{"id":429642,"date":"2020-04-02T14:50:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T18:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=429642"},"modified":"2020-04-06T10:38:30","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T14:38:30","slug":"time-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2020\/04\/02\/time-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“Time” by Etel Adnan [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win<\/a> posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Brandon Shimoda<\/b>\u00a0is the author of several books, most recently\u00a0<\/em>The Grave on the Wall\u00a0(City Lights), which received the PEN Open Book Award,\u00a0<\/em>The Desert(The Song Cave), and\u00a0<\/em>Evening Oracle(Letter Machine Editions), which received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. He lives in the desert.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Time<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Etel Adnan, translated from the French by Sarah Riggs (Nightboat)<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the smoke clears, there will be more smoke. And when that smoke clears, there will be even more smoke after that. The source of the smoke: fires, fires everywhere, some lit a long time ago, some that only just started burning. \u201cBut then when thick smoke blinds the streets, the noise cuts the heart off from the world, the thinking body gives up and finds itself on the side of decay.\u201d That is a sentence from Etel Adnan\u2019s Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz)<\/em>, a collection of epistolary travelogue-essays, and one of my favorite books\u2014by Etel, and by anyone. Another of my favorite books is also by Etel, translated into English from the French by Sarah Riggs, and published by Nightboat Books: Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It feels vulgar to play favorites, but I guess that is the nature of judging for an award. There is a distinct debt that I owe to Etel Adnan and her work. I have been rescued, many times, from surrendering to the varieties of ill-temper that are easy when one\u2019s eyes and head are overwhelmed with smoke, by Etel\u2019s writing\u2014by what of it has reached, through the smoke, to touch and encourage me, so kindly, yet so uncompromisingly. Maybe Etel would disagree with the ways in which her writing has been put to use\u2014if what I am describing above is use\u2014or even with the similarly vulgar idea that her writing, or any writing, could be appraised in such terms. And it is not as though I am always on the verge of surrender. But life is unforgiving, and reading and writing are not entirely exempt from contributing to what is unforgiving about it. What it means is that I often forget to slow myself into the forms of attention and presence that Etel\u2019s work embodies, and that her work offers. Her writing is magnanimous. It is the best of human nature. It often takes only a single line, sometimes a single word, to bring me back to myself, and to my ability to attend to and be present in the world.<\/p>\n

Time <\/em>is comprised of six poem sequences, the first of which begins with the lines, \u201cI say that I\u2019m not afraid \/ of dying because I haven\u2019t \/ yet had the experience \/ of death\u201d (\u201cOctober 27, 2003\u201d). According to Sarah Riggs\u2019s Translator\u2019s Note, the line was written after receiving a postcard from her friend Khaled Najar, October 27, 2003. (Najar is a poet; he published one book of poetry, which was translated into English as Windows of Sand<\/em>, although I am having a difficult time finding physical proof of its existence.) To repeat:<\/p>\n

I say that I\u2019m not afraid<\/p>\n

of dying because I haven\u2019t<\/p>\n

yet had the experience<\/p>\n

of death<\/p>\n

\u201cI say,\u201d she writes, and Riggs translates, not \u201cI\u2019m not afraid.\u201d And also, dying and death are not the same experience, so could it be possible that one could fear one and not the other? (In a later poem, Etel writes, \u201cit\u2019s more bearable to think of \/ death than of love,\u201d but of course love is an entirely different, if not entirely unrelated, matter.) All six of the poem sequences were written during the first decade of the 21st<\/sup> century, and there is something significant about that\u2014about the example, and the image, of Etel Adnan reestablishing and sharpening, on the edge of the new millennium, her acute and longstanding form of witness. One of the many results of that sharpening, is the continuous revelation of the generosity of her witness\u2014of what and how she sees, and of how thoroughly she shares what and how she sees with everyone with whom she comes into contact.<\/p>\n

Sarah Riggs also writes, in her Translator\u2019s Notes, about how, while reading \u201cLe 27 Octobre 2003\u201d in a caf\u00e9 in Paris, she realized she wanted to translate it into English. She asked Etel if she might want to translate the poem herself. Riggs writes: \u201cEtel responded very simply and enthusiastically as is her way, \u2018I\u2019d rather you did it.\u2019\u201d Etel is generous, yes, but she also knows<\/em>. Riggs has published five collections of her own poetry, and has translated, in addition to Time<\/em>, five collections of contemporary French poetry. The accumulation of this work has generated a voice that is the most crystalline and brilliant and seamless guide to the evolving, transformative voice of poetry. I have come to believe, through Riggs\u2019s work, that translation is touch<\/em>. Meanwhile, check out this perhaps unintentional moment of sly intimacy from page 50:<\/p>\n

time can\u2019t be translated<\/p>\n

your voice in my veins<\/p>\n

Truth be told, I find it difficult, sometimes impossible, to write about work that means so much to me. It can feel superfluous, when not denuding, but I understand the need to advocate for something in the chance that it might reach, by some hard-won miracle, that <\/em>particular person\u2014that person out there<\/em>, i.e. you, or even you<\/em>. When I first started writing this appreciation of Time<\/em>, I meant to write, \u201cAfter the smoke clears, there will remain, as powerful as ever, the poetry of Etel Adnan.\u201d She is, to paraphrase her words\u2014from her short story, \u201cThe Master of the Eclipse\u201d\u2014one of our most important and persistent contemplatives of the ongoing apocalypse. I have to admit: I have not read the Bible. And yet despite every indication that now might be a good time to start, it is doubtful I am going to read it, because I already have access to the profound weight and ever-giving benefaction of another more relevant body of literature. Time <\/em>is the latest entrant into what I consider, in fact, to be one of the most important bodies of work ever produced. Not in this or last century, but ever.<\/p>\n

(Large image<\/a> copyrighted by P K.)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards.\u00a0 Brandon Shimoda\u00a0is the author of several books, most recently\u00a0The Grave on the Wall\u00a0(City Lights), which received the PEN Open Book Award,\u00a0The Desert(The Song Cave), and\u00a0Evening Oracle(Letter Machine Editions), which received the William […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":423572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[70082,70102,70092,70112,18936,37876],"class_list":["post-429642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-brandon-shimoda","tag-etel-adnan","tag-nightboat","tag-sarah-riggs","tag-time","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429642"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429762,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429642\/revisions\/429762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}