PEN America is thrilled to showcase the work of recipients of the 2018 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants. The fund awards grants of $2,000–$4,000 to promote the publication and reception of translated world literature in English.
The following is an excerpt from Alexander Dickow‘s grant-winning translation of Neverending Quest for the Other Shore by French writer Sylvie Kandé.
Dickow writes: The following excerpt describes a final 14th-century epic battle between Guazabara, a South American cacique, and the king of Mali. The scene is a send-up of a hypermasculine epic hyperbole, amplifying the battle to more than a year of endless combat with uprooted trees and interspersed with “chit-chat,” as Kandé follows in the tradition of many female authors of epics before her and critiques the traditionally masculine and warlike genre. Her humor also recalls something of the wry humor of medieval French chansons de geste, like those describing the exploits of Guillaume d’Orange “of the short nose.” (In fact, the final lines of the excerpt are a modified version of the last lines of the Song of Roland, the greatest of the chansons de geste.) High epic is not often represented as a genre amenable to comedy, but examples of such fine humor do exist, even in the Western epic tradition. Kandé is capable of the most lofty and passionate language, but never takes herself so seriously as to weary the reader—a salutary equilibrium indeed. Kandé remains ever quick on her feet, shifting and modulating the verbal texture of the narrative. She introduces new voices as she pleases, never settling into a single pattern.
*
from Neverending Quest for the Shore
At the summit are two kings two armies
sizing each other up finding they are not unalike:
which didn’t fail to unsettle their fine martial display
Called to order and ready to mete out every woe
as men love to do when they think they see hostility
and so they drum and march and rant
Don’t you find them strangely coiffed?
And what outlandish garb: ah! but they wear no sarawil
So that war through this tumult
might not cut a red clearing
each camp calls upon its interpreter
and designates at length its most gallant soldier
into the arena the Malinke push Lansana
for everyone must agree
no Koné no army
His adversary bore the name Guazabara
(at the very least they cried to him thus)
Both were provided broad shields
a dagger a lance a crested helm
charms and heaps of flowers
Weighed down with all this gear
they butted against each other
spouting challenges as best they can
each of them berserk in like manner
heels welded to earth chins spittle-coated
a consuming fire upon their bushy brow
The battle began in thirteen eleven
at high noon lasting no less than a year
These bronze-hearted giants were at it
battering each other for more than a year
cutting and thrusting at one another
so vigorously they broke their javelins:
many a time new ones were sharpened
so that they might end at last the slaughter
The crowd found in it a pastime at first
and stuffed them with game and mead
every time they made as if to yield
By signs the heroes sometimes tried
to chit-chat till their thirst for homicide
lent their combat life unabated
One year passed neither confounding his foe
Having finally stripped their splinters from each other
they uprooted two trees without much effort
and brandished each one high to better crush the other
and their mingled blood stained the fallen rocks
They were battling still when fair weather returned
At this the wearied audience murmured protest:
High time they left the fray
and for everyone to head home
It is good to know how to ride
knowing when to dismount is better still
Therewith Mansa and Cacique draw near
— each now well-versed in the other’s tongue–
they both agree to settle on a truce
I have a sister my Kafuma thrice-beautiful:
take her for a wife says Mori she is yours
The cacique gives his word with no more fuss:
I know a fief to foster our progeny
you shall bring your men there and all your effects
The princes embrace exchanging cognomina
For the affair believe me was intense
Thus did Kalira the jaguar marry Kafuma the short
that gentlewoman of the well-palmed hands
whose gums are blue whose necklaces are fine
Thus was Africa wedded to America
before they even knew their names
And the great greenish depths are probably depopulated
of those doomed-to-be-enchained-and-branded-before-being-thrown-sad-bestiary-[overboard-to-the-
joy-of-the-great-squall
Here ends the tale of Abubakar the Second
which we ourselves this day conceived
