Mullins Archives | Numéro Cinq

FIRST EVER NUMÉRO CINQ TRANSLATION CONTEST

Submissions June 12-30, 2010.

Enter by translating the sample passage below and submitting it as a comment on this post.

The competition is open to anyone. Just sign onto WordPress.com for free and contribute your translation.

Rule #1: Do not submit an entry if you actually speak the language in the sample below. It doesn’t help if you can read the sample and render an accurate translation because the judge can’t read the sample himself. (It goes without saying that you shouldn’t bother using a translation dictionary either.)

That’s the only rule.

Rule #2: Translations must be submitted in English. (Gary Garvin already submitted an entry in Chinese characters via email. This will not fly with the judge.)

Rule #3: Given the confusions we had during the last contest, the judge wishes to specify that there will be an open, ageless category (the Numéro Cinq Shark Class) and an under-16 category (the Numéro Cinq Barracuda Class).

Rule #4: Birth certificate and two pieces of photo ID required to qualify for the Barracuda Class competition (last time certain adult members of the Numéro Cinq community—a disreputable, rebellious, disaffected, and outlaw crowd of ne’er-do-wells and agitators—attempted to have their entries switched to the under-16 category).

Let go of your bourgeois yearning after sense and meaning. Forget certainty. (The judge is returning to his Sufi roots.) Think only of the sound of the words, their rhythms, and what you can invent from them.

As usual with Numéro Cinq contests, wit and arrogance will be appreciated. In fact, wit and arrogance are the only qualities the judge cares about.

Contest open to everyone including employees of Numéro Cinq, their significant others, children, and small pets (mammals only, up to 50 lbs).

First Prize — Instant Worldwide (e)Publication w/ commentary.

Plus honours & laurels.

A single malt Scotch at 9 Maple Avenue with dg or a hot chocolate at Virgil’s with Jonah if you’re in the under-16 Barracuda Class. (You have to get to Saratoga Springs on your own and dg will not put you up.)

Each entry must purport to be a translation of the following passage. Feel free to submit more than one translation.

Ja, er dreigde iets. En hij bleef daar zitten, ziek van angst, làf, zonder geestkracht, zonder moed…. Er dreigde iets en hij voelde het naderen, hem overvallen, met hem strijden op leven en dood, in eene overspanning van wanhoop: hij voelde zich wankelen, nederzinken, hij voelde zich gerukt worden uit de fluweelen zachtheid van zijn leven, neergesmakt worden op straat, zonder dak, zonder iets … Wat behoorde hem toe! Het linnen aan zijn lichaam, de schoenen aan zijne voeten, de ring aan zijn vinger, het was van Frank. Het souper daarginds, zijn bed boven, het was van Frank. Zoo was het geweest een vol jaar lang en als hij ooit weg zoû moeten gaan met alleen het zijne, dan zou hij moeten gaan … naakt, in den winter. En hij kón niet meer zijn, als hij geweest was in Amerika, dienstbaar scharrelend van den eenen dag op den anderen. Zijn lijf en zijne ziel waren beide als geweekt in een bad van lauwe weelde; hij was geworden als eene kasplant, die, gewend aan de vochte warmte der serres, vreest in de open lucht te worden gezet. Want het dreigde, gruwzaam, onbarmhartig: geen seconde was die bedreiging van hem af, en, in de lafheid zijner verweeking, wrong hij er zachtjes zijne witte handen om, en drupten er twee tranen langs zijn strak masker van wanhoop.

Okay, this was an evil contest for the judge who has been tortured trying to decide among the Final Five (not to mention the other estimable entries). Never mind that after the aphorism contest the judge had to hide out in Sea Hills, NJ, for five weeks to avoid violence and public opprobrium. This time the pain was in the judging (and, believe me, the judge tried to hand off the honours but was flatly turned down several times). This time the general quality of the entries was so high, surprisingly high–it seems the NC crowd is upping its game, rising to the occasion. (I hope I haven’t turned you all into poets!) The Final Five are all just fascinating poems. And Gary Garvin may hedge about his “Spam Villanelle,” but you have to grant him the wit of the initial conception and the follow-through. The poems Gwen Mullins and Anne de Marcken entered are definitely the most “felt” poems, delicately threading emotion, language and thought. Of these two, the judge possibly admires the Anne de Marcken poem the most but he likes the Gwen Mullins poem on personal grounds–he has sons growing up. But then the judge appreciates the brash humour, the pure joy of Julie Larios’s ratty-ness poem. He wanted that one to win, especially because his dog makes a brief appearance (apparently a part of Julie’s inner menagerie, go figure). And finally he decided that Julie’s “At Play” should win because he admired it spareness and clarity of line and thought and its lovely description of the act of thought or writing. And so he thought he was done. But then he read them all again–torn, torn as he was upon the rack of ART!–

The judge and his dog

After an orgy of gin & tonics, a sleepless night, and a long, heartfelt discussion with a blue dog, the judge (anonymous) has rendered a decision. (Remember him in your prayers.) Below, please find the poetic finalists for this year’s contest.

“Spam Villanelle” made the final cut for its outrageous inventiveness. Julie placed two poems in the top five which will no doubt embarrass her, but what can one say? Gwen Mullins, obviously. And Anne de Marcken for the lovely juxtaposition of the inner and outer sea.

There are some wonderful poems in the entry list, all worth reading, especially dg’s (alas, he can never win) and Jacob’s sheepfold poem written after reading Tristan Tzara and Natasha’s cell phone poem and Anna Maria’s snake poem and Julie Marden’s students’ heart-breaking poem. And more. It’s amazing to see the NC crowd pitch in and enjoy writing for writing’s sake, to try unaccustomed forms and genres. In pretty much every villanelle, there was a moment of inspiration, a line with zing, a bit of quirky humour or a thought well-turned. I love watching these contests unfold, watching the minds at play. It’s also lovely to see Sage & Sarah join the fray and the general atmosphere of welcome and support. Five months and it already seems like a special place.

ENTRIES ARE OFFICIALLY CLOSED. COMMENTS STILL WELCOME.

Herewith the first ever (annual) Numéro Cinq villanelle writing contest. I am announcing it early so that you can work on your entries. Entries will be accepted between May 1 and May 15. Entries, as with the aphorism contest, should be posted as comments on this page. Entries are open to anyone in the world, but only if they are written in English, French, Latin, or classical Greek (the only languages anyone can speak in this house). As with the aphorism contest, I encourage you to familiarize yourselves with the form. See the craft and technique page for help. Roughly speaking, we’re talking about a 19-line poem written in tercets (except for the last stanza which has four lines). The first and last line of the first stanza become the last lines of the following stanzas and also turn into a couplet at the end of the last stanza. These are fun to write and can actually turn out surprisingly well if you arm yourselves with strong refrain lines (think: panache, drama, obsession, schizophrenia). You need not be a poet to enter. And it’s always a good thing for prose writers to extend themselves; it makes their prose more interesting. One lesson to be drawn from writing a poem like this is the way form drives content instead of the other way around.

The following is an email sent to dg from the anonymous contest judge who is in hiding, with his entire family and pets, somewhere in Argentina.

This was a tough go over the weekend for an indecisive judge. All the finalists were extremely good, very witty. In fact, the whole contest was a pleasant surprise–for the commentary as well as the entries. I loved Nina’s very short aphorism “A mapped world is always small” for its terseness; when you unpack it, the idea is huge–the unknown is always greater than the known. Steven Axelrod is a very witty man playing on glass houses, green houses and the greenhouse effect. (If there had been a prize for most prolific, he would have won; had their been a prize for the under-21 age group, Madeleine would have won.) C. M. Mayo’s entry grew and grew on me. I think I didn’t take it seriously at first because she was clearly just having fun with the contest, but she did an amazing little thing turning the idea of procrastination upside down (making it a pleasure instead of something to inspire guilt) with the egg and yolk idea. Gwen Mullins three-word line may not even be an aphorism precisely, but I liked the verbal play: fuck to effing to the letter f to the word “ineffable.” Natasha Sarkissian’s face entry was also a sleeper. It just kept staying in the mix as I found reasons to cut others out. It’s very clever: losing face, saving face, face lift, plastic surgery. Kit Hathaway is the old pro, the ringer. His aphorism worked as a rhyming couplet, but it also worked as a complex idea starting with the leap of putting Zoloft next to Nietzsche and coming up with the idea that they have a lot in common; Zoloft evens out the emotional peaks and valleys while Nietzsche delivered us from guilt and judgment (“neither bad nor good” plays off the title of Nietzsche’s book Beyond Good and Evil).

So I tried various criteria. Everyone was about equal on wit and verbal play. But when I asked myself about the profundity of the ideas behind the aphorisms, then Nina and Kit came out in front. Not that aphorisms have to be profound, but I was looking for some reason to separate the entries. Then I also tried to factor in syntactic and semantic complexity. I thought Kit had a slight edge there. But when it came to arrogance, Kit had a definite edge.

So by incremental calculations of relative value–even more Byzantine than hinted at here–I came to the conclusion that the winner is William Hathaway for his aphorism:

Zoloft does more than Nietzsche could
to make you feel neither bad nor good.

This is a preliminary announcement only. Press releases have gone out to major media. The winner was notified this morning by telephone and pronounced himself “over the moon.” The actual award, along with a considerable financial emolument, will be presented in Stockholm to coincide with the lesser known, yet no doubt estimable in its own right, Nobel Prize for Literature.

The judge will remain anonymous. Any attempt to contact him will be reported to the police. The cat in the earlier post is not the judge’s cat; it was a professional model posing as the judge’s cat. Contractual arrangements outlined in the entry form protect the magazine, dg, his family and staff from civil actions pertaining to the contest. Entry fees were clearly stated to be non-refundable.

The judge's cat, clearly suffering from intense Aphorism Contest anxiety

Yes, the death threats, the bribes, and blackmail have begun. The pressure on the judge is incredible at this point. How do you decide between one great entry and another? The judge is drinking vodka neat morning til night; he’s taken up smoking; he’s found a bottle of painkillers from his knee surgery (or possibly they are antibiotics for the dog). Nothing helps. He is thinking of just taking all the entry fees and prize money and flying to Mexico til this blows over.

I should add that the People’s Choice contest is a complete mess at this point with a three-way tie. Could someone please go to the post and break the tie?

The Finalists

A loss of face requires more than plastic surgery to fix.
Natalia Sarkissian
——————
Zoloft does more than Nietzsche could
to make you feel neither bad nor good.
William Hathaway
—————–
In the egg of procrastination, there is the yolk of fun.
C.M. Mayo
————-
People who live in glass houses understand the greenhouse effect.
Steven Axelrod
——————-
A mapped world is always small.
Nina Alvarez
—————-
Fuck the ineffable.
Gwen Mullins