The Circles of Pain: Translating and Re-writing Nora Iuga
“Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him:
a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him.”
Blaise Pascal
The Comet in the Butcher Shop: VII
by Nora Iuga (The Heart Like a Boxer’s Fist, 1982), tr. Diana Manole
the cigarette burns out
I must go to sleep I’m sending you a letter
you won’t understand a word of it
the start of a church
electrocutes the entire Renaissance
I wish I could save humankind
but the whale got too close
I was hopping on one leg
throwing stones into the wrinkles
of a sleeping nun
a while ago I studied at a school
run by nuns
since then my dialogue
with its run-down colours
has started
I wished for a cello
that was the perfect coffin
for a fifteen year-old soul
and the comet fell
onto the butcher shop
A Coffee and a Smoke
by Diana Manole, to Nora Iuga
Every morning I wake up craving
a little coffee and a smoke
but doctors forbade me both decades ago.
I listened.
I take a long breath and add the nicotine
to it in my mind. I wash it down with
small sips of my night-flavoured saliva,
blood pressure rising just enough to
start my morning routine.
I feed the cat. Water the flowers.
I change all the light bulbs in my apartment
to be sure I won’t find myself
in the dark at night. I make macaroni
with breadcrumbs. Cheese’s also out
for me. When I finally sit at my writing desk
I’m so tired I can’t understand
my own thoughts.
Words lie down on the page by themselves,
empathizing.
The heart like a boxer’s fist: VII
by Nora Iuga (The Heart Like a Boxer’s Fist, 1982), tr. Diana Manole
he sits quietly in the armchair
and I love him
there was a coffee-coloured bird
that kept bumping into the walls
on the pillow between our heads
an oil lamp had spilt
I was wondering
who was going to strike the first match
and whose hair would burn first
two cubes of sugar
a slice of lemon
some hoarseness some irony
a diving helmet hidden under the winter coat
hello, sir
hello, ma’am
the scissors clattered
and one more nail fell off
and one more little bone fell off
the days got longer
the nights got shorter
and out of sleep there came
a caroler
a reciter
an ass-kisser
how long has the earth been running
how long have we borne with each other
how long
have the walnut kernels and the brain and the bed
had two hemispheres
not quite identical
He sits quietly in the armchair
and I love him
From Wall to Wall
by Diana Manole, to Nora Iuga
On the eastern wall
I drew the map of Europe with a marker.
I stuck a sewing pin
in each of the cities where I fell in love.
No, I didn’t tell the men.
I didn’t want to bother them. Some were
married, others were dead, but most of them
didn’t speak Romanian. In the last couple
of years I’ve been feeling quite lonely. Every
morning I turn the pins
counterclockwise
and all the men I’ve ever loved show up
in my living room. They hold hands
and start dancing the hora in a circle
also counterclockwise.
Even Nietzsche is with them, but I know he feels
beholden to me, not love-stricken.
What a fool! I’ve never mixed love and
translations, I did them for the money,
his book was no exception.
Around noon, they stop dancing exhausted
and look at me
with the eyes of a dog begging for a walk.
I understand. I let them go about their business.
I go to the western wall. On this one I didn’t
draw anything. I left it blank.
I stand in front of the wall and start twirling around,
but clockwise. From time to time
my shadow resembles a map—
I assume it’s the map of all the places where
some men fell in love with me and I keep waiting
to be called out to the hora.
Diana Manole is a Romanian-Canadian scholar and literary translator, and the award-winning author of nine books of poetry and drama in her home country. She has translated or co-translated seven poetry collections, including Nora Iuga’s The Hunchbacks’ Bus (Bitter Oleander Press, 2016), which was longlisted for the American Literary Translators Association’s 2017 National Translation Award in Poetry. Diana’s next collection of poems, Praying to an Immigrant God, will be published by Grey Borders Books in 2020.
Nora Iuga (1931–) is one of Romania’s most important and original poets. Her first collection of poems, It Isn’t My Fault, was published in 1968. Her second book, The Circle’s Captivity (1970) was accused by Communist censors of disseminating ‘morbid eroticism,’ and as a result Iuga was banned from publishing. Between 1971 and 1978, her books were withdrawn from public libraries and bookstores in Romania. Since her debut, she has published seven books of prose and 19 collections of poems, including the award-winning Opinions on Pain (1980) and, most recently, Next to the Road (2019). Iuga is also an acclaimed translator of over thirty books by German-language authors.
