the interlingual zoo

three percent: per højholt

2011-02-24T09:35:00.003+01:00

Chad W. Post, master of Open Letter Books out of the University of Rochester and the force behind accompanying translation blog Three Percent wrote this about some translations I did of Per Højholt's astonishing Praxis 8: Album, Tumult. I'm not finished with Højholt yet, not by a long chalk.

Click here: Three Percent: Per Hojholt in Calque

niels hav

2011-02-18T23:53:00.003+01:00

Niels Hav from Lemvig in West Jutland, latterly of Copenhagen's Nørrebro district, is one of this country's finest poets, and, I think, my personal favourite. I've been fortunate enough to translate some of Niels Hav's poems into English and to have had them published in various journals in Canada and the US. Niels tells me some more are coming up in Absinthe #16 this autumn. Listen to the sound of Lemvig here>>. Read the words here:

KÆRLIGHED

Det er sådan et stort ord.
Eller fik jeg det galt i halsen?
Elske, hvad er det,
når det kommer til stykket?
Mange veksler med tiden den store
kærlighed til småpenge.
Jeg elsker dig. Og du hiver stikket ud.
Jeg elsker dig. Og du kyler min bog
i nakken på mig.
Jeg elsker dig. Og verden eksploderer!

Vi tørster efter hinanden i uvidenhed,
ligesom elefanter.

Uden børn ingen lykke,
sagde Schumann. Clara fødte ham
syv børn som modgift mod melankoli.
Det var ikke nok!
Han blev sindssyg, forsøgte selvmord
og døde på en nerveanstalt.
Hun spillede klaver. Det er dét,
de kalder kærlighed.

Niels Hav © 2004

red hair

2011-02-18T23:40:00.002+01:00

Packed house last night at Copenhagen's LiteraturHaus where I shared the bill with Thomas E. Kennedy, Line-Maria Lång, Niels Hav and Boy in Blue for the launch of The Girl With Red Hair (buy it here>>), an anthology put out by Serving House Books in the US and including Dorthe Nors' Gwen, Betsy and Anne-Marie Jensen in my translation. Great soup, too.

the fish

2011-02-18T23:37:00.003+01:00

Novelist and story writer Charlotte Weitze has a new collection out here late February entitled Det hvide kvarter. Publishers Rosinante asked me to translate one of the stories in it. Hear Tim Hinman read The Fish here>> on Charlotte's website.

anyway

2011-02-07T15:30:00.002+01:00

There was a piece in one of the dailies here about how miserably we book translators are paid. This is true, I imagine, but we do it anyway.

conjunction

2011-01-31T11:09:00.003+01:00

US writer Fiona Maazel, author of Last Last Chance (here>>), has done a great little piece for the website of A Public Space on Dorthe Nors' stories in English. Read Dorthe Nors: A Master of Conjunction here>>. While you're at it, buy the journal, too.

mirror lands honoured

2011-01-28T09:00:00.002+01:00

Congratulations to Birgithe Kosovic, whose magnificent Det dobbelte land [Mirror Lands] just won the prestigious Weekendavisen Award for 2010.

There's an English sample out there somewhere, a short excerpt from which has already been put up here>>.

Publishers of the world arise from your slumbers!

wung-sung

2011-01-25T10:01:00.003+01:00

Jesper Wung-Sung (born 1971) is an almost improbably productive writer whose hyperactive pen has produced at least a dozen books (all of them critically acclaimed) since winning the Danish Debutant's Award at the Copenhagen Book Fair in 1998. Throughout his work runs one glorious theme: male existence, dissected in all its phases in a remarkable blend of realism and absurdist humour. From the ecstatically received 2009 collection of stories Trælår [Dead Leg](Danish review here>>) comes a story which in every thinkable way is typical Wung-Sung right down to its cryptic title. It'll be published in Absinthe #16 this autumn, and I've called it Close only counts when you're doing your damnedest. It starts like this:

They had buried Mort the Wart in the yard.
Of course, they had not actually buried Mort the Wart in the yard. Not all of Mort the Wart, for his head was sticking up out of the lawn. It had been necessary, though, to gag him. To put a stop to his yelling. The cries. The screams.

