin, spirals further and further into addiction. David Foster Wallace once wrote that “one of the saddest times...is the invisible pivot when the party ends.” Quarter Past Never turns on that pivot.
- Marshall Yarbrough
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
July, 2018To conclude the 100 Refutations series, we offer you a final essay by Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Guaraní | Poetry
July, 2018“Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.”
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
100 Refutations | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Cacamatzin (1483-1520) was born into the most illustrious family of Tezcoco, a region known for its many wise governors and celebrated poets. He was the grandson of the famous poet-king Nezahualtcóyotl and son of the famous Lord of Tezcoco Nezahualpilli, whom Cacamatzin eventually replaced. As Lord of Tezcoco, Cacamatzin was unable to stop the invasion of gold-hungry Hernán Cortes and his conquistadors. In 1520, Cacamatzin was captured, tortured, and killed under the direction of Alvarado, whom Cortes left in charge before going on to commit further atrocities in the land of the Aztecs and beyond.
100 Refutations | Guatemala | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Enrique Noriega is a Guatemalan poet and the director of Guatemala’s Dependency Ministry Unit for the Promotion of Books and Reading. He has published many poetry collections, including Oh banalidad (1973), Post actus (1982), Libreta del centauro copulante (1994), La pasión según Judas (1998), El cuerpo que se cansa (1998), Libro caliente voz de hielo (1999), La saga de n (2006), Épica del ocio (2007), Lo que la memoria viste y calza (2012), and Guastatoya (2015). Noriega has also won numerous awards, including the Mesoamerican Poetry Prize “Luis Cardoza y Aragón” (2007, 2012), the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature (2010), and the Rubén Darío prize for poetry (2013).
100 Refutations | Paraguay | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Eloy Fariña Nuñez (1885-1929) studied in the Paraná seminary in Argentina, but soon thereafter traded his aspirations of an ecclesiastical career for a law career in Buenos Aires. He was eventually forced to abandon his studies for financial reasons, but this allowed him to dedicate himself wholly to the pursuit of arts and letters. He was a poet, storyteller, essayist, dramaturge, and journalist. He is often referred to as the greatest poet of Paraguay.
100 Refutations | Belize | English | Poetry
July, 2018Samuel Alfred Haynes (1899-1971) was an African-Caribbean soldier, activist, and poet who helped lead the 1919 riot by Belizean World War I veterans protesting the racial discrimination they faced at home. He wrote the lyrics of a song called “Land of the Gods” that later became Belize’s national anthem, "Land of the Free."
100 Refutations | Guatemala | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Rafael Landívar (1731-1793) was a Guatemalan poet and Jesuit priest. He was born in what was then called La Capitanía de Guatemala, and is now the territory of Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Antigua, and he died in Italy. He was a descendant of the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, and chose philosophy as his primary field of study. In 1749, he joined a Jesuit order and began working soon thereafter on what would become Rusticatio Mexicana, 15 books of poetry describing the regional fauna, flora, and customs using Latin hexameter. This text was translated into Spanish in 1897 by Antonio Ramírez Fontecha, in order to present it in the Exposición Centroamericana of the same year.
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to InTranslation, where we feature English translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing from around the world. InTranslation is a showcase for works in translation that have not yet been acquired for book publication. Learn more »