Mircea Cărtărescu, "The Sonnetist"

AMQgR1 REVRW Notes on Translating Nostalgia by Mircea Cärtärescu Julian Semilian In order to get translated, a book must wish for its translation. I don't know what makes a book wish for its translation; there are things that are mysteries, and that's that. When Nostalgia (New Directions, 2005, English translation) called out to be translated, there were messengers, certainly, and they informed me I was chosen to smuggle it, Nostalgia, into the future, across borders, through languages. Granted asylum within the book's territory, word by word, word-by-word exchanges take place. I can't say it's not a little dangerous; there is some haggling at the borders, but the world ofword smuggling is generally friendly: the original words are dying to be taken to the future, eager to assume new guises and to wait in trepidation for their transfiguration into new meanings . An occult and welcoming dance takes place. It is not particularly necessary that a chosen translator understands a book in order for the book to be translated: even today, after having already translated Nostalgia, I am not sure I could speak about it. I know that the book crossed through me: thinking about it now, two years later, I feel trepidation, a pleasant invasion, thrilling in shape-shifting words, in mutual agreements and invisible nods. The memory of the book still stirs in me, and I in it, and my being a participant in the book, it alive within me. / don't know what makes a book wishfor its translation. I sometimes walk to our local Borders under some pretense or other, head for the fiction (C-section ), pick up a copy of Nostalgia and open it up, at random; the smuggled words are still there: a frail child entrancing neighborhood ruffians with dreams, a tarantula staring at us from inside the jar, a greeneyed child ofalabaster at the bottom ofa frozen lake, the long-shadowed factories of Giorgio de Chirico, a hospital in which a mother obsesses on bleeding herself, a magical wishbone leading little girls to a gigantic human skeleton inside which spoken words, words spoken even in jest, become literal manifestations. Little wonder, then, when I returned from Romania , Nostalgia's place of origin, and the border guard asked what made me come, I responded effortlessly . "Nostalgia. Nostalgia." In addition to Nostalgia, Julian Semilian's recent translations from Romanian into English include works by Paul Celanpublished by Green Integer. His own poems and novels, including A Spy in Amnesia (1998) and Transgender Organ Grinder (2002), have appeared injournals andperiodicals throughout the US and Europe and have been published by Spuyten Duyvil, among others. Mircea Cärtärescu, "The Sonnetist" Serban Foartà, Translated by Cälin-Andrei Mihäilescu To start with the obvious: the title of Mircea Cärtärescu's latest collection ofpoems, Fifty Sonnets (2003), carries a vast antiphrasis. The only canonical sonnet one can read here, itself reprinted from an older opus, is the one that opens the volume: Pentru artist, femeia nu-ifemeie ci mai curînd ea seamänä-a bärbat cäci harul lui abia atunci scînteie cînd de-un suris se lasäfecundat. Abia atunci gîndirea sa adîncâ rämine gréa si plinä e de rod cînd luntrea i se sparge ca de-o stîncâ în tändäri, de al rochiei izvod. Artistul e-a domnit ei lui mireasä si-? grêle chinuri naste mintea sa; desi din carnea lui afast sä iasä, poemul e asemeni si cu ea. Pätrunde, deci, din nou în al meu gînd sä-ti nasc copii, ce ?-or muri curînd. As for the artist, the woman's no female she rather has the looks of a, hum!, man; his true gift only then starts to unveil when by a smile he lets himself be ran. It's only then that his profoundest thinking gets impregnated, burgeoning with fruit, when his boat breaks—the smithereens are sinking— against—as if a rock—the skirts' deep root. The artist is his lovely woman's bride his mind delivers after heavy labors; although it's fleshed out...