Extract © Jesper Wung-Sung
Translation © Martin Aitken

red hair

2011-01-23T12:41:00.002+01:00

Serving House Books in the US have just published an anthology of stories entitled The Girl With Red Hair, edited by Walter Cummins and Thomas E. Kennedy. The book includes fine contributions by Danes Niels Hav, Line-Maria Lång (who graces the cover) and Dorthe Nors, whose story Gwen, Betsy and Anne-Marie Jensen appears in my translation. According to the publishers' site (here>>), the book will be available on Amazon soon. I got mine free.

prizes

2011-01-22T23:10:00.002+01:00

Janne Teller's remarkable novel Nothing, published in my translation last year in the US and Canada by Simon & Schuster imprint Atheneum, has garnered noteworthy acclaim, being awarded a Printz Honor as one of the top five novels for young adults in the US last year, and a Batchelder Honor as one of the year's three best translated novels in the same category. These are actually major honours. I'd like to think they might have just a little bit to do with me. Nothing will be published in the UK and Commonwealth by Scottish publishing house Strident in April.

a public space

2011-01-22T23:02:00.006+01:00

New York journal A Public Space (hereby warmly recommended) has linked to this blog. Meaning I'd better do something about it. Note new design. Note new enthusiasm. A Public Space has just published my translation of Dorthe Nors' magnificent story The Winter Garden in their issue #12. Buy it, it's great.

dictionaries

2010-08-31T13:14:00.000+02:00

Dictionaries. Never use 'em myself.

mirror lands

2010-08-13T23:09:00.002+02:00

He sits himself down on a rock protruding from out of the dry ground. The light is sharp between the fig trees on the mountain slopes around him. He screws up his eyes as his gaze passes over the trees and beyond to the mountains on the other side of the Popovo valley. In his hand at his knee hangs a letter. A white sheet of paper, lines of hastily scribbled letters slanting sharply to the right. Each word utters itself without him reading. They say that his wife is dead and that she will be buried in Dubrovnik beyond the mountains the day after tomorrow at 4 pm. That she was found on the bathroom floor. That it happened while his son, who has written the letter, and his daughter-in-law were in with the neighbours for no more than half an hour, and that she could not have been lying there very long. At the bottom of the page, a busy little symbol is scrawled, and although it is almost quite illegible, he recognises the name of his son.

[...]

Now Frane’s coughing returns to him. It consumes him with guilt about the sour, sulphurous feeling in his stomach that its maddening sound on occasion brought up in him. Although he by no means wished to be like that, he was: He was unable to abide the sound of her asthmatic hacking that both of them were aware sooner or later would be the death of her. He found it simply too intimate an experience to hear the mucus rattle in her throat before being loosened, to hear the sputum being worked against the roof of her mouth before being swallowed or spat out into the lavatory. It offended his modesty in the same way as when people champed on their food or quite unashamedly enjoyed the sound of their own singing. He could not endure this demonstration of the force of her asthma, its insufferable momentum and predictability. The illness was a problem medicine was unable to solve, merely adjourn, and which could only annihilate itself by unfurling to the full and killing her.
He picks up the letter from his knee and reads it again: Frane is dead. They found her on the bathroom floor. She had been lying there for half an hour at the most, while Tomislav and Svetlana were in with the neighbours having coffee, and she will be buried from the Danče church the day after tomorrow at 4 pm. Not a word does it say about needing him home.

extract from sample translation

© Birgithe Kosović & Gyldendal, 2010
Translation © Martin Aitken, 2010

how they look

2010-07-29T23:30:00.004+02:00

PRECIPICe is a literary magazine out of Ontario, Canada. The new issue just out contains a recommendable review of Scandinavian literature, including poems by Jørgen Leth and Niels Hav in my translations, one of which is this one from Leth's 1987 collection Hvordan de ser ud [How They Look]:

HOW THEY LOOK

How they look
not how they are

stop along the way
lay small things out

investigate what happens
vinyl flashes across the fields

a tree burning
a horse that looks up and listens

describe how they look
a person with an onion in their hand

a handful of earth with metal in it
not how they are

from Hvordan de ser ud [How They Look] (1987)

faeries are cool (new vampires)

2010-06-26T21:53:00.005+02:00

Carlsen have got me translating the third in Melissa Marr's bestselling urban fantasy quartet of Wicked Lovely novels, this one entitled Fragile Eternity. Read about the book here>> and visit Melissa's website here>>.

Tons of readers for this, I reckon. And one of the characters smokes. Faeries are cool.

poems

2010-06-15T10:52:00.005+02:00

Translations of mine just out. 'My father's wristwatch', a poem by Niels Hav in The Los Angeles Review (here>>) and 'Boredom: seven poems around a theme' by Jørgen Leth (selected by the translator) in The Literary Review (here>>).

