Silent Landscape II by Aisha Rajar. Image courtesy ArtChowk The Gallery
mivel nem érezték olyan nosztalgiák
szorÃtását, melyek kÃméletlenül
befalazták volna őket szerencsétlenségükbe,
mint amikor a kisdiákkal büntetésből
százszor leÃratják ugyanazt, jegyességüket
elhálták. de mert ugyanez okból
nem tudták válogatás nélkül elfogadni
a másikban a már senkinek sem szóló
várakozást, reményeket, élvezethez
csak ritkán juttatták egymást,
és hiába tanultak türelmet, jóakaratot,
hiába tanÃtgatták testüket, végül
meg kellett növelniük a szobák számát
eggyel, és le kellett tenniük a gyűrűket.
~ Gábor Schein
Because they did not feel the grip
of nostalgias that would unsparingly
immure them within their unhappiness,
like ordering a schoolboy to copy down
the same sentence a hundred times, they chose to
consummate their betrothal, and since for the same reason
they could not indiscriminately accept
the other’s protracted waiting and hopes
for no identifiable person,
they seldom gave each other pleasure
and in vain they learnt patience and goodwill,
in vain they taught their bodies, in the end
they had to add one room to the house
and take off the rings.
 ~ trans. Erika Mihálycsa
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Gábor Schein is the author of nine collections of poetry and three novels, including ‘Lazarus!’ (Triton, 2010), translated by Ottilie Mulzet. He was born in 1969 and lives in Budapest, where he is a professor at the Hungarian Literary History Institute of Eötvös Loránd University.Â
Erika Mihálycsa teaches 20th-century British fiction at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj. Her research is focused mainly on Joyce, Beckett and Flann O’Brien, and she is a prolific translator from English and German into Hungarian. Her translations of Hungarian literature into English have previously appeared in B O D Y magazine and on Hungarian Literature Online.
