“A consistently exquisite journal, inside and out.” —Shakespeare & Company Bookstore, Paris
“Each issue is a gem.” —NPR (National Public Radio)
Digital editions of Music & Literature are available through Exact Editions
Music & Literature no. 6 champions the work of three artists poised to break through on the international stage: Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, Ukrainian composer Victoria Polevá, and Croatian writer Dubravka Ugrešić. An aura of almost legendary prestige surrounds the short life of Alejandra Pizarnik, who, though haunted by doubt and depression, left behind an oeuvre by turns searing, tragic, playful, and erotic. Her portfolio brings into English one hundred pages of previously untranslated prose, diary entries, and letters, as well as appreciations from, among others, Enrique Vila-Matas and César Aira, who writes that Pizarnik “was not only a great poet, she was the greatest, and the last.” Equally uncompromising in her artistry is Victoria Polevá, who has written music for the world’s leading soloists and ensembles while building a reputation as a major cultural figure in Eastern Europe. Though the majority of Polevá’s music has yet to reach Western audiences, a host of her illustrious contemporaries from around the world gather here to attest—in verse, in correspondence, and in oils—to her singular vision, while in her most extensive interview to appear in English and in her musical writings on mentors Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov, the maestro elaborates on her spiritual and aesthetic evolution. The volume's third portfolio celebrates the wry and sharply powerful voice of Dubravka Ugrešić. Since the break-up of her native Yugoslavia, Ugrešić’s fiction has revolved around questions of exile and identity, while her caustic, brilliantly insightful criticism has taken on literature, Yugostalgia, and contemporary hypocrisy in all its forms. Alongside an exclusive interview and a newly-translated work of fiction, appearing here for the first time in any language, this portfolio offers contributions by Ugrešić’s translators Michael Henry Heim and Damion Searls, as well as a critical overview of her prolific career.
CONTENTS
I. Alejandra Pizarnik
A Few Essential Words / Alberto Manguel
An Introduction to Alejandra Pizarnik’s Diaries / Ana Becciú, trans. Cecilia Rossi
A Selection from Diaries / Alejandra Pizarnik, trans. Cecilia Rossi
A Selection of Prose / Alejandra Pizarnik, trans. Cecilia Rossi
An Introduction to “The Lady Buccaneer of Pernambuco or Hilda the Polygraph” / Ana Becciú, trans. Cecilia Rossi
The Lady Buccaneer of Pernambuco or Hilda the Polygraph / Alejandra Pizarnik, trans. Suzanne Jill Levine
Correspondence with León Ostrov / Alejandra Pizarnik, trans. Emily Cooke
Some Keys to Alejandra Pizarnik: An Interview / Martha Isabel Moia, trans. Emily Cooke
Come Here Alejandra / Julio Cortázar, trans. Stephen Kessler
Pavane for a Dead Princess / Olga Orozco, trans. Stephen Kessler
An Overdose of Seconal / Enrique Vila-Matas, trans. Rosalind Harvey
Alejandra Pizarnik / César Aira, trans. Katherine Silver
Demystifying Pizarnik: On Editing the Complete Works / Isabella Checcaglini, trans. Jeffrey Zuckerman
“The Shadow of the Typist”: The Perturbed among Lilacs / Étienne Dobenesque, trans. Jeffrey Zuckerman
The Woman in Red / Jacques Ancet, trans. Jeffrey Zuckerman
II. Victoria Polevá
A Biographical Statement / Victoria Polevá, trans. Ian Dreiblatt
A Conversation with Victoria Polevá / Anna Lunina, trans. Rachel Caplan
Arvo Pärt at 75 / Victoria Polevá, trans. Ian Dreiblatt
The Return of Silvestrov / Victoria Polevá, trans. Ian Dreiblatt
I Ask to Fall Silent / Victoria Polevá, trans. Ian Dreiblatt
The Berlin Letter / Arvo Pärt, Valentin Silvestrov, Giya Kancheli, trans. Adrian Nathan West
The Making of The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould / Gidon Kremer & Victoria Polevá, trans. Ian Dreiblatt
An Introduction to the Neumann Paintings
Eight Recent Paintings / Max Neumann
vii / morţi: plainchant / Esther Kinsky
Meditation on the Night Vigil / Ellen Hinsey
Sacred Abstinence from Musical Belief / Lawrence Sutin
An Initiation / Marvin Rosen
III. Dubravka Ugrešić
A Story about How Stories Come to Be Written / Dubravka Ugrešić, trans. David Williams
A Conversation with Dubravka Ugrešić / Daniel Medin
Seven Prints by Dubravka Ugrešić
Home Away from Home / Damion Searls
Steffie Cvek and Miloš Hrma, Literary Half-Siblings / Sam Sacks
Unconditional Surrender / Madeleine LaRue
Honesty at Play in Thank You for Not Reading / Curtis White
Memories of Pan-Yugo Angst / Sara Nović
Losers and Exile / Shannon Burns
From a Note on Baba Yaga / Michael Henry Heim
Witchiness / Marina Warner
A Question of Perspective in Karaoke Culture / Philip Huff, trans. Jan Steyn
In Defense of Lost Time: Reading Europe in Sepia / Jeremy Bleeke