New England Review

  • Subscribe/Order
  • Back Issues
    • Vol. 41, No. 3 (2020)
    • Vol. 41, No. 2 (2020)
    • Black Lives Matter
    • Vol. 41, No.1 (2020)
    • Vol. 40 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 4 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 3 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 2 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No 1 (2019)
    • Vol. 39 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 4 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 3 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 2 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 1 (2018)
    • Vol. 38 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 4 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 3 (2017)
      • Vol.38, No. 2 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 1 (2017)
    • Vol. 37 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 4 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 3 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 2 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 1 (2016)
    • Vol. 36 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 4 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 3 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 2 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 1 (2015)
    • Vol. 35 (2014-2015)
      • Vol. 35, No.1 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 2 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 3 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 4 (2015)
    • Vol. 34 (2013-2014)
      • Vol. 34, No. 1 (2013)
      • Vol. 34, No. 2 (2013)
      • Vol. 34, Nos. 3-4 (2014)
    • Vol. 33 (2012-2013)
      • Vol. 33, No. 1 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 2 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 3 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 4 (2013)
    • Vol. 32 (2011-2012)
      • Vol. 32, No. 1 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 2 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 3 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 4 (2012)
    • Vol. 31 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 1 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 2 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 3 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 4 (2010-2011)
    • Vol. 30 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 1 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 2 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 3 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 4 (2009-2010)
    • Vol. 29 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 1 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 2 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 3 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 4 (2008)
    • Vol. 28 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 1 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 2 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 3 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 4 (2007)
    • Vol. 27 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 1 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 2 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 3 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 4 (2006)
    • Vol. 26 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 1 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 2 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 3 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 4 (2005)
    • Vol. 25 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, Nos. 1-2 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, No. 3 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, No. 4 (2004)
    • Vol. 24 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 1 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 2 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 3 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 4 (2004)
        • See all
  • About
    • Masthead
    • NER Award Winners
    • Press
    • Award for Emerging Writers
    • Readers and Interns
    • Books by our authors
    • Contact
  • Audio
  • Events
  • Submit

Dan Beachy-Quick

Writer’s Notebook: Why I Translated This

July 6, 2020

 It is as if translating these ancient poems returned me to a way of knowing I had not only lost, but never knew I lost. 

Archilochus, Callimachus, & Alcman, A Suite of Poems from the Ancient Greek, from NER 41.2

I wanted to learn Ancient Greek to work down toward the roots of certain words and so dig deeper into the earthy loam that is the mind. And for a long time—studying the bewildering grammar, trying to memorize conjugations of verbs and declensions of nouns, reading through the vocabulary flashcards I made on the way to teach my seminar on Keats and Celan—that first feeling stayed true. Some words shook my head apart like a child shakes apart a dandelion: a strong breath that scatters its wish into greener fields. The word for poet was one such word, ποιητής, which means “maker; workman; inventor.” The related verb ποιέω means what you’d expect it to mean: “I make; I invent.” But unlike English, verbs in Ancient Greek can occur in the “middle voice.” I think of the middle voice as John Keats taught me to—a verb that is active and passive at once, a “diligent indolence,” in which the nature of the verb’s action is curiously at work inside and against itself. Some words change their meaning in the middle voice, a kind of magic, and ποιέω is one such word. What in the active indicative means “I make” in the middle voice, ποιέεσθαί, means “to consider.” So I learned the poem is the thing that must be made before it can be considered, that the thinking of the poem cannot occur in any true way before the writing of the poem, can be held or found no place else, but once the poem is written, the primer is there, and one can learn how to read once again. That one word made poetry more sacred to me—I understood that I didn’t understand, and that bewildered condition requires this building on the page called a poem.

But as I moved from those years toiling on in my student way to learn the basics of the language into these years of translating from the early lyric tradition (Alcman, Anacreon, Archilochus, Callimachus, Simonides, Theognis, and now Sappho) and from early philosophy (Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, and Thales) something changed in me. Another word helps explain it. The word for “reading” in Ancient Greek is ἀναγιγνώσκω. Its most literal definition is “to know again.” Reading returns us to knowing—the thought keeps echoing inside me, and by the echo, a kind of echolocation, I’ve found this work has opened something larger in me than I’d ever intended. Not a getting down to the roots, but as the poet Paul Eluard supposedly claimed, that “there is another world, but it is inside this one.” Not a root, but a cosmos: an order, an ardor, a door. It is as if translating these ancient poems returned me to a way of knowing I had not only lost, but never knew I lost. Some more essential way. A way of thinking we can no longer think in, it is so simple, our questions cannot reach it.  Not mastery or fact. But participation. Nearing. Or as Heidegger puts it writing about Parmenides, “a heedful retreat in the face of being.” If one could draw the vectors of force of translating as I’ve learned to translate, it might look like this: a drawing near, a walking close, and the quick living fix of the other’s gaze, and then a walking backward, eyes to other eyes’ brightness locked, hoping what I see, and what sees me, follows. I’ve come to love this walking backward blind to every step, eyes fixed on a brightness more important than direction: to be in heedful retreat.  


