Signs to The Abyss

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In Yuri Herrera’s novel Signs Preceding the End of the World, there is one word in particular that carries the weight of the novel. Makina, the main character of the story walks through vast landscapes to reach the one thing that people today cross borders for. Makina crosses the Mexican border to reach her brother. When Herrera writes, “She’d been asking after her brother around the edges of the abyss” (Herrera), we know that Makina is traveling through a kind of hell to reach a family member.  Despite all the darkness and violence that Makina is surrounded by she stops at nothing by traveling through an abyss to see a family member. Just like those today trying to reach family members on the other side of the border, Makina is determined to make something happen by traveling through an abyss.

 

Another instance when the author refers to the word, abyss in the novel is when he writes, “but the breadth of that abyss and the clean cut of its walls didn’t correspond to the modest exertion of the machines” (Herrera). This is right after when Makina, “cleaves her way through the cold on her own” (Herrera), which we can almost connect to Dante’s last circle of Hell, in which Dante had to travel through a frozen lake to get to the last circle, whereas with Makina, she travels through cold as well finally reaching her brother in the last stage of her travels. Maybe Makina’s travels weren’t as horrific as Dante’s travels, but the fact that Makina also traveled through cold during the final stage of her journey, creates an interesting metaphor for having to journey through an abyss.

 

 

 

Sheep in Cheap Clothing

“The Dystopian Novel That Foresaw the Nightmares of Socialism.” Learn Liberty, http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/the-dystopian-novel-that-foresaw-the-nightmares-of-socialism/.

In Dystopian worlds there is the usual death, destruction, and revolution. In Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s dystopian novel, Utopia, there is most definitely death, destruction, a little revolution, and unfortunately too much rape. Why does rape have to be normalized in dystopian novels? When humanity finally reaches its end will human life really turn into its worst nightmare?

 

There is a particular image that Towfik illustrates in his novel that sets up the significant binary discourse between the rich and the poor. The poor are demonstrated as the prey being tormented by the rich because of their isolation, who are the wolves of the novel. The wolves being the people from the city of Utopia. For instance when one of the less fortunate characters named Gaber, tells to the main narrator who remains nameless, “I don’t trust any oath you people take since you deal with with us as if we were subhuman. And you lie to us with the ease of someone lying to sheep” (Towfik 134), we know that the author is demonstrating that there is a major critique that when the time comes for the world to burn the poorest may not do so well. That those who are fortunate will let the sheep fend for themselves the way in which Gaber in the novel does for himself and his sister.

 

Another image that Towfik makes clear in the novel is that the women are the sheep being preyed upon by the vile wolves who can’t control themselves. Towfik and other dystopian writers have uniformly demonstrated that if you’re a woman or poor, those who are in power always win. There is an unfortunate normalization in fiction that when parts of the world has gone to its worst, the lesser, or in Towfik’s case, the sheep have been overcome by the wolves who symbolize the rich in Towfik’s novel. Are the lesser in dysoptian novels bound to always get the short end of the stick because those on top will never see those that are less fortunate anything than other? Towfik certainly makes sure of it in his novel.   That those who are less than will be treated as subhumans. 

Lost in Wei’s Translation

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A translation should never lose or infuriate the reader because of its inaccuracy. When translating a different language, a translator should hold their own ego and try to be as accurate as possible so the reader can follow the sense of the poem or the story that is being demonstrated in the poem as much as possible. In Weinberger’s 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Weinberger illustrates when different translators try to express Wang Wei’s poetry in separate distinctive ways that show how some translators should avoid trying too hard to be unique with their translation. Translators should not translate with, “lack of sense” as if, “through a haze of opium reflected in a hundred thimbles of wine” (Weinberger). Rather than try to get too fancy with a translation, maybe stick with clear accuracy as much as possible so it doesn’t sound as if it came from the head of pompous New Critic who refuses to write a particular way.  

 

While translation can always have different meanings and interpretations, Weinberger cleverly tells us that not all translations need to have a twist that takes the reader away from the poem. “A bad translation is the insistent voice of the translator -that is, when one sees no poet and hears only translator speaking” (Weinberger). When the translator decides to go on their trip of egocentric translation, the reader has lost their sense of the poetry and lost the feel of spiturality that is supposed to be felt in Wang Wei’s poetry.