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Nazarii A. Nazarov – ‘To His Library’ (Моїй бібліотеці)

Nazarii A. Nazarov holds a PhD in linguistics, and lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine. His poems have appeared in national anthologies in Ukraine (both in Ukrainian and in French translation). Previously published collections include Escape from Babylon (2006), Torch Bearer (2009), and translation collections Gardens of Adonis: Minor Anthology of World Poetry (2015, translations from Modern and Ancient Greek, Persian etc.), and Cavafy: Poems (2016, from Modern Greek).

 

To His Library 

This text appears as an outcome of my deliberations about contemporary and future world literature. How can it look? How should it look? Who will be included in its canon? To what extent should it be ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’? In the following lines, I attempt to track the general passage (totally conjectural, of course) of the current and forthcoming forms of global literature.

 The poem was originally written in Ukrainian. I decided to make an English version of it to facilitate dialogue with other poets from different countries. I mention several outstanding personalities about whom I was thinking a lot at that moment. They are Ancient Roman writer and philosopher Cicero (106-143 BCE), medieval Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), and Ukrainian translator of Roman classics Mykola Zerov (1890-1937). I also pay homage to favorite Japanese writers of the Heian epoch – Murasaki Shikibu (978?-1014/1016) and Sey Shonagon (966-1017?). I conclude with the work of the poet Tao Yuanming (c. 365-427) and the Chinese classic The Book of Changes, I Ching (I m. BCE), which has been an inspiration for European thought since G. Leibniz (1646-1716). After gathering them together, I dissolve them into a landscape of mountains, literature, and other forms of silence. 

 

I have gathered you from all over the world,

My dear favorite books.

Books with rights and without.

Books of ashes and ice.

 

Oh, my Cicero and my Khayyam.

With two volumes of Zerov,

With Heian epoch,

You make a shell of marble.

 

There is a luminous hexagram

In The Book of Changes:

Tao Yuanming died long ago

But we are still contemporaries

 

Because both of us have quit the big river

And come back to the mountains –

To birds squirrels and stars –

And we talk to them

 

For there is no more desirable talk

Than the silence of an evening

When we sit in a broad circle

And write ancient verses

 

Man is just a reed

And those know it the best

Who embark on

the quest after the Word

 

2017/2019

Моїй бібліотеці

 

З усіх усюд я вас зібрав

Найкращі любі книги

Книжки з правами і без прав

Із попелу і криги

 

Мій Цицерон і мій Хаям

З двотомником Зерова

Ви із епохою Хеян

Як мушля мармурова

 

Стоїть у Книзі Перемін

Пломінна гексаграма:

Покійник Тао Юань Мін –

Епоха в нас та сама!

 

Бо ми з великої ріки

Вернулися у гори

Де птиці вивірки зірки

Із ними ми говорим

 

Нема жаданіших розмов

Аніж вечірня тиша

В великім колі сидимо

І древні вірші пишем

 

Людина тільки очерет

І знають це чудово

Ті хто рушає уперед

У подорож за словом.

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Jennifer Fossenbell – “WTF DID / YOU DO / TO MY OCEAN / (swoosh)”

Jennifer Fossenbell recently relocated from Beijing, China back to Denver, USA. Her poetry and other linguistic experiments have appeared in online and print publications in China, the U.S., and Vietnam, most recently So & So, Black Warrior Review, The Hunger, and where is the river. She completed her creative writing MFA at the University of Minnesota in 2014. Also, there is no “back”.

 

WTF DID / YOU DO / TO MY OCEAN / (swoosh)

For all of these reasons and more: how far can a body stretch?

Across continents, across platforms, around entire other bodies

the alien self that grows and grows? How far can I listen to them

the many voices in the sub-sky spaces between the buildings

around the cars, floating over the streets? The weak signal

unstable connection, laggy device? How to respond large enough—

 

What’s in there, voices say. A watermelon, a bowling ball?

A soccer ball. Hahahahaha. A body floats in the dark

and I keep thinking he must be scared and lonely. A body drowned

but living, unoriented in his disoriented world. Not waiting

but living while his world waits for him. It doesn’t drag its heels.

It wants to keep him inside forever. It wants to get him out right away.

 

Didi driver with a bee and flowers embroidered

on the right thigh of his jeans. Full color, gold thread. A lavish cameo

in my stomach-acid-bowling-ball day. He beats his arms

and legs with a firm fist while he drives. It’s a steady sound

and I guess it’s supposed to make him stronger and I guess

it makes me stronger too. I feel the strength of his bones in the way he turns

the wheel. He leans forward, I can’t see his face in the mirror. But he eyed

me when I got in. I saw the flash of horror on his face that people get. How

can a body stretch so far? The grotesquery is arresting. So alarmingly

surreal, I can’t blame anyone for looking twice to be sure they haven’t seen

a god.

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Jennifer Fossenbell – ‘I WANT TO GO BACK / TO BELIEVING A STORY’

Jennifer Fossenbell recently relocated from Beijing, China back to Denver, USA. Her poetry and other linguistic experiments have appeared in online and print publications in China, the U.S., and Vietnam, most recently So & So, Black Warrior Review, The Hunger, and where is the river. She completed her creative writing MFA at the University of Minnesota in 2014. Also, there is no “back”.

