The culmination of New York Times bestselling author Ilan Stavans’s distinguished career as a scholar and translator, Fictional Translations pushes the boundaries of poetry.This extraordinarily original volume includes apocryphal poems by Petrarch, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Anna Akhmatova, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Celan, Fernando Pessoa, Jorge Luis Borges, Eugenio Montale, Pablo Neruda, Yehuda Amichai, and scores of others in their original languages, as well as English translations of those poems by invented translators whose approaches to the craft often clash. Each translator also explains, in personal reflections, their fears and dreams, their aesthetics, and the challenges of remaining “invisible.”
With astonishing élan, Stavans, known for his polyglot explorations, invites us to see language anew and liberate the alternative voices that exist within us.
Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) El latido de Dionisio “Garrapata” Cañas Dionisio Cañas, alias Garrapata, un poeta de las calles, del cristal roto y el vino rancio, que nunca se levantaba salvo en los rincones oscuros de su mente. Se sentaba en los cafés de luz tenue de Barcelona, encorvado sobre un cuaderno, fugitivo de sus propios deseos, escribiendo versos sobre una chica que nunca tocaría. Un poeta de segunda categoría con un alma de tercera— Garrapata, o el Sapo, como le llamaban los demás, no por ninguna belleza o gracia, sino por la forma en que saltaba de fracaso en fracaso, su cuerpo una vieja máquina que no recordaba cómo levantarse, cómo ser hombre, cómo ser humano. Una noche, entre el rugir del bar donde poetas de mejores nombres bebían su fama barata, Garrapata, con su cabello indomable y el traje desordenado, contó una broma que cayó como polvo. Alguien rió—tal vez por lástima— y fue entonces cuando lo sintió, la tensión en el pecho, el latido cansado en las piernas. Su corazón, harto de latir, dijo basta. Basta ya. La muerte de Dionisio “Garrapata” Cañas pasó tan desapercibida como había sido su vida. Una exhalación débil y suave que apenas movió el aire. Nadie pudo decir cuándo la última palabra murió en sus labios— ¿fue una media sílaba de vergüenza? Un aliento robado por un sueño de ella, la que nunca vino, la que nunca pudo follar, ni en vida, ni en poesía. Y sin embargo, en el cortejo fúnebre al que nadie asistió, pasó algo extraño: el sol comenzó a ponerse en la hora equivocada, proyectando sombras largas sobre las paredes agrietadas de la iglesia, como si la tierra misma estuviera cansada de esperar a que la virilidad de Dionisio despertara de su eterno letargo. No fue trágico, no realmente— más bien como el final de un chiste malo que nadie había encontrado jugoso. The Beat of Dionisio “Garrapata” Cañas Dionisio Cañas, alias Garrapata, a poet of the streets, of broken glass and stale wine, who could never get it up except in the dark corners of his mind. He’d sit in the dim-lit cafés of Barcelona, hunched over a notebook, a fugitive from his own desires, scribbling verses about a girl he’d never touch. A second-rate poet with a third-rate soul— Garrapata, or the Toad, as the others called him, so named not for any beauty or grace, but for the way he hopped from failure to failure, his body an old machine that couldn’t remember how to rise, how to be man, how to be human. One night, amidst the roar of the bar where poets of better names drank their cheap fame, Garrapata, with his untamed hair and disheveled suit, told a joke that fell like dust. Someone laughed—out of pity, perhaps— and that’s when he felt it, the tightness in his chest, the dull throb in his legs. His heart, tired of beating, said no more. No more. The death of Dionisio “Garrapata” Cañas was as unnoticed as his life had been. A weak, soft exhalation that barely stirred the air. No one could say when the last word died on his lips— was it a half-syllable of shame? A breath stolen by a dream of her, the one who never came, the one he could never fuck, not in life, not in poetry. And yet in the funeral procession that no one attended, a strange thing happened: the sun began to set at the wrong hour, casting long shadows over the church’s cracked walls, as if the earth itself was tired of waiting for Dionisio’s manhood to awaken from its eternal slumber. It wasn’t tragic, not really— more like the end of a bad joke that no one had ever found juicy. —Jacinta Candelaria, 2015
Paul Celan (1920–1970)
Wilde Pilze
Im Schatten der Ruinen,
wo das Schweigen sich von sich selbst ernährt,
sammle ich die wilden Pilze,
die aus dem Dreck der Welt wachsen,
nach oben krallend,
ihre Kappen voll Erinnerung,
ihre Lamellen wie Asche.