Dan Beachy-Quick is a poet, essayist, and translator whose newest collection, Arrows, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. Milkweed Editions will be publishing Stone-Garland, a selection of lyric poems from the Ancient Greek that includes the poems published here. His work has been supported by the Monfort, Lannan, and Guggenheim foundations, and he teaches at Colorado State University, where he is a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar. Beachy-Quick’s poem “Memory-Wax, Knowledge-Bird” appeared in NER 38.3. Read Beachy-Quick’s conversation about that poem with poetry editor Rick Barot. 

Filed Under: NER Digital, News & Notes, Translations, Writer's Notebook Tagged With: Dan Beachy-Quick

Wang Zengqi

Revenge

October 4, 2018

Translation from NER 39.3

An avenger should not break his sword.
A jealous man should not complain of a tile falling off the roof.
—Zhaungzi (369–280 bc)

Translated from the Chinese by Xujun Eberlein

“Flowers” by Ramsay Wise

A white candle; a half jar of honey. The honey is not in his view right now. The honey is in the jar; he is sitting on the low bed. But his senses are filled with honey, dense, thick. The bile does not rise into his throat. He has a good appetite. He hasn’t vomited many times in his whole life. A whole life. How long is a whole life? Have I had a whole life now? Doesn’t matter. This is a very common pet phrase. Everybody says, “In my whole life . . .” Like this monk—monks must often eat this kind of wild honey. His eyes narrow a bit, because the candlelight jumps, and a heap of shadows jumps, too. He smiles once: in his mind he has come up with a name for the monk, “the honey monk.” This is no wonder, because the words “a whole life” hide behind honey and monk. Tomorrow when I say goodbye, what would he do if I really call him that? Well, now the monk has a name, what about me? What would he call me? It wouldn’t be “the sword guest” (he noticed that the monk saw his sword at once), would it?

[Read more]

 

Support fine writing:
SUBSCRIBE to NER!

 

Wang Zengqi (1920–1997) is well known in China for his short stories and essays, though his work has been little translated. His writing had two peak periods: the 1940s (before the Communist era) and 1980s (after the Cultural Revolution). During the last two decades of his life he was pivotal in reestablishing the value of culturally rich language after years of politically conformant literature in China. “Revenge” is Wang’s earliest known story and one of the first in Chinese to use the stream-of-consciousness style.

Xujun Eberlein has lived half a life each in China and the United States. Author of the story collection Apologies Forthcoming (Livingston Press, 2008), winner of the Tartts First Fiction Award, she writes and translates from Boston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Agni, Asia Literary Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Night Train, Post Road, Prism International, StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere. She received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, and her personal essays have been recognized in The Best American Essays and The Pushcart Prize. She is currently finishing a memoir set in China. 

 

Filed Under: News & Notes, Translations Tagged With: Wang Zengqi, Xujun Eberlein

Maciej Miłkowski

The Week of German Cinema

January 10, 2017

1.

"Sunset" by Ramsay WiseAt this sort of event the audience is, on the one hand, rather specialized—we are talking about culture after all—and on the other hand quite predictable, drawn from among a small, easily quantifiable group of regulars—we are talking about culture after all. A few are recognizable public figures, almost famous, though the fame of literary critics, translators, even poets is a bit different from that of actors, athletes, or singers. Even the most celebrated poet can visit a crowded marketplace without worrying that he will be obsessively accosted, while picking out a handsome ear of corn, by a group of local youths professing their admiration and undying devotion.

