The "Sefsafa" publishing house, Egypt, has recently released a collection of poems by Slovenian Poet Brane Mozetic, titled "Don't Leave a Trace Behind You." It features translated poems from works including "The Oath," "The Net," "Butterflies," "Banalities," "Also Banalities," and "Unaccomplished Plans of a Certain Revolution."
Translators Mohsen and Marguerite al-Hadi named the new collection after one of the Mozetic's longest translated poems. The other 47 works featured in the new book range between few lines and one to two pages. Seven poems were translated by Ashour Fani, Mohammed al-Amrawi, Jalal Hikmawi, and Golan Haji, while Mohsen and Marguerite al-Hadi translated 41 poems from selected works published in English, French, and Slovenian.
Brane Mozetic is one of the most prominent Slovenian poets, writers, and translators in his country. He was born in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. He studied French language and literature, and comparative literature. In his last poetry collections, he created new musical patterns in the Slovenian poetry, and used his skills to grow and magnify the power, authenticity, and depth of his poems, in which urban life meets modern community like two partners living a disturbed life, and suffering from unstable spirit and conscience.
This made him one of the best modern Slovenian artists, and made his poems attract many foreign translators. His works have been translated into many languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic. The poems featured in the new collection reflect an abundance of emotions against the human being and his siege. These emotions can be easily reflected in the following poem titled "Wizards of Large Cities in their Might":
They spread intolerance and narrowness with their hands
They dry wells, and sometimes hit
Drivers at night or spray poison
in glasses on the balcony, in the night they steal
sleep from the eyes of our children and the embraced creatures
They take every feeling and every desire to feel
Silent wizards put a rope in the route
of our neighbor, they steal the will from his wife, they steal colors
from flowers, and the scent from poetry, they plant
pain in heads, and fear in hearts.
The creativity of Mozetic, who has 13 poetry collections, goes beyond poetry. He wrote novels and short stories including "Sufferance" (1993); "Angels" (1996); and "The Lost Story" (2001). He also wrote comics for children including "The Countries of Bombs and Countries of Grass" (2013) which was translated into Arabic and released by Sefsafa publishing house in 2014. He also translated into Slovenian many works by French poets like Rimbaud and La Rochefoucauld, and edited many anthologies and literary and poetic translations issued by different European publishing houses. These contributions highlighted his significant role in introducing the Slovenian poetry and diffusing it around the world.
Mohsen al-Hadi, who translated the new collection, is a Yemeni-Slovenian translator, who has lived in Slovenia for years. He worked with his wife to translate the meanings of Quran to Slovenian in 2014. They also translated many poetry selections from the contemporary Slovenian poetry in 2009, in addition to a novel titled "Parallels," by writer Suzana Tratnik released by Sefsafa house in 2015.
