Light Breeze in Paradise E-Book

Carmen-Francesca Banciu

• Herausgeber: PalmArtPress
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 118

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The narrator turns her back on Berlin and the hectic throb of the big city for a summer, in order to recharge and reconnect with herself in the seclusion of a Greek mountain village. For the first little while she passes the time silently on a terrace. A terrace on the hillside, looking out over the great expanse of the ocean. She lives surrounded by insects and other animals that eventually become her friends. She takes time to experience changes in light and transformations of the sea, to take notice of the hidden and inconspicuous things in her environment, the glimmer of what lies concealed. It is only after some days have passed that she is struck by the desire to meet people again, and starts to embark on journeys beyond the cosmos of her terrace. She hitchhikes to the town by the sea each day. Brief encounters along the way, people-watching on the beach, and observations of nature's own spectacle as it unfolds reveal to her the interrelation of all living beings in nature. Coinciding with the human interactions, dramas play out in the microcosm of insects, beetles, and small animals - like scenes from Greek mythology. This book is all about the detailed narration of the small world re ected in the larger one. Translation is a collaboration. This couldn't be truer in the case of this bilingual translation of Leichter Wind im Paradies by Carmen-Francesca Banciu in English (Light Breeze in Paradise) and Greek (Ελαφρύ Αεράκι στον Παράδεισο). This bilingual translation challenges the limits of the notion of collaboration, as it occurs on multiple levels. More specifically, this is the outcome of a collaboration in the frame of the Advanced Training in Greek Poetry Translation & Performance Workshop, founded and directed by Dr. Vassiliki Rapti at Harvard University in 2014. Since July 2916 she has been running it independently.

Leseprobe

Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Light Breezein Paradise

Translated from German byMolly O'LaughlinPat Snidvongs et alii

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://www.dnb.de abrufbar.

First Edition in German, PalmArtPress, March, 2015

© 2015 Carmen-Francesca Banciu, ISBN: 978-3-941524-60-6

ISBN: 978-3-941524-95-8 (Print)

ISBN: 978-3-96258-040-7 (E-Book)

1. Edition (English and Greek), All Rights Reserved, 2017

© Carmen-Francesca Banciu

© PalmArtPress, Pfalzburger Str. 69, 10719 Berlin, Germany

www.palmartpress.com

Publisher: Catharine J. Nicely

Cover Photo: Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Photos: Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Translation: Advanced Training in Greek Poetry Translation and Performance Workshop, directed by Vassiliki Rapti

