TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
Timeless
is a very problematic moniker to attach to art, for it bespeaks the
somehow otherworldly and the distant. But the world inhabited by G
Mend-Oyoo’s poems and narratives can easily fall into the catch of
timeless, they are as particles of memory in the modern world, gravid
visions in a haze of exhaust fumes.
Mend-Oyoo is perhaps equally
timeless, but in a very Mongolian fashion. He is forever taking calls on
his cellphone, forever heading this way and that in some vehicle or
other; but he thinks like an ancient man, slowly, deliberately and with
care, and like a spiritual man, with compassion and with lips of prayer.
All
these qualities will be found in the pages that follow. His language is
clean and elegant, his ideas contemporary, but his subject matter –
that word again – is timeless, oneiric, mythic. The poems are
structurally modern, they do not follow necessarily the structure of
classical Mongolian litarature, but they talk of family and nature and
nomadic life, of horses and airag and landscape, and this is the world
in which Mend-Oyoo grew up and became himself.
I have not sought
to make these translations literal. Rather I have sought to create a
kind of looking-glass, through which Mend-Oyoo’s world is seen perhaps
as though beneath the moon or through a haze of heat and dust.
The
initial idea for this book, then, came from my dear friend Mend-Oyoo,
who asked me to translate a selection of his poems while I was in
Ulaanbaatar during August 2006. Although it is I who am listed as the
translator, I would like to acknowledge the work done by Peter K Marsh
and S Sumiya in translating, respectively, The Legend of the Horse-Head
Fiddle and My Gentle Lyric.
Two people deserve special thanks for
acting as my living, breathing Mongolian-English dictionary supplements.
Mugi Oyoo not only brought me buuz and khushuur on a daily basis, she
also consistently placed me and my lexical questions near the top of her
to-do list, which, given the Byzantine length and complexity of both
her list and my questions, was no mean feat. Tsog Shagdarsüren was
always at hand to help explain (in excellent German when necessary) the
special nuances of Mongolian and how they could be translated, both
semantically and culturally, into English. Tsog was more than a gifted
translator, though: he quickly became my friend and his sudden death
during the preparation of this book affected me very deeply. I only hope
he can see his influence somewhere in these pages.
Simon Wickham-Smith
Seattle WA
February 2nd 2007
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