Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel.
This is part of our special feature on Contemporary Bulgarian Literature.
A
Acacia
Your thighs – acacia
White, with a pleasant scent
Able to endure low
and high temperatures
Used for reinforcing
steep hillsides swaths
With a deep root system
Reaching wet layers of soil
A precious honey-producing species
Transparent pale-greenish honey
Dark brown seeds
A flat follicle
ripens at the end of summer
In the core of every stem
two prickly thorns
Alabaster
Alabaster is the world
In a milk-white colour
Milk-white sea
Milk-white sky
Sugar milk-white
in warm white milk
It has a porous structure
A vessel for perfumes
and essential oils
can easily be crafted
B
Brilliant
(from French brillant – “glittering”)
Diamond
For reference see: Diamond
Two fused cones
The upper – truncated
The angles at their base
and between their facets
are chosen so as to
attain the maximal
internal reflection of the light
In this way obtaining
the best brilliance
C
Cobalt
A hard, glittering gray-blue metal
Its name comes from
the German word “Kobold” – spirit, goblin
When heated, cobalt minerals
give off toxic fumes
The ancient Norwegians
attributed poisoning while forging silver
to this evil spirit
Most likely the name comes from the same root
as the Greek “kobalos” – smoke
The Greeks also used this word for lies
Cobalt is mainly used
to improve heat resistance
It is also an element in some
wear-resistant alloys
for the crafting of
tools for cutting
Crimson
A color of the group of non-spectral colors
A combination of blue and red
similar to purple
It belongs to the warm colors
not like purple
which
belongs to the cold ones
It is often confused with dark red
Similar to blood red
Associations:
Power, monarchy, high aristocracy
F
Fig
A flower turned outside-in,
keeping its pollen inside.
Those who are fond of the fruit,
and vegetarians, too,
might be revolted,
when they find out that
its luxurious taste
comes from a wasp, rotting inside it
The female wasp creeps through
the narrow orifice of the fig,
her wings are torn,
she lays her eggs and successfully pollinates the fruit
Having lost her ability to fly,
the wasp dies
Although the fig cannot reproduce without this deadly cycle,
many vegans and vegetarians refuse to consume figs
Ivan Hristov is a Bulgarian poet and literary researcher. He is the author of the poetry collections Farewell, Nineteenth Century (winner of the prize for best poetic debut from the National Southern Spring Competition 2002) and Bdin (winner of the national literary prize Svetlostruy 2006, in 2015 “Bdin” was published in Turkey), as well as the academic monograph The Sagittarius Circle and the Idea of the Native (2009). In 2013 his third poetry book American poems was published. In 2016 in Romania was published the book Bdin, followed by American poems which contains his last two poetry books. Since 2010, he has been a member of the organizing committee for the international Sofia: Poetics festival. He currently works at the Institute for Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Angela Rodel is a professional literary translator living and working in Bulgaria. She holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from UCLA in linguistics. She received a 2014 NEA translation grant for Georgi Gospodinov’s novel The Physics of Sorrow (Open Letter 2015), as well as a 2010 PEN Translation Fund Grant for Georgi Tenev’s short story collection Holy Light – the first time a Bulgarian-language work has received either award. Her translation of Physics of Sorrow won the National Book Center’s 2015 Peroto Prize for best translation from Bulgarian, the 2016 AATSEEL Prize for Best Book of Literary Translation, and was nominated for the three most prestigious translation awards in the US: finalist for the 2016 PEN Translation Prize, the 2016 National Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association, and Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award for 2016.
Published on December 6, 2017.
