Desiderata

A list of 8 long works which I think ought to be translated into English in their entirety but have not been, at least as far as I know (if I'm wrong, by all means inform me.) Though portions have been translated by some (including, in a few cases, me.) It is no accident that most of these are in minority or otherwise "minor" languages.

Tra La Ŝtormo (Through The Storm) by Kálmán Kalocsay.
A collection of Esperanto Sonnets dealing with WWII.

Sus la Mar de las Galèras (On The Galley Sea) by Joan Bodon.
The most seminal book of one of the most seminal poets of modern Occitan literature.

غير مجدٍ في ملتي واعتقادي ġayru mujdin fī millatī wa-ˁtiqādī (Useless in my religion and belief) by Abū ˁAlā Al-Maˁarrī.
The blind medieval Arabic poet's long elegy for Abū Hamza. An evocative, stoic and pessimistic meditation on death.

Ададывэс и Атася Adadîvés i Atasja (Today and Yesterday) by Lera Yanysheva.
A collection of poems in Russian Romani (and other dialects of Romani) treating themes of Rom life in the modern era and in the nomadic past.

לידער פֿון גנ–עדן Lider Fun Gan Eydn (Songs from Eden) by H. Leivick.
A collection of Yiddish poems written during the poet's stay in a Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Colorado from 1932 to 1936.

סאָנעטן Sonetn (Sonnets) by Mani Leyb
Collection of Yiddish sonnets arranged in 5 thematically-coherent series which build on one another. Mani Leyb's masterpiece.

Ποιητοῦ ἀδήλου Αστροναυτιλία ἢ ἡ Μικροοδύσσεια ἡ κοσμική Poiētoû Adḗlou Astronautilía ḕ hē Mikroodýsseia hē Kosmikḗ (An Unknown Poet's Star-trek, or: A Space Mini-Odyssey) by Jan Křesadlo (1995).
A comedic sci-fi epic in Homeric Greek.  Commonly referred to as simply "The Astronautilia"

De Piraat (The Pirate) by Jan Slauerhoff.
A cycle of poems in Dutch on the eponymous theme.

5 comments:

  1. Astronautilia is now available as a free e-book from the Municipal Library if Prague website https://search.mlp.cz/cz/titul/astronautilia/4615145

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  2. For the scenesetting Foreword and Preamble in my English translation, see vzjp.cz/JK/Astronautilia-intro.pdf

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  3. For (now somewhat outdated) info on the now near-finished English hexameter translation by Ben Broadbent see thisherevoyageofmine.wordpress.com

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