Asymptote Fall 2015 Issue

The newest issue of Asymptote Journal came out a couple weeks ago. I haven't made it through the whole issue yet. It can be hard to get through a full issue sometimes. I'm generally unfamiliar with many (read: all) of the author so I find myself reading a story (or poem or whatever else) and then falling into a blackhole of research about the author and if they have a twitter or what other works they've written and where they're from and who their translator is and if they have a twitter or what other works have they translated and...you get the point. And that point is these stories, these interviews, these essays, these are all great jumping off points to learn about new ideas, new works of art, new cultures, all around the world.

Take for instance, the poem 'Common Night' by Uyghur poet Merdan Ehet'éli. The Uyghurs are an ethnic group from Eastern and Central Asia, primarily in the far Western region of China called Xinjiang. Their culture isn't typical to what one normally thinks of Chinese as they are traditionally an Islamic group, and tend to have more in common culturally with neighboring countries (Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan) than with Beijingers and Shanghainese.

Merdan (born 1991) is already an accomplished writer and translator, having translated works from Chinese to Uygher (and vice versa). He's part of what's called the Nothingism school of Uygher poetry. Take the opening lines of the poem for example: "This is a night made from words" and contrast those with a later line: "This is a night that no elegy, ode, rain, or beam of light shall ever reach." This seeming contradiction is just another facet of a common night. The Xinjiang region that is home to Uyghers is fairly isolated from the rest of China, but as translator Joshua Freeman notes in an interview, "a lot of what’s really vibrant and interesting in Uyghur poetry right now is happening primarily on the web, and even on phone messaging apps."

And speaking of exciting work that's happening on the web, one of the best works I've read on Asymptote so far was "The Time Traveller" by Mexican writer Alberto Chimal. Yes, it's twitter fiction, which I haven't really gotten down with, but it was done so well, not trying to be a novel that exists on twitter, so much as it actually is a twitter novel. Asymptote originally posted the full translated text, and then also tweeted out all of the work over a two-day period. Some of my favorite lines/tweets:

The Time Traveller dreamt a “flashforward,” in which he awoke, traveled backwards in time, slept, and dreamt a “flashforward.”

The Time Traveller uses a machine propelled by lost, ignored, and wasted hours. He’s pleased: he’ll have fuel forever.

“The end of the world?” The Time Traveller asks. “Or the end of humanity?” They’re not on the same date. 

The limited format allows Chimal's wit to prevail, and various themes to emerge, without getting too bulky or self-involved (since there is (ironically) no time to get to that point). Chimal makes many references to people like Kafka, Rimbaud, Borges, Duchamp, Michael Jackson, Jack the Ripper, and more, who are all clearly influences on him. The Time Traveller takes Plato to watch the Matrix. He insists on Vlad to kill Bram Stroker, destroying one great novel and a thousand awful ones. In the translator's note, Chimal also offers thoughts on fiction in the digital age:

"In a self-interview published in the digital magazine Casa del Tiempo, Chimal asks (himself) the question, "How does mini-fiction work on the internet?" to which he provides this insightful response:

"In general in the same way a book or a magazine, insofar as reading; that is, the texts continue to demand a particular kind of attention from the readers—to the delayed effect of the very brief text, whose brevity is always deceiving—while also offering succinctness and possibilities of allusion and evocation. But there is something more: at the same time, the texts can be written with greater speed and spontaneity (even if they later need the same rigorous work as always, or even more), and they can be read in more flexible ways, depending on the context in which they are transmitted and received."

If you want to follow the whole thing on Twitter, check out #TheTimeTraveller. Alberto Chimal tweets at @albertochimal and his translator George Henson tweets at @unpoetaloco.

Changing mediums, the drawings of Greek artist Nina Papaconstantinou are fascinating. As per the intro of the interview with Eve Heisler: "St. John, The Apocalypse is from Bookcase, a series in which Papaconstantinou copies books from her personal library. Using carbon paper, she begins copying at the top of a sheet of paper and, when she reaches the bottom of the sheet, she returns to the top and begins transcribing once again from top to bottom. An entire book is recorded on one sheet of paper." The rest of the interview is an enlightening look into the process of her work and the intersection between art and not just language, but specifically the written word.  

Finally, we have an excerpt from a text titled 'My Suicide' written by Henri Roorda van Eysinga. Born in Brussels and writing in French, Roorda was also a humorist and math professor. This text is a suicide note that covers topics such as marriage, lust, ethics, and death (Roorda killed himself in 1925 at 54 years old). Suicide is an interesting subject to me. Admittedly, I wasn't immediately grasped by this text, but once I fell in with Roorda's rhythms, I couldn't let go. Here are a few lines that were brilliant. 

"I understood the importance of the role of money in modern society belatedly. Now I know. When I enter one of the magnificent banks recently constructed in Lausanne, I feel a sacred emotion; I am in the temple of the living religion. There are no hypocrites among the faithful whom I encounter there: none of them doubts that his god is all-powerful." 

"Very poor, very honest people are undernourished beings. Watch them: their souls radiate no warmth. They are nourished just enough to be able to continue. Besides, that is the only thing that society demands of them. I imagine the faces the rich would make if the poor made a habit of killing themselves to shorten their gray existences. They would surely say that it is immoral. And what wouldn't they do to keep their prisoners from escaping!"

Roorda also points out how hard it is to change career path or to divorce if one is poor. People just continue to live their lives, no matter how miserable, no matter how impossible it is to escape the misery. As true today as 100 years ago when this was written.

"But in the vast majority of cases, marriage is a link that causes suffering. Two people "who are made for each other" are not necessarily made to live together, from morning until night and from night until morning, for forty years straight. Because they are endowed with sensitivity and imagination (by the simple fact that they are alive), man and woman are unable to obey the representative of the state who tells them, "From now on, your feelings must not change."

Towards the end, we realize that Roorda seems to have been driven mad by his questioning mind.

"Man is condemned to sorrow because he has imagination, because he thinks, because he abandoned his animal nature."

"Am I unhappy, or do the hopeless words that I say to myself make me think that I am? It is impossible for us to distinguish our real pains from our imaginary ones. Which is real? Which is not?"

Wrote Descartes: "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." Roorda seemed to pay the ultimate price for such intense levels of doubt. As always with the topic of suicide (or mental illness, drug abuse, depression, etc.) and art is to ask: is it worth the life of a human being for a moment of brilliance? Would the world be a better place if these tortoured souls could be helped, healed, to become "normal?" Then again, Roorda admits that his friends did try to help him, and that he resigned to an imminent death that should not be delayed more than necessary.

Whew. Welp. On that note. If you haven't read Asymptote yet, get on it! There's so much variety of topics and ideas, from so many different cultures and eras.