 

I WANT TO GO BACK / TO BELIEVING A STORY

fast-drying into

brittle like Bach for harpsicord

short rivulets either

end or split stutter

like a daughter

still as a piano

on loan for entire

adulthood, one

borrower dead

sky white cup, canvas

backpacking politics

it was always only words as walls piled, too cool to melt stay with magma green

everywhere, pictorial no space, too many spaces split us like time too much time splits

us like the doing

                                                                                                                                                       does and undoes

                                                                                                                                                       lace as skin stripped

                                                                                                                                                       of voice, the “resist”

                                                                                                                                                      aria, mantra over

                                                                                                                                                      cello promise of

                                                                                                                                                      depth fluid florid

                                                                                                                                                      statehood the matter

                                                                                                                                                      of belief the word

                                                                                                                                                      “indoctrinated”

                                                                                                                                                      cactus spine into

                                                                                                                                                      muscle, one smiles

                                                                                                                                                      the other winces but

                                                                                                                                                      it’s only

                                                                                                                                                      a tiny story on a train

 

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David Huntington – ‘I’d left my city open that night’

David Huntington is managing web editor at SpittoonCollective.com. His work is published or forthcoming in the likes of Spittoon Literary Magazine, Literary Hub, and Post Road; his screenplay ‘New Violence’ was selected for the 2018 Middlebury Script Lab.

 

I’d left my city open that night

 

and when I woke I closed it.

 

I tidied my pages

and crossed the streets.

 

The beggars took their corners.

My students looked down the long halls.

 

From my tower

I could hear the summation

and a tin-like hammer near Xujiahui.

 

I went to the sculpture park and read a book

among the statues I didn’t know what to do.

 

It took only one rain to shed summer.

The streets became numb and increased their tension.

 

At the intersections it was always as if

one of those raincoats cupped a pearl.

 

I walked over my city, over and over it.

Its towers grew taller every day.

 

Because I wore gloves I dropped my phone

it broke on the glassy street—

 

the rain drove the heat down into the belly.

 

Turned around as I stepped off the subway
all my roads slick black and the faces like lamps

beneath their umbrellas—

 

It seemed the traffic might never move again.

She met me in a small brown bar.

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David Huntington – ‘May the Smuggler’

David Huntington is managing web editor at SpittoonCollective.com. His work is published or forthcoming in the likes of Spittoon Literary Magazine, Literary Hub, and Post Road; his screenplay ‘New Violence’ was selected for the 2018 Middlebury Script Lab.

 

May the Smuggler

 

One day I simply awoke

         within an enemy—

 

         Even to crouch home

         would be a crime.

 

The trees pummeled the air.

The merchants spoke in accusations—

 

         I gave an urchin boy my native coin, he said:

 

                 Only the emperor

                 is permitted cartography.

 

         I said I trespass not by will:

         But in the deeper will of sleep, they took me.

 

                 Wisemen pray to the syndicate,

                                                   he said.

 

         That’s the word these days.

Around this town I wandered a river

 

saddled by a bridge

of whitish stone and righteous.

 

The whole day and none crossed, though

arched so pure and paramount.

 

         I feigned interest with a cobbler,

         asked: Must not there be some other road?

 

         But his foreign language only rang

         like intonations of my name—

 

Were they on to me?

But of course they were.

 

The tall grass shown like mackerel.

         All the townsfolks’ eyes were hidden from me.

 

         Night had fallen: An unwelcomed traveler

         is made into a prowler.

 

         Lapping moonlight from a puddle,

         I cursed the will who willed me so

 

and envied the hearthlit silhouettes.

All men do not wake equal . . .

 

         The bridge was silent

         and wholly blue.

 

         I knew not to which land it crossed, only,

         that I looked too like a villain here.

 

                   And so I tried the crossing.

                   Swiftly, then slowly—

                   The old stone slabs were magnificent and true.

 

                   It was then the river saw me, a stranger—

                   its currents coiled

                            and waters arraigned!

 

         Blindfolded and beaten, took.

         I was not righteous; they were not wrong.

 

As the townsfolk wrote my sentence,

I knew there had never been hope.

 

We see green only

when the snake wills it.

 

          They say:

                    Wisemen pray to the syndicate.

 

Now in my cell that is all I do:

Scratch dates in the walls

 

and as sleep descends, utter:

May the smuggler steal me home.

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Habib Mohana – “The Florist”

Habib Mohana was born in 1969 in Daraban Kalan, a town in the district of Dera Imsail Khan, Pakistan. He is an assistant professor of English at Government Degree College No 3, D. I. Khan. He writes fiction in English, Urdu, and Saraiki (his mother tongue). He has four books under his belt, one in Urdu and three in Saraiki. His Saraiki novel forms part of the syllabus for the MA in Saraiki at Zikria University Multan. His short stories in English have appeared in literary journals in India and Canada. In 2010 and 2014, his Saraiki books won the Khawaja Ghulam Farid Award from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. His book of short stories in Urdu, titled Adhori Neend, won the Abaseen award from the Government of KPK. He is currently seeking a publisher for his novel The Village Café.

 

The Florist

 

Irfan’s face was familiar to a many in the city, because he sold flowers at Chowgalia—the place where the four bazaars met.

