LOVING EMILY

by Milena Abrahamyan

I am being haunted by Emily Dickinson. She says things like death makes you not see and I could not see to see. Her voice is so quiet and soft I confuse it with the wind or the dull buzzing of a bee.

When I open my eyes the room is dark. She is sleeping next to me. Her body is evaporated poetry. Her breath is snow. It fills the room.

»»  ««

I dream I am making love to her. She has her white nightgown on. I move my hand up to her breast and she says you can never have what you have. My hand hesitates to grasp the tender flesh. I balance myself on top of her and carefully take her face in my hands. She looks nothing like I had expected. Her face is simple, her chestnut hair is light and soft. It almost feels unreal between my fingers.

 She looks at me but I cannot be sure who she is looking at. Her eyes hold a childish glare, but there is something else there. Some kind of light behind her eyes. Perhaps immortality.

I bring my mouth close to her ear. She is all goose-bumps. I whisper, “please, I am so hungry.” Her lips barely move when she replies, Hunger is a way of persons outside windows that entering takes away.

I don’t understand this game she is playing. I grow silent and shift my body off of hers. She is cold and alive next to me, refusing to be seduced.

The plenty hurt me, she carries on. We are laying side by side now, facing the ceiling. We are only in a room. It is only night. This cannot be that overwhelming. Besides, she is dead. Nothing can hurt her now.

I many times thought peace had come when peace was far way, she speaks.

She must be listening to the thoughts I am having. Or I must be hallucinating. But then I realize that I am in the midst of a dream. And I shake myself out of sleep.

»»  ««

Emily is sitting on a chair facing the window. It is a moonless night. She is humming to herself. I get out of bed and slowly move toward her. As I get closer and closer I can hear the words she is mumbling, seam by seam, and could not make them fit. She doesn’t stir at the sight of me. Am I the ghost haunting her? Is that why she doesn’t see me? But then she turns to face me with a look of horror in her eyes.

I am all dashes! she cries.

Right away, I’m by her side. I take her head in my hands as if to protect her mind. I am all dashes! she repeats with desperate tears streaming out of her eyes.

The thought behind . . . I strove to join unto the thought before, she speaks cautiously. She looks out through the window as if the thoughts that have rolled out of her mouth are alive in the corners of the night.

I rock her body back and forth. She is stiff as someone in the throes of squeezing into the universe. As if she is the thing that caused the Gap. I think about giants and gnats and envision a question to ask her, but find that the question refuses to take on form.

The crying is gone now and she is breathing lightly. The snow from her breath collects on my shoulders. I take her frozen hand in mine and move toward the bed. I lay her down and cover her up with blankets. She says, Narcotics cannot still the Tooth That nibbles at the soul.

On the other side of the room I am collecting the snow in paper bags. I am not worried about it melting. There is something constant about this snow that comes out of the atmosphere of her lungs.

After I finish and there is not a trace of white left I get into bed with her. I bring extra blankets. Her eyes are closed and at peace.

»»  ««

I am pushed out of sleep by her screams.

Dying! Dying in the night! 

Won’t somebody bring the light 

So I can see which way to go 

Into everlasting snow?

She is hysterical, clutching at the air.

I bring her chamomile tea and lavender. She is inconsolable yet composed. Her body is shaking even with all the blankets I have put around her.

We stay up late into the night. She doesn’t say another word. There is only the sound of distant bells accompanying the deadly silence that has befallen the night. Emily falls asleep in my arms.

»»  ««

I awake in a grave. It is dark as night. Emily is next to me. She says, I can see thee better in the Dark. But I cannot see her. Only her voice is visible. She sounds happier, or relieved. I can’t tell which. She seems at peace.

And the snow is gone.

ՇԱՐԺԵԼՈՎ ՍԱՐԵՐԸ #2

ՏԱՐՕՐԻՆԱԿԵԼՈՎ ԱԶԱՏԸ

Chère L

J’ouvre encore une fois l’album posé en dessous du lit. Les photos de nous deux semblent d’un autre siècle.

Les pages jaunies en quelques années témoignent de l’éphémère réalité de notre rencontre impromptue.