More from both writers to come soon in Canada's PRECIPICe Magazine.

nothing

2010-06-07T10:40:00.002+02:00

My translation of Janne Teller's Nothing, published this spring on Simon & Schuster's Atheneum imprint in the US and Canada, will be coming out on Strident in the UK & Commonwealth in April 2011.

silhouette of a sinner

2010-05-28T10:31:00.007+02:00

Leonora Christina Skov's extraordinary queer Gothic salute Silhuet af en synder [Silhouette of a Sinner] came out here a couple of weeks ago on Rosinante to ecstatic reviews across the board. Lilian Munk Rösing at Information (here>>) summed it nicely:

[a] metaliterary, pulpy nest of plot-boxes packed with ghosts and ghouls, lesbian incest and voyeurism, cross-dressers and changelings ...

Here's a short extract - the book's opening paragraphs - from the English sample I did recently for Gyldendal. It's already stirring up interest in the UK. Watch this space.

August 1973

These many years gone by not a single day has passed without me thinking of the time I returned to Liljenholm. It was in November 1941, a little after four in the afternoon, and just where the avenue of lime trees comes to an end and the manor reveals itself in full view, my feet stopped all by themselves.
“My God!”
In front of me, my dearest Nella turned around. Her skin was like porcelain, even in the wind that had long since got the better of her carefully done hair; she brushed a long curl away from her eyes and put down her suitcase for a moment.
“What’s the matter?”
She took no notice my pointing finger, but simply picked up her suitcase again and pulled her collar further up around her ears.
“I’d suggest you get a move on,” she said over her shoulder.
“But can’t you see …?”
“Do hurry. It’s going to rain soon.”
It had been five years since we had been there last, and in our absence, the hall had fallen in on itself like a hunched old man. Or perhaps it was merely the wilderness that had grown up around it. Bare creepers lay in wait in the fading light of afternoon, having crawled up the redbrick walls and covered most of the entrance. The hole in the wilderness where the main door had to be resembled something more than a hole, however. It looked like … well, I hardly know how to put it. But imagine opening a thick, old book one wishes to read again. One turns the pages, oblivious, the paper crackles and naturally one is expecting a familiar story to begin. Perhaps it even says Chapter One, yet underneath one finds only a hole the size of a fist, a hole in every single page so all that remains are useless, amputated sentences. That is how it felt to see Liljenholm again. Even as I went closer, I saw only disquieting darkness where the entrance was supposed to be.
“One could hardly claim Liljenholm has aged with grace,” I commented, if only for the sake of saying something to make things settle again, and Nella was almost inside the hole now. Flanked by two moss-covered stone lions, rampant and with teeth bared. I vaguely remembered having seen them before.
“Hardly. Had you expected it to?” she asked and patted one of the beasts, the one on the right that had lost half its wig-like mane, a clean break from the top of the head to a point midway down its muscular back. Her matter-of-factness surprised me, although really it oughtn’t to have. After all, this was Nella’s childhood home, not mine. Eighteen long years spent here with her mother, Antonia von Liljenholm.
Are you familiar with the name? I hope so. Regardless of what one otherwise may think about Antonia, she was certainly one of Denmark’s leading Gothic authoresses up to World War II, though the passage of time has been unkind to her reputation. Even the most major of her thirty-two novels have been forgotten, and if we are to include her personal life history, mention must be made of the fact that all those around her died or disappeared (or, in Nella’s case, fled to Copenhagen), leaving Antonia to spend the last ten years of her life alone in the hall here. She died of cancer at the age of fifty-two. In 1936.
“To think she could bear to live here on her own,” I exclaimed, just as the outline of the main door loomed up in front of us, Nella putting the key in the lock and turning it three times. We were here only to bring order into Antonia’s personal documents and to sort through the heirlooms before the manor was to be sold and our futures could begin. Well, Nella’s future, to be exact. I was here just to keep Nella company and to lend a hand where I was able. An appendage, one might say, of no great weight, though the latter description, in consideration of my appearance, would require some small amendment. Nella turned her head and caught my gaze. Her face was devoid of expression, like a bedsheet that had been ironed.
“Are you ready?” she asked, then pushed at the door until it opened with a groan of capitulation. I assume I said yes. But I was not in the least bit ready at all. Even today, so many years later that it could all be something imagined, just to think of the moment I stepped over the threshold is so very disagreeable. Everything I knew disappeared behind me without my having any idea what was going on. Everything I was suddenly became open to question, and I do not even know what disturbs me the most: the fact that it happened, or that it just as easily might not have happened.