Just after eating his breakfast, the twenty-two-year-old florist would cycle to the garden to buy roses and jasmine blossoms. First, he would help the chatty, hump-backed gardener pick them. Then, he would strap the basket of roses and jasmine flowers to the carrier of his bicycle and race back to his house, where he and his mother would make bracelets from the jasmine flowers and garlands from the roses. When the bracelets and garlands were ready, Irfan would hang them on his left arm and head for the Chowgalia—a mere ten minutes’ walk from his house. Through doing this, he earned enough money to run his two-member household.

Every Thursday afternoon Irfan sold flowers at the shrine of Pir Inayat Shah, as Thursday was the day when visitors came there in droves. He would park himself by the formidable wooden gate of the shrine, and passing visitors would buy his flowers to hang over the grave of the Pir Sahib. They always sold like hot cakes. After exhausting his stock Irfan would join the pilgrims dancing dhamal in ecstasy or listening to qawwali. He also ate his evening meal in the lungar at the shrine, and most times he took rice or halwa home to his mother.

Irfan had been in fifth grade when his father married another woman without informing his wife, and moved to another city. His father had a small provision shop in the neighbourhood, and they had led a prosperous life. With his father gone, Irfan could not continue his studies. His maternal grandfather was a florist, and thus his mother knew how to make bracelets and garlands. So mother and son eked out a living by making and selling jasmine bracelet and rose garlands.

In his childhood, Irfan had no idea why and for whom the buyers bought the flowers. One day he went to the shrine of Pir Inayat with his mother and saw bunches of jasmine bracelets and rose garlands hanging over the white marble grave. For years he believed that this was the flowers’ only purpose.

When he was fifteen, his aunt bought a colour TV. Every evening he went to her house to watch primetime soap operas. One evening he saw a dashing young man presenting a jasmine blossom bracelet to a shy and pretty woman. The picture became imprinted on Irfan’s mind. Whenever he was making bracelets and garlands, the fragrance from the freshly-picked flowers would make him think of a girl who was even prettier than the one he had seen on TV. At the Chowgalia, his eyes would chase each passing girl. Every one of them was his beloved, his future wife. He was dying to give the gift of a bracelet to a potential lover.

Some days, the bracelets and garlands did not sell well. He brought the remainder to his house, wrapped in a moist rag, and asked his neighbour to put them in his refrigerator. The next day he sold the day-old flowers at a reduced price, along with fresh ones. Sometimes his neighbour refused to store them. ‘Sorry,’ the middle aged man would say. ‘Our refrigerator is groaning with food.’

That day, Irfan gave the unsold bracelets and garlands to the children in his neighbourhood. He made the noisy bands of kids stand in a circle, and threw the flowers into the air for them to catch. The strings of roses and jasmine shot up into the air like fireworks, and the children moved to catch them. Only a few succeeded. The successful children started sprinting home with their booty, but soon they were intercepted by the ones who’d been unable to grab anything. The laughing kids tried to snatch the strings of flowers from one another until the bracelet and garland strings snapped, after which they fought over the shower of flowers. When the dust had settled, the more diligent children sought the rose and jasmine petals that lay scattered in the dust.

One day, Irfan knocked at his neighbour’s door. The neighbour’s daughter Dilshad craned her neck around the curtain that hung at the door, her body concealed.

Irfan pushed the small, moist bundle towards her.

‘Could you put this in your refrigerator?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ Dilshad replied.

She had been Irfan’s classmate when he was in fifth grade. He hadn’t seen her for years because she observed purdah now, and he was taken aback by her beauty.

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘Where’s your father?’

‘He’s down with fever,’ she said, before disappearing behind the curtain.

As he headed home, Irfan thought to himself, A few years back, she was a skinny girl whose face was covered in white patches, always buzzing with flies.

On the second day, Dilshad answered the door again. By the third day, Irfan had mustered up enough courage to hand her a small, moist paper packet. ‘This is for you.’

‘What is it?’ Dilshad lightly pressed the bundle.

‘Open it.’

She gingerly obeyed, and saw a pair of fresh jasmine bracelets. Irfan feared that she might hurl them away contemptuously, but she accepted the gift, blushing crimson.

On the fourth day, to Irfan’s disappointment, Dilshad’s father answered the door, having recovered from his fever.

The lovers managed to rendezvous on the roof.

One evening, Irfan’s mother caught them swapping gifts. She went to Dilshad’s mother to beg for the girl’s hand in marriage to her son, but Dilshad’s family turned down the proposal on the grounds that their families were adherents of different sects, and that their daughter was educated while Irfan was not.

The next morning, when Irfan was making bracelets and garlands, he felt like the flowers were burning his hands. Their fragrance made him sick. He hung the bracelets and garlands on his arm and limped out of the house. They felt like small snakes wrapped around his arm, and he wanted to throw them away. He did not go to his usual place; instead he roamed aimlessly in the city until he feared that his legs would buckle underneath him. It was afternoon when he wandered into a park. He plunked the bundle of flowers on the unkempt lawn as if they were a bag of trash, and lay down under a sprawling pipal tree. He had not sold a single bracelet or garland. His belly growled from hunger and his pocket was empty. With a weak smile, he said to himself, The unsold flowers are of no use. You can’t eat them. It is better to sell bananas, melons, and apples. If they don’t sell, at least you can eat them.