Meine Hände zittern in der Dämmerung,
jeder Hut ein Grabstein,
jeder Stiel ein Seil,
im Wind zurückgelassen, um zu schwingen.
Ich drücke meine Finger in ihre Weichheit—
sie flüstern von Dingen, die ich nicht benennen kann,
die Namen, vergessen im Fall von Erde
und Himmel.
Hier, in der Leere,
die kalte Sonne ein Splitter,
ein Überbleibsel der Morgen, die vorher waren,
bevor wir in unseren eigenen Mündern lagen.
Ein Vogel, oder vielleicht nur die Luft,
singt von der Vergessenheit,
seine Flügel brechen wie Glas
im hohlen Himmel.
Verstehen die Pilze?
Träumen sie von der Dunkelheit, die uns gegeben wurde?
Ich weiß es nicht.
Aber ich spüre ihren Atem,
schwer vor Hunger,
schwer vor Tod.
Mein Herz ist eine zerbrochene Schale,
überlaufend mit bitterem Regen,
der Geschmack des Regens wie Asche,
der Geschmack des Himmels wie Haut,
und unter meinen Füßen, die Erde
verschlingt mich—
ein langsames, leises Schlucken
von Boden und Schatten,
wo niemand sich erinnert,
was blieb
oder was genommen wurde.
Aber noch gehe ich.
Noch lasse ich die Pilze sprechen,
und in ihrem blassen Gesang,
höre ich das Geräusch eines fallenden Körpers,
das Echo einer Welt,
die wir nie gesehen
oder berührt
oder geliebt hätten.
Und ich frage mich,
mit dem verblassenden Licht,
ob dies der Ort ist,
an dem wir immer enden sollten,
wo das Schweigen nicht mehr Schweigen ist,
und selbst die wilden Pilze
beginnen zu sterben
Wild Mushrooms
In the shadow of ruins,
where silence feeds on itself,
I gather the wild mushrooms
that grow from the dirt of the world,
clawing upwards,
their gills full of memory,
their spores like ash.
My hands tremble in the dusk,
each cap a tombstone,
each stem a rope
left in the wind to sway.
I press my fingers into their softness—
they whisper of things I cannot name,
the names forgotten in the fall of earth
and sky.
Here, in the emptiness,
the cold sun is a shard,
a leftover from the dawns before
we were left to lie in our own mouths.
A bird, or maybe just the air,
sings of oblivion,
its wings breaking like glass
in the hollow sky.
Do the mushrooms understand?
Do they dream of the dark we were given?
I do not know.
But I feel their breath,
heavy with hunger,
heavy with death.
My heart is a cracked bowl
overflowing with bitter rain,
the taste of the rain like ash,
the taste of the sky like skin,
and under my feet, the earth
swallows me—
a slow, quiet gulp
of soil and shadow,
where no one remembers
what was left
or what was taken.
But still, I walk.
Still, I let the mushrooms speak,
and in their pale song,
I hear the sound of a body falling,
the echo of a world
we could never have seen
or touched
or loved.
And I wonder,
with the fading light,
if this is the place
we were always meant to end,
where silence is no longer silence,
and even the wild mushrooms
begin to die.