For the fact of the matter is that I never left Liljenholm again. That is the short version. And the long one? You shall have it, of course, as soon as this foreword is written to end. Yet I shall linger a moment before handing the pen to that considerably younger version of my self. She who committed to writing all that happened at Liljenholm that winter, and all that had happened in the years before, and who later, in 1943, published it all as the real story, Silhouette of a Sinner. Under the rather inadequate pseudonym A. von Liljenholm, no less. But before I lose myself entirely in the past, allow me to draw attention to the fact that I am writing this foreword under duress. I cannot see that a book such as Silhouette of a Sinner should have any need at all of a foreword, yet my publisher seemingly is of a different opinion. Bella, she is called. She is Nella’s daughter, and I have never before found difficulty saying no, but I cannot possibly say no to a person who resembles Nella so much. My Nella. That is what love does for one.

arken

2010-05-28T10:28:00.001+02:00

My Danish translation of Boyd Morrison's The Ark came out yesterday on Lindhardt & Ringhof.

auricula

2010-05-02T13:39:00.004+02:00

The Silence of 1915 occurred on September 7 and embraced Western Europe and the countries from the Baltic in the north to the Balkans in the south. Since it was unforeseen, no accounts of it exist. Many failed to even perceive it, fleeting and incidental as it was, and this despite their own participation in it. There was no question of recalcitrance, neither was there time. The silence occurred, catching Europe between two breaths and with one leg aloft, as it were, whereupon everything and everyone carried on as though nothing had happened. How indeed should one have known that the silence one so unwittingly upheld embraced all of Europe? Naturally, it might have been made the subject of discussion immediately following its occurrence, but since its few witnesses were unreasonably distributed – many lived far from civilised parts, in regions where silence already was their confidant – the subject was quickly changed. The news media, who besides participating in the event also received incredulous enquiries concerning it, realised immediately that it would be impossible to verify and might therefore lead to most anything at all, and hushed it up. He who seeks information about the event is even now, so many years after, at a loss. A Bulgarian agronomical journal mentions it in a subclause in the context of an article on watermills in the north-eastern provinces, and the pseudonym Ludwig Renn treats the phenomenon with ill-bestowed irony in his novel of 1936, Vor Grossen Wandlungen. It should also be noted that in France in 1921 initiative was taken to repeat the event on its 6th anniversary, though this remained but a local enterprise, betrayed by a dog in Containcourt and pigeons in Honfleur.

(extract of sample translation)

© Per Højholt & Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag A/S, 2001
Translation © Martin Aitken, 2010

on auricula

2010-04-28T11:54:00.002+02:00

"Much of this appears in subclauses and people will say to themselves: he’s making this up! But they can check and see: all of it’s true! And then they’ll suppose all the rest of it’s true as well, which it isn’t!"

Højholt on his then unfinished 'Auricula', in conversation with Lars Johansson in 1997, from Johansson's book Udsatte egne - det er mig. Samtaler med Per Højholt (Borgen, 1998)

new letters

2010-04-27T15:25:00.002+02:00

Just out, and featuring two of the aforementioned stories by Dorthe Nors. Thomas E. Kennedy, too. See contents and read The Duckling and She frequented cemeteries here>>

on auricula

2010-04-24T11:15:00.003+02:00

Just found this English piece on Auricula, from Nordic Literature Yearbook 2003.

dage

2010-04-23T15:09:00.003+02:00

Dorthe Nors (here>>), whose stories I've translated for AGNI, The Boston Review, Fence Magazine and New Letters, has a new book out in Danish on May 7. If the other stuff's anything to go by, you should buy it. Pulitzer winner 2009, Junot Díaz, was prompted to write this after reading those stories:

Beautiful, faceted, haunting stories ... Dorthe Nors is fantastic ... a rising star of Danish letters.

priapus

2010-04-23T14:43:00.003+02:00

The spring issue of Danish Literary Magazine, just out online, features an extract from my sample translation of multi-talent Mathilde Walter Clark's riotous new novel, Priapus. Read it here>>.

Have a look, too, at Mathilde's website (here>>).

auricula

2010-04-22T11:32:00.003+02:00

Things to do between jobs. Like, finally, a sample translation of Per Højholt's monumentally absurd Auricula. If this is to be published, it'll be the slowest, most meticulous translation ever. And my epitaph will say: He translated Auricula and needs the rest.

in the company of angels

2010-04-21T10:56:00.002+02:00

Copenhagen-based writer, editor, lecturer Thomas E. Kennedy (here>>), also an adept translator of Danish literature (e.g. Dan Turèll, Henrik Nordbrandt), is currently in the middle of a major-league international breakthrough with Bloomsbury just having published In The Company of Angels, the first in Kennedy's already well-reviewed Copenhagen quartet, previously out on now-defunct Irish small press Wynkin de Worde.

