Karin Boye ebook

Just a reminder that my translations of Karin Boye's poetry (Complete Poems) are now available as a Kindle ebook, here (UK) and here (US).

Norway International

The current edition of Poetry International's website has work by Norwegian poets Monica Aasprong, Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen (some of his poems are also in my translations) and Tone Hødnebø on its front page. The Norwegian PIW site, where all the material should be accessible after this week, is here.

No Man's Land

by Pia Tafdrup

My grey cat vanishes,

or has it acquired a new life

   at Nivå Brickworks?

At night I hear it calling…

Search for it, search again the next day.

Live in a vacuum, while my father

looks for another farm,

but learn in sun and dust to cycle,

shoot myself forward like a mainspring,

   ever further out

on Vibevej, along the residential gardens.

Lilacs, laburnums,

an olfactory orgy to sweep past.

Shall I vanish like the cat,

for there is no one to play with,

   and over the summer

I lose

    tooth after tooth in my hollowed hand.

When my mother takes an afternoon nap

with no hands on the clock 

the first one falls out,

   white,

but leaving

      a bloody hole

the tongue’s tip wants to drill down into

– instead of calling, speaking.

Taste of iron in the mouth. Blood words.

Cave language. Tongue pit.

A tooth

   white

as a daisy growing in the grass

in the garden of the house we rent

   and under whose roof my mother in the rain

now and then sings

                      "Solitude Road".

In the house with creaky stairs

and smells of strangers

   there is a studio

we may not enter, my sister and I,

   there I seek refuge –

sit for hours on the floor, contemplate

the radiant pictures’

                  vanishing grey.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Chiaroscuro

by Kaarlo Sarkia


I heard the words my dreams spoke with their soul:
Who views his life with hatred, mad is he,
like one who whips and tears at his own flesh.
Life is a soil, from it your dreams break free,
and beauty grows from under weights of pain,
and when you rise and throw off matter’s reign
your dreams, too, meet their end within that mesh,
and darkness floods in all, devours it whole.

You must obey with love, must love your life,
For that is why your father fathered you,
and that is why, through all the shame and strife,
your mother carried you and brought you through,
was grateful to her life because of yours,
which she could place outside the open doors.

My life, I want to praise and thank you now:
Thank you for bearing me from emptiness,
a member of the beauteous human race,
for giving them to me, these human eyes,
for seeing beauty under vaulted skies,
thank you for filling them with dreams that flow
until the number of my days shall end you, life,
and I am harvest for the reaper’s scythe.

Power of life, I want to love you still,
because I wandered long in mazes made
of fear and desperation without will,
because you early took and caused to fade
that gift of yours that was the finest one,
love you because you left my strength undone
and let it lie in chains that weakness laid,
because your wine could also change and be
the vinegar of pain and death for me,
because when I will long for shadows tall
and give you back your gifts, and dying fall,
then it will turn, my soul, and take from you
another day, another morning, new.

VALOHÄMYÄ

Puhui mulle unieni sielu: 
Mieletön, ken elâmäänsä vihaa,
niinkuin mies, ken ruoskii omaa lihaa,
Elämä on unelmies multa, 
kaunis kasvaa alta tuskan paineen,
ja kun pääset vankilasta aineen,
loppuu myöskin unelmasi sulta,
kaiken ahmaa pimeyden nielu.

Rakastaa sun tulee elämätä, 
sitä varten sinut isäs siitti,
sitä varten sinut äitis kantoi,
vaikka painoi häpeä ja hätä,
sentään elämäänsä siitä kiitti,
että sulle elämän hän antoi. 

Tahdon, elämääni, sua kiittää:
Kiitos, että tyhjästä mun kannoit 
jäseneksi kauniin ihmissuvun, 
että ihmissilmät mulle annoit
valmistuneet monoin sukupolvin 
kauneuteen alla taivaan holvin,
kiitos, että unta niille riittáä,
siksi kunnes alta ilmain kuvun
täyttyessä päivieni luvun 
korjuumiehen viikate mun niittää. 

Rakastaa sua tahdon, mahti elon,
siksi että sokkeloissa harhain
epätoivon tuta sain ja pelon,
että kädestäni riistit varhain 
mikä mielestäni lahjas parhain,
rakastaa siks että mulle voiman
annoit heikkouden kammitsoiman,
että viinissäsi toinen puol’on
etikkata kivun sekä kuolon,
että kuitenkin, kun kaipaan varjoon
kuoleman ja lahjas sulle tarjoon
takaisin, sen jälleen sulta saa mun
sielinu, ain’ annat uuden aamun. 

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Ecbatana

The poem plays a central role in Sophus Claussen’s novel Valfart (Pilgrimage, 1896). Valfart is written as a travel memoir in the tradition of Goethe’s Italian Journey, though in Claussen’s book the narrative lends itself to the creation of a fictional world, a fantasy that is only tangentially linked to the real locations in Italy and France which the novel’s central character, the bridge-building engineer Silvio, visits. Silvio has been commissioned by a wealthy German lady to write “a treatise that was to be called Some of Italy's Oldest Bridges (Nogle af de ældste Broer i Italien)." In a sense, the novel is the treatise, in which the bridges eventually become allegorical, representing love-relationships rather than constructions of stone. The “pilgrimage” of the title is a journey to the sanctuary of the Montallegro Madonna near Rapallo, a section that forms the high point of the novel’s second part.

On the way to Italy Silvio visits Paris, where he falls in love with Célimène and has a Platonic love affair with her. The affair eventually becomes complicated by Silvio’s desire for a physical relationship, but before this happens, he attends a New Year’s celebration at which he has a hallucinatory vision of a more ancient civilization – the Persian city of Ecbatana:

Han vidste ikke helt nøjagtigt, paa hvilken Klode eller I hvilken Tid, han selv befandt sig, om han virkelig var i Paris ved et Nytaarsselskab, eller om han var med ved et nu længst forglemt Gæstebud I Ekbátana.