Tout existait dans nos têtes. Rien n’existait en dehors. La rue ne reconnaît plus nos étreintes. Les vielles femmes aigries repoussent au coup de leur balai matinal les dernières traces de notre existence scandaleuse.   

Tout s’arrêtera un jour. Je n’existerai plus, toi non plus.

Existerait uniquement cette collection de photos jaunies, prises clandestinement; toi, dans toute ta nudité et moi, complètement prise de ton odeur, de la sensibilité insolite de tes épaules dégarnies.

Le petit café, rue Saryan ne nous attend plus, depuis longtemps déjà.

Yesayan a quitté le pays, elle ne circule plus entre nous. Elle s’est reposée quelque part entre la rue Apovyan et Nalbandyan.

Le dernier calice s’est répandu avant le temps. 

La musique ne m’apaise plus.

Silencieuse et concentrée, Je rase mes jambes. Frissonnante dans cette salle de bain soviétique, au carrelage bleu, où un bac d’eau est suspendu au plafond en dessus de ma tête. Je déteste ces rasoirs roses pour femmes qui mutilent, qui font saigner.  J’essaye de me décider si je remonte au dessus des genoux ou je me contente d’éliminer les poils des demi-jambes.

Tout n’est pas perdu. Tout dépend de ce qu’on arrive à transmettre à travers les écrits et ces lettres que personne ne lit. Il faut déchiffrer entre les lignes pour comprendre toute l’histoire.  S’arrêter sur chaque page, retenir son souffle pour ne pas manquer les détails,

revenir sur chaque paragraphe,

changer la place des mots,

alterner les ponctuations.

décortiquer le sens.

L'histoire apparaît à ce moment, unique et personnelle.

Une histoire qui dérange. Une histoire qui change les normes du jeu.

Une histoire qui laisse perplexe.

Les poils accumulés sur les lames du rasoir rose acheté au marché Nor Zovq à moitié prix, connaissent bien la sensation incontrôlable et unique de ce toucher étrange;

ce toucher qui brule, qui dérange, qui émeut, qui fait saigner, mais impossible à rassasier

ce toucher ébranlable,

ce toucher singulier, impromptu,

tant attendu dans l’intimité de nos étreintes interdites,

ce toucher qui fait vaciller, qui fait chuchoter, qui fait vivre pour un petit instant.

Je remets l’album à sa place, en dessous du lit. Tant de choses amassées, visibles et invisibles à travers les années, entassées sous ce lit.

Je ne reconnaît plus mon visage dans le reflet de la vitre de la salle de bain.

Je n’ai plus envie de ramasser autour de moi, de faire le ménage. Mon lit demeure inchangé depuis les  dernières étreintes imaginées. Imprégné de cet odeur familier qui feint de disparaître. Je n’ose pas trop bouger les couvertures pour ne pas perdre les miettes, les débris des corps absents.

Mon lit est une longue lamentation.

Le voisin d’en bas ne réalise pas la lourdeur de la tristesse suspendue en dessus de sa tête.

Un jour le plafond va céder sous le poids de ce chagrin immense et tout se répandra complètement et scandaleusement sur celle, en dessous, qui n’est au courant de rien. Elle subira les conséquences comme subit un passant un coup au hasard dans la rue, dans cette ville où la répression est grande. 

Je tiens cette fragilité dans la paume de mes mains.

Avec la pointe du rasoir ensanglanté, je dessine à l’intérieur de mes jambes la carte de nos vies; une série d’unions et de séparations clandestines. L’étang de sang s’élargit sur le carrelage bleu de ce parterre si froid. Je ferme les yeux et savoure pour un moment la brulure. L'exaltante sensation d’exister encore. Les larmes coulent sans prévenir. La douleur me mène doucement à l’orgasme, j’éjacule.

Légèrement je m’étends sur le carrelage humide de sang, de larme et de secrétions vaginales.

Je referme l’album de famille.

Je relève doucement la couverture jusqu’à mes épaules.

Je rêve de ce jour où ta lettre finira bientôt par arriver à mon adresse. J’attends encore. J’espère seulement que je serai là pour l’ouvrir.

Je ferme les yeux pour mieux ajuster les différentes réalités qui m’aliènent et afin de reprendre le souffle pour encore vivre un bout de temps, malgré l’envie qui manque et la douleur qui courbe.

J’attends.

B.

ՇԱՐԺԵԼՈՎ ՍԱՐԵՐԸ #1

ԱՐԻ ԻՄ ՍՈԽԱԿ

ա ր ի՛, իմ սոխակ! թո՛ղ պարտեզ, մերին,

ՏԱՂԵՐՈՎ խաղ բե՛ր դստրիս աչերին

երբ նա շողում է դու, սոխակ, երգիր.

իմ դստրիկ ԿՈՒԶԵ ստեղծագործ դառնալ։

ե՛կ, ծովածիծառ———թո՛ղ օվկիանոս!

ԹԵՎԵՐ տուր՛ դստրիս , թռիչքի է կարոտ․

միտքն է սավառնում․ թևերի՛ն ուժ տուր,

իմ դստրիկ կուզե ՏԻԵԶԵՐԱԳՆԱՑ դառնալ։

թո՛ղ դու! տատրակի՛կ! քու ձագն ու բունը,

վվվվվով դստրիս բե՛ր ՁԱՅՆԸ․

նա սփռվում է———————տատրակի՛կ!

ԻՄ դստրիկ կուզե նենգորդ (hacker!) ըլլալ։

կաչաղա՛կ ճարպիկ, գող, իմաստասեր,

մտքի զըրուցով դստրիս (երևա)կայությունը բեր!

ՆԱ կառուցում է․ կաչաղա՛կ, կանչի!

իմդստրիկկուԶեգրողդառնալ։

թո՛ղ որսըդ  ! արի՛ ! քաջասի՛րտ ԲԱԶԵ,

ՔՈ երգը գուցցցե իմ դստրիկ կուզե․․․

բազեն որ եկավ` դուստրս կազմվեցավ,

ՏԱՐՕՐԻՆԱԿՈՂ երգերի ձայնով արթընցավ >>>

Dear B

I miss you terribly

These letters are the only truth in my life. I will burn them soon, destroy them one by one, like my grandmother’s testimonies.  I will burn them so they vanish completely from the unbearable reality.

Motherhood is not for me. I hate it. This has never been about love; they lied to me, all of them. It is more about this awful remorse and endless shame. 

I take him in my arms, caress his soft hair; offer him my engorged breasts and cracked nipples, not out of love, but out of guilt. 

I made him; I need to ensure his survival. But do I need to love him?

I look at the bloody marks on my belly. Monsters, I whisper, they are all savage monsters!

Oror, oror, oror…don’t cry please.

the letters are always kept tightly in a small drawer.

the letters are never sent

the recipient is always absent

the sender longing

Hurt, hurt, too much hurt. Unbearable. 

V. will take him away for a while. I can’t stand hearing his cry anymore. She will walk with him in the forest. Oror, oror… and he will sleep there and forget my smell.

The scar on my torn belly is getting too large, too deep

So large that it will soon swallow me completely

Oror, oror, oror

I can’t bear the sight of it.

I can’t bear the sight of me.

L.

judas tree growing in the [fill in yourself] of yerevan | երևանի [լրացրու ինքդ] աճում է հուդայածառ

In and Between the (Re)public
Հանրա(պետության) մեջ և միջև

DOTYK-2016

http://en.dotyk.by/program-of-the-dotyk-2016/

On “Blackselves”

Shushan Avagyan

When I was asked to translate a piece for Absinthe and write a short introduction focusing on the mechanics of translation, I proposed to do something else instead: to submit one of my own texts called “Sevamenq” and write a commentary on the text and its translatability, or perhaps a postscript about deficit. The deficit of faithful translations of Armenian literature in English, the deficit of interest in translation in general in the English-speaking parts of the world, and more abstractly, the deficit of originals and the voids of meaning that are filled in with simulacral effects, as in the case of Aurora Mardiganian’s testimony. So I come to this journal both as a writer and translator, more as a writer who has learned how to write by translating other writers.