—Zoë Mjøen with Aliaksei Kovalenko, 1987
Hoshino Tenchi (1862–1950)
緊急アルファベット
AからZ、私は始める
終わりがどこにあるか知らずに—
一文字一文字が遠い岸へと続く橋、
しかし沈黙の海がその先に広がる。
Bは息、最初に漏れ出すもの、
囁きの祈り、虚無への落下。
Cは葉のように内に巻きつき、
風と大地のため息の間に挟まる。
Dは静かに分けようとする、
全てから分かれ、分かち合うことを。
だがひとつひとつの裂け目、音のひとひらが、
無限に広がる折り目を明かすことはできない。
Eは山を覆う夕暮れのように—
景色を隠し、掴むものを無くす。
言葉にできないものに名前はあるのか？
指の間からこぼれ落ちる雨のような真実。
Fは恐れを語る、言葉の隙間—
魂を揺さぶる震える音節。
その隙間に、儚い言葉の合間に、
心はその限界を知ることになる。
Gは与えられたもの、けれども壊れた形、
声を出せず、無音に倒れた象形文字。
言葉は星々の塊のように
空の広大な虚無に投げ込まれる。
Hは空洞のように響く、空洞そのもの、
その檻の重みに耐えながら。
すべての文字、すべての音は一つの願い、
意味を求め、真実を探し、ページの片隅を見つめる。
Iは自己を意味する—けれど誰がそれを定義できるか、
無数の他者の海の中でひとつの形を。
それは広がり、やがて壊れ、線ではなく、
迷子のように彷徨う幽霊となる。
Jは風に揺れる竹のように、
まだ書かれていない意味に身を任せ。
身体の言語、息の言葉、
それは訳せない、静かな知恵として保たれる。
Kは大地にひび割れを入れる—
言葉が届かぬところ、影が眠る場所。
その隙間に、どんな言葉も光も届かず、
ただ視界の外で踊る真実だけがある。
Lは月の弧のように嘆き、
言葉を超えて語られない影を落とす。
そしてMは動かぬ山のように、
その静かな威厳は音の届かぬところに。
Nは夜のこと、地平線のその線—
意味が露のように滴り、消えてゆく。
Oは口を開けるが、声は出ない、
ただ言われなかったことの反響だけが残る。
Pは海のように忍耐強く、潮を待つ—
そのリズムは失われた歌のよう。
Qは答えのない問い、
時の折り目の中に畳まれた謎。
R—錆びた、壊れた、それでも確固たるもの—
舌から転がるけれど、保持することはできない。
Sは呼吸の合間の静寂、
言葉が粉塵に変わる空間。
Tは思考の寺院、けれど空虚—
言葉が内に向かって渦巻き、外に出ることができない。
Uは太陽に触れぬ洞窟、
戻すことのできない秘密を抱えている。
Vは影が長く伸びる谷のよう、
不足の重さを背負って曲がる。
Wは風のように、千の言語で語る、
けれどそのすべてにひびが入っている。
Xは地図が裂けたその場所を示す、
言葉が消え、ただ痕跡だけが残る。
Yは死ぬことのない渇望、
癒すことのない傷が時間の中に残る。
Z—無音のまま、すべてのことの終わり、
けれど終わりではなく、間の場所。
すべての終わりの中に、新たな言葉が形作られる、
言葉が意味を持つことのできない輪の中で。
そして私たちは語り続ける、終わりなく、
解決のない声の合唱—
失われた何かを追いかけながら、
アルファベットの静かな呼びかけの隅に。
Emergency Alphabet
A through Z, I begin,
Not knowing how far the end lies—
Each letter a bridge to a distant shore,
Yet the ocean of silence beckons beyond.
B is for breath, the first to escape,
A whispered prayer, a fall into void.
C curls within like a trembling leaf,
Caught between wind and earth’s sighs.
D, in its quiet, seeks to divide,
Splitting the whole from what is whole,
Yet every fracture, each sliver of sound,
Cannot reveal the infinite fold.
E falls like dusk over the mountain—
Eclipsing the view, leaving nothing to hold.
Where is the word for what cannot be said?
The truth that slips through fingers like rain.
F speaks of fear, the gap between words—
A trembling syllable that twists the soul,
And in the gap, between fleeting phrases,
The heart learns the limits of its own plea.
G is a gift, though broken in form,
A glyph that stumbles, falls silent, unheard.
Language is a fistful of stars thrown
Into the vast, quiet void of the sky.
H echoes as hollow as hollow can be—
Humming beneath the weight of its cage.
Every letter, every sound, is a plea
For meaning, for truth, for a glimpse of the page.
I is for the self—yet who can define
The shape of one soul among a sea of others?
It stretches, then breaks, becomes not a line
But a ghost that wanders, lost in the clutter.
J bends like a bamboo stalk in the wind—
Swaying to meaning not yet written.
The language of the body, of breath,
Is untranslatable, a quiet wisdom kept.
K, a crack in the earth, calls to the deep—
Where the tongue cannot go, where shadows sleep.
The letters falter, for they have no light
To reach the truth that dances just out of sight.
L is a lament, low as the moon’s arc,
Drawing shadows that speak without words,
While M, a mountain, stands unmoving,
Its silent majesty beyond reach of sound.
N is for night, the horizon’s line—
Where meaning drips like dew, then vanishes.
O opens its mouth, but no voice comes,
Only the echo of what was never said.
P, patient as the sea, waits for the tide—
Its rhythm an endless song of loss.
Q is the question that has no answer,
A riddle folded in the folds of time.
R—rusted, broken, yet resolute—
Rolls from the tongue, but cannot hold.
S is the silence between the breaths,
The space where language turns to dust.
T is a temple of thought, yet hollow—
Words spiral inward, but cannot climb out.
U, a cave, untouched by the sun,
Holds the secret of what cannot be undone.
V is the valley where shadows grow long,
It bends beneath the weight of what we lack.
W, like wind, speaks in a thousand tongues,
But in each, the message is cracked.
X marks the spot where the map is torn,
Where words fade, leaving only traces.
Y is the yearn that never dies,
A wound that time refuses to heal.
Z—silent, the end of all things,
Yet not the end, but a place in between.
For in every ending, a new word forms,
Spinning in circles that language cannot mean.
And so we speak, endlessly,
A chorus of voices without resolve—
Chasing the sound of something lost
In the corners of the alphabet’s silent call.
—Hiroashi Mura, 2006
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012)
Życie, z przesadą
Życie podaje dłoń, jak kruchą szklankę,
Szeptając: “Proszę, pij, to wszystko jest twoje.”
Lecz gdy ją podnosisz, w ułamku sekundy,
Szklanka pęka, a razem z nią twoje plany.
Lata szukamy drogi jasnej jak dzień,
Aż tuż za rogiem ona ginie w cień.
Im więcej wiemy, tym więcej pytamy,
Każda odpowiedź prowadzi do nowych wątpliwości.
Chcemy rosnąć, ale korzenie za głębokie—
Wiążą nas z ziemią, a my chcemy skakać.
Gonimy za czasem, jakby mógł się zatrzymać,
A kiedy przychodzi, już odchodzi w dal.
Bogaty i biedny, obok siebie na ulicy,
Jeden ma świat, drugi jego klęskę.
A jednak stoją tak sami, jak puste muszle,
Każdy z nich ma swoją historię, której nikt nie opowie.
Miłość, ta dziwna siła, ulotna i jasna,
Zawsze tuż poza zasięgiem, jakby nie istniała.
Gdy już ją znajdziesz, staje się zarówno darem, jak i przekleństwem—
Prezent, który jest za dużo, a jednocześnie za mało.
Szukamy i dążymy do życia pełnego,
Lecz życie, z jego ironami, wymyka się z duszy.
Śmiejemy się i płaczemy, kochamy i tracimy—
I jakoś, na końcu, wszyscy jesteśmy zagubieni.
On Life, with Exaggeration
Life offers its hand, like a fragile glass,
Whispering, “Here, drink, it’s all yours, at last.”
Yet just as you lift it, a slip, a glance,
The glass shatters, and so do your plans.
We spend years searching for a path so clear,
Then stumble upon it, only to veer.
The more we know, the more we must question,
Each answer a key to a new obsession.
We want to grow, but the roots are too deep—
They bind us to soil, yet we still want to leap.
We chase after time, as if it could stay,
But when it arrives, it’s already away.
The rich and the poor, side by side on the street,
One has the world, the other its defeat.
Yet both stand so lonely, like two empty shells,
Each one a story that no one can tell.
Love, that strange force, elusive and bright,
It stays just out of reach, just beyond sight.
