Dubravka Ugresic - The Ministry of Pain

May you die in darkness.

May your soul fall out.

May you never eat your fill.

May your joys lament.

May you drift without end.

May you go deaf.

May you go dumb.

May the earth push up your bones.

May you be devoured by worms.

May you lose your soul and nails.

May you never again see your house.

May you lack bread when you have salt.

May you turn to wood and stone.

May your star go out.

May you take to the road.

May your days be black.

May your tongue go mute.

May you leave your bones behind….

And when my vocal cords give out, when my forehead goes numb from the wind, I abandon the beach calm and collected, leaving no trace. The Dutch horizontals are good; they are like the school blotters of yesteryear: they absorb everything.

DUBRAVKA UGREŠI is the author of several works of fiction, including The Museum of Unconditional Surrender , and several essay collections, most recently Thank You for Not Reading . She has received several international prizes for her writing. She has held positions at Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, Wesleyan University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Born and raised in the former Yugoslavia, she left her homeland in 1993 for political reasons and lives in Amsterdam.

MICHAEL HENRY HEIM is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures and comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His many translations include Chekhov’s Essential Plays , Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being , and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice , for which he won the 2005 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. He also has translated Dubravka Ugreši ’s Fording the Stream of Consciousness .

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