Mustafa Ziyalan
Lightning
I was reading once again the seminal essay of Murat Nemet-Nejat, Questions of Accent[1]:
“The true power of language, its well of inspiration, for me, lie in its conscious or unconscious errors, cracks, imperfections. I am a poet, an
American poet, because I have a defective ear. And, first lesson: this defect is the source of my possible talents and their limitations.”
I thought it could not be a mere coincidence that I met him in New York of all places. In that essay he writes, “I am not Turkish. I am Jewish.” In Turkey anyone who is not Turkish, Sunni Muslim, male and heterosexual is part of a minority, I think. That authentically marginal position is one of the qualities that enable him to relate to a “range of poetries”[2] uniquely and radically.
The following is part of what I read as a panel presentation at Bosporus University, Istanbul, years ago:
“Being comfortable with a text is never easy for me; it is even harder in a multilingual realm. There, a signifier may reveal exponentially more
or many signifiers may imply surprisingly close clusters of signifieds. On the one hand, ways of rendering something in writing are enriched, on the other hand, this richness is obscured by abundance; wealth of meaning is dispersed -or honed- to the point of invisibility, silence,
outright choking."
Considering the way, say, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann and the likes went, I cannot help feeling the possibility that trying to exist in more languages than one is as close to being multilingual as to being non-lingual.
Murat Nemet-Nejat overcomes this delicate, perilous state of things by actively creating a multilingual realm, in fact a vortex, where languages almost collide. In some ways his translations of my poetry can be viewed as picking bones, the bones of the text. By doing so, on a more visible level, he eviscerates the more obscure, the more remotely possible. But the skeleton he picks, reveals and eventually constructs also opens up the text; it does that by pointing out, or even creating links to other texts, languages, almost in a digital/hypertextual way. In a broader sense, languages are brought into contact, if not into impact. Not unlike my translations (from myself and others), his translations have been changing the way I relate to my own poetry. They ultimately remind me of the fact that every translation is an interpretation, a possibility among many which may justify more than one version, and they make me believe, to radically paraphrase Frost, that poetry is found in translation.
Then, I went ahead and translated one of his poems. Into what language? Well, honestly, I don't know exactly. I had to build on the interface of the spoken and the written; I ultimately had to invent the target language to some degree, I think. Was it turning the tables on him? I don't think so. It was rather an attempt to sit at the same table with him.”
At that presentation from years ago I was talking about the poem An/kara: My Kind Hearted Step Mother.[3] The poem is both in English and Turkish. Yet, it cannot be considered to be a mixture of those two languages in certain percentages.
(This reminds me of my experience with an editor of a literary periodical published in Europe: He wanted to know if my writing was originally written in English or first written in Turkish and then translated into English; he was very particular about it. The more he pressed, the more I realized that this wasn't an easy question for me. Some poems were written in English, some in Turkish and some others were the result of conscious and not so conscious, if unconscious, translation processes between at least two languages. It was hard for me to say precisely what was written first in what language and translated into what language, when, in what sequence, to what degree.)
So, Translating An/kara: My Kind Hearted Step Mother (“Into what language?”) was not about reversing the words or languages. I was to do what I mentioned above as something I saw in Murat Nemet-Nejat’s translations: I was going to “actively create a multilingual realm, in fact a vortex, where languages almost collided” and “to build on the interface of the spoken and the written; I ultimately had to invent the target language.”
Then, I was not surprised to see the poem in Io’s Song, Murat Nemet-Nejat’s book of poems that came out in 2019. It perhaps meant that his poetry was coming full circle in some ways. In a number of ways it is a magnificent display of his writing. It moves. It is centrifugal. It is is kaleidoscopic. It reminds me of a collage. It reminds me of film editing. Of course, it cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. It is like being shot at with a wunderbuss.
But then, movement is central here, I think. The movement is jagged. It takes attention and effort to follow it, to catch up with it. Actually, that is how he makes a point in person. He gestures. His strikes are sharp and deep.
As you can already tell, he is my friend. I haven’t seen him in a while.
I remember him standing on a sidewalk and moving his hands, arms and body to make his point. Almost like a fighter. So, it may or may not be of any relevance at the end of the day, but (or course!) his writing incorporates him, too.
And, that is my image of the man and his writing: non-linear, jagged, like lightning.
[1]The essay can be accessed at http://ziyalan.com/marmara/murat_nemet_nejat3.html
[2]A phrase borrowed from Jerome Rothenberg.