He was not quite sure on which planet or in which era he found himself, whether he was in Paris at a New Year’s gathering or whether he was taking part in a now long-forgotten feast in Ecbatana.

The Ecbatana poem is a curious assembly of visual and visionary, dreamlike elements, bound together in a four-footed metre. There is, however, a problem in the last line of each stanza, all of which end with the word "Ekbátana". As the Danish scholar Vilhelm Andersen once pointed out, where the metre calls for the dactylic Ek-bá-a-ta-na, there is what he calls an “iambic dipody”, or double iamb. This has the effect of creating a slight emphasis on the "Ek-" of Ekbátana, producing a delay which means that the final syllable of the line carries a lighter stress than would normally be the case, and causes a sense of floating uncertainty, where "in a single word finite meets infinite, and materiality meets transcendence".  (For this perception I'm indebted to Dan Ringgaard's study of Claussen's poetic universe in his book Den poetiske lækage).

There are other technical problems in the poem – for example, the name ”Ekbátana” is a poor rhyme-word in Danish, and Claussen has to resort to pairing it with insignificant words like “da” and “fra”. Yet the richness of the imagery is such this doesn’t really interfere with the reader’s appreciation of the poem as a whole.

In my English version - which I'm still working on - I have tried to maintain the metre and rhyme, though this may have led to some distortions of meaning. The Danish text follows, and after it my translation.

EKBÁTANA

Jeg husker den Vaar, da mit Hjærte i Kim
undfangede Drømmen og søgte et Rim,
hvis Glans skulde synke, jeg ved ej hvorfra,
som naar Solen gik ned i Ekbátana.

En Spotter gav mig med Lærdom at ane,
at Vægten paa Ordet var Ekbatáne.
Den traurige Tosse, han ved ej da,
at Hjærtet det elsker Ekbátana.

Byen med tusind henslængte Terrasser,
Løngange, svimlende Mure - som passer
der bagerst i Persien, hvor Rosen er fra,
begravet i Minder - Ekbátana!

Hin fjærne Vaar, da min Sjæl laa i Kim
og drømte umulige Roser og Rim,
er svunden, skjønt Luften var lys ogsaa da,
som den Sol, der forsvandt bag Ekbátana.

Men Drømmen har rejst sig en Vaar i Paris,
da Verden var dyb og assyrisk og vis,
som blødte den yppigste Oldtid endda ...
Jeg har levet en Dag i Ekbátana.

Min Sjæl har flydt som en Syrings af Toner,
til Solfaldet farvede Parkernes Kroner
og Hjærtet sov ind i sin Højhed - som fra
en Solnedgang over Ekbátana.

Men Folkets Sæder? den stoltes Bedrift?
hvad nyt og sælsomt skal levnes derfra?
En Rædsel, et Vanvid i Kileskrift
paa dit Dronningelegem - Ekbátana.

Men Rosen, det dyreste, verden har drømt,
al Livets Vellyst - hvad var den da?
Et Tegn kun, en Blomst, som blev givet paa Skrømt
ved en kongelig Fest i Ekbátana.

Da blev jeg taalmodig og stolt. Jeg har drømt
en dybere Lykke, end nogen har tømt.
Lad Syndflodens Vande mig bære herfra
- jeg har levet en dag i Ekbátana.


ECBÁTANA

I remember that spring, when my heart in its time
conceived the dream and searched for a rhyme,
whose glory should sink, I know not from where,
as when the sun set in Ecbátana.

A mocker advised me, with scholarly drama,
that the stress on the word was “Ecbatána”,
The sad, silly fool, he wasn’t aware
that the heart is in love with Ecbátana.

The city with terraces thousandfold sprawling,
with passages secret, walls dizzy falling
in Persia down there where the roses are,
buried in memories – Ecbátana!

That far-off spring, when my heart in its time
dreamed of impossible roses and rhyme,
has died, though the air was also light there,
like the sun that died behind Ecbátana.

But in Paris one spring the dream came to rise,
and the world became deep and Assyrian and wise,
as if still antiquity bled as of yore…
I lived for a day in Ecbátana.

My soul floated on like a syrinx of sounds
till the sun’s fall colored the parks' tree-crowns,
and the heart fell asleep in its highness, as there
in a sunset over Ecbátana.

But the people’s customs? The proud man’s feat?
What new and strange things would be left to share?
A terror, a madness, a cuneiform script
On your queenly body – Ecbátana.

But the rose, the most precious that world’s dreams know,
all life’s voluptuousness – who knew what they were?
Just a sign, a flower that was given for show
at a royal feast in Ecbátana.

I grew patient and proud. And then in my sleep
I dreamt of a fortune unemptied and deep.
Let the Flood’s waters carry me hence, afar
– I lived for a day in Ecbátana.

Sophus Claussen in English

The apparent absence of a standard English translation of the work of the great Danish Symbolist poet Sophus Claussen (1865-1931) has always struck me as puzzling. Whether it's because Claussen is still  associated in some Anglo-American literary minds with the European "periphery", or whether it relates to the difficulty of rendering his polished and elegant metrical verse into English rhyme, or whether the obscurity of some of his work has confounded the translators, his poetry has remained to a large extent unknown outside the Nordic region. It has also meant that Claussen's novels, which include Unge Bander (1894), Antonius i Paris (1896) and Valfart (1896), are not yet known to an English-language readership.