Translation (English): Molly O'Laughlin

Chapters: 1-3, 9-11, 13-41, 43-60, 62-68, 70-73, 75

Editors: Catharine J. Nicely, Clara Luise Hildebrand

Translation (English): Pat Snidvongs

Chapters: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 42, 61, 69, 74

Editors: Peter Bottéas, Vladimir Bošković, Julia Dubnoff, Vassiliki Rapti

Translation (Greek): Vassiliki Rapti and Andreas Triantafyllou

Produced in Germany

Content

Foreword

1. Karelia Gold

2. Karelia Joy

3. Eyes behind the Eyes of the Eyes

4. Homesick

5. Morning Moods

6. Thirst for the Sea

7. Mimis, The Philosopher

8. Cicada Music

9. Summer Home

10. Terrace Safari I

11. Orange Life, Orange Learning

12. Clytemnestra and Orestes

13. Brief Locust Lore

14. Summer Friends

15. Among People Again

16. Akrogiali, Here and Now

17. What Remained of the Day

18. Daniel, the Savior of Himself

19. May the Earth Rest Lightly upon Them

20. Today, about the Rain

21. The Scent of the World

22. Portrait in the Company of Insects I

23. Portrait in the Company of Insects II

24. The Intelligence of My Pets

25. My Toothbrush Belongs to Me

26. Cat Visit

27. Agave Kraken

28. Ode to the Agave Kraken

29. Sunset

30. Terrace Safari II

31. Every Sunset is Different

32. Heart Jump

33. Basic Hunger

34. Driftwood

35. Is that Betrayal?

36. It Doesn’t Take a Lot to Be Clever

37. Temporary Homecoming

38. I Eat Cherries and Look at the Sea

39. Risk of Confusion

40. Betrayal or Responsibility

41. Where is Orestes Hiding?

42. The End of Summer

43. The Power of Silence

44. Silence Is Balance, Talking Is Joy

45. Sappho from the Mainland

46. My Friend Palomena V.

47. Yearning for Crisis?

48. The Eternal Perikles

49. Do You Know Fukuoka?

50. Beloved Music I

51. Beloved Music II

52. Summer Friday in the Village

53. The Fool in Me, the Fool to Me

54. The Day of the Karamanis Clan

55. Cloudy Summer View

56. Cat Teachings

57. In Doubt of the Returnees

58. On the Terrace Battlefield, Banners Wave

59. And I, Why Do I Murder?

60. Saturday Again

61. Nocturnal Visit

62. The World’s Navel at the Sea

63. Life Is Everywhere

64. That, Too, Is Life

65. Time for the Bookworm

66. Small(est) Stories at the Sea

67. Vacation at Last

68. Tattoo-Tataaa!

69. Drunk on the Sun, and Wanderlust

70. Summer Dies a Little Every Day

71. Ilios Goes to Sleep

72. Farewell to the Beautiful Clytemnestra

73. I seek the Traces of Summer

74. A Last Cherry for Orestes

75. The Death of Summer

Translator’s Note

For Dieter Ohlhaver and Germa von Heydebreck-Ohlhaver

“Championing a cosmopolitan perspective, Banciu’s novels are distinctive in style and structure and present an interesting challenge for English language translation of her work. Richly metaphorical, rife with anaphora and characterized with a sentence structure that is skillfully elliptical and allusive, as well as deceptively simple and deliberately suggestive and ambivalent, Banciu’s prose is both playful and profound.”

Elena Mancini, Queens College, CUNY

Foreword

“Thirteen ways of describing the rain”— and a thousand and one the sun, sinking or rising in the mirror of the sea.

Despite all the tragedies about those locusts, baptized “Orestes” or “Clytemnestra” by the author, in spite of all the insect satyr-plays about Arachne’s webs, Ariadne’s threads, about love-labyrinths and death-orgies in the terrace-arena of the miniature Minotaurs, in the cicadas’ polyphonic chirp of a Greek summer: with the author alone on the terrace, with her in the car among people, in the kafenion, in the sea, by reading—now, during the melting of the Berlin snow—the weight of the world grows lighter gram by gram, and step by step the eye grows brighter …

As modest as she is clever, Carmen-Francesca Banciu draws on the root of all poetry inspired by Greece: to be a hymn to light.

I can feel my heart contracting. / Flickering out like the Sun’s daily death. I know this. / There is no beginning. And no ending. / I know this. / Nothing is lost. / Nothing dies. / Things are only transformed. / I know this. / And forget it, again and again.

Werner Fritsch, January 2015

Hearing many words is not listening. It´s like a noise among the leaves. The quality of listening is attention. Sagt Yddu Krishnamurti.

Watching many things is not seeing. The quality of seeing is awareness. I add to it.

1. Karelia Gold

No, I’m not starting again.

I never stopped. Smoking.

By now, I only smoke a couple of times a year. Maybe ten times. But today I feel like it. A George Karelia. I tried them for the first time here in Greece. Back then, fifteen years ago. And they’re still around.

A lot has changed in these 15 years here. A lot has disappeared in these 15 years. The Karelias are still there. A blend of the finest. Un mélange … Still in their flat, yellow package. The package with the golden letters. That one opens like a box of chocolates. George Karelias and Sons. Smoother Taste. Virginia. Everything as it was years ago. Only nowadays, a white sticker with deep black script defaces the elegant box. It sticks threateningly to the front side. And repeats on the back. A premonition of the future obituary for the smoker.

The sweet-savory-soft smell leaves me waiting. Until I’ve opened the box wide.

But I take my time. And first patiently study the print on the inside of the lid. I can’t remember ever having read this Note from George A. Karelias. Did I not pay attention to his message back then?

Back then, anyhow, George A. Karelias never spoke to me. Or maybe it’s a new message.

For over a century successive generations of our family have worked to refine our products. From this rich tradition of heritage and quality we bring to you a distinctive cigarette of superior quality.

George signed it himself in gold. A regular, balanced, elegant hand. A man in equilibrium. No lover of wild excess.

Is that true?

When one opens the box, one gets a faint idea of what Mr. George means.

But first one must admire the elegant paper. Patterned with tiny Karelia logos. Countless gold emblems on white paper. When one opens the protective paper, the whole inside shines golden. In this shining bed lie the cigarettes, underneath each other in two rows. With long, orange, yellow-speckled filters. Each one wears the Karelia name in gold.

White leather gloves-milk-vanilla-honey aroma. And the aroma of tobacco. Out of the box it rises smoothly upward. Un mélange des meilleurs tabacs choisis pour qualité …

I breathe in the fine aroma. Light and rich. Its enticing sweetness relaxes me. The Greek summer afternoon is more perfect for it.

I’m away from Berlin. Fled. I’ve escaped my life for this summer. To slip into another. Into life on a terrace with a view of the sea.

I’m away from Berlin, leaving everything heavy, everything unresolved behind me. At least to interrupt the old life. Or even to change it. To free myself from the heaviness. To birth myself anew. Through another view. Through another attitude. Through mindfulness. Through awareness.