A young couple approached Irfan. The man shyly asked to buy a pair of jasmine bracelets, but the florist shook his head morosely. The man gave his girlfriend a silly, embarrassed smile. The couple had only gone a few paces when Irfan hurled the bracelets and garlands into the air, screaming madly. The flowers flew up like a swarm of red and white butterflies. Some bracelets and garlands got caught on the branches of the pipal tree while the remainder tumbled to the ground. Irfan collected the remainder and thundered towards the park exit. He tossed the tangled bracelets and garlands into the open sewer that passed on the other side of the park. The dark, filthy water carried the flowers away in the company of leaves, plastic shoppers, banana peels, and diapers. For a while Irfan walked along the sewer, and got a grim sense of satisfaction by observing the flowers’ miserable fate.

A year passed.

Dilshad got a job as a nurse at the teaching hospital.

On the 8th of Muharram, Irfan’s wares sold like hotcakes. This was because the Sunnis bought flowers for the graves of their loved ones, while the Shiites bought them to decorate the rozas they made in honour of their Imams. The florist stood at his usual spot. Today he had brought three times as many flowers as usual, and had sold them all except for three garlands and a pair of bracelets. His side pocket was bulging with one rupee bills, and he was jubilant.

Suddenly, out of nowhere there appeared two swarms of angry men chanting slogans against each other’s sects. Brandishing flags, bludgeons, and guns, they charged at one another. There was a brief scuffle before the firing started—pa-taka-pa-taka. The shopkeepers pulled down their shutters and raced away from the trouble. Customers and passers-by fled the scene like terrified herds of sheep. The shopkeeper closest to Irfan pulled his shutter down, locking it from the inside. Then, he opened the lock and lifted the shutter just enough to tell Irfan to duck into his shop, but the florist was already bolting in the direction of home.

Sirens wailing, police vans appeared on the scene. Some rioters had absconded, and others lay dead. Sunnis and Shiites alike were collecting their dead. The air was thick with the stench of gunpowder and teargas fumes. The road had been cleared of bodies, and small pools of blood shone in the scarlet of the setting sun. Only one corpse lay unclaimed. It was Irfan the florist’s, his right hand still clutching his bracelets and garlands. A stray bullet had pierced his chest. A passer-by uncoiled his white turban and spread it over him. Then, police offices hauled the flower vendor’s body into a dark blue van, and it was carted off to the city’s teaching hospital.

On duty in the emergency room were Dilshad, her husband Naimat, her middle-aged female colleague, and a newly-qualified doctor. A police officer pushed the stretcher towards them.

‘He was killed by a stray bullet in the sectarian violence. He sold flowers at the Chowgalia, the poor boy.’

The newly-qualified doctor lifted the white sheet away from Irfan’s and issued an order for the body to be prepared for post-mortem. Dilshad gasped in horror when she saw who it was. The doctor asked Naimat to follow him, and they disappeared into the post-mortem room to attend to other cases.

The senior nurse said to Dilshad, ‘Take the bracelets and garlands from his hands while I remove his shirt.’

But Dilshad didn’t move. Instead, she slumped down at the foot of the stretcher on which Irfan’s body lay. She tried to choke back tears but couldn’t stop them rolling down her cheeks.

The senior nurse placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Dilshad replied, gathering herself. ‘I was a bit dizzy, that’s all.’

The senior nurse brought her a glass of water.

Dilshad tried to remove the garlands and bracelets from Irfan’s tightly closed fist but his grip was too strong.

‘He won’t let go,’ she said to the senior nurse.

‘No big deal. Cut them with scissors.’

‘I can’t…’ Dilshad caressed the flowers, then brought a roll of surgical cotton and started wiping Irfan’s face.

‘Do you know him?’ the senior nurse asked.

‘Yes. His name was Irfan. He was my classmate and neighbour. He used to give me bracelets every day,’ Dilshad whispered to her colleague, who was cutting Irfan’s shirt over his chest. The senior nurse stopped and looked up. She had cut the shirt up to his navel.

Just then, the doctor stormed out of the post-mortem room, with Naimat at his heels.

‘Is he ready for the autopsy yet?’ the doctor snapped, glaring at them. ‘Why are you gossiping? Take off his shirt and the other things. Have him ready within the next minute.’ He hurried away, Naimat trying to keep up with him.

When the men had gone, the senior nurse turned to Dilshad, wanting to know more.

‘Well?’ she pressed.

Dilshad had managed to free the bracelets and garlands from Irfan’s grip.

‘Every evening he came to his roof and I came to mine. A yard-high wall separated our roofs. Every day he gave me a pair of jasmine bracelets.’

Her fingers were unconsciously moving the jasmine flowers as if they were the beads of a rosary. The edges of the petals of the wilted flowers had yellowed. ‘He was so cute and…and he always smelled of roses and jasmine. We were so madly in love… Once, we even planned to run away.’ Dilshad tried to stifle a tearful smile. ‘A year ago he sent his mother to my house to ask for my hand, but my father blew his top, saying It’s an impossibility. He is not from our sect. I will not tie my educated daughter to an uneducated man. I was crestfallen for months. After some time I started working at this hospital, and then one day I met Naimat, my husband.’

