The Uprooted: Cristina Peri Rossi. Megan Berkobien, translator.
This absence of roots gives them a characteristic feature in their looks: a tonality, celestial and waterlike, elusive, as someone who instead of nourishing himself strongly by his roots–adhered to the past and the land–floats in a vague and imprecise space.
Grandmother: Božena Němcová. Emma Claire Foley, translator.
Now she dreaded going out unless she couldn’t avoid it, so she would be relieved from those eyes that pursued her everywhere, if only for a moment. Music no longer made her happy, with that gloomy face always watching her from some corner of the sitting room; she was no longer as happy to go to spinning parties, for she knew for sure that if he was not standing in the room, he would be standing outside at the window, and the girl’s voice would stick in her throat, and her thread would break. She was tormented. Everyone saw a change in her, but no one thought the cavalryman could be to blame.
The Lover’s Sentence: Victor-Émile Michelet. Liz Medendorp, translator.
Halida, along with the other young girls, prepared the objects that would reveal her destiny. The others had come out of the water and were lying down on the shore. They carried small baskets that held eggs and stumps of candles. Halida took an egg, poured the whites on a stone, and pronounced an incantation. She then planted a candle stump in the eggshell.
The Masked Ball: Alexandre Dumas. Anastasia Klimchynskaya, translator.
The music started playing. Oh! And then..! These strange creatures started moving at the sound of the orchestra, whose harmonies reached me mingled with cries, laughs and shouts; these figures clung to each other’s hands, arms, necks; a long circle formed itself, beginning with a circular movement, the dancers tapping their feet, making the dust, whose tiny particles were rendered visible by the bright chandeliers, spurt into the air; turning in their growing speed with bizarre postures, obscene gestures and shouts full of debauchery...
Selam Berlin: Yadé Kara. Marisa Gies, translator.
Baba had two lives, two women, three sons in a city with two systems, two ideologies, two city halls, one language, one climate, and one wall. Ha—it couldn’t have been better. That’s how we all lived next to each other without knowing anything about the other. For decades. He’d devised it all beautifully neatly, Baba had. Only one catch—the Wall fell—it crumbled on Mama, Ediz, and me!
Fragments: Sappho et al. Matthew Pfaff, translator.
your lips smelled like wine, / and Desire led you by the fingers / since you trembled with old age / and you took your garland down / to give me – / (the flowers, Anacreon, / they smelled like you) / Idiot me, I lifted it / and set it on my brow, / and from then, even now, / I haven’t held myself back / from desire.
“The Tale of Hercules and Cacus” The Aeneid: Virgil. Ben King, translator.
The cave and palace of the beast / Lie now exposed, now fully breached. / If earth itself by force were cleft, / Revealing seats of souls bereft, / Hell’s sallow sector scorned on high, / Where shades recoil from sudden light, / No less did Cacus now withdraw / And bellow, trapped within the maw.
“Philemon and Baucis” Metamorphoses: Ovid. Sarah Kunjummen, translator.
And that, even among mortals, / Some live sweet-rooted, / Changing their clothing / With the seasons, / And learn to bend their bodies to / The winds, the demands / Of ivy and neighbouring trees, / But others / Throw themselves / Down like lightning, / Forking away, / Though the place / Had seemed exactly right, / Driven on by the smallest spurs, / The winds, the shuttling mercury, / The weight of water in the air.