'Absinthe Minded', the blog of US journal Absinthe, has a piece including review extracts here>>.

i am not here

2010-04-08T10:59:00.003+02:00

Dorph/Pasternak (here>>). Two novels already out, third just done: Jeg er ikke her. I Am Not Here. Nordic crime, dark as fuck. Easily the best thing going on in the genre here. The Danish original won't be out for a while, but here's a brief taster from the English sample:

Erik Rohde turned his head in front of the bathroom mirror and pulled back his lips with two fingers. He got the torch in his mouth and found the right angle and turned it on. Fine and smooth it was, and he felt the relief in his stomach, the penicillin had done the trick. He felt with the tip of his tongue, caught his pupil in the mirror, made to contract by the light. Be fine again. He opened his mouth again to make sure, and there on the back of his tongue was a nubbly lustre of tiny white spots. The thrush was all over now, inside the dark of his organism. He felt dizzy and imagined it spreading to his guts and eating him up and spitting him out so he tumbled into his open grave. He got his head over the toilet bowl and felt the spasms in his stomach, but there was only slime to come up and some of it landed on the seat. There were dark strands in it, he wiped it up with his index finger and turned it in the pale light. Blood.
“Dad, are you finished in there?”
“Go back to bed and sleep, Marie”
“I need a wee.”
“Can’t you use the downstairs toilet?”
“It’s too cold.”
“Go, for Christ’s sake!”
It was quiet again and he heard Marie Louise go down the corridor and the stairs to the ground floor creak. He felt sorry he’d snapped. He heard the door of the downstairs toilet. Kartoffelrækkerne – the Potato Rows – crooked, old houses in three storeys facing the Lakes, full of your kids and my kids, now our kids, stripped pine furniture, Christiania bikes and architects, nothing more than stairs and built-in cupboards, tiny rooms, and you couldn’t open a door without the whole place creaking and groaning and howling.
He stood listening to the sounds of the house. Ann Charlotte had put on a record. Bartok’s concerto for viola and orchestra. She was saying something to Marie now, he couldn’t hear what.
He and Ann Charlotte rarely spoke, he avoided her, they were busy, took turns staying at work and looking after Peter. The little chap with his middle ear infections since March, and they’d drained the fluid, it got better, he wasn’t crying any more at night, but it hadn’t really gone away either.
He missed her.
Rohde clenched his fist. It’d all be like before, before the fever and the thrush and the dry cough, the purple rash on his throat and his face, and the eternal stitch in his side and the nausea. The new broad-spectrum penicillin just needed time to kick in.
He stood at the mirror again. Had he put on weight as well?
He opened the cupboard and took out Ann Charlotte’s powder case, it was Chanel, there was a little beige pad in it. He smoothed some powder out with difficulty, pressed it with his finger, it seemed so stupid, but he was obsessed by it, covered up the purple spots, covered up his whole face.
He looked in the mirror again.
Good as new.
He smiled. Nightshift in twenty minutes. KCB. Kriminalpolitiets Centrale Beredskab. Crime Investigation Department. He put on his work clothes, light blue shirt, flannels, Ecco shoes.
Six hours by himself.
Six hours to think about something else.

© Christian Dorph & Simon Pasternak 2010
Translation © Martin Aitken 2010

until you perish

2010-04-08T10:47:00.003+02:00

Julie Hastrup's debut crime novel En torn i øjet (here>>) was published recently to decent reviews by Gyldendal, having initially been set to come out on now defunct Bazar. English title for the sample is Until You Perish. Here's the murder:

The blow was hard and abrupt. Anna collapsed on top of the branch, striking her forehead as she fell. Something warm and sticky ran down her face. She struggled to get to her feet, and was dealt a second blow to the back of the head. Her face was mashed into the ground. Her mouth filled with earth and gravel. She tried to scream, but the sound stuck in her throat. She felt another’s breath against her skin, and a familiar scent. There was a third, savage blow. A sound of something splintering. Blood spewed into her mouth. She felt the surge of nausea, and gradually became faint and lifeless inside. Come on, come on! Get away! She wanted to pick up the branch or find a sharp stone, defend herself. Fight. But her body would no longer comply. She felt something sharp in her back. Over and over. There was a faint gurgling. Suddenly, she was in doubt as to whether it was her own. Then sound disappeared. The last thought in her mind was: “Now I am dying,” and in some way it was a comfort. Nothing more could happen to her now.

© Julie Hastrup and Bazar Forlag ApS 2009
Translation © Martin Aitken 2009

nothing

2010-04-08T10:38:00.003+02:00

Janne Teller's Nothing, recently published in my translation by Simon & Schuster's Atheneum, imprint has received its fourth starred review in the States - no mean achievement. The review - in The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books - has gone online here>>

ejersbo

2010-04-04T22:54:00.002+02:00

Jacob Ejersbo's critically acclaimed African trilogy - Exile, Revolution, Liberty - is being published in the UK by Christopher Maclehose's Quercus. Maclehose, who previously brought both Peter Høeg and Stieg Larsson to the attention of British readers, is interviewed here>> in Politiken (Danish only).

hildegard

2010-03-08T09:32:00.002+01:00

Just a few weeks ago, Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen received Danish weekly Weekendavisen's prestigious Prize for Literature for her recent and much acclaimed novel, Hildegard, a stunning, claustrophobic fiction depicting the life of the Blessed Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). A masterful work deserving of widespread attention. Gyldendal commissioned me for a sample translation, a small excerpt of which follows here:

The Archbishop leads the procession through the church. Brushing silk robes; jangling, golden crucifixes. From the thuribles a good smell issues, an intoxicating, heavy scent, and in a moment they are to rise from their uncomfortable position. He blesses them with outstretched hands. A thousand fireflies leave his hands. They burn on their backs. He splashes water on their outstretched bodies; small, grey islands appear on the white cloth, a circular pattern, beautifully symmetrical. Jutta lies motionless. The child trembles. A single word is sufficient sign for Jutta, who is concentrated on all that is said, and slowly she rises to her knees, places both hands under the child’s arms and pulls her upright with her. Hildegard’s face blushes red and white, the twigs have left a labyrinth on her cheeks and chin, the garland of straw has dropped halfway down over her eyebrows. It seems she will fall: she sways from side to side, opens and closes her hands, but remains standing. There is a priest on either side of them; he hands them each two lighted candles. One candle for the love of God, one for the love of one’s neighbour, burning tallow running down Hildegard’s hands.
Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.
The expelled air of bodies rising. Someone drops something on the floor with a harsh clatter, another coughs, another groans. Jutta is a branch of a young tree. Hildegard is a hard, unripened fruit, fastened to the tree by a pliable stalk. She totters no longer. Hildebert and Mechthild step forth and stand beside their child. Hildebert is standing so close that Hildegard can inhale his familiar scent. Mechthild is behind him. With the bishop leading the way, the funereal procession proceeds through the church. Hildegard’s feet are tingling; she keeps a tight hold of the candles, her body now woken from torpor. Hildebert is standing so close she can feel his cloak, the soft fur brushing intolerably against her arm.
Veni, Creator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita, imple superna gratia quae tu creasti pectora.
Before the altar they must kneel three times.
Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam et non confundas me in expectatione mea.
The four candles, Jutta’s two and Hildegard’s two, are to be placed on the altar. The draught almost snuffs out the flame, and the priest must shield the candles with his hand. The fire sparkles in his golden finger ring, turning Hildegard into a sleepwalker child reaching out her hand to touch the flame. Hildebert takes her by the shoulder, arresting her outstretched hand, turning her round so that she must follow Jutta and the rest of the procession back to the uncomfortable bed. The warmth of his hand seeps through her clothing. During the reading and the sermon they again lie prone and when once more they are allowed to rise, Hildegard surveys the congregation, looking for her father’s face. People have come from all over, men and women, uneasy, tripping feet, colourful capes, furs, and mouths agape. It is a day without end, the moment before death, in which the light of Paradise, distant and unattainable, beguiles. Hildebert towers above the other men; hunched and broad-shouldered he stands with folded hands. When Hildegard’s name is uttered in barely comprehensible prayer, a twitch passes across his otherwise so expressionless face. Mechthild’s face is only barely visible in shadow and light, soft, shimmering fields concealing her eyes and motionless mouth. Hildegard stared and stared before being made to lie down on the spruce needles. Her eyes are dry, but their faces were a collision with an absence almost forgotten. Little jolts, a scorching hot tongue against the inside of an iron bell.
The girls are kneeling on the floor in front of their cell. The shovel is so small it almost vanishes in the hand of the bishop. A fine layer of dusty earth gathers along the straw garland on Hildegard’s head. Then the bishop sprinkles earth on Jutta’s head, too, and she blinks. De terra plasmasti me et carne induisti me. Redemtor noster resuscita me in novissimo die.
Mechthild places her arm under Hildebert’s, but he pulls away from her. Sophia sends Mechthild a nod. She nods back as tears flow down over her cheeks and mouth, despite Hildebert looking upon her with harsh, condemning eyes. Mechthild looks at her daughter, who is kneeling with her back towards her. She herself will never set foot in the chambers in which her youngest born will spend the rest of her days. Until now she has been able to hold the void at bay by fantasising of reunion, but on this mountain daydreams have no place. She will at best be able to speak to her daughter once a year through a tiny, barred window. In this bare church room, she will sit on a wooden chair and listen to the voice of her child; here she will manoeuvre her fingers through the bars in order to stroke her hands; here she will see the years extinguish the child’s face she knows, and replace it with that of a woman. It was her own idea to send Hildegard to the cloister, yet even though she cannot see any other way, doubt has been eating at her ever since Hildegard was sent to Sponheim. On several occasions she has felt ready to ride alone the entire way to Sophia’s estate and take back her daughter. She has been quite unable to speak of the matter with Hildebert. He says almost nothing any more, but behaves as though they have an account to settle.
O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.
The male voices of the choir sound beautifully through the church. The girls sway forward on their knees, the congregation remaining standing behind them. Some mumble along with the psalm; most are silent, their eyes on the girls, the Archbishop, the priests and the monks, who follow on into the little cell bearing thuribles, holy water, mortar trough and trowel. Jutta is gone first, then Hildegard. Jutta’s radiant, white clothing cannot withstand the dark; only the voice of the bishop still prevails, strong and masterful.
Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.
The priests’ response is a mumble so subdued those at the front must take a step forward.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
Hildegard is gone; the darkness engulfs its corn of wheat, and Mechthild wrings her hands until they pain. Sophia touches her arm. She is saying something Mechthild cannot hear. Mechthild is thinking only that it is as though Hildegard never was in the world at all, but crept straight from her mother’s womb into her grave at the rear of this foreign church.

© Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen and Gyldendal 2009

Translation © Martin Aitken 2010

denmark in the wind

2010-02-12T10:03:00.002+01:00

I translated this little piece for the novelist Hanne-Vibeke Holst, and then forgot all about it, until falling over it here>> in the New York Times.

nothing

2010-02-08T08:55:00.003+01:00

My translation of Janne Teller's award-winning novel for young readers, Nothing, is published in the US and Canada by Simon & Schuster on their Atheneum imprint tomorrow. Branch magazines have already given it three so-called starred reviews. Apparently, that's exceptional. Check Booklist (December 1, 2009), Publishers Weekly (here>>) (January 4, 2010) and Kirkus Reviews (January 15, 2010) (below):

The seventh graders of Tæring School are much like any others, until Pierre Anthon has an existential crisis, climbs a tree and refuses to come back to school. The other students can’t live their lives as usual with one of their classmates sitting in a tree, pelting them with unripe plums every morning and yelling, “In a few years you’ll all be dead and forgotten and diddly-squat, nothing.” Determined to prove to Pierre Anthon that life has plenty of meaning, the students embark on a dire quest. Over the course of months, each student is required to give up something full of meaning, something chosen by the previous sacrificing student. The sacrificial items start small—a favorite pair of shoes, a fishing pole—but become more and more dreadful as the pile of meaning grows. Quietly and without fanfare, the students’ adventure develops into one that rivals Lord of the Flies for horror. The matter-of-fact, ruthlessly logical amorality of these teens is chilling. Gorgeously lyrical, as abetted by Aitken’s translation, and dreadfully bleak.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2010

pushcart

2010-02-07T16:03:00.004+01:00

While we're at it, two more of Dorthe Nors' stories in my translations have been nominated for a prestigious Pushcart Prize (see here>>) in the US. They are The Buddhist [Buddhisten] here>> in The Boston Review (Sept/Oct 2009), and The Wadden Sea [Vadehavet] in AGNI #70.

mutual destruction

2010-02-05T20:48:00.003+01:00

The new issue of the excellent US journal FENCE Magazine (here>>) contains, amongst a wealth of other good stuff, my translation of Dorthe Nors' eerily suggestive story Gensidig aflivning from her critically acclaimed collection Kantslag [Karate Chop]. The English title is Mutual Destruction and it starts like this:

He whistles his dog to him, puts a collar on it and pulls it a short way back from the edge of the wood so they’re not stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s late in the day and there’s a big fallow field between him and Morten, so he can remain standing here. Morten is going about the farmyard with the red bitch at his heels. It’s lean and rough-haired, and he’s always only ever had Dachshunds. Small, aggressive animals that chew the lead and the floor mats in the car, and Henrik doesn’t like small dogs. But when they go hunting foxes, Morten takes his Dachshund, and when they go shooting by the fjord, Henrik takes his Small Munsterlander and the decoys. Many’s the time they’ve sat in the caravan on the Gardener’s land down in the bog, drinking weak coffee from plastic cups to the smell of wet dog and talking about how practically things divided up, Henrik having a big dog for the one thing and Morten having Dachshunds for the other. But now Morten’s going about the farmyard down there alone. A single light is shining from the kitchen window. He must have forgotten to switch it off, and the dog reaches only to his bootlegs. It looks like he’s trying to fix some part of the door in the gable end. There’s a lot needs fixing now. There’s a lot needs to sink in.