When found, it’s a treasure, but also a curse—
A gift that’s too much, yet somehow it’s worse.
We seek and we strive for a life to be whole,
But life, with its ironies, slips through the soul.
We laugh and we weep, we love and we lose—
And somehow, in the end, we’re all just confused.
—Aliaksei Kovalenko, 2014
Translators
Born in Manchester and raised in Bogotá, Jacinta Candelaria (1933–2007) studied at the London School of Economics before moving to Phoenix, Arizona, where she was a feminist voice of the Chicano movement. Candelaria translated Tomás Rivera’s And the Earth Did Not Part (1981), which was left unpublished, then delved into baroque Latin American writers such as Severo Sarduy (Christ of Rue Jacob, 1987), José Lezama Lima (Havana: City of Columns, 1993), and Gustavo Pardeles (Loveless Love, 1996). Her penchant for ornamented authors is in contrast with the simplicity of her Neruda renditions, whose work she repeatedly translated (Ode to Typography, 2004; Album of Birds, 2005; and Sea Quake, 2006). “The translation’s task, I’ve learned over time,” Candelaria posited in an interview in The Telegraph (August 6, 1999), “is to vanish without trace—to become a ghost.” For years, she was a kindergarten teacher. Candelaria is among the most prolific translators in Fictional Translations, rendering poems by Miguel de Cervantes, Antonio Machado, Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, Octavio Paz, and Roberto Bolaño.
Born in Gomel, Belarus, Aliaksei Kovalenko (b. 1946) is a distinguished translator known for his exceptional work in rendering Russian poetry into English. Kovalenko’s academic journey took him to prominent institutions, where he honed his linguistic expertise. He gained widespread recognition for his translations of iconic Russian poets, including Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Joseph Brodsky, capturing the emotional depth and cultural nuances of their works. He also translated from Polish, his first language, including the words of Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska. Based in Germany and Turkey, Kovalenko has earned praise for his precise yet evocative translations. His work continues to influence both the appreciation of Russian poetry in the English-speaking world and the study of literary translation itself. He teaches at Humboldt University in Berlin, in the Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Linguistik and the Institut für Slawistik und Turkologie. His books include Obowiązki publiczne: studia literaturoznawcze (2016) and Rozpacz tłumacza (2022). He has been called “the mystic of translation.”
Zoë Mjøen (b. 1951), the daughter of a former Nazi SS officer and a celebrated theater director, is a German- and Turkish-to-English translator, celebrated for her exceptional work in bringing the literary voices of German and Turkish poets to an English-speaking audience. Born in Istanbul to a German mother and Turkish father, Mjøen’s bilingual upbringing fostered a deep connection to both languages and cultures. She gained widespread recognition for her translations of iconic poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Paul Celan, and Nazım Hikmet. As a director, she has staged plays by Bertolt Brecht, Marieluise Fleißer, Efraide Jalinek, Marilus von Mayenburg, Heine Müller, and Ulrich Plenzdorf. Her autobiography, Eine Szene machen, was released in 2020. Mjøen’s translations have appeared in Poetry International, Granta, and the Paris Review. She lives in Berlin and Istanbul with her husband, Aliaksei Kovalenko.
Hiroashi Mura (1947–2020), a novelist, essayist, and lexicographer, was a respected Japanese-to-English translator, renowned for his translations of Japanese literature into fluent and evocative English. Born in Kyoto, Mura developed a passion for language and literature early on, earning degrees in both Japanese literature and translation studies. His translations of modern and classical Japanese authors, such as Yukio Mishima, Natsume Sōseki, and Yasunari Kawabata, played a crucial role in bringing Japanese literary culture to global attention. Mura’s work was marked by his ability to capture the delicate balance between the linguistic beauty of the original text and its cultural essence. Mura wrote three novels, popularly known as “the compassion trilogy”: The Censor’s Wife (1987), The Castle of Laughter (1993), and Exit Tokyo (1997). Mura’s biography of Lafcadio Hern is considered a masterpiece. He teaches at Kyoto University.
Reprinted with permission from Fictional Translations: Poems published in © 2026 by LSU Press. All rights reserved.
