Two Lines 15: Strange Harbors
Fall 2008
Out of Print
His walk was the same, although perhaps a little slower than before, his large waist had not much thickened, but it was his stocky silhouette, and above all his immaculate white guyabera which gave him away, even from behind.
—from “The Snares of History” by Georges Anglade, translated from the French by Joseph Berganza
We tell ourselves it’s universal, storytelling. It is—except what it is a storyteller tells isn’t always and everywhere the same thing. Reading stories in translation, one soon begins to wonder, “What is a story?”
One might as well ask, “What is love?” We think it universal. We think we know what others mean when they use the word. But reading translated stories about love, who can keep from asking, “Can this be love, the thing the story—if it is a story— talks about?”
We concede we do not always understand ideas. What makes us think we understand emotions any better? —JOHN BIGUENET
Table of Contents
Poetry
The Two Small Black Hands of the Clock | If I Became
Translated from Bengali by Jordan Mills Pleasant and Devadatta Joardar
Parting from Semba | At Semba's Shore
Translated from Latvian by Inara Cedrins
Railroad Sunset, 1929 | Cape Cod Evening, 1939
Translated from Catalan by Lawrence Venuti
The Stain | The Canine Sense of Smell | Newton's Orange: Gravity
By Ewa Lipska
Translated from Polish by Margret Grebowicz
Metamorphosis
Translated from Spanish by Wendy Burk
Island | The Boatman
Translated from Gaelic by Ivy Porpotage
A Cross of Candles
Translated from Spanish by Elizabeth Gamble Miller
Edgard's Lessons: 24
Translated from French by Douglas Basford
With Your Voice | Done with the City
Translated from Turkish by Cunda Translation Workshop
Coffee Grinds: Three | Coffee Grinds: Twenty | The Poem of Dust
Translated from Turkish by Murat Nemet-Nejat
Fiction
A Manuscript of Ashes
Translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman
Four Children, Two Dogs and Some Birds
Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Vilnius Poker
Translated from Lithuanian by Elizabeth Novickas
Our Years of Beauty
Translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter
Paradise
Translated from Spanish by Michael Henry Heim