Asymptote

Fiction Daily has just picked up a story of ours to feature! Jonas
Hassen Khemiri’s “Only in New York” was run in our July issue. Read it here again!”

If you want what visible reality
can give, you’re an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.

translated from the Persian by Coleman Barks

SN

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

translated from the Persian by Coleman Barks

SN

63
Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! 
 One thing at least is certain—This Life flies: 
 One thing is certain and the rest is lies;
 The Flower that once is blown for ever dies.
64
 Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
 Before us pass’d the door of Darkness through
 Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
 Which to discover we must travel too.
65
 The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d
 Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn’d,
 Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep
 They told their fellows, and to Sleep return’d.
66
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
 Some letter of that After-life to spell:
 And by and by my Soul return’d to me,
 And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell :”
67
 Heav’n but the Vision of fulfill’d Desire,
 And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on fire,
 Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
 So late emerg’d from, shall so soon expire.

translated from the Persian by Edward Fitzgerald

SN

After a recommendation from the marvelous @alexanderchee I just read a marvelous graphic novel translated from the French. You can read the whole thing here (righthand corner).

From the website:

The 32 pages of “Émile” were drawn in 1999, at the time of the publication of the third volume of his ’Journal’ (of which he makes a passing mention in the story). Events were drawn as they occurred and consequently there is much less detachment than in the volumes of his ’Journal’ ; but the lucidity of the author remains intact and just as impressive as ever.

The purity of the art and page composition of Fabrice Neaud is totally realized in this story. The solitude in these pages is nearly total ; there is little human warmth, even in his encounters with others : a great emptiness echoes throughout. The author is doubtful of the virtues of “sublimation” that are generally attributed to works of art. He draws the trees and familiar paths of his everyday strolls ; scenery roughed up by the famous storm of 1999, which occurs in the course of the account.

Since the third volume of his ’Journal’, we’ve become acquainted with Fabrice Neaud’s talent for constructing books of an impressive structure that give meaning to the slightest moments of a life. By its concision, this account finds another astonishing path for making the voice of its author heard. So unique and moving, “Émile” is a truly beautiful achievement.

Translation by Travis Lealand, with the help of the collaborative comics translation website comixinflux.
Thanks to them !

FD

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith’s forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you that put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

— Anonymous

(an Irish ballad from the eighth century, translated by Lady Augusta Gregory)

FD