I have come in order to touch life itself. To give birth to myself anew. And to capture the birth in words.

2. Karelia Joy

I live in a lonely house. At the edge of a village in Mani.

It’s not my house. It’s the house of friends from Lübeck.

And I’m allowed to spend the summer here.

Having just arrived, I plunge into the velvety air.

Around me, the tepid summer evening.

The new moon. Dainty. An arabesque.

Karelia Gold.

The new moon hangs over the sea.

I am sitting on the terrace. A terrace on the hillside.

And the way I sit there, it looks like the terrace is a bridge. From the garden to the sea.

I choose a cigarette. The third in the row. As if it had a meaning. It has a meaning. It is the third cigarette in the top row.

And because it is the third, it tastes different from the second. Or the tenth. Or the seventeenth in the second row.

Because more humidity.

Because more air.

Because more light has reached it.

Because I’ve chosen it.

Because nothing is the same as itself. And everything is always new and unknown.

I can’t part with the aroma, and clamp the Karelia between my upper lip and nose. I look at the sea. And at the moon above. And at the swarm of bustling moths around the hanging lamp on the terrace.

The Karelia between upper lip and nose. I imagine how that looks. And have to laugh. And the cigarette falls to the floor. I pick it up. It’s the third cigarette from the top row. And yet, now it’s become something or someone else. From now on, it is the third cigarette from the top row, that has fallen on the floor.

The-third-cigarette-from-the-top-row-that-has-fallen-on-the-floor has a history now.

It already had one before. Only I didn’t know it. I didn’t even think about it. Now there was one, because I noticed it.

A locust sniffs at the box. It’s ocher-colored. With brownish patterns and green decorations. It, too, goes with the gold of the box.

I hold my cigarette under my nose and breathe in the aroma. The aroma makes me happy. Can smoking make me even happier?

A locust with only one feeler wants to get at the smell. Into the box. I close the box. Frighten the little locust Not on purpose. It stays on the table. Frozen. Then it thaws again. Feels with its feeler ever closer to the box.

It must be a smoker. An addicted smoker.

The aroma makes me happy. The aroma of twenty luxury cigarettes.

Twenty times I can take pleasure in it. When I breathe in the aroma of the tobacco, sitting on the terrace at night—surrounded by singing cicadas, by chirping crickets and grasshoppers, by curious locusts, by orange and pink moths, by small, lemon-yellow, tiny insects—with a deep drag.

Twenty times I can take pleasure in it.

And even more often. When I don’t light up.

At the foot of the mountain flicker the lights of the city. The lights of Stoupa. And behind the lights a sea of darkness spreads. Behind the lights darkly lies the sea.

I, high up on a Greek mountain, could smoke the finest cigarette now. More than a century people have striven for this. So that I can enjoy it, here and now.

For years I have bought no cigarettes for myself. Only sometimes bummed from other smokers. I don’t even have a lighter. In my bag full of surprises. Really a city backpack. I find a slim matchbox.

On the box it says Hotel Remarque. This box has traveled with me a lot. Through half the world. For no reason. Because it was just there. And there was no reason to take it out.

Hotel Remarque in Osnabrück. That’s a long time ago.

A friend of mine is from Osnabrück. I met her in Greece too.

No. I didn’t smoke it. The Karelia. I put it back. And fell asleep with the aroma.

3. Eyes behind the Eyes of the Eyes

Everything here in the village wakes up earlier than I do. It’s only a bit after five.

How early do I have to get up to be the first one? So I can notice everything. So I can perceive everything. So nothing slips by me. Escapes. So I can weave my tracks into what’s happening. So I can be a part of the whole. And, at the same time, retain an overall picture.

I want to see everything. But still I overlook most things. I need time to perceive things. Because things hide from me. They hide from strangers’ eyes. They hide from the untrained eye. From the hasty one. From the interloper.

I train myself to notice the landscape. And every day the landscape trusts itself to me a little bit more. Like a full rose it is opening before me. My eyes see ever more spaciously. Comprehensively. Ever deeper. Eyes behind the eyes of the eyes are opening.

In the beginning I see what I know. What I recognize. Every day I train. Every day I learn. Every day I look out over the borders of my world. My eyes subsist on the world. On my daily changing world. And on the world of others.

My view. My being. They are enlarged.

In the first days I only see that which I already know.

What I’m expecting.

Only today I discover a fork in the road from the terrace.

And the sloping bend. Has it always been there?

In the bend, two backpackers emerge. As if out of nowhere. As if from another world. From another dimension. As if they had brought the bend with them.

The backpackers leave the bend behind. They step into the river of the street, which rushes down.

Two backpackers on the way to Stoupa. The morning has only just dawned. The luggage is still light. Their step springy. The body relaxed. The breath is full of the morning freshness. In the roof of the mouth the memory of the summer breakfast.