“Blackselves” was written between 2006-07 as part of a triptych on displacement co-authored with Nancy Agabian, who wrote her part in English, and Lara Aharonian, who wrote hers in French. It is a fragmentary essay, where nearly every sentence references another text. I was probably interested in putting these fragments in new relationships and constructing a certain intertextuality through allusion, quotation, and referencing that would change the trajectories of the various hypotexts and lead to new links—insights. For instance, the epigraph is taken from Aurora Mardiganian’s testimony, which was orally narrated in her native Armenian, interpreted by so-called “native informants” into English, and transcribed in English by American screenwriter Harvey Gates in 1917. Although Gates didn’t know any Armenian, he appears as the interpreter of the Armenian narrative, which exists only in its translated form. The epigraph that appears in “Sevamenq” is not a back translation from the English text, but a new sentence that passes as a statement by Arshaluys Mardiganian (her signed name), standing as a witness to the ruptures and prostheses out of which Ravished Armenia was born.† And this (in)fidelity to fact, then, is the logic in which “Blackselves” operates, threading disconnected bits of my own recollections of childhood, post-Soviet amnesia, Micheline Marcom’s novel The Daydreaming Boy, a drunken conversation in a pub in Illinois with a man named Beyazit, and so on. These seemingly disparate threads evolve through a recurrent question around the notion of menq or “selves”—which might possibly refer to the authors of the triptych—Agabian, Aharonian and myself. The question of “selves” might also refer to a single construct, such as Marcom’s fictional narrator Vahé Tcheubjian, who is composed of multitudes of voices, all contradicting one another. Or it could refer back to the epigraph, where the word “selves” does not occur, but which can be inferred from the self-mention marker “we”: “Through the long night we waited—for what we did not know.”

But linked with the word sev or “black”—the new compound word “blackselves,” and the entire piece, becomes an extended metaphor of Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge.” In the age of “postmemory” (Marianne Hirsch) we are not drinking black milk anymore, we have completely consum(mat)ed  death, we have naturalized and neutralized grief, we no longer feel the compelling tension between “black” and “milk.” The replacement of “milk” with “selves” in Armenian, written as one word—sevamenq—creates yet another association with the word sevamaghdz (սևամաղձ), which means melancholia, literally—black bile. But this wordplay, of course, is not made explicit and not every reader will make these connections, though Celan is cited in the text. Still, if Celan is lost in the continuity of formation and deformation of meanings, the experimental text allows for another wordplay, which is more explicit and which poses a genuine challenge for the translator. The verb sevagrel or “to draft” would have had a very conventional sense in another text, but it compels a new emphasis, a new perception of drafting—literally, black-writing—when positioned against the backdrop of “blackselves.” And the title of the work itself changes in the light of this verb—to draft, in other words, to be involved in the process of (re)writing the different versions of self, a process that requires resilience, elation, and exuberance. But then, herein lies the difficulty of translation—how to choose which meaning(s) to select from a web of references that construct an elaborate hypertext and how to transmit it/them to the reader, so that the reader doesn’t feel completely lost or overwhelmed? After all, from its very beginnings, Armenian literature has attracted perhaps only two or three Anglo-American readers/translators (George Byron or Alice Stone Blackwell don’t count) who have truly appreciated and seriously engaged with the Armenian letters.‡

† Mardiganian’s narrative was a unique testimony of the Armenian genocide, which was adapted for the silent screen—the first of a number of motion pictures made by the Near East Relief about Armenian survivors. After losing her family and being forced into the death marches, during which she was captured and sold into the slave markets of Anatolia, and after escaping to the United States via Norway, Mardiganian was approached by Gates who proposed to make her story into film. The testimony was published in English language first as Ravished Armenia by Kingfield Press in New York in 1918 and as The Auction of Souls in London by Odhams Press in 1919. It was translated into Armenian as Hokineru achurte [The Auction of Souls] by Mardiros Gushagchian and published in Beirut in 1965. 

‡ I am infinitely grateful to Milena Abrahamyan for her radical generosity and trust in what George Steiner has called “as yet untried, unmapped alterity of statement.” I would not have entrusted the translation of “Sevamenq” to anyone else, including myself.

[Forthcoming in the Spring/Summer 2016 issue of Absinthe: A Journal of World Literature in Translation]