Cultural gatherings are also sure to draw a number of academics—steadfastly observing the principle never to veer from their narrow area of specialization. A meeting with a French writer is attended by Romanists, a meeting with a Hungarian writer by Hungarianists. If the relevant languages are not taught at the university in a given city, then discussions with their leading artists often sit empty, if they happen at all. At a recent meeting with a Croatian writer, one such specialist, a lady in the front row—in answer to the translator about whether she needed to translate the Croatian author’s replies—glibly proclaimed, “Of course not! What for?” At the next week’s meeting with a leading Lithuanian writer, somehow I didn’t see this woman.

[read more]

—translated from the Polish by Justin Wilmes

Maciej Miłkowski, born in Łódź, Poland, is a writer, translator, and book critic. He has translated over fifteen books from English, in both fiction and nonfiction. His first collection of short stories, Wist, was published in 2014 by Zeszyty Literackie. He hosts a program on literature for the internet radio station Studnia. His stories have been translated into Dutch, English, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Russian. He resides in Kraków.

Justin Wilmes is Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at East Carolina University. His work focuses on post-Soviet cinema and culture, Polish literature, and translation.

Filed Under: Fiction, Translations Tagged With: Justin Wilmes, Maciej Miłkowski

Ning Ken

Writing in the Age of the Ultra-Unreal

November 21, 2016

Translation from NER 37.2.

On October 26, 2015, Ning Ken gave a talk at Middlebury College titled “Writing in the Age of the Ultra-Unreal.” He spoke in Chinese, and the audience was provided with an English translation to read, which the translator has revised for New England Review.

"Red Fountain" by Roger Camp rogercampphoto.comThe first thing I should do, of course, is explain what I mean by “chaohuan,” which we are rendering in English as “ultra-unreal.” The literal meaning of “chaohuan” is “surpassing the unreal” or “surpassing the imaginary.” It is a word that a friend and I made up about a year ago during a conversation about contemporary Chinese reality. Not long after, I used the word in remarks I made at a conference in Hainan province. The conference was organized by the Institute of Literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and recently the institute’s journal, the influential Literary Review, published an article that uses our coinage in its title. The word “ultra-unreal” is young; it’s a newborn baby. I confidently submit, however, that it is going to live a long, healthy life. China’s been pregnant with the word for at least thirty years. Maybe fifty years. Maybe even a hundred years.

So, what has happened in China over the last one hundred years? Well, let’s leave aside the more distant past and limit ourselves to just the last decade, during which much of Chinese reality has seemed like a hallucination. Some of the things that have actually happened have surpassed novels and movies in their inventiveness. Let me give a few minor examples that reveal something of the current Chinese reality.

There is a major anti-corruption campaign underway in China as I speak, and all the examples I am about to give were made public by the official Chinese media. In China, corrupt officials like to keep huge amounts of cash in their homes. In the past, investigators might find a stash of one million or ten million, but these days such an amount would be nothing. Early in 2015, a department head at the National Development and Reform Commission was investigated for corruption. In his apartment they found more cash than they could count by hand. They got currency-counting machines so they could zip right through the counting, but they burned out four of the machines before they got a final tally, which was more than two hundred million Renminbi, which is about thirty-one million US dollars.

—translated from the Chinese by Thomas Moran

[Read more]

Ning Ken grew up in one of Beijing’s old hutong (alley) neighborhoods and, after graduating from college, spent several years in Tibet, where he wrote poetry and taught at a local school. His books include two nonfiction collections and five novels, most recently Sange sanchongzou (Three Trios, 2015) and Tian•Zang (Heaven •Tibet, 2010), for which he was awarded his second Lao She Literary Award and the Shi Nai’an Literary Award. He currently lives in Beijing.

Thomas Moran is John D. Berninghausen Professor of Chinese at Middlebury College. He lives in Ripton, Vermont, with his wife, the painter Rebecca Purdum.

Filed Under: Nonfiction, Translations

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »
Cover art by Ralph Lazar

Volume 41, Number 4

Subscribe

Writer’s Notebook

Writer’s Notebook—Field Dress Portal

Sarah Audsley

Writer’s Notebook—Field Dress Portal

Writing this poem was not a commentary on a rivalry between the sister arts—poetry and painting—but more an experiment in the ekphrastic poetic mode.

ner via email

Stories, poems, essays, and web features delivered to your Inbox.

quarterly newsletter

Click here to sign up for quarterly updates.

categories

Navigation

  • Subscribe/Order
  • Back Issues
  • About
  • Events
  • Audio
  • NER Out Loud
  • Emerging Writers Award
  • Support NER
  • Advertising
  • The Podcast

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Categories

Copyright © 2021 · facebook · twitter