‘Yes I know.’

Dilshad couldn’t bear the sight of Irfan’s body anymore.

She asked her colleague to carry on without her. Then, barely suppressing her sobs, she placed the rose garlands on the florist’s chest, stashed the jasmine bracelets in her purse, and hurried out of the emergency room.

 

 

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REVIEW: “Professor Su Jing’an in His Later Years” by Dong Jun (Patrick Schiefen)

It is fundamentally human to disregard our own mortality, to believe – especially through our younger years – that we’re indestructible, even immortal. Yet Death is undeniable; it casts its shadow across every aspect of our daily lives whether or not we dare to look. After all, all things must come to an end.

So it is appropriate that death plays a large but quiet role in Dong Jun’s Professor Su Jing’an in His Later Years, revealing itself in its various forms throughout the short story in ways that are true to life. Its influence can be felt in every character’s actions, in their personal relationships, and, ultimately, in their association to identity. It serves both as an explicit motivation and as an unspoken one. It is even there in the book’s title, asking us to confront life’s finality before a single page has been turned.

With his ticking clocks and his conversations about legacy, Professor Su had already confronted the passing of time, to some degree, in the years before he is introduced to us.

As it goes, we, like the narrator, meet the retired Professor Su in the middle – or, more accurately, in the middle of the end – of his life, after the seventy-four year old academic requires a caretaker at his eclectic estate, the Bamboo and Plum Blossom Pavilion. There, with his wife and housekeeper, the professor oversees his now modest life like clockwork, though to which, if any, of his many international clocks that decorate his study he follows remains unknown.

Hoping to gather insight into the prestigious professor’s accomplishments, the narrator initially accompanies Professor Su as he moves through his daily routine with particular pride, crediting his not-yet-diminished sharpness on the habits he keeps. He wakes up to a pot of coffee and a glass of milk each day, he walks in reverse down his street after sunrise as exercise, and he eats salty sprouts and fermented bean curd with every meal, all the while making time to read, write, and construct those blue book sleeves for his library.

He criticizes his peer for being senile while comparing his own age to “a good tune played on an old fiddle.”

At first glance, it seems true; he is an aging man who both looks back on his life with fondness and looks forward to a rewarding and productive future – a future which, according to his planner, will see him to “at least a hundred.”

It is time’s indifference to people’s plans that sends Professor Su and the narrator on an unexpected trajectory, as death weighs more and more like gravity. His marriage evaporates suddenly, his rival is left hemiplegic after collapsing in front of a crowd, and his mentor loses his fight with lung cancer. In some ways we are more a companion of time than of Professor Su, as we observe his evolving relationship with his everchanging surroundings.

Sid Gulinck, a Belgian sinologist and certified interpreter, translates Dong Jun’s first-person narrative with a casual ease, weaving both observation and exposition with language that allows us to step into the intimate realities of the characters. It helps that the story is composed as a near timeline, one that starts by familiarizing the reader to a life already lived and then slowly departs – or, arguably, crash lands – as lives are propelled forward.

With each glimpse into this timeline, Dong Jun raises the stakes ever so slightly until we have no choice but to reckon with the effects that time has on who we are and who we will become. Plans and relationships are no match and reveal themselves to be fragile when up against such a relentless force.

As the story progresses and life’s tiny and mundane tragedies pile up, the characters must learn, like the rest of humanity, to examine even the most well-intentioned habits and to submit to what cannot be controlled. Professor Su, in particular, has staked so much of his identity on the illusion of control that when the rug is pulled out from under him he is faced with the existential threat of the death of self.

How he deals with this is at first is relatable, if a little predictable: he shuts his doors to all but the housekeeper, allows his routine to unravel, refuses to shave or shower or brush his teeth, and changes all of his clocks – the timekeepers – in an illogical manner. He caves to all the things he has been fighting against.

It is when he forgoes his established life completely that the Dong Jun’s narrative delivers on the unexpected.

Death may be the endpoint for us all but it always seems to come as a surprise. The real surprise, however, is the way we try, as humans, to negotiate with it. By the end of Professor Su Jing’an in His Later Years, Dong Jun reveals through his subject that by being overly concerned with doing so, you can lose perspective on what you have and who you are.

When Professor Su finally asks the narrator, and by extension us, “Who might you be?” he is offering an opportunity to decide if we are the sums of our pasts or, simply, whatever we may be in the flash of this moment.

Professor Su, at the end, has more or less already made up his mind.

 

Dong Jun (Author)

Sid Gulinck (Translator, Chinese to English)

Professor Su Jing’an in His Later Years

Penguin Random House/Penguin Books

2019, 55 pages

 

Patrick Schiefen is an expatriate writer from Upstate New York who currently writes and performs in Shanghai, China. His writing is greatly influenced by topics of identity, politics, and sexuality and aims to build community through his writing. His work has appeared in various publications both inside and outside of China, most recently in High Shelf Press and A Shanghai Poetry Zine.

“If You Know, You Know” is his first collection of poetry and was launched with the help of Literary Shanghai in September 2019.

Find more information about him on Twitter, @p_schiefen, or on his website, patrickschiefen.com.