[3]The poem can be accessed at
http://www.thedreamingmachine.com/writing-in-the-crack-between-two-languages-aritra-sanyal-interviews-murat-nemet-nejat/
I was reading once again the seminal essay of Murat Nemet-Nejat, Questions of Accent[1]:
“The true power of language, its well of inspiration, for me, lie in its conscious or unconscious errors, cracks, imperfections. I am a poet, an
American poet, because I have a defective ear. And, first lesson: this defect is the source of my possible talents and their limitations.”
I thought it could not be a mere coincidence that I met him in New York of all places. In that essay he writes, “I am not Turkish. I am Jewish.” In Turkey anyone who is not Turkish, Sunni Muslim, male and heterosexual is part of a minority, I think. That authentically marginal position is one of the qualities that enable him to relate to a “range of poetries”[2] uniquely and radically.
The following is part of what I read as a panel presentation at Bosporus University, Istanbul, years ago:
“Being comfortable with a text is never easy for me; it is even harder in a multilingual realm. There, a signifier may reveal exponentially more
or many signifiers may imply surprisingly close clusters of signifieds. On the one hand, ways of rendering something in writing are enriched, on the other hand, this richness is obscured by abundance; wealth of meaning is dispersed -or honed- to the point of invisibility, silence,
outright choking."
Considering the way, say, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann and the likes went, I cannot help feeling the possibility that trying to exist in more languages than one is as close to being multilingual as to being non-lingual.
Murat Nemet-Nejat overcomes this delicate, perilous state of things by actively creating a multilingual realm, in fact a vortex, where languages almost collide. In some ways his translations of my poetry can be viewed as picking bones, the bones of the text. By doing so, on a more visible level, he eviscerates the more obscure, the more remotely possible. But the skeleton he picks, reveals and eventually constructs also opens up the text; it does that by pointing out, or even creating links to other texts, languages, almost in a digital/hypertextual way. In a broader sense, languages are brought into contact, if not into impact. Not unlike my translations (from myself and others), his translations have been changing the way I relate to my own poetry. They ultimately remind me of the fact that every translation is an interpretation, a possibility among many which may justify more than one version, and they make me believe, to radically paraphrase Frost, that poetry is found in translation.
Then, I went ahead and translated one of his poems. Into what language? Well, honestly, I don't know exactly. I had to build on the interface of the spoken and the written; I ultimately had to invent the target language to some degree, I think. Was it turning the tables on him? I don't think so. It was rather an attempt to sit at the same table with him.”
At that presentation from years ago I was talking about the poem An/kara: My Kind Hearted Step Mother.[3] The poem is both in English and Turkish. Yet, it cannot be considered to be a mixture of those two languages in certain percentages.
(This reminds me of my experience with an editor of a literary periodical published in Europe: He wanted to know if my writing was originally written in English or first written in Turkish and then translated into English; he was very particular about it. The more he pressed, the more I realized that this wasn't an easy question for me. Some poems were written in English, some in Turkish and some others were the result of conscious and not so conscious, if unconscious, translation processes between at least two languages. It was hard for me to say precisely what was written first in what language and translated into what language, when, in what sequence, to what degree.)
So, Translating An/kara: My Kind Hearted Step Mother (“Into what language?”) was not about reversing the words or languages. I was to do what I mentioned above as something I saw in Murat Nemet-Nejat’s translations: I was going to “actively create a multilingual realm, in fact a vortex, where languages almost collided” and “to build on the interface of the spoken and the written; I ultimately had to invent the target language.”
Then, I was not surprised to see the poem in Io’s Song, Murat Nemet-Nejat’s book of poems that came out in 2019. It perhaps meant that his poetry was coming full circle in some ways. In a number of ways it is a magnificent display of his writing. It moves. It is centrifugal. It is is kaleidoscopic. It reminds me of a collage. It reminds me of film editing. Of course, it cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. It is like being shot at with a wunderbuss.
But then, movement is central here, I think. The movement is jagged. It takes attention and effort to follow it, to catch up with it. Actually, that is how he makes a point in person. He gestures. His strikes are sharp and deep.
As you can already tell, he is my friend. I haven’t seen him in a while.
I remember him standing on a sidewalk and moving his hands, arms and body to make his point. Almost like a fighter. So, it may or may not be of any relevance at the end of the day, but (or course!) his writing incorporates him, too.
And, that is my image of the man and his writing: non-linear, jagged, like lightning.
[1]The essay can be accessed at http://ziyalan.com/marmara/murat_nemet_nejat3.html
[2]A phrase borrowed from Jerome Rothenberg.
[3]The poem can be accessed at
http://www.thedreamingmachine.com/writing-in-the-crack-between-two-languages-aritra-sanyal-interviews-murat-nemet-nejat/