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Do you feel the weight? Do you sense the wall your words have been hitting? Does it feel that by writing, by choosing to express yourselves through the written word you have become a prisoner of your language? And by “your language” we mean both the language of the land you happened to be born in, and your own particular code, the system of communication you have developed. Yes, the first one can certainly be viewed as a wall separating one from that universal eversought understanding. Literature unlike most arts comes with built-in restrictions, literature is the process of constructing language through language, sort of like fighting fire with fire, or having a drink of water while drowning. But the second one, your language, what does it look like? Is it a hole in the wall big enough to press your mouth against? Or do you press your ear against it? If the plethora of tongues is a gift from God, we present you with a Promethean task: it is our contention that there is only one literature, and that one literature exists in many languages, thus it is a duty of every writer to make use of more than just the language he/she was born into, yes, you need at least two, one to employ in the expression, one to work on the understanding - because you can’t have what you haven’t worked for, and the simple fact is expression without understanding is a one-winged bird. So here’s our double dare to you - yes, we’d like to see more work from all of you, but we’d like you to reach for the work of others as well and bring it closer to those whose understanding you’re looking for. We’d like you to open and open to the new channels of communication, to turn incomprehensible into accessible, draw distant nearer, make foreign familiar. In other words - translate! Let’s make every writer responsible for international communication which means that every writer should be a translator as well. Only by reaching towards other languages can one transcend from that langue-centric shell within which egocentric monologuism pollutes the free creation. Writers should feel obliged to translate other writers thus making that one literature alive, worldwide. Collaboration means treating the other as a partner, as the essential part of oneself. Translation presupposes collaboration in its definition. A world in which translation is treated equally as creative writing is a world of dialogue. A world of dialogue as the overspread mode of expression is a world of hope. NG&OR |
AdmitTwo, No. 4, March, 2005.
Fiction:
by Gail Davis & Eric S. Brown
"The house itself sat upon a small hill. Its outer walls were covered with wildly growing ivy that was actively picking its way under the peeling paint and taking root in the very shingles of the siding. It had a haunted air that sent a shiver down the spine but it was better than sleeping on the ground out in the cold any day."
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Fiction:
The
Work Of Art In The Age Of Digital Reproduction (part
three)
"In
the evening I went with several Russians to the sea. It was glowing
crystal blue. I took my shoes off and walked into the cold waters, a
large black dog splashing circles all about me."
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Poetry & Art:
five pieces from "Nutritional Feed": by Shin Yu Pai & David Lukowski
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Essay:
(or by Natalija Grgorinic & Ognjen Raden
"A
pair can, in return, be defined as a group consisting of any two persons,
complete with their separate identities, working on the development of their
mutual, third identity. A pair is that only unit of the society in which an
individual represents a majority. There can be no pair where there is dominance
of one individual over the other, of one sex over the other. A pair as an active
social unit is possible only in a society in which both sexes, and all persons
have equal rights.
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