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Felix Rian Constantinescu – a translation of “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth

Felix Rian Constantinescu was born in Romania in 1982. He made his debut in 2002 as a writer of short pieces for theatre, and his published works include  Imersiune posibila – Possible Immersion (2004), Canon in d si alb – trei povestiri (2011), O mama de lumina (2015), Momentul in care D-zeu exista (2015) and Yin (2016).

 

Lucy Gray

 

Ades am auzit de Lucy Gray

Și când încrucișai pământul

‘Ntâmplă de-am văzut-o-n crăpat de zi

Copilul solitar.

 

Nici coleg nici tovarășă Lucy n-avea;

Viețuia pe-o bahnă uriașă,

Cel mai dulce lucru ce crescu vreodat’

Lângă o ușă de om!

 

Totuși poți iscodi faunul la joacă,

Iepurele pe smarald;

Dar dulcea fațăa Luciei Gray

N-om mai vedea vreodată.

 

‘La noapte va fi furtună,

La târg trebuie să mergi,

Și ia o lampă, copilă,să lumini

Mamei prin zăpadă.’

 

‘Aceasta, Tată, fac cu bucurie;

E abia amiază –

Orologiul abia a bătut două,

Și uite sus e Luna.’

 

La asta Tatăl luă vătraiul

Ș-izbi-ntr-un braț de lemne;

Se apucă iar la lucru, iar Lucy Luă

Lampa în mână.

 

Mai voioasă neagra ciută nu-i,

Cu izbituri a joacă

Picioarele-i împrăștie praful de zăpadă

Ce se înalță fum.

 

Potopul veni mult prea devreme

Merse în sus și-n jos

Și pe multe culmi Lucy urcă

Dar nu ajunse-n târg.

 

Pierduți Părinții  în toată noaptea

Au chemat departe-n tot locul;

Dar nu a fost nici glas nici văz

Să le fie călăuză.

 

‘N crăpat de zi pe un deal stătură

Sus, sus, peste bahnă;

Ș-atunci văzură Podul de Lemn

La doi pași de ușă.

 

Și-acum spre casă merg plângând

‘În cer ne vom-ntâlni!’

Când în zăpadă Mama văzu

Urma piciorului lui Lucy.

 

Apoi în jos de muchea abruptă

Urmară micile urme;

Și prin ruptul păducel

Și lungul zid de pietre;

 

Apoi un camp deschis trecură,

Urmele erau aceleași;

Le-au izvodit, nicicând pierdut,

Până au dat de Pod.

 

Le-au urmat de pe țărmu-nzăpădit

Urmele, una câte una,

Până în mijlocul ghețușului,

Iar mai departe niciuna.

 

Totuși unii spun și azi

Ea-i un Copil trăind,

O poți vedea cumintea Lucy Gray

Pe Sălbăticia singuratică.

 

Peste noroi sau iarbă ea merge încet

Și niciodată nu privește în urmă;

Și cântă un cântec solitar

Ce flutură în vânt.

 

~

 

Lucy Gray

 

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,

And when I cross’d the Wild,

I chanc’d to see at break of day

The solitary Child.

 

No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew;

She dwelt on a wild Moor,

The sweetest Thing that ever grew

Beside a human door!

 

You yet may spy the Fawn at play,

The Hare upon the Green;

But the sweet face of Lucy Gray

Will never more be seen.

 

“To-night will be a stormy night,

You to the Town must go,

And take a lantern, Child, to light

Your Mother thro’ the snow.”

 

“That, Father! will I gladly do;

‘Tis scarcely afternoon—

The Minster-clock has just struck two,

And yonder is the Moon.”

 

At this the Father rais’d his hook

And snapp’d a faggot-band;

He plied his work, and Lucy took

The lantern in her hand.

 

Not blither is the mountain roe,

With many a wanton stroke

Her feet disperse, the powd’ry snow

That rises up like smoke.

 

The storm came on before its time,

She wander’d up and down,

And many a hill did Lucy climb

But never reach’d the Town.

 

The wretched Parents all that night

Went shouting far and wide;

But there was neither sound nor sight

To serve them for a guide.

 

At day-break on a hill they stood

That overlook’d the Moor;

And thence they saw the Bridge of Wood

A furlong from their door.

 

And now they homeward turn’d, and cry’d

“In Heaven we all shall meet!”

When in the snow the Mother spied

The print of Lucy’s feet.

 

Then downward from the steep hill’s edge

They track’d the footmarks small;

And through the broken hawthorn-hedge,

And by the long stone-wall;

 

And then an open field they cross’d,

The marks were still the same;

They track’d them on, nor ever lost,

And to the Bridge they came.

 

They follow’d from the snowy bank

The footmarks, one by one,

Into the middle of the plank,

And further there were none.

 

Yet some maintain that to this day

She is a living Child,

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray

Upon the lonesome Wild.

 

O’er rough and smooth she trips along,

And never looks behind;

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind.

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Alicia Liu – “You, A Cactus Planter”

Alicia Liu comes from the small beachside town of Richmond, British Columbia, but currently studies as a high school student at the Western Academy of Beijing.

