Translator’s Note

I came across the work of Irina Nechit (1962- ), who lives in the Republic of Moldova, while reading a two-volume anthology titled Un Secol de Poezie Româna Scrisă de Femei (A Century of Romanian Poetry Written by Women). I was attracted immediately to her voice, its intimate timbre, and to her poems’ blend of realism and surrealism. Extended metaphors and textured images often function as apt signifiers for emotional turmoil and as sharp socio-political critiques.  

In the case of “Beyond,” I was taken with the startling images and the tensions created by Nechit’s juxtapositions. She mentioned that the poem emerged from her obsession with pantheist worldviews and the presence of the cosmos within us, humans. It’s especially in the summer, she added, that “we feel the exultation of nature and the Creator at work in the spectacle of all that blooming, the ripening of fruit, the unleashing of natural forces.”  

As Nechit noted in our correspondence, “Tyranny” was written as a response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It’s a protest against his dictatorial drive to subjugate Ukraine. The Z and V letters painted on Russian tanks became symbols of the invasion. As a poet, I was particularly drawn to how Nechit captures, with such economy of language and dramatic intensity, the psychology of despots. Her background as a playwright and leanings toward postmodern absurdism serve the poem well. With just a few details she particularizes this oppressor (see his beard dipped in honey and the seven saucers), while also inviting us to recognize in him all tyrants. 

As a translator, I am drawn to work that facilitates encounters with another poet’s and culture’s particulars but that I can also immediately ‘hear’ in English. Nechit’s dictions and images lend themselves effortlessly to the process of translation. Before I translate the words, I spend time with a poem until I feel I have inhabited its voice and images. If I cannot clarify for myself, or in consultation with the poet, what the poem is doing and how, or feel that I cannot hit, in English, the right registers, I abandon the translation, afraid to do it a disservice. In these two poems, the most difficult decision had to do with the use of punctuation. As a translator, I am aware that punctuation and syntax sometimes work differently in the languages I translate from and into, and that replicating the original’s gestures in the translated text is not necessarily an act of faithfulness. For instance, comma splices feel natural in a Romanian poem as they are not grammatical mistakes, but they raise eyebrows in English. My decision, in this case, will be driven by how I want the poem to be received in the host language (English), so generally I will go with conventional punctuation. In the case of the poems included here, I decided to preserve the comma splices in English for reasons of pacing and tonal fluidity. 

Mihaela Moscaliuc