Andes

By Tomaz Salamun

The penultimate work from renowned Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun, Andes was written less than three years before his death in 2014. Together, the poems of Andes are an exceptional and unusual journey that confronts both life and death across diverse continents, peoples, cities, languages, and histories. In his eulogy for Šalamun, the Slovene poet Miklavž Komelj said: “Šalamun achieved this highest level, where the real question regarding his poetry isn’t what someone thinks of it, or if someone likes it or not, but solely, if we are able to endure it or not.” Like life and the human condition itself, these poems are at times challenging but also absurd, celebratory, and ecstatic—and completely worth it. Translators Jeffrey Young and Katarina Vladimirov Young worked closely with Šalamun before his death and render here a translation absolutely faithful to his voice and intention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Ocean
• Release date: May 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781939568564

Tomaz Salamun

Tomaž Šalamun was born in 1941 in Zagreb. He has published over thirty books of poetry and frequently teaches at American universities, including Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Texas.

Book preview

ANDES

TOMAŽ

ŠALAMUN

Andes

by Tomaž Šalamun

Translated by Jeffrey Young and Katarina Vladimirov Young

Translation © 2016 by Jeffrey Young, Katarina Vladimirov Young, and Tomaž Šalamun

Introduction © 2016 by Jeffrey Young

Afterword © 2016 by Tibor Hrs Pandur

All rights reserved.

To reprint, reproduce, or transmit electronically, or by recording all or part of this manuscript, beyond brief reviews or educational purposes, please send a written request to the publisher at:

Black Ocean

P.O. Box 52030

Boston, MA 02205

blackocean.org

Cover Art and Design by Abby Haddican | abbyhaddican.com

Book Design by Nikkita Cohoon | nikkita.co

ISBN 978-1-939568-18-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Šalamun, Tomaž, author. | Young, Jeffrey, 1968- translator. | Young, Katarina Vladimirov, translator.

Title: Andes / Tomaž Šalamun ; translated from the Slovenian by Jeffrey Young and Katarina Vladimirov Young, with the author.

Description: First edition. | Boston : Black Ocean, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016027531 | ISBN 9781939568182 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Šalamun, Tomaž--Translations into English.

Classification: LCC PG1919.29.A2 A6 2016 | DDC 891.8/415--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027531

FIRST EDITION

CONTENTS

Notes on the Translation

I

Among the Chestnuts

Concluding of a Small Ball

I Touch Rough Canvas on the Deck Chair

Plasma, Small Bread of Avala

Ostrich Galvanized with Cylinder

He Acquainted the Dead One with the Habsburgs

He Exclaimed

Breath Comes from Disfigure

She Had Black and Beautiful Eyes

To Speed. To Throw Laundry into the Coffin

Lunch and the Evening

Two

A Mouse Got Caught in a Pot in Katorga

Poems

And Under the Skull Breathes Cosmé Turra

II

Under Glass Air Spews

She Said Proudly, Not Shouted

Hedgehog

Grotto

Tigris Fioreto

Horse Doesn’t Betray

Dado

Reconquista

Whirl

Know What! I Want!

The Ravine

Hermes Was Able to Change the Soles of Every Shoemaker

Ptuj

Buy His House in Kambreško

According to the Raftsman’s Floor Plan to Operate on Brain Nucleus

Skull Base

Big Yellow Blind with Java

Who Doesn’t Hide behind the Altar

Nino

Vadyanyiti (from behind)

With Air

Hydrogen, List of Birds in the Astrakhan Province

III

Pink Case

On the Open Sea

Filibert the Fair

Ferrara, Ferrara

The Stream

White Greeks

Nijinsky and I

The Pupil

Ajusco

Joseph II

Foreigners

Breakfast with Him

Grain of Practices

Tuft Presses Me

Indians Little Japanese

The Blossom Falls, People Die

Tuscany

First Africa

The Crouching Ones Are Drawing Near Them

Beloved Metka

Turn

IV

Chipped Steps of Paolo Mancini

We Won’t Argue over One Worker

Gioventu Universitaria Fascista

Life

Joseph Wrapped Mary into Thickly Woven Canvas

Brother Who Falls on Brother as If They Were from the Same Oven

Throwing the Bicycle over the Fence

Syracuse

Mail to Austin

We Will Tear Your Throat with Blueberries

We from Aragon

Daughter Drew In Also the Herbarium

Morning

Hoops

You Cry Because My Love Isn’t Deeper, I Know

V

From Stone

Pouring

The Forest

Money Shots

The Cell

David Schubert

Tomile!

Blocked Symmetry

The Hill

Martyrdom

Afterword

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION OF TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN’S ANDES

Great poets/foretell their own deaths in a single line.

— Tomaž Šalamun, from his book Amerika (1973)

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (1855)

But my soul is a fire that suffers if it does not blaze.

—Stendhal, quoted by Albert Camus in the introduction to L’Envers et l’endroit (1958)

This translation, like most of Tomaž Šalamun’s work published in English to date, was born from a collaborative effort with the author. Sadly, it is also the last translation of an original manuscript that he would complete and authorize before his death, in December 2014, at the age of 73.

Our cooperation began in sunnier days, during summer 2012, as an offer to help him prepare rough translations of his poems in English. Since starting work on a documentary about Šalamun earlier that year, I could see how busy he was with all manner of literary activities and obligations. It would have been impossible for me to make this offer were it not for the happy fact of my marriage to the artist Katarina Vladimirov, who was born and raised in Šalamun’s adopted hometown of Ljubljana. Though, as Šalamun told us, it was more her training and instincts as a painter than their shared mother tongue that gave him confidence that we