[excerpt copyright Dorthe Nors]

the ark

2010-01-25T21:56:00.004+01:00

Boyd Morrison (here>>) is not as yet a name known to many. But having self-published three novels in Kindle e-book format and woken the established publishing houses with their roaring success, he was picked up by Simon & Schuster, who are now putting out his first 'proper' novel in the spring and pushing him as a new Dan Brown. The Ark (or The Noah's Ark Quest as the Brits are calling it) is a swashbuckling, boys' own affair with a combat engineer in the starring role. Think Indiana Jones behind the wheel of the improbable vehicle pictured above (which, among a lot of other shiny hardware in the engineer's wet-dream category, has a prominent role in the proceedings). Don't look for The Ark in your Literary Studies curriculum. But then, who needs a fancy pen when you've got a Liebherr T282 mining truck to play with?

The Ark will be out in my Danish translation in the spring, published by Lindhardt & Ringhof. A likely Danish title: Jagten på Noas ark.

no danes in delhi

2010-01-20T14:52:00.002+01:00

Hands on the stop button, I got involved in what seemed like a major publishing drive for Danish (and Dutch, and Norwegian ...) literature in India. It always seemed too good to be true, and as Information reports here, it was. I managed to get one book off the keyboard before the hotline from Delhi self-destructed: Mette Finderup's excellent novel for young readers, Blink. Gyldendal are now picking up on the translation and will be pushing it at the Bologna fair in April. There's an extract from the draft posted here.

balladeering

2010-01-20T14:43:00.002+01:00

I recently translated Jørgen Leth's wonderful liner notes for a new jazz release, Balladeering, by Danish guitarist Jakob Bro. Read about that here on Jakob's site, listen to some of the music and watch excerpts from Sune Blicher's film of the recording sessions, Weightless. The English liner notes are here:

New York Invitation

Yellow cab from Battery Park up through Manhattan. September 14, 2008. Pulling up now. 441 West 53rd Street. I’ve a feeling about this. This is déjà-vu. I’m stepping into a past. I press the button outside Avatar Studios. I’m buzzed in, and I take the elevator up. Solid iron door, press the button. Now I’m inside. Invited in. A tingling, thrilling atmosphere.

“In New York I’ll be following the highly talented young Danish guitarist Jakob Bro during recording sessions for his new album in the legendary Avatar Studios together with the likes of Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Lee Konitz, and Ben Street. An unprecedented line-up of some of the greatest, most trailblazing jazz musicians alive. We’re filming in the studio Monday and Tuesday. If Jørgen wants to stop by, he’s more than welcome. We could even do a scene with Jørgen listening to the music and meeting Jakob and the other musicians. My US number is 19175443714. I’m in New York from Friday night.”

These were the words of the young filmmaker Andreas Koefoed, forwarded by a mutual friend, that sent me on my way.

And now I’m here.

He knew I was in New York at the time. I was taking part in a film project Jennifer Elster had been working on for a couple of years, and as always there was so much else for me to do in New York before going on to Haiti. What is this? I thought. Back to jazz? Do I want this?

But wait, this is an offer you can’t refuse: Avatar Studios, of course I want to go and look. It was like a piece of archaeology: Was it real, or was it a dream? It was a whole lot New York, at any rate. Ring the buzzer. Come on in. Hear voices and the sound of guitars being tuned. Friendly people bidding welcome. I meet Jakob Bro, and I meet the Danish filmcrew, headed up by director Sune Blicher, who are recording everything that’s happening, even before the music has commenced. What kind of occasion is this? The young Danish composer Jakob Bro has succeeded in gathering together some legendary jazz musicians for a recording session in which they are to play his compositions. I don’t know what’s going on in Danish jazz, so I need to get my bearings from scratch. But it turns out not to be difficult. Just a matter of keeping my ears open. I realize this is major. The music is out on its own. And Jakob Bro is highly appreciated by some of the world’s best musicians. This is major.

Lee Konitz was one of my heroes back in my youth when I wrote about jazz. To have the opportunity of meeting him now was like an invitation from providence. In Copenhagen, Lars Movin had finished editing En dag forsvandt Duke Jordan i Harlem/One Day Duke Jordan Disappeared in Harlem, my book of jazz writings from the 50’s and 60’s. There are quite a few lines about Lee Konitz in that book. He arrived with this new sound and became the exponent of what we right away began calling Cool Jazz. I was crazy about him and with the thought of how, as I saw it, he introduced the air into the instrument in an easy, steady flow, and then shaped his flourishing figures in what seemed so effortless an exertion. It may all be a myth. But it was how we saw him. Inapproachable behind his glasses, yet eternally inspired and creatively at the forefront.

Back then he stood right there alongside bebop’s greatest and most inventive soloist, Charlie Parker. Both played alto sax, and there were plenty of grounds for exