Two Poems

from Territorial Song [Territorialsang, 1994]
by Pia Tafdrup

A CITY IN HEAVEN

My blood has many relatives.
They never visit.

Yehuda Amichai

The eye in its cave turns the horizon round
birds circling in the air
Born in Warsaw, born in Budapest, born in Kiev
Born in Moscow, born in Berlin, born in Craiova
in Sofia, in Prague – they come to the city of David

A language they leave, letters from home
go up this generation or the next in smoke and oblivion
or vanish in the glowing ether’s sphere
In the light from wax candles they drown themselves out
and the family is only visited in dreams

The eye in its cave turns the horizon round
birds circling in the air
heavenly bodies glide in their paths
They live under evening-warm clouds now with desert mist and wine
cut bread in slices, eat figs and pomegranates
know the rocket shelter as well they do the prayers
they recite, and the songs of blood, milk and honey

They have cuddled one another wearing gas masks
children they lose in the war-
that-never-stops
They celebrate holy days and will be buried here
to awaken the earth with their longing

The eye in its cave turns the horizon round
birds circling in the air
heavenly bodies glide in their paths
words intertwine and let go in winged song
Born in Warsaw, born in Budapest, born in Kiev
Born in Moscow, born in Berlin, born in Craiova
in Sofia, in Prague…



HORIZON

Like grains of salt held forth
Jerusalem sprouts
up from the mountain

Red and pink limestone
a desert all round
that obeys and flowers

Time
is momentary
and millennial

Wind harp
shifting sand
evening sun

Voices
graze the ear
that scans the pain:

In the darkness under a hatch for fishing tackle
my father and his family in a cutter
across the Sound to Sweden

On the bottom of another boat my grandfather
and on a shelf in the engine room
my mother and her mother…

Count the many
see the one
nothing must be limited, no one be forgotten

Each consciousness its tell*
a memory
that keeps the dread awake

The day is great
as a stone of burden
I lean towards the silent paper

Spin a life-thread.



*tell - from Hebrew tel, a heap of ruins, a mound that forms an archaeological site.


0translated from Danish by David McDuff

Five Books

At TheBrowser, a literary website which announces that it is creating a 21st century library of Writing Worth Reading, Rory McTurk discusses five works on Norse culture and Old Icelandic literature, including Vilhelm Grønbech's The Culture of the Teutons, Sigurður Nordal's Icelandic Culture, and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen's Saga and Society. All the books mentioned in the interview are available in English translation.

Siri Hustvedt: The Summer Without Men

Siri Hustvedt’s recently-published novel The Summer Without Men (Henry Holt, Sceptre, hardback, also Kindle) tells the story of the survival of a 30-year-old marriage through a brief and sudden experience of loss and breakdown which leads to a realization of personal integrity. This happens not only in terms of individual experience but also in a broader context that encompasses the generations, from childhood to extreme old age. It’s a moving narrative that is unpretentious in its determination to get to the truth. The style is episodic, at times impressionistic, occasionally making a transition to poetry. It has a place for humour, irony and dry observation, yet also carries a voice that is straightforward and sincere. The evocation of Norwegian-American Minnesota, with it communities, its libraries, its care homes for the elderly and its study groups for children, is delicately and skilfully done. The central theme is the interweaving of life and art, of reality and fiction. At a book club discussion, the participants don’t distinguish between them, regarding “the characters inside books exactly the way they regard the characters outside books. The facts that the former are made of the alphabet and the latter of muscle, tissue, and bone are of little relevance.”

In a sense the book can be seen as a homage by Mia, the novel’s heroine (and by implication the author herself) to “that coy but passionate genius, the Danish philosopher who has been irking and unsettling and bewildering her for years.” As one of Mia’s anonymous correspondents writes: “Who would deny us the mere pantomime of frenzy? We, the actors who pace back and forth on a stage no one watches, our guts heaving and our fists flying?”

Peter Weiss: Letters - 2

I’ve now finished reading the book* – it’s a fairly short work, and includes the text of 21 letters, with notes and bibliography. The letters themselves give a fascinating snapshot of the 24 year-old Weiss’s psychological, emotional and artistic situation in Alingsås, western Sweden, during the summer of 1941. In April of the same year, the Swedish poet Karin Boye, who also lived in Alingsås, and with whom Weiss may have had personal contact, committed suicide. It seems that this event drove him to seek psychoanalytic treatment, though it was some time before he could afford to undertake a proper analysis. In the letters there are references to an aborted analysis with a local doctor, Iwan Bratt, and a self-analysis conducted afterwards during a time when Weiss was still working as a darkroom technician in his father’s factory.

Henriette Itta Blumenthal, like several other of Weiss’s close friends during this period, was considerably older than him, and had also trained as an analyst. Unlike Weiss, she emigrated to the United States. Weiss’s letters to her bear the character of a personal confession, and reveal much about his troubled sense of personal, ethnic and national identity, his relation to his parents, his affairs with women, his attitude towards homosexuality, his increasingly political interpretation of the role of resistance in psychoanalysis, and many other themes which eventually became merged into his later literary works, especially the "Erzählung” Abschied von den Eltern (1960), and the novels Fluchtpunkt (1961) and Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975-1981) There is also a good deal of detail about his activity and aspirations as a painter and visual artist, and the book gives an insight into his concept of “world theatre” (Welttheater) as a meeting-place of the personal and the public, which would later become important in his work for the stage and screen. The descriptions of life in a small Swedish town during wartime, with its gossip, its hostility to foreigners and its undisguised anti-Semitism, are sharply and vividly drawn.

In their notes, the editors of the volume have tried to be as precise, inclusive and informative as possible, and this is very welcome. Their introductory essay also serves as a useful summary of the rest of the text. One has the impression, however, that the editors are not quite at home in Swedish, and this is a pity, as the letters are written in a curious linguistic style that hovers somewhere between German and Swedish, occasionally producing some strange and subtle shifts, not all of which are literary, and which require some detective work on the part of the reader.  In one case when Weiss writes that he has been out with friends picking rosehips, and uses a “Germanized” form (Nippon) of the Swedish word nypon, the notes flag this as “Unklar: Es gibt eine Pfingstrose namens »Nippon Beauty«. Möglicherweise auch ein Übertragungsfehler.“ (p. 151) Where Weiss spells the name of the journal Månadstidningen in a mixture of German and Swedish which probably reflects his state of mind in exile, as "Monatstidningen", in one instance the notes go even further, and reproduce the title as Månatsdidningen (p.71). On a more general level, many readers could probably dispense with notes that inform them that Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch painter, or that Diego Rivera was a Mexican one.

But these are minor matters, and ones which it would perhaps not be hard to set right for a second edition. Readers who are familiar with Weiss's prose work, especially the Ästhetik, will find much of interest in this book as it provides documentary background material and in some cases a confirmation of certain themes and facts that are only hinted at in the prose fiction. It is also a highly enjoyable read, and a worthy addition to the volumes of Weiss's letters that have already been published (most recently his correspondence with Hermann Hesse and Siegfried Unseld, the late head of Suhrkamp.)

* Peter Weiss: Briefe an Henriette Itta Blumenthal, Matthes & Seitz, Berlin, 2011. 175pp.

Christer Kihlman reassessed

Hufvudstadsbladet’s Pia Ingström has been rereading the novels of Christer Kihlman (b. 1930), Finland’s doyen and former enfant terrible of “confessional literature” who was at his most productive in the 1960s and 70s, but whose literary activity subsequently became more sporadic.  Kihlman’s breakthrough novel Se upp, Salige! (1960) has  been reissued in a new edition by Söderströms, though readers of English will have to wait.  Four of his novels are, however, available in English versions, and one wonders whether the renewed interest in his work may also extend to the English-speaking world. Certainly, as Pia Ingström points out in her column, Kihlman’s work is not short on interesting, contemporary and universally human themes, whether it be marital conflict, family breakdown, homosexual prostitution, alcoholism or drug addiction – “Frågan är om inte Kihlman är bättre ju värre han är” (The question is whether Kihlman is not better the worse he is), she writes, and there may well be something in that, for he was probably at his best as a writer when exploring what Gunnar Ekelöf called the “bottom” (botten) of human nature and  experience. At all events, one looks forward to seeing the republication in Swedish of more of Kihlman’s controversial but surely not superannuated output, much of which has been out of print for a long time. After all, in the intervening years since the 1970s confessional literature has never entirely gone out of fashion in the global literary market, and may even be on the way back to prominence again.

Peter Weiss: Letters

News that Berlin publishers Matthes & Seitz will this month release a new edition of Peter Weiss's Letters to Henriette Itta Blumenthal, written mostly from Alingsås, Sweden, between 1941 and 1943, before the beginning of Weiss's first proper psychoanalysis.

Update: the book is now published, and I have a copy. I'll post a short review here in due course.

Thor Vilhjálmsson 1925-2011

It's reported from Reykjavík that the Icelandic poet, novelist, essayist and translator Thor Vilhjálmsson has died at the age of 85. Among his better known works are the essay collection Fljótt, fljótt sagði fuglinn (1968) and the novel Grámosinn glóir (1986) which won the 1988 Nordic Council Literature Prize and was translated into English by Bernard Scudder (Justice Undone, 1998).

Update: Shortly before his death, Thor Vilhjálmsson was interviewed on video by Icelandic novelist and critic Einar Kárason.

Two Poems

by Pia Tafdrup

SIGNPOST


The world was old
even before
it was born,
for no one learns
from others’ experience,
  only by making
the mistakes oneself
over and over again.
Atlas, globe, map, 
the world was discovered, 
  only not by me…
In the heart is
the signpost
    I follow.
What else can I
so exactly
navigate by?



STUMBLING STONE
  
Not a stone in the shoe 
that chafes long before 
it registers as stone, 
but a stone on the road, 
                   a stumbling stone, 
that suddenly makes the heart 
pound in the chest, as waves 
roll from foreign shores 
  in towards the coast, 
where I grew up, 
  into the poems I write. 
A stone 
between before and after 
at an insurmountable distance 
on a hot day 
without a cloud in the sky. 
A stone, 
lying as it does, 
  sun up there 
  stone down here 
substance, matter, 
in order to point out 
that I am scarcely
on the road –
but the  mind is racing. 
What does a person think of 
  while walking? 
Not necessarily of travel, 
the legs walk by themselves, 
once they've learned 
  to walk. 
Quite often the person thinks about
not having much time 
                 to live, 
thinks about events that are 
like scars in the heart 
or about changing 
for the better, at least 
  trying. 
I walk on the road 
the mind is racing 
            over a wayless terrain, 
                           far beyond this present now. 

(from Trækfuglens kompas, 2010)

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Göteborg Poets in Ukraine

The cover of Lev Hrytsyuk's new anthology of work by 18 Göteborg poets, which he has translated into Ukrainian. The book has 244 pages, and is published by Krok.

Bo Carpelan

It's sad to read of Bo Carpelan's passing - in many ways he was the last remaining representative of the classical Finland-Swedish modernist poetry tradition. If anyone feels like reading some of my translations of Carpelan's poetry, there's an excerpt from one collection here.

As far as my own role in making Carpelan's work better known outside Finland is concerned, there isn't really much to say: for several years I worked with him on getting two of his novels (Axel and Urwind) into an English format he was more or less happy with, as well as three collections of his poetry - the latter were published in a single volume by Carcanet Press in 1993. Although Carpelan came from an upper-class Finland-Swedish background, and Axel is in some ways a spiritual and intellectual history of Finland-Sweden, there was little in his essential artistic and aesthetic orientation that could be called specifically Finnish or Swedish: while he gravitated towards Anglo-American literature, his ideal was an international one, and like his contemporary Tove Jansson he reached out to a wider audience. He was a shrewd, kind and occasionally stubborn man who wanted to find the way home, both for himself and for his contemporaries everywhere:

A few words sought their way close up to me
as though they sought protection from something
that was too difficult to see. I wrote them down.
This they taught me, the words that came:
farewells are part of everything that is
and, when I have dreamt most strongly,
a homecoming.

Bo Carpelan (1926-2011)

The Literary Saloon notes that the Finland-Swedish poet and novelist Bo Carpelan has passed away at the age of 84:

quote: He was two-time winner of the Finlandia Prize (for Urwind and Berg), and also won the Nordic Council Literature Prize. See, for example, the books and writers page on him, or this interview at Books from Finland.

Quite a few of his books have been translated into English, including the interesting Axel; see the Northwestern University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

Update: Pekka Tarkka has written an in memoriam.

German as a gateway language

In Publishing Perspectives, Amanda DeMarco notes that German is becoming a gateway language for literary translations from Icelandic.

Icelandic literary awards

Via Iceland Review: 

The poetry book Blódhófnir ("Bloodhoof") by Gerdur Kristný and Sveppabókin (“The Mushroom Book”) by Helgi Hallgrímsson received the 2010 Icelandic Literary Award at a special ceremony at Bessastadir, the presidential residence, on Wednesday [February 2].

Hat tip: Literary Saloon

David Vikgren

In Hbl, Ralf Andtbacka reviews Norrbotten poet David Vikgren's latest collection of verse, and also a volume of Vikgren's and others' translations of the poems of the 17th century Tornedal Finnish poet Antti Keksi. Andtbacka notes that Folkmun, the new collection, is more accessible than Vikgren's two previous books, and his opinion is that this is "en imponerande och oroande diktsamling som man inte blir klar med i första taget."

Incidentally, I recently found an online selection of Vikgren's early work, and an interview with him, at this link (pdf).

Years Like Leaves

There are some of my translations of Bo Carpelan's poetry here.

Susanne Jorn: poems

A POMEGRANATE
A SMALL TORTOISESHELL
A POMEGRANATE

*

Most wonderfully lovely pomegranate tree.
Most wonderfully beautiful pomegranate.
Love’s pomegranate-red fruit.

Nothing more.

*

It is said
that pomegranates
cleanse the body
of hatred and jealousy.

If it is said
that poetry
is the breath of the soul
then pomegranates must
be love poems
all of them


*

Granada is the place
where many pomegranate trees grow.
Granada is the place
where the Alhambra palace is.

I got lost in the Alhambra.
And
suddenly stood
in the Alhambra’s secret chamber.

In one corner of the chamber I could sense
a man’s presence in the thick darkness.

I sat down in the opposite corner of the chamber
and whispered my secret to him.

Only then
could I
continue along
that fate-determined road.

*

SIESTA
CIRCULAR SAW
SIESTA

*

In endless, deep minutes
of penetrable transparency
I’m united with my poems in koans

while
two ink-black daytime-owl-eyes
just
stare and stare and stare
mysteriously
straight through me


(from Andalusiske øjebliksbilleder i november, 2010)

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Mirjam Tuominen

I've posted a selection of my translations of poems from Mirjam Tuominen's 1954 collection Under jorden sjönk - here and here.

Russian land sales ban upsets Finland

On January 9, Russia’s President Medvedev signed a new decree which specifies border areas where foreign citizens are not allowed to purchase land. The areas include nearly all the regions of the Russian Federation bordering on Finland and Norway, all the way from Pechenga in northern Russia to the Gulf of Finland in the south (near Helsinki).

Finland has asked for an explanation of the new law, according to the Barents Observer, with foreign minister Alexander Stubb making an official representation to the Russian authorities, as quite a few Finns have already bought land in the areas that are now banned:

What will happen to those foreigners that already own land in this areas is highly uncertain. The Finnish Embassy in Moscow is examining the significance of the decree, reports Helsingin Sanomat.

- We stick to the principle of reciprocity as long as it is realistic and possible, says Alexander Stubb, interviewed by YLE.

- We’ll talk with Russian authorities about how this can be realised. If one can buy land here, then of course one should be able to buy land on the other side of the border as well, says Stubb.

Dark October

by Pia Tafdrup

To cross a strait
in a boat at night
   like my mother.
To cross a strait
at night in another cutter
   like my father.
To flee like growing crowds
                     of displaced persons.
The black water
          is open.
My mother without luggage, but wearing
layer upon layer of clothes,
crammed into the hold among many others,
down to her mother and sister
   with a hat to throw up in.
The order is for dead 
silence
   until the boat is out of the harbour.
On the deck in the pitch darkness
follow my mother's father at sea
the voyage to Swedish territory
lashed to the mast
so as not to fall overboard.
No German patrols, only tugboats.
The black water
          is open.
Relatives are left behind —
friends   houses   belongings   a beloved country. 
To cross a strait
on a dark October night
with a fisherman and crew
who don’t know the exact route.
To try to find port
by sounding the depths,
try to find port with signals
from searchlights’ glare.
At last to dock at the right berth in Höganäs
shouted in by Swedish soldiers.
A way across the water      homecoming
with no home
        to what future?
Not to flee from oneself,
     but be allowed to be oneself.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Hunger

Issue 14 of Absinthe is out, with among other things an essay by Thomas E. Kennedy recalling his first acquaintance with Knut Hamsun's Hunger, after seeing Henning Carlsen's 1966 film of the novel:

The film led me to read an SAS Airline bilingual publication (Scandinavian Words 15) of the first chapter, written by Hamsun in the late 1880s and later expanded to the novel.

Kennedy compares Hamsun to Conrad, perceiving a journey to darkness at the heart of each author's work.

Solveig von Schoultz

I've put a selection of my translations of the poetry of Solveig von Schoultz (1907-1996) on Nordic Voices In Print - here, and here.

Two Poems

By Pia Tafdrup

MYSTERIOUS BRIDGE


With my lipstick
a poet from Cyprus is reading
her poems in Turkish.
A  woman asking
to borrow my lipstick
is one second
more overarching of borders
than driving from one country
  to another.
My lipstick now speaks
on her lips.
Suddenly I'm one kiss closer to
   her language.
With my lipstick
she is reading
a poem about a man
who is like a pendulum.
He sways        incessantly
between two women.
That could have been
   my life
my lipstick was reading poems about.
An arrow
would have kissed
the back of his neck.



THE ROAD ANYONE CAN GO


I go led by sleepless nerve paths
  in front of my shadow,
traverse dense traffic, find
a passable path
go right, left,
cross bridges over streams
and fords,
reach a track I want to follow.
The straight path is not
  the shortest one.
The air is chilly and raw, the landscape
is lit by the earliest morning sun,
cold and heat proliferate
at once.
Now is the time, I go
lured by dreams
  where birds migrate.
Notice a sharp odour of plants
that grew once, 
hear sounds purring
of before.
   What does the road want of me?
Look out across the vast terrain
with its network of tracks and scents. 
Fear
is always there,
          like this a pupil opens.
The road changes pace, keeps me awake -
I branch, collect myself
mark
on the map of the future
  a route
bound for uncertainty.

from Trækfuglens kompas, 2010

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Purge

I've just finished reading Lola Rogers' translation of Puhdistus (Purge), by Sofi Oksanen. It's a remarkable work - restless, vivid, articulate, emotional, violent, political - and I don't think there is anything quite like it in the rest of world literature. The only book remotely akin to it that I've come across before is a strange Estonian novel from 2004, which has a similar graphic reconstruction of Soviet reality. I think Sofi Oksanen's work does require a knowledge of Estonian and Soviet history if the reader is to understand the thinking, motivation and actions of the characters. One solitary niggling doubt I have is that while the book amounts to an extraordinary tribute to the Estonian people and their survival of decades of Soviet occupation, the characters themselves don't come across as very likeable human beings - but I believe that may be deliberate on the author's part. It's good to see Paul-Eerik Rummo's poetry quoted in the opening of each section.

Mistral and Sweden’s security

Ever since the announcement of the controversial Mistral arms deal between France and Russia on Christmas Eve 2010, the Swedish press has been publishing articles about the implications of the deal for Baltic security, and Sweden's security in particular. On January 7 Dagens Nyheter noted that concern about the sale of the Mistral assault ships to Russia was high because these helicopter carriers can be used for landing operations - presumably in the course of a military invasion. Bo Pellnäs, a Swedish defence analyst, commented that although the carriers will be based in Murmansk, they can be moved anywhere. This, against the background of reports that Russia is to increase its military expenditure by 60 percent, and last fall held its largest military exercise in the Baltic Sea since the 1980s, is giving rise to fears in Sweden that the country's security may  be compromised.

On January 5 a member of the Swedish parliament, Mikael Oscarsson, requested a statement from Foreign Minister Carl Bildt on what the deal means for the security of the Baltic Sea as a whole. Oscarsson also said that it was necessary to ask Russia about the purpose of the invasion capability, and that a tightening of Sweden's defence with Poland might be needed.

Now, in an interview published in the Swedish current affairs journal Världen idag (The World Today), Oscarsson says that his concerns are heightened by the internal political situation in Russia in the aftermath of the recent unsolved murders of journalists and the sentencing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

"We need greater cooperation between Sweden, Poland and the Baltics, but we should also invite Russia to talks. I'm not one of those who say that the Russians are coming, but we cannot assume that anyone else will defend us. Therefore, we need to respond and ensure that we have a fleet that works."

In Poland, Polskie Radio has taken up Mikael Oscarsson's question, and there are reports that the military ties between Sweden and Poland may strengthen in response to Russia's investment in the new warships.

he U.S. think tank and news agency Stratfor's East Europe analyst Marko Papic says that just five days into the new year Mikael Oscarsson's question to Carl Bildt shows that the geopolitical map may be redrawn.

"The area of Sweden, Poland and Russia will be crucial for European security and political issues in 2011," he said in a statement.

Rabbe Enckell

My versions of a selection of Rabbe Enckell's poetry are now posted at Nordic Voices In Print.

The Human Lot

Owen Witesman's translation of Kari Hotakainen's novel Ihmisen osa / The Human Lot is to be published by Christopher MacLehose/Quercus this year. From the book's blurb:

A writer buys a life from Salme Malmikunnas, an 80-year-old former yarn seller. You can get a lot for 7000 euros. Salme opens up and tells him everything the way she wants to remember it – the silence of her husband, Paavo, the accident that befell her daughter Helena, Maija’s marriage, and Pekka’s success in business. But will the author tell the story like they’d agreed? Can he resist the urge to write about subjects that are off limits? And is Salme telling the truth?

A review and a story

There's a review of Tarkovsky's Horses and Other Poems in Evergreen Review, and Ólafur Gunnarsson has a new short story in Mayday Magazine.

Keeping translations alive

The following is mainly related to translations of poetry, though some of it may also be applicable to certain kinds of translated fiction. For some time now – at least during the past decade – I’ve become aware that trying to sell poetry in the form of printed books is increasingly an uphill struggle, and some alternative means of reaching a readership may need to be found.

The struggle has always has been there – for example, when I worked at the UK’s Anvil Press Poetry during the 1980s the firm produced no more than 12-14 titles a year,approcimately half of which were translations, and the notion of making a profit was out of the question. Like Bloodaxe, Carcanet and several other specialist publishers, Anvil survived mainly because of the Arts Council grant it received each year, which accounted for most of its income. In the second part of the 1980s and into the 90s, Bloodaxe Books, under its committed director Neil Astley, took a more aggressive approach to poetry publishing, endeavouring to embrace a wider audience and reach out to readers who didn’t normally read poetry at all. This project had some success – although still heavily AC-funded, Bloodaxe did manage to operate as a normal business, comparable to mainstream London publishers of fiction. Bloodaxe’s poetry translation list was (and still is) impressive, including a wide range of titles and poets. But the new vigour didn’t last – by the 2000s, one was again uneasily aware that the Bloodaxe operation was under something of a strain, and in the early part of the decade many Bloodaxe authors and translators were informed that the unsold copies of their back titles would either be sold to them at a discount, or pulped.

The situation with other poetry publishers was not much better, or even worse. Carcanet, which in addition to original poetry and translations also published fiction, seems to have got by on the strength of its fiction list. The smaller houses like Arc and Dedalus were also in trouble, and in 2008 Dedalus had its Arts Council funding cut drastically. After a long campaign, that funding was restored in July last year, but in the present economic climate the future still remains uncertain. Book publishing is currently undergoing a crisis, and because of their minority appeal published poetry and poetry translation are the the first to be seriously affected.

So what’s to be done? My own feeling is that with the increasing power and presence of the Internet, poetry translators, poetry editors and poets should start to take matters into their own hands. Online and ebook publishing may not be to everyone’s taste – I know that my colleague Eric Dickens heartily dislikes it – but at least it’s a way of sending the work out into the world, and can even be a commercially viable method of sale and distribution. I’ve already started to scan and put online the contents of some of my older Bloodaxe titles – the copyright in those translations rests with me, and the volumes in which they appeared are now of out of print.

Nordic Voices in Print is my first attempt in this direction – it’s only a basic blog, and is devoted exclusively to the reprinting of my translations of Nordic literature and poetry, but in time I hope to develop the project further and extend it into the area of ebook publishing. Above all I think it’s important to avoid the ghettoization of translated literature that’s evident in certain US-based publishing concerns (they shall be nameless) which enjoy a high profile in the translation world at present. While they may once have been inspired by selfless motives, I believe that those publishers are really taking advantage of the ever-growing marginalization of translated work. Poets and translators beware.

Gunnar Björling

A selection of my translations of the poems of Gunnar Björling is now available on Nordic Voices in Print. These are essentially the same as the translations that appeared in the Bloodaxe Ice Around Our Lips anthology, with one or two minor edits.

The background to the language situation

In the latest issue of the Finland-Swedish journal Nya Argus (nr. 11-12, 2010) linguistics professor Fred Karlsson considers the present uneasy situation surrounding the status of the Swedish language in Finland above all through the prism of the past. In doing so he raises some interesting points that are sometimes forgotten: the men who in the 19th century worked to establish Finnish as Finland’s national language were, after all, Finnish Swedes. Snellman, Forsman and other representatives of the country’s Swedish-speaking intelligentsia helped to bring about a peaceful linguistic revolution, but were soon regarded as traitors by their own Swedish-speaking compatriots. Karlsson also examines the nowadays neglected role of the Finnish linguist and politician Emil Nestor Setälä (1864-1936) who single-handedly drafted Finland’s declaration of independence in 1917 and also wrote an important work on the language law of 1922, in which he emphasized that although Finland had two languages, this did not mean that Finland had two nationalities: “Finland’s people are one.”

The essay also traces the history of pakkoruotsi (tvångsvenskan or “compulsory Swedish” – the preferred translation “mandatory Swedish”  seems like a bit of a euphemism) – in Finland’s schools, pointing out, somewhat drily by reference to online discussions, that compulsion is not usually the way to make friends. There are, however, difficult decisions to be made. An education minister of the Kekkonen era is quoted as saying that if compulsory Swedish is abolished, it will be replaced by another language, “and that language is not Spanish”. Karlsson believes that it’s incumbent on Finland-Swedes to keep a low profile in the current language debate, and to leave it up to the Finnish-speaking majority and their political leaders to draw up guidelines as to their situation in Finland, Europe and the constantly changing modern world.

Attack on Jyllands-Posten foiled

http://jp.dk/indland/krimi/article2290657.ece

WikiLeaks and extremism - 2

At Harry's Place, Joseph W draws attention to some further aspects of Russian WikiLeaks, and the shadow it casts on the whole of the WikiLeaks operation.

Nordic Voices in Print - latest additions

Nordic Voices in Print now has complete texts of my translations of collections by Karin Boye and Gösta Ågren, as well as selections of poetry by Bertel Gripenberg, Arvid Mörne and Elmer Diktonius.

The blog can also be accessed at

http://nordicvoices.xtreemhost.com/

WikiLeaks and extremism

This article in Reason magazine looks at some aspects of the WikiLeaks operation that seem to have been largely ignored by its supporters.

Nordic Council Literature Prize 2011

The complete run-down of candidates for the 2011 Nordic Council Literature Award is as follows (NB Norway's Beate Grimsrud wrote her novel in both Norwegian and in Swedish versions):


Denmark

Josefine Klougart
Stigninger og fald
Novel, Rosinante, 2010

Harald Voetmann
Vågen
Novel, Gyldendal, 2010

Finland

Erik Wahlström
Flugtämjaren
Novel, Schildts, 2010

Kristina Carlson
Herra Darwinin puutarhuri (Herr Darwins trädgårdsmästare)
Novel, Otava, 2009 (Swedish translation, Janina Orlov)

Iceland

Gyrðir Elíasson
Milli trjánna (Bland träden)
Short stories, Uppheimar, 2009, (Swedish translation, John Swedenmark)

Ísak Harðarson
Rennur upp um nótt (Stiger upp om natten)
Poems, Uppheimar, 2009, (Swedish translation, John Swedenmark)

Norway

Beate Grimsrud
En dåre fri
Novel, Cappelen Damm, 2010

Carl Frode Tiller
Innsirkling 2
Novel, Aschehoug, 2010

Sweden

Beate Grimsrud
En dåre fri
Novel, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2010

Anna Hallberg
Colosseum, Kolosseum
Poetry Collection, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2010

Faroe Islands

Tóroddur Poulsen
Útsýni (Utsikt)
Poetry collection, Mentunargrunnur Studentafelagsins, 2009, (Swedish translation, Anna Mattsson)

Greenland

Kristian Olsen Aaju
Kakiorneqaqatigiit (Det tatoverede budskab)
Novel, Forlaget Atuagkat, 2010

Åland Islands

Sonja Nordenswan
Blues från ett krossat världshus
Novel, PQR-kultur, 2009

The Sami Language Area

Kerttu Vuolab
Bárbmoáirras (Paradisets stjerne)
Novel, Davvi Girji OS, 2008

(Via the Nordic Council)

Mr Darwin's Gardener

Otava's Hanna Kjellberg reports that Kristina Carlson's novel Herra Darwinin puutarhuri (Mr Darwin's Gardener) [2009], my translated excerpts from which were published in Books from Finland magazine earlier this year, has been shortlisted as one of the Finnish candidates for the 2011 Nordic Council Literature Award.

The global book

In Hbl, Philip Teir reflects on the increasing internationalization and globalization of contemporary fiction, and wonders whether we are heading for a new literary world where national identity doesn't count for much:

Perhaps part of the explanation for Sofi Oksanen's success is that she is one of the first to try their hand at taking stock of the new Europe?

Slovak-born Alexandra Salmela's shortlisting for the Finlandia Prize could perhaps be seen as a sign of a coming trend... her new novel 27 - Eli Kuolema Tekee Taitelijan (27 - Or Death Makes an Artist) is not particularly rooted in one spot, but is a sort of cacophonous young person's novel that could have been published in almost any language at all...

...It's an interesting thought: are we heading towards a future in which the national literature project dissolves and we get literature that is trans-European? That may be too optimistic...

Continuing

The new blog is up and running in both versions: the wordpress.org one and the wordpress.com one. There are two new posts, representing two collections of poetry: Karin Boye's Moln (Clouds)[1922] and Jär (Standing Here)[1988] by Gösta Ågren, both in my own translation. Soon I hope to be adding some work that hasn't previously had much exposure, including my versions of poetry by Arvid Mörne and Bertel Gripenberg.

I still haven't decided how to proceed with the question of the two versions of the blog. I feel that the Xtreemhost server-hosted one gives me more personal control over the content and management, while the wordpress.com one, though off my computer, is quite a lot easier to administer and maintain, and most of the relevant plugins are ready-supplied. Anyway, time will tell. Perhaps one of the blog versions can serve as a backup for the other, and vice versa...

Nordic Voices in Print - New URL

The URL of the new blog has changed: it's now

http://nordicvoicesinprint.wordpress.com/

And, after some wrestling with my wp.config file, it's also once again

http://nordicvoices.xtreemhost.com/

So you can take your pick. :-)

I think that for the time being I'll maintain both versions - the wordpress.com one and the wordpress.org/Xtreemhost server-based one - and eventually one of them will be the "winner".

From the WP About page:

The general idea is to provide a space for Nordic texts (Finland-Swedish, Swedish, Icelandic, etc.) that I’ve translated over a number of years. Some have appeared in published book form, others haven’t. I had thought of reviving the old Demon site, as many of its pages are still up on the Web, isolated and unadvertised – but WordPress seemed like a more up-to-date and user-friendly way of dealing with the issue.  In particular, there are some older Bloodaxe titles that are now out of print, and WP might be one channel that could be useful for making these available again, in part or in whole. Another alternative might be to reissue the texts as e-books – but I think I prefer the less formal method of the blog, which also gives more control, potential interactivity and editing flexibility...

The first main posting is my translation of Moln (Clouds), the 1922 collection by Karin Boye.

Guest event

I’ve another new translation in Books from Finland.

Vanishing Point

Joel Haahtela’s novel Katoamispiste (Vanishing Point) – excerpts from which I posted in my own translation in some earlier posts to this blog – has been selected as a nomination for this year’s Finlandia Prize, FILI reports.

Ice Floe

The first issue of the new series of Ice Floe is now available from University of Alaska Press - the inaugural issue presents new poems as well as a selection of work from the first seven years of the publication's existence, and the poets represented hail from  Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

Elmer Diktonius - 2 Poems

The child's dream

 An angel came from heaven
with a sausage in her hand
and gave it to me –
oh how good it was!
And the angel said, come to heaven!
and we flew. And there was God.
With a lollipop in his mouth.
And he gave it to me.
And it was good too!
And God said: there is always meat
for poor children,
and pastries on top
and ice cream!
And we ate.
And all our tummies rumbled full.
And God said:
who ‘s that singing so nicely?


My name is Diktonius

My name is Diktonius –
a liar like everyone else.
not songs do I sing
but concrete,
have no ideas –
an iron skeleton is my inner being.
My lines are the explosion’s,
my heat the crater’s -
if you seek coolness
I give you blocks of ice,
I understand much,
know very little –
but what do you care!

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

Summer Poems

by Lars Huldén


Even the Ice Age had its summers,
short it is true
as the Nordic summers are,
but light, light.
One saw the expanses of ice.
But one didn't despair.
That is my consolation.

***

Hay belongs to the summer,
fragrant hay.
How lovely
a well-kept meadow smells!
And a barn full of hay,
the kind there were still in the country
until a short time ago,
could make people drunk.

The days of free hay are gone.
People don’t make love among bales.

***

The mist cups its hand
over the meadow’s bosom.
The sun throws down its gaze.
A curious moon rises
to see what is happening,
is going to happen, or has happened already.
The meadow says that she is unfortunately
already married. The mist’s hand
stays where it is.

***


We flesh-eating plants
are not so numerous here in the north.
I am the only one on this moss,
says the drosera.

It gets quite lonely sometimes.
My surroundings think I’m mysterious,
but I don’t care about that.
There are plenty of little flies here,
and creepy-crawlies.
One doesn’t have to go hungry.

But occasionally I
envy the grasses and the semi-grasses
that stand so close together.
I have no I
on whom I can rely.

But it’s all right.
And soon the summer
will be over.

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

Sontag Award

From the Scandinavia House website:

The 2010 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation was awarded to Benjamin Mier-Cruz, a Ph.D. candidate in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley, for his proposed translation of selected letters and poems by the Finland-Swedish author Elmer Diktonius (1896 -1961). In celebration of the translation prize, programs will include the panel discussions The Challenges of Literary Translation Today and Elmer Diktonius, Finland-Swedish Literature, and Modernism in Scandinavia. Programs will also include a screening of the rare Sontag film Duet for Cannibals/Duett för kannibaler (Sweden, 1969).

18 Gothenburg Poets

Lev Hrytsyuk's large anthology of contemporary Swedish poetry in Ukrainian translation, 18 поетів із Гетеборга, is now available on Issuu.

I personally find the Issuu interface a little tricky, but it's nice to be able to turn the pages!

Identities

Swedish author and translator Ulf Peter Hallberg recently visited Helsinki and wrote about what he perceived to be a "slightly alarming" social and cultural uniformity (entydighet) in the place and its citizens. When the piece was reviewed in Hbl (with an accent on Hallberg's pessimistic take on the future of Finland-Swedishness), some commenters took the opportunity of pointing out that because of its unique history, Finland and the Finns play a special role in today's Europe, preserving the concept and practice of national identity in an era when it has been less than fashionable to do so. Hallberg's reactions to Finland are particularly interesting in the light of German chancellor Angela Merkel's recent remarks about the failure of multiculturalism in her country.

Islandia

Qué dicha para todos los hombres,
Islandia de los mares, que existas.
Islandia de la nieve silenciosa y del agua ferviente.
Islandia de la noche que se aboveda
Sobre la vigilancia y el sueño.
Isla del día blanco que regresa,
Joven y mortal como Baldr.
Fría rosa, isla secreta
Que fuiste la memoria de Germania
Y salvaste para nosotros
Su apagada, enterrada mitología,
El anillo que engendra nueve anillos,
Los altos lobos de la selva de hierro
Que devorarán la luna y el sol,
La nave que Algo o Alguien construye
Con uñas de los muertos.
Islandia de los cráteres que esperan,
Y de las tranquilas majadas.
Islandia de las tardes inmóviles
Y de los hombres fuertes
Que son ahora marineros y banqueros y párrocos
Y que ayer descubrieron un continente.
Isla de caballos de larga crin
Que engendran sobre el paso y la lava,
Isla del agua llena de monedas
Y de no saciada esperanza.
Islandia de la espada y de la runa,
Islandia de la gran Memoria cóncava
Que no es una nostalgia.

- Jorge Luis Borges

Bending the knee

At Absinthe Minded blog, Rita Dahl considers the Finnish case involving the Mohammed cartoons [excerpt]:

The cultural magazine Kaltio, based in Oulu, was the first magazine to republish the Mohammed cartoons in Finland. The 6-page-long comic appeared on the internet in September 2006 and was drawn by the Finnish comic artist, Ville Ranta. The prophet Mohammed was presented in the comic as a very furious, fundamentalist figure, who was wearing a mask and criticizing the Western world for the bad deeds it had done in the past to Arab countries and at the same time imposing the demand for freedom of speech in Arab countries. At the end of the comic the Finnish prime minister, Matti Vanhanen, and president, Tarja Halonen, burn the Danish flag in the hope that the Islamists would not get angry with them. (This burning of a flag refers to the apologies already made by Vanhanen and Halonen in February 2006, after the Finnish magazine, Suomen Sisu, had published the Mohammed cartoons for the first time in Finland.)

We call this heritage of bending the knee to other countries Finlandization. I will shortly explain what this way of reacting (still common among Finnish politicians) means. Finland has a long history of being suppressed, first by Sweden, then by the Soviet Union, until our independence in 1917. Even after that our political leaders continued to bend the knee to Russia whenever it was considered to be politically wise. Our country became famous for its unique foreign policy-- Kekkonen´s and Paasikivi´s line. That meant precisely that--bending the knee. Finlandization became another term for that foreign policy.

In my opinion, Ranta criticizes in his comic both Western and Islamist countries for their own kind of fundamentalisms. His starting point is that it is never good in the long term for anything--be it religion or politics—to be presented and heard only by its most fundamentalist representatives. His argument is that it is especially not good for anything--be it a religion like Islam, or western politics—to be represented by its most fundamental figures, be they fundamentalist Islamists, or Finnish politicians, who in their fear of losing good relations with other neighbouring countries, bend in every possible direction.

Read it all.

Skogslund

News that Gösta and Anna-Lisa have moved from the country environment of Skogslund to Vasa City. The following is my translation of Gösta's poem Orfeus' återkomst (The Return of Orpheus):

No poet can endure
being dead, a sojourn without
rhyme or reason. He needs
order and rhythm. His poems
are really laws. He
always turns back
from the underworld, which resembles
the everyday.

The darkness hides the screams
around him, when
the walking begins. The sun is
only black heraldry, only
a cavern in the sky
of stone, and he sees
it, without being blinded.

Then he goes, through the walking's
immobile, invisible lattice
from horizon to horizon.
An occasional tornado
of consciousness moves
through the journey, which is
what will remain.

The figures he meets
are shadows remembering
all that could have been.
Broken illusions are the name of
the only space in which we
are always free, can
always breathe, but those who
do not give up for lost what they have lost
will never attain it. He passes
a gateway, and continues in its
long, invisible arm. A gateway
never ends; it waits.
The darkness expands until it is
obscurity, no longer threat but
depth for all. Orpheus is like
a lonely child in a poem.
He is afraid. Perhaps there are
no dangers. But then there is
no protection against them
either.

But then there is only
this.

That is why he is not afraid
when the smiles begin to gleam
in the darkness, a swarm of knives,
slowly approaching. He knows
that he must go towards them
in order to escape from them. In that
way we flee from all
that we cannot flee from:
by seeking it out.

In vain do we ask for names.
Only the myth can answer.
The particular is too
general. Orpheus runs
through the crowd of indistinct
demons, created by that
reality whose innermost,
subatomic particle's name
a scientist's trembling hand
will one day write: Emptiness.

Now he is threatened by the total
consciousness which exists
in the darkness in his body.
They strike him as
hatefully as though they
were striking themselves, his image
within them. He flees
by enduring. For
he must write his
poems. Only thus can he
silence them. When he
at last lies alone
by the roadside in the underworld
he rises up once and for all,
as though he were abandoning
the figure lying there,
and continues, continues
the journey.

The wordless autumn wind
puts people's grief
into words. They themselves cannot
do it, for it is existence
that grieves, a nothingness
inside us all that compels us
to torment, and be tormented,
and thus exist so
intensely that being
drowns out the grief. Orpheus
sees the enemy, one
who is helpless, and strikes him
in order to be freed from the blows
he himself has had to accept.
It was thus he became
their prisoner.

To walk through the north wind is
like pushing one's way forward
between the ice­cold atoms
in a knife blade. What is it called,
the helpless voice that shouts
in the cold without doing so?
Love? No, love is never
helpless. It is an immense
bath­sponge that sucks into itself
everything, and thus, imperceptibly, becomes
everything. The one who holds fast
to his name cannot
accept life in any
other way than by
hating it. Orpheus is
helpless, but he is
Orpheus, and while

the sun thunders against the rockface
he meets Christ, here
and now a beggar
whose task is to
save people from
their insight that nothing
can save them. The kindness
his misery compels them to
shows that something else is
possible, if only
as the void in which it
does not exist. Thus may a haze
of mercy be wrapped
over facts. The ragged
figure walks slowly
onwards, total as a blind
judge. But Orpheus knows
that kindness is only part
of suffering, and they pass
each other without a word
while the sun burns
above the centuries.

His footsteps echo in the silence,
a monotonous leitmotif that
has got stuck. To
continue demands weakness.
His heart beats without resistance,
but Orpheus himself is strong.
He stops, he
turns round.

Who is she who is dimly seen
and vanishes inside
his gloom?

Now he knows: She is
a legend which no
narrator will tame. The
form he loves
he has himself sculpted.
Only if she becomes
real can he become
free. When one has waited long
the meeting
is a farewell.

The night closes society
and opens the stars.
Even in the underworld,
whose starless night
surrounds Orpheus' brain,
fatigue can grow
into grace. That is why the
sparse crowd of people
he meets is peaceful
as a landscape,
but stubbornly, mechanically
as a series of copies
of himself, Orpheus
walks in the opposite
direction.

The gateway's vault of clouds
and pillars of pines are
invisible. One sees only clouds
and pines. He walks out
into the unproven theory
that is called reality,
into the village where the faces
turn towards him like
lanterns in the gloom. He
thinks of a poem about what
he is thinking of: these
people who move
through the village, dragging long,
impassive shadows. Now
once again they know the result
of today's work: tomorrow's
work awaits. To endure
is a way to get strength
to endure. So

he thinks, and that is why
he does not shout that the one
who has walked long through
the underworld can only reject
everything, even this
meaningless gesture of
rejecting everything.

Instead the poem ends
like this: He comes home.

The air is motionless in the cottage.
Slowly, with movement after
movement, mother peels potatoes.
Is it poverty and illness
that stand still in here?

No, but she is choked
by an unsung song
of sorrow, our chance
to live.

That song aches like a child
without words. It is so hard
because sorrow demands love,
that immense hand
in our breast which no one
can reduce to fate.

The evening's black, swaying
trees are the horns of slowly moving
herds. Inexorably
everything journeys.

Orpheus sings
of sorrow.

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff