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AltaIFLAND |
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Alta Ifland (www.altaifland.com) was born in Communist Romania, came to the US as a political refugee in 1991 and now lives in France. A PhD in French language and literature, she works as a freelance writer, translator and book reviewer. She is the author of two collections of prose poems (Voix de glace/Voice of ice, bilingual, self-translated from French, 2008 Louis Guillaume Prize; and The Snail’s Song) and two books of short stories (Elegy for a Fabulous World, 2010 finalist, Northern California Book Award, and Death-in-a-Box, 2010 Subito Press Fiction Prize of the University of Colorado). Her novels, The Wife Who Wasn’t and Speaking to No. 4 were published by New Europe Books in 2021 and 2022. Ifland has also published translations from French into English (Raymond Queneau, Marguerite Duras, Lorand Gaspar), from English into French (W. S. Merwin), and Romanian to English (Norman Manea and Mariana Marin).
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The Snail’s Song
I know a Snail like no other. In summertime he lives on a leaf whose tree is perched on a cliff above the blue-green sea; in winters he lives within himself. But be it summer or winter he sings and plays all day, he plays an instrument with no strings, no brass, no wind; he plays his own house. He is himself his own house, which he always carries with him, and he is himself his own instrument, which he plays with such passion that his friend, the Turtle, opens her eyes wide with astonishment, nodding and wiggling her green head. She too is her own house, though her house is no instrument. Not having the gift of song, the Turtle stays quiet by her friend, as he delivers his homemade melodies, which can’t go anywhere because the house-instrument keeps them within its coiled shell. But how much song can a home take? One day, filled with too much music, the shell cracked at the heart of its coil, and from that minuscule wound sounds spilled into the world. Day after day the Snail’s song pours from the wound, and day after day his body, home and music are made anew, all one, in the secret darkness of the coiled, broken shell. His song comes from a broken home. From The Snail’s Song, 2011, Spuyten Duyvil
First Memory?
She is three years old. Her parents appear not to be home; her nanny, an old woman with a funny name, isn’t with her either, but she is surely in one of the other rooms. The girl is sitting at a table too big for her, a bowl of soup before her. In her right hand she is holding a spoon also too big, with which she clumsily attempts to eat the soup. She drops the spoon on the table. The soup is too hot. She climbs on a chair and manages to seize from the wooden cabinet a cup or a jar—here the film fades and the image gets blurry—then off the chair and back to the table. How did she manage to fill the cup with water? She pours the water into the bowl of soup and tastes again. Now it’s too cold. And the taste is different. She looks at the soup as if it were an untamed animal with which no communication is possible. From The Snail’s Song, 2011, Spuyten Duyvil
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These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author.
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