 

You, a Cactus Planter

You say you’ve never liked flowers, but the truth is, you simply can’t bear to see them wilt. Perhaps it’s because they remind you that one day, you’ll wilt too. So you prefer cacti, or maybe an aloe vera. They’re low-maintenance. Shrivel-proof: if you forget to water them for a week or two they’ll gladly resuscitate. They’re not as beautiful so when they finally die, your soft heart won’t feel a thing.

On Sundays, you tag along with whoever of your friends happens to be going to the Flower Market. Casually chatting as you walk along aisles of peonies and pansies, primroses and hyacinths, no one has to know that you won’t ever make a purchase. Just watching is enough. It gets a little hard somedays when the light is just right and the petals so soft and dewy and you watch your friends debating how much sugar to mix into the water as they load up flowers in their car.

Fools! They’re wasting time and money on something that’ll be in the compost bin after two weeks. Three if they’re lucky.

But one day, Oh! What’s this!

Petrified, you stand in the aisles of the flower market. Your friends tugs you along, but an invisible hammer has pounded nails through the soft flesh of your feet, deep into the ground.


Flowers aren’t supposed to be this beautiful.

Your world slides off the edge. Forget wasting money, you want to slice bits off your heart and bury it in the soil; this is a flower worth wilting for.

“Sorry, honey. That one’s been paid for already. Can I interest you in some roses? Freshly picked this morning!”

But you can’t tear your eyes off the flower, even as that smiley-faced bastard comes and places the flower on a cart bursting full of two hundred other blossoms and wheels it all away.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

You go home, telling yourself you never saw that flower. As you water a cactus, the familiar emptiness reaches unbearable heights. So you slam your hand down on a cactus and it bursts. Doesn’t matter. Just a cactus.  You throw the pieces outside the window, but those spines remain lodged in the tips of your finger, burrowed into the palm of your hand.

There they are now still, festering, drawing pus.

There they will be, forever reminding you of their existence, of the existence of the flower that you’ll never see again, any time you tenderly extend your fingers to feel, anytime you feebly attempt to hold anything close.

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Wu Lianqun – Essay on Anton Gustav Matos, and a translation

Professor Wu Lianqun, Doctor of Literature, is currently teaching in the Chinese Department of the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

塞语诗人马托什与他的一首诗

 

头发的安慰

昨晚我注视着你。在梦里,悲哀地死去。

在命中注定的殿堂,在牧歌般的花朵里,

在一个高高的立处,在蜡烛哀伤的泪光中,

我将我的生命作为贡品,准备好给你。

 

我没有哭泣。我没有。我错愕而立

在那命定的殿堂,充满着死亡的美丽。

我疑惑那黑暗的眼睛是如此悲伤

在那里我曾有过美好生活的开始。

 

所有的,所有的都已死去;眼睛,呼吸和双臂,

在盲目的恐惧和激情的痛苦中

我绝望地地企图复活所有。

 

在无可逃脱的殿堂,我的思念变为灰色

只有你的头发仍然充满蓬勃生机,

对我宣告:淡定!死亡只是一个梦。

 

Utjeha kose

Gledao sam te sinoć. U snu. Tužnu. Mrtvu.
U dvorani kobnoj, u idili cvijeća,
Na visokom odru, u agoniji svijeća,
Gotov da ti predam život kao žrtvu.

Nisam plako. Nisam. Zapanjen sam stao
U dvorani kobnoj, punoj smrti krasne,
Sumnjajući da su tamne oči jasne
Odakle mi nekad bolji život sjao.

Sve baš, sve je mrtvo: oči, dah i ruke,
Sve što očajanjem htjedoh da oživim
U slijepoj stravi i u strasti muke,

U dvorani kobnoj, mislima u sivim.
Samo kosa tvoja još je bila živa,
Pa mi reče: Miruj! U smrti se sniva.

 

~

 

 

安敦·古斯塔夫·马托什(1873—1914,Anton Gustav Matos),克罗地亚诗人,短篇小说家,记者,散文家和游记作家。他被认为是克罗地亚现代主义文学的冠冕人物,开启了克罗地亚通向欧洲现代主义的潮流,是有史以来克罗地亚最伟大的文学人物之一。

  • 生平

马托什出生在塞尔米亚(Syrmia)地区的托瓦尔尼克(Tovarnik),即今天克罗地亚的乌克瓦尔—塞尔米亚区(Vukovar—Syrmia County)。他两岁时,随其父母迁往扎格勒布(Zagreb),在那里他上了小学和中学。他打算进维也纳军事兽医大学(the Military Veterinary College)学习,但失败了。1893年他被征兵,1894年做了逃兵,他从克罗地亚逃到沙巴克(Sabac),再逃到贝尔格莱德。

马托什在贝尔格莱德待了三年。他在此地的生活,用他自己的话说,是作为一个“大提琴演奏者,记者和码字的人”而活着。1898年1月马托什到维也纳和慕尼黑旅行,在日内瓦稍作停留,然后在1899年去了巴黎。他在巴黎待了五年。在巴黎期间,马托什写下了他最伟大的报道。1904年马托什回到贝尔格莱德。1905年、1906年、1907年他秘密访问了扎格勒布(因为他仍然还是一个逃兵)。

最后,在1908年,逃亡在外十三年之后,马托什被赦免。他最后定居扎格勒布,最终因喉癌死于此地。马托什写了二十四部作品,包括出版和未出版的:诗歌,短篇小说,报道,游记,评论和辩论。

