The Tears and Smiles of Things

An evocative collection of vignettes and essays from Ukraineâ s â voiceâ of classical antiquity, now available in English for the first time.Inspired by Virgilâ s exquisitely ambivalent phrase â sunt lacrimae rerumâ (there are tears of/for/in things), Andriy Sodomora, the Ukrainian â voiceâ of classical antiquity, has produced a series of original vignettes and essays about things: the big things in our lives (like happiness, loneliness, and aging); the small things we do or see daily, rarely paying attention to them (like a treeâ s shadow or the kernels on an ear of corn); and the things (i.e., objects) to which we form connections. The selected stories presented here are the first English translations of Sodomoraâ s profoundly intellectual and intertextual prose. Through his nostalgic memories and recollections, Sodomora takes readers on a journey through western Ukraine, as well as through world literature, from ancient Greece and Rome to the poetry of Paul Verlaine and Federico Garc¦-a Lorca.This book has been published with the support of the Translate Ukraine Translation Program.