During the past few months I've been trying out some English versions of poems by Claussen in the environment of an online translation workshop, where the general atmosphere, though inevitably somewhat foggy, is none the less enlivening. The response among specialists and non-specialists alike has been interesting. Although some participants have dismissed the poems as "glib" and "flowery", others have confirmed by the general drift of their comments that in many respects Claussen's work differs little in form, style and character from that of many other Symbolist poets of his time, although they wrote in French, German or Russian, not Danish. Certainly, Claussen was entirely at home in the world of Parisian literary bohemianism, and was even photographed together with Verlaine and other Parnassian and Symbolist poets. The French translations of his work by the poet Charles Cros, though long out of print, also put him firmly into the context of the French literature from which he derived so much of the technical basis of his inspiration.

In her fascinating and amazingly detailed study of Nordic Orientalism, the Scandinavianist and literary scholar Elisabeth Oxfeldt has examined the  roots and genesis of Claussen's celebrated poem 'Ekbátana', which she sees as a central text in the historic emergence of Denmark from the cultural periphery of Europe towards its centre. She writes that "the poem expresses a longing towards Parisian modernity and cosmopolitanism as well as a built-in resistance towards a Western monoculture whose tendency it is to obliterate peripheral cultures."

In future posts I'll present the Danish text of  'Ekbátana' together with the latest version of my translation, and discuss the poem further.

Out in the Field

A small group of Finnish-English translators who hail from both sides of the Atlantic has recently set itself up as a literary "translation cooperative" - FELT.  At present the aims of the new body are somewhat unclear: apparently it's not an association along the lines of SELTA, the long-established association of Swedish-English literary translators, but rather "a community where translators can exchange news, ideas, and working methods with each other and share their work with the public", to quote the official statement on the FELT website. It seems that it also exists, in the words of one member, "to unabashedly promote our own work to general readers, publishers, and agents."

So far so good, and one wishes the cooperative all the best for the future. It's still not clear, however, whether the new community is an open one which all Finnish-English translators may join - in the way that Swedish-English translators have joined SELTA over the past few decades as full or associate members - or whether it's a closed professional club with a fixed and restricted membership and a Facebook window on the wider world. It might perhaps be helpful if the organizers would make this less ambiguous, though one appreciates that the planning of the new organization may still be in the early stages.

In the Mirror

Kaarlo Sarkia

IN THE MIRROR

Strange and truly wondrous
in the mirror you look at me.
All I really know is
that you I cannot be.

With my eyes you survey me,
with my lips you smile, too,
what I see in the mirror
is not me, but you, just you.

Whoever you are – astral morning,
eternal night – in the frame
like a wraith, a ghostly phantom,
invisible I remain.

KUVASTIMESTA

Kuvastimesta minua vastaan

sinä katselet, ihmeellinen. 

Minä ymmärrän ainoastaan:

Minä en ole siinä, en. 

Sinä katselet silmilläni,

sinä hymyät suullani mun.

En peilistä itseäni

mina nää, näen sun, vain sun. 

Kuka liet – ylimaallinen aamu,

iankaikkinen yö – sinut nään

kuvastimesta, niinkuin haamu

näkymättömäks itse ma jään. 

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Saima Harmaja

My translations of poems by Saima Harmaja are online at Books from Finland.

Two Poems

UUNO KAILAS

ALONE

I go alone. Leading the others?
Or am I last in the race?
I do not know. Now it is eons
since I saw a human face.

Perhaps I have never seen anyone.
It is wiped from my memory.
Perhaps it was only my mother,
she who gave birth to me.

Or did I see while dreaming
another person, you?
Perhaps one day I will find you,
perhaps you are lost from view.

What message is yours: joy? anguish?
That is something I never knew.
What’s certain: I can discover
myself only through you.


YKSIN

Käyn yksin. Eelläkö muista?
Vai jälemmäksikö jäin?
En tiedä. On kauan siitä,
kun ihmisen toisen näin.

Ehk'en minä koskaan nähnyt.
Se on häipynyt muistostain.
Kenties se on syntymässä
oma äitini ollut vain.

Vai lienenkö unessa nähnyt,
sun, toisen ihmisen.
Kenties sinut kerran löydän,
kenties sua löydä en.

Mikä viestisi lie: ilo? tuska?
Sitä en minä tiedä lain.
Mut, varma on: itseni löytää
mina voin sinun kauttas vain.

KAARLO SARKIA

THE ONE WHO FLED

Did I love you?
That I do not know.
In my soul I trembled
when you turned to go.

I know that you left it
with reason to flee.
No way to prohibit
necessity.

From my soul was lifted
the innermost veil.
You could not bear it,
a moth, you set sail,

fled from the gloomy
enigma in fright:
in front of you opened
a pitch-black night,

deeper than leagues, you saw the dark pit,
- and then you fled
the cruel sight of it.

Did I love you?
That I do not know -
In my soul I trembled
when you turned to go.

PAENNUT

Rakastinko sinua?
Tiedä en tuota.
Värisin, kun lähdit
sieluni luota.

Tiedän: kun lähdit,
et lähtenyt syyttä.
Kieltää on mahdoton
välttämättömyyttä.

Väistyi sieluni
sisimmäisin verho.
Nähdä et kestänyt,
pakenit, perho,

säikähdit synkkää
arvoitusta:
eteesi aukeni
yö sysimusta,

pimeän kuilun näit, peninkulmaa
syvemmän – pakenit
näkyä julmaa.

Rakastinko sinua?
tiedä en tuota -
värisin, kun lähdit
sieluni luota.


translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Pedro Carmona-Alvarez

My translations of poems by the Norwegian-Chilean poet Pedro Carmona-Alvarez are on the site of Poetry International Web.

Tua Forsström

Books from Finland magazine has published some of my translations of poems from Tua Forsström's new collection. There's also a short introductory essay by Michel Ekman, also in my translation.

Laus Strandby Nielsen: Two Texts

MR. SAFE

Mr. Safe has chosen his 600 kilo weight pseudonym because the elevator can just about carry him. The combination he has forgotten. Perhaps a stamp collection has been lost. He watches the news continuously. It is always new. His forgetfulness wins the race against the whole flock of repetitions. Every time. That is how he forestalls his loneliness. Once he had an anxious future. Now he is in time’s fullness of abundance. Absolutely alone. Absolutely modern. Like in the good old days. His daughter is his mother. His grandchild is also him. His time has come. It goes no further. How can he be lonely?

His real name is Hansen. More real than that it does not get. It is far from certain that it is enough. It takes at least three people to change the diaper on his 120 kilo weight body. Free will lives somewhere nearby. Like a king in his castle. It’s some old shit, but it's his old shit. There must be a meeting. There must be several meetings. There must be implementation. But from now on he represents your blind spot. His heirs are called Cause and Effect.


HR. PENGESKAB

Hr. Pengeskab har valgt sit 600 kg tunge pseudonym fordi elevatoren så lige akkurat kan bære ham. Koden har han glemt. Måske er en frimærkesamling gået tabt. Han ser nyhederne uafbrudt.  De er hele tiden nye. Hans glemsomhed vinder kapløbet mod hele flokken af gentagelser. Hver gang. Sådan kommer han ensomheden i forkøbet. Engang havde han en ængstelig fremtid.  Nu er han i tidens fylde af overflod. Absolut ikke alene. Absolut moderne. Som i de gode gamle dage. Hans datter er hans mor. Hans barnebarn er også ham. Hans tid er kommet. Den går ikke længere. Hvordan kan han være ensom?

Hans virkelige navn er Hansen. Mere virkeligt bliver det ikke. Det er langt fra sikkert at det er nok. Der skal mindst tre personer til at skifte bleen på hans 120 kg tunge krop. Den frie vilje bor et sted i nærheden. Som en konge på sit slot. Det er noget gammelt lort, men det er hans gamle lort. Der skal holdes et møde. Der skal holdes flere møder. Der skal implementeres. Men fra  nu af forestiller han din blinde plet. Hans arvinger hedder Årsag og Virkning.



THEY NEVER PUT THE LIGHT OUT IN THE CORRIDOR

Because life goes on with trolleys and racks
in the light and the dark, in spasms that clutch something
almost nothing of what remains, it spreads
out like that snoring in the universe you call
your neighbour. You must go closer. Through the fair
fluttering worlds that are what you can see
in the birdsong’s grey-flickering cuts in the grief.
The wet and the dry monsters wag their tails.
If they’ve been allowed to keep them. There’s
a big circle when the animals say goodbye.
While the  pretty, capable ambassadors of the future
submit their credentials to my white
blood cells. There’s a burning in one foot.
There’s an emergency vehicle on its way in the oesophagus
in a southbound direction, I repeat: Dr. Carrot
and Dr. Stick are in a meeting, this is the last call
for passengers to The Old World. All
others are asked to stand up and say thank you for the ride.


DE SLUKKER ALDRIG LYSET UDE PÅ GANGEN 

Fordi livet går videre med rulleborde og stativer
i lyset og mørket, i kramper der knuger noget
nær ingenting ud af det der er tilbage, det breder
sig ud som den snorken i universet du kalder
din næste. Du skal tættere på. Gennem de fagre
blafrende verdener der er hvad du kan se 
i fuglesangens gråflimrende rifter i sorgen.
De våde og de tørre monstre logrer med halen.
Hvis de har fået lov til at beholde den.  Der er
en stor rundkreds når dyrene siger farvel.
Mens fremtidens smukke, dygtige ambassadører
afleverer deres akkreditiver til mine hvide
blodlegemer. Det brænder i den ene fod.
Der er et udrykningskøretøj på vej i spiserøret
i sydgående retning, jeg gentager: Dr. Gulerod
og Dr. Stok sidder i møde, det er sidste udkald
for passagerer til Den gamle verden. Alle
andre bedes rejse sig og sige tak for turen.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Michael Strunge and F.P. Jac

YouTube now has quite an extensive collection of videos of readings and interviews featuring 1980s Danish poets.  In this sequence Michael Strunge is joined by F.P. Jac.

Pia Tafdrup: Salamandersol

In a documentary broadcast on Gyldendal's television channel, Pia Tafdrup talks about her new collection Salamandersol. Among other things, the film contains some video clips that feature Michael Strunge.


 

Laus Strandby Nielsen: Two Texts

THE TITLE GEYSIR

Seen from a distance in backlight it looks like a slightly informal funeral.
But the yellow, red, blue, purple, black, incidentally not green
windcheaters and raincoats and not least the cameras tell
a different story about the incidentally 19 texts without a heading
that stand around a mud hole. Which one must not touch.
19 different open texts, cryptically unfinished, muttering
with a planet in their mouths and the sky for a handkerchief.
Can they read one another? No. Can they read themselves? No.
They are waiting for the title, and so they cannot get down
to the text. And then it is there. A fountain of boiling water
shoots high in the air. The cameras click. An expected
surprise, called Geysir, makes the texts meaningless
and briefly closed...


OVERSKRIFTEN GEYSIR

Set på afstand i modlys ligner det en lidt uformel begravelse.
Men de gule, røde, blå, lilla, sorte, tilfældigvis ingen grønne
vind- og regnjakker og ikke mindst kameraerne fortæller 
noget andet om de tilfældigvis 19 tekster uden overskrift
der står rundt om et mudderhul. Som man ikke skal røre ved.
19 forskellige åbne tekster, kryptisk uafsluttede, mumlende
med en planet i munden og himlen som lommetørklæde.
Kan de læse hinanden? Nej. Kan de læse sig selv? Nej.
De venter på overskriften, og så kan de jo ikke komme ned
i teksten. Og så er den der. En fontæne af kogende vand
skyder højt op i luften. Kameraerne klikker. En forventet
overraskelse, kaldet Geysir, gør teksterne meningsløse
og kortvarigt afsluttede…


AVANTGARDE

The stiffest clothes are not as stiff as they were. So now a plaster cast is needed. But I anticipate the course of events. As always when one lags behind. The whole class came and wrote their names on the plaster leg. This temporary monument, assailed by doubtful presence. Who will come now with the family album of X-rays? The loft must be cleared. The house must be vacuumed and fumigated. And yet the new tenants will complain because they are bitten by the old fleas. They are not all there. They are obsessed with the thought of fleas. They scratch themselves where the skin bubbles up around a bite. Material sense never fails.


AVANTGARDE

Det stiveste puds er ikke så stift som det har været. Så nu skal der gipses. Men jeg foregriber begivenhedernes gang. Som altid når man er bagud. Hele klassen kom og skrev deres navne på gipsbenet. Dette midlertidige monument, bestormet af tvivlsomt nærvær. Hvem kommer nu med familiealbummet af røntgenbilleder? Loftet skal ryddes. Huset skal støvsuges og gasses. Og alligevel vil de nye lejere klage fordi de bliver bidt af de gamle lopper. De er ikke rigtig kloge. De er besat af tanken om lopper. De kradser sig hvor huden bobler op omkring et bid. Materialefornemmelsen fornægter sig aldrig.


translated from Danish by David McDuff

Salamander Sun

Salamandersol, Pia Tafdrup's latest collection of poetry, contains one poem for each year of the poet's life. Here's a translation of the first poem.

JOY

First is joy,

  smuggled across the border

      through a narrow tunnel.

The night is over, drowned in the sea

  buried in the ground,

      thousands of years passed alone.

Smells that already existed,

  closely surround,

       horses snort in the barn.

Wake with light,

  see shadow-play on the wallpaper

       hear birds in bushes and ivy.

The  grown-ups’ voices and laughter,

  a safe landing place

       on the other side of the wall.

First is the morning garden

  in sun,

       its illumination of the heart.

Apples fall in the warm grass,

  insects rise

       up from flowers’ petal depth.

First is openness,

  that soon closes,

       faceless.

First is trust,

  that is easily swallowed

       by galactic fear.

First is  joy,

  that newborn flows

       towards the world, dreams it.

Then follows grief, then follows anger,

  then someone says:

    –  Peace be with it.

Life is death that is coming,

  but first is joy.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

The Beggar and the Hare

Tuomas Kyrö's novel Kerjäläinen ja jänis (The Beggar and the Hare, 2011) is at once a homage to the better-known book by Arto Paasilinna, Jäniksen vuosi (The Year of the Hare, 1977), and an affectionate pastiche of it. Kyrö takes the theme of "man and animal" and turns it into a satire on the life of modern Finland, with its uncertain position between an affluent and introspective Scandinavia and an impoverished but outward-bound Eastern Europe. The novel's great virtue lies in its author's ability to go further and convert this local drama into a human comedy, where elements of social and political strife become part of a universal moral tale.

Here's an excerpt from the early part of the book, in my translation:

From Kerjäläinen ja jänis [The Beggar and the Hare] by Tuomas Kyrö

[pp. 29-33]

Yegor Kugar was a professional in the security sector whose career began in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Later on the artificial Union filed for bankruptcy, but that change of affairs had no effect on Yegor Kugar’s life and deeds – at least not of a negative kind. Regimes may fall, but the security police remains. The security police is the regime. From Kugar’s professional point of view the nosedive of the Bolshies was actually a positive event, one that improved the state of the markets. Unstable domestic politics and power vacuums always mean brilliant new opportunities for those with no shortage of nerve and testosterone. 

“I brought the poppy flowers of the mullahs to the nouveau-riches of my own land. A briefcase full of opium, several briefcases full of banknotes. Our kind of agricultural subsidy. That way the level of my income rather swiftly reached that of my clients. I bought a Nokia mobile phone the size of a beer-crate but couldn’t use it to call anyone, as there weren’t any network towers in our neck of the woods yet.”

   At first Yegor sold sackfuls of poppies, then opium, but having been brought up on the street he soon realized that the longer a small businessman works up his raw stock the fatter his wallet will be. With his takings Yegor Kugar bought what every newly-rich motherfucker throughout the world buys: an outsize four-by-four. It might also suit the tramcar-riding intelligentsia to find out what it feels like to go rolling along in one’s very own bulletproof, family-car-eating Hummer.

   Yegor needed a temporary residence for vacations, so he bought a floor of the former Party members’ apartment block. When the heroes of the Great Patriotic War on the floor above complained about the noise, Yegor bought that floor as well and moved the heroes out to the street. In his new home Yegor Kugar celebrated his own ego, the good sides of his time at the summit of world history in the company of presidents, sports stars and the bearded, pointy hat-wearing radicals of the Orthodox Church. An endless shindig, like the one in Yegor’s favourite book The Dirt, which describes the everyday life – or rave-up – of the band Mötley Crüe. For in Yegor’s eyes two beings were superior to all others: Vince Neil and Joseph Stalin. Yegor himself puts it like this:

“I’ll tell you straight, as it’s important if you want to understand my character and don’t just want to stick me in the slammer. I’m mad about fucking. It’s the only way I know to get the shit out of my head when I’m under this goddamn stress all the time. Fucking is better than fighting, no? At first I never did drugs myself because I knew it would immediately bugger the stock records and the sales chain follow-up.

   “What’s the alternative? Drinking puts you out of action for several days. It’s better to empty your head with fucking.

    “Two weeks of business, two weeks in my pad with Miss Uzbekistan. There are all kinds of broads in the world, of all races, sizes, smells and tastes. There are the Pam Andersons and the Armi Aavikkos, but there are also the junkies, the halfwits and the Alla Pugachovas. There are the semi-uglies who are also hypersexual marvels in an easy-going sort of way. There are the seventeen year-olds who look like women of thirty and there are the forty-seven year-olds who’ve kept their resale value. There are the rump roasts who are bigger and lovelier than the sum of their holes. And there the ones who are just holes, for whom I was equivalent to money, drugs and connections, in other words a hole through which they could sniff coke with NHL hockey players. But fun was always had on both sides, until it got embarrassing, at which point I’d tell the girls to go, and order new ones. It didn’t seem possible that such a life would ever end.

   “I just can’t sleep alone, I need someone beside me, it doesn’t matter who it is as long as she has a good body. That’s how it is with the women back home, but over here the ladies have been let into the labour market, they have too many opportunities to let their bodies go and quit wearing makeup.”

Yegor Kugar wanted more serious challenges in his life, and so he expanded his business activities from drugs to arms. A market was offered to him on a plate: hostile armies. The most important thing was that the conflicts were ongoing, that no peace negotiations were started, that the situation did not become normalized. As long as the hostile army was within binocular range and antagonistic, one could trade drugs for arms.

“Shitistan, Blackanistan and blah-blah-blah. I got my supply of happy dust from the tribal warlords, paid cash in Kalashnikovs. Then, just for form’s sake, a little skirmish with the same crew, and at the same time an application to HQ for leave, which was granted of course as I slipped in some powder as a sweetener.

    “The problems began when the enemy side began to tighten up their morale. Worst of all were the separatists, read B-league fundamentalists, read clerics. They’re an obstacle to free trade, a bit like your social democracy here. They scared the pants off me, because they weren’t scared of us at all. Kind of like the Finns during the Winter War: let the Russkies bring their millions of tanks, we’ll mow them down with our bows and catapults. In place of fear and flight they had hate and faith. Extremely dangerous. I respected them and despised them. But goddammit, if they’d gained such unlimited power, why on earth did they go on living in caves and ruins? They made threatening videos, took hostages and muttered their holy scripture, though they’d have done  better to make music videos and build swimming pools in their basements with pole dancing, billiard tables and drink cupboards.

    “I realized that they didn’t know much about fucking, either. That they could only get it up when they were able to rape someone. Their male cousins.”

The Woman at 1000 Degrees

Here's Icelandic novelist Hallgrímur Helgason discussing his latest novel, on The Reykjavík Grapevine: 

It’s about Herra Björnsson, an eighty-year-old Icelandic woman, who was the granddaughter of the first president of Iceland. She was born in 1929 and grew up on the Breiðafjörður islands. Her father was among the few Icelanders who fought on Hitler’s side in WW2. Her life was very much affected by this fact, and during the war she was left alone, a young girl roaming around Germany. You can say she never recovered from this experience.

After the war she goes from here to there, has many husbands and lives all over the place. She then ends up bedridden, in a garage in Reykjavík, where she spends her last years living alone with a laptop and an old German hand grenade, her sole souvenir from a turbulent life. The book plays out in the present, with her in the garage, doing her tricks on Facebook and such, but also in the past, as she looks back on her eventful life. The novel is very much Herra’s life story, peppered with some eighty years of North European and Icelandic history. It’s very tragic at times, but funny as well, I hope.

There are some chapters from the new novel in my translation, here.

The Great Flood (2)

Sort Of Books say that they are publishing my translation of Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen as The Moomins and the Great Flood in October 2012. There's some information on their website.

Update: the translation is now published.

Travel Light

My translation of a recent poem by Pia Tafdrup is published at Plume magazine.

And Other Stories

Catharine Mansfield, interviewing Stefan Tobler in Booktrust, writes:

With the help of the reading groups and subscribers, the company plans to publish 4 or 5 new titles in 2012, including books by Argentinian heavyweight Carlos Gamerro, Russian author Oleg Zaionchkovsky and Swiss writer Christoph Simon. The company now has over 200 subscribers and aims to reach 300 by the end of the year. Reading groups are also thriving, with Swedish and Arabic groups planned for 2012.

Two Percent

At FutureBook, Jakob Harden discusses the state of Danish publishing in the light of the rise of the e-book, and notes that so far

With less than a 2 % market share, e-books are still to come in Denmark.

The Great Flood

 
I'm informed by an editor at Schildts - the Finland-Swedish publishing company now in a merger with Söderströms - that an unnamed UK publisher may be interested in releasing a new edition of my translation of Tove Jansson's first Moomin story, Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen. However, this remains to be confirmed, and the translation itself has a rather curious history, having been already been published (with Tove Jansson's original illustrations) by Schildts in 2005 and 2007.

10 poems

by Rune Christiansen

  

A sheet of paper lit up by memory

But still – the poem's patient independence, and the shallow depths near heaven, a phrase I have from Ekelöf (‘As in the ballad’ published 10 October 1964), perhaps simply to remind myself that the draught from the open kitchen window, and the thin, cold drizzle, snowflakes almost, set the scene for an awkward perspective that evening. The year was 2003. How would it go with us?

  And on the grey respatex table, next to a black dice, lay the photograph of father, a picture that had once been stapled to a public document unknown to me. I noted that we did not resemble each other, but when I turned the face towards the twilight I found my way home all the same.

Lukas 9

A day of frozen lakes, in February the sun reigns only in shy glints, and the silence is on its way like space ships passing in the night. Soon it will snow, as in northern Japan, soon we shall be in the prime of sleep, and the universe will not weigh us down any longer. When I see you at a distance, on a white slope, I think: all that you take from me you will receive, and all that I borrow from you, you will inherit back.

 

Five allegorical sketches

The escalators down to the subway lead the shadows ambiguously home. In the absence of other gods, we eagerly greet the chill draught from the trains.

*

In Poems Around Zero Karl Vennberg wrote: "Someone, perhaps you, seems to be taking a rest, / though in great unrest," and then "Someone, perhaps myself, raises an arm / as against a delayed attack”, and elsewhere: "For a moment to stand there outside / and avoid recognizing oneself!"

*

We played soccer on a little patch of land, used an empty water bottle and a jacket as goal. I thought of all the years that had gone. When darkness came, we continued for another hour.

*

The two boys shivering in the rain will soon themselves turn into rain.

*

One no longer sees oneself as a child in one’s childhood.

 

The working class arrives in Paradise

1. It is 1975, I am twelve, I am travelling by train, I have planned to go to The Elysian Fields, or to Dalarö.

2. Oh, how I have missed surrendering myself to the warmth. Where are you from? a girl asks. It’s so bright around you.

3. Everything was in motion even though there was no wind.

4. They say that peace came, and that it was not expected. How did that happen?

5. I never said "dad" after I turned ten, nor "father" either, I referred to him by name, or I addressed him directly with a "you".

6. What remains? Only vague images of things that happened all too fast.

7. "Longing" is reminiscent of "long ago".

 

Julien Gracq (July 27, 1910 - December 22, 2007)

A boy does not speak the same language as a rabbit or a deer. An airport does not cry for help as a girl can cry for help. "At the bottom of the garden" does not mean "she is shaking with fever," but is from the same linguistic source. The one who says "let’s prune these branches" probably understands the one who talks about time as an exhausting preparation. The tablecloth is being stained while we discuss. Of course we agree about chestnuts, rain, farewells – for what we understand, what we grasp, is our leavings.  

 

The lonely clouds blow across the sky

Fatigue at a window overlooking a rain-soaked park, you lean out panting after the night's labour, the notebook with its scribbles lies open in the frame, the little cactus has capsized, and the clouds – they are gliding all over the public sector.

 

St. Nobody

Down in the street two young girls are kicking a football against a container, and so they set reality in motion, just as you once set love in motion in a hotel room in a city without memory.

  We don’t live long, we are teenagers, and then it is winter. But if we are lucky we shall meet again in another life, preferably on the coast, preferably in November, the reunion is pure experience – we both stand still in the snow with our own understanding.

 

I have always been here before

One morning you move without understanding poetry, in the light there is no room, only thin dust, cold in the corners. Life arrives with its tulips, the scorch-marks of New Year's rockets in the snow make you nostalgic. But what serves you? What is in your best interest? In a photograph taken in Turku in 1947 a grey horse is crossing a bridge. But what if this poem were to end like this: a boy leaves a girl with a certain melancholy – everything was new to them that night, they were disappointed.

 

Loneliness mistaken for a clear day

The snow-covered mountains in the distance are reminiscent of distant, snow-covered mountains, or capitalism, capitalism engulfed by death (can it be said so simply?).

You wait in a white car, the sun floods over the front windscreen and makes the glass soft, in the glove compartment – a postcard:

             VI. Winterkampfspiele, Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1941

No matter: from a great height the blue sky resembles any old desolate expanse.

  

Morton Feldman (12 January 1926 - 3 September 1987)

Why patterns? A distinct and compliant echo? Or is it rather a matter of a patiently extended waiting? Or drops that hesitate in the encounter with themselves? Of course it is drops, drops as we have forgotten them – slow and obvious, yes, obvious, for after all no one has ever said: I leave death to those who need it, but Basho mentions the cold rain.

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Leaves from Autumn's archive

My translation of some excerpts from Bo Carpelan's posthumously published novel Blad ur höstens arkiv (Schildts, 2011) are online at Books from Finland's website. I've also translated an essay by Clas Zilliacus which examines the book's style and structure.

Poem

Five allegorical sketches

by Rune Christiansen

The escalators down to the subway lead the shadows ambiguously home. In the absence of other gods, we eagerly greet the chill draught from the trains.

*

In Poems Around Zero Karl Vennberg wrote: "Someone, perhaps you, seems to be taking a rest, / though in great unrest," and then "Someone, perhaps myself, raises an arm / as against a delayed attack”, and elsewhere: "For a moment to stand there outside / and avoid recognizing oneself!"

*

We played soccer on a little piece of land, used an empty water bottle and a jacket as goal. I thought of all the years that had gone. When darkness came, we continued for another hour.

*

The two boys shivering in the rain will soon themselves turn into rain.

*

One no longer sees oneself as a child in one’s childhood.


translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Godfather

From Godfather [Gudfar], by Dy Plambeck


BANG! What a day to be at a cycle race! It was 1953, August, the time shortly before the turn, when the beech tree changes colour and the cycling season ends, and the rain was falling heavily. But it wasn’t one of those days when late summer puts a lid on, when the clouds draw together and the sky closes in like the dough round a baked pie. There was a brief, intense rain shower that made everything look stronger and more radiant, the way stones look brighter when they are wet. Then the sun broke through the clouds over Ordrup Track, and when Tenna noticed it she looked up at the sky. She had just fired the starting pistol to begin the race. It hadn’t been the original intention that she should do it. It was the job of Annalise, loved and admired, at least for her name. She was the daughter of Keller, the Track’s director, but she could not be said to be a great beauty. She was a small, slender woman with the shape of a pheasant. Only because Annalise was sick had Keller asked Tenna if she could oblige.

Tenna was twenty-nine years old, an hourglass-shaped girl with a big bosom, big brown eyes and big jet-black hair that fell in soft curls over her shoulders. She was slim, Gustav could have reached his hands around her waist, yet even so there was something full-bodied about her, something the police described in her dossier as stout, perhaps because everything about her was plump, her bosom, hair, lips, her large square nose, her puffy cheeks, her bushy eyebrows, pretty wasn’t the right word for her, more distinctive, alluring. She watched the riders as they raced down the straight. She loved fast cycling, a points race on the Track, the most exhausting kind of speed test. It was a pure war of nerves. The rider waited only for his opponent to lose concentration so he could attack. Only a moment’s inattentiveness was enough. No circuit race required the same raw strength and self-confidence.
  The start was crucial, the first turn of the pedal, all one’s strength had to go into it. The riders drew up parallel on both sides of their handlebars in order to set off in a straight line, and there was Erik-Frank approaching with his passionate face and elegant style. With his all-crushing ride. Tenna knew him from Pinden, the pub where she worked, the cyclists’ favourite watering hole, when he came and bought draught Tuborg. Tenna waved, Erik-Frank rode past her, and eight years earlier, in 1945, four days after the liberation, drove an open lorry through the old marsh district, Bringemosen, Møllemosen, Bundmosen, that surrounded Værløse camp, and continued across Måløvvej to fetch Tenna and Gustav from their bakery in Knardrup.
  It had been Gustav's dream to expand the bakery. He decided to raise the capital, he had the German discipline, even though he could hardly be called German. He was born in Flensburg, Germany’s Scandinavia, but had been naturalized and received Danish citizenship long before the war. He was seventeen years older than Tenna. One of his distant relatives knew a German officer in Værløse camp. It was through him that Tenna and Gustav came to manage the canteen. That way they could earn a bit extra, put money aside for Knardrup’s first patisserie.

The Germans took charge of Værløse camp from day one, on the very day of the occupation they shot the Danish army’s nine Fokker XXI aircraft to pieces. The Germans knew what they were after, how strong the fighter planes would make the Danish forces. As for the buildings, the Germans left them intact. They could use them. They hoisted the swastika over the camp and set up a shooting academy in the barracks where German fighter pilots from the front came to train. It was not the fighter pilots but the Danish workers at the camp whom Tenna had to serve in her canteen. She served breakfast porridge, sandwiches and leftovers of pastry from the bakery. She was a terrible cook, but the porridge and bread were not too bad. That was the extent of her abilities.

At Ordrup Track there were unparalleled crowds, people jostling in and out between one other, a tumult of shouting and roaring from the loudspeaker which told of the day’s programme, and there he was again, Erik-Frank. Tenna thought it inconceivable that he could ride any faster, but he could. In one single flash he was at the head of the field. It was suicidal to try to get ahead of him, the jet fighter, as he was called. In the first minutes of any sprint, no one could touch him.

As the freedom fighters stormed into the private flat above the bakery in Knardrup, a loud whining rang in Tenna’s ears. Her teeth were chattering. A freedom fighter pressed his submachine gun into her back, jabbed it and threatened to shoot if she did not stop crying. Her knees knocked together. Was it because Gustav was German? It had never even crossed her mind that she and Gustav had been picked up because of her work. While it was true that the canteen was in the workers’ barracks, it was the Danish workers that it served. She had never thought there was anything unpatriotic about working there. Nevertheless that was one of the points in the indictment. Tenna was arrested, forced to get into the back of a lorry and driven away, even though she denied ever having been a member of the DNSAP, the Danish Nazi Party. She had had no connection with the Wehrmacht, the German police, German organizations or the German intelligence service. She didn’t understand why the freedom fighters were asking her about it, didn’t understand what was happening, no, she had never given information to anyone in the service of the Germans, she had never been issued with weapons.


*


With his delicate face, broad cheekbones, black, brushed-back hair, dimples and athletically trained body, Erik-Frank was the Adonis of Ordrup Track. Tenna watched him as he tore into the bend of the track. He had a nice smile, his teeth were more or less perfect. Gustav on the other hand had had teeth like lumps of amber and was shaped like a cigar. Low-voiced and round he was, and ever so withered to look at. Tenna met him on a staircase. He had been on the way down, she was going up. It was pitch dark. She couldn’t see him, but she liked the sound of his steps. His heavy, shuffling tread on the staircase made her smile. She stopped him. Nine weeks later they got married, it was 1940, she was only sixteen, they needed a royal dispensation.
  In the six years of their marriage Tenna never went anywhere without Gustav, to parties or coffee mornings, and anyway where would she go? They didn’t associate with anyone in Knardrup. Circle of acquaintances: None. That was what it said on their police dossier in black and white. When they were picked up by the freedom fighters and taken to the detention centre in Frederikssund they stood side by side on the back of the open lorry in their fancy dress costumes. They had been on their way to the carnival. Tenna wore a gown that was trimmed with imitation fur and had large tufts of feathers for buttons. Gustav was a negro. He had made a large hollowed-out head of papier mâché which he had put on top of him. It was brown with large, fleshy lips and a broad flat nose. On the head he wore a hat that was too small. In front of them stood a man who had been fetched from his wedding reception. He wore evening dress and had a carnation in his buttonhole. People in the street ran after the lorry, beat on it, spat and screamed: Folk like you should be put in a slicing machine and cut into slices!


Dy Plambeck, Gudfar [Godfather], Gyldendal 2011

translated from Danish by David McDuff