  • 著述

马托什是克罗地亚现代主义流派的中心人物。克罗地亚现代主义流派是克罗地亚文学的巨变,深受欧洲影响。它快速地吸收现代的潮流和风尚,如象征主义、现代主义和印象主义,凭借法国从波德莱尔(Baudelaire)到马拉美(Mallarme)、巴雷斯(Barres)和胡伊斯曼(Huysmans)的文学遗产,唯美主义和艺术规范成为主要的价值标准。在此以前,民族和社会活动常常是价值的唯一量尺标杆,成为克罗地亚作家的一部分是作家们更广泛的使命。马托什之后,作家们不再被要求为了宣传目的而创作艺术(除了共产主义时期外)。

1892年马托什凭借短篇小说《良心的力量》(The Power of Conscience)进入克罗地亚文坛。这本小说的出版被认为是克罗地亚现代文学流派的开端。马托什写下了关于文学创作和在不同场景中的角色模范的主张。他在给朋友米兰·奥格里左维奇(Milan Ogrizovic)的一封信中如是说道:“作为一个短篇小说家,我对诗歌天才和前辈怀有最大的感情,比如梅里美的简洁精确和莫泊桑讽刺的自然感。”

  • 小说

马托什的短篇小说根据他的主题以及技巧、方式和风格常常被分为两组:

  • 发生在扎格勒布和扎戈列当地环境中的真实的故事,以及取自现实生活中的人物。
  • 怪诞的奇异故事,以及个人主义风格的人物。

这两组作品都有着强烈的抒情声调和爱的情节,它们并非截然分开而是并列存在的。同时,这种创作表明,马托什不仅作为一个故事讲述者的“发展进程”,而且也显示出他的“学习风格”。为了描画人物,他努力尝试使用不同的主题。

马托什在克罗地亚主题故事中的许多元素,如社会问题,充塞在他循环的奇幻之中。不过,这种奇幻的循环,主要是探讨神秘的爱、死亡和夜间状态与现象的主题。为此,马托什减少了情节。在深刻分析英雄人物的个人命运时,他去掉了表面和传闻的元素,以及难以置信的事件和奇异的人物。这些故事将心理动机推向了最前沿,而社会因素则成为次要的部分。因此,奇异故事放弃了地域和民族的特征,呈现出一种大都会式的共存性。

在游记文学方面,马托什是克罗地亚最伟大的创新者之一。在巴雷斯影响之下,马托什把这样的景观观念引进到克罗地亚文学之中:景观不仅是故事的一部分,也是一个独立的主体。他的景观不仅是外部的形象,而且是作者移动的活动设置。实际上,马托什描写景观的目的不仅仅是唤起情感,而是扩展联想,引导读者思考更广泛的不同问题。清晰的印象派技巧,使用景观引起情绪的激动,这种标记充溢在所有类型的主题中。这几乎是马托什所有散文作品的典型特征。他写了许多优秀的游记,景观是唯一的主题,最著名的是《在罗博拉周围》(Around Lobor)。

四、诗歌

在写作和出版短篇小说、游记、评论和辩论充满马托什整个职业生涯的时候,他在后期开始严肃地写作和发表诗歌。1906年前后,他仅仅写了80首左右的诗歌作品。毫无疑问,他的伟大导师是波德莱尔,因为他从伟大的诗人那里获取了很多形式元素,并且好几次热情地写到波德莱尔。

马托什偏好十四行诗,他赋予诗歌的音乐性,词语的和谐,色彩和气味(联觉隐喻),一种非常精致的韵律,说唱语调的混合。这些构成了他诗歌风格的明显符号。

他早期的主要诗歌主题是爱和花,他把爱的抽象性和花的具体诗意符号融合起来。另一个反复的主题是死亡,挽歌的气息弥漫他的诗作,短暂经过的激烈情感,梦和现实的合流,用窒息的颜色和声音,爱的经历犹如痛苦的体验。他最好的关于爱的诗是《孤独的爱》(Lonely Love),《给孩子而不是给玩具》(To a Child Instead of a Toy),《头发的安慰》(Comfort of Hair)。

五、评论

马托什在文学批评、随笔和报刊文章方面留下了深刻的痕迹。在使用强烈的印象派方法的克罗地亚(Kranjcevic, Vidric, Domjanic, Kamov)作家和塞尔维亚作家(Sremac, Veselinovic, Pandurovic)的作品中,马托什常常声称在他的文章中表现了他的个人艺术信仰。因为他相信艺术意味着美,他把诗人表达的强度或者作家的个性风格作为文学价值的主要准则。因此,他认为文体之间没有差异:小说、诗歌和评论都是艺术,主要反映艺术家的个性特征和他们最原初的表达能力。当然,除了这样的一般标准,当他分析克罗地亚作家的时候,他永远也不会忽略民族的因素。

六、作品集

1、诗歌:《诗选》(死后)。

2、短篇小说:《碎片》(1899年),《新碎片》(1900年),《困乏的故事》(1909年)。

3、随笔:《随笔》(1905年),《地平线和路》(1907年),《我们的人民和土地》(1910年)。

 

Mianyang Teachers College (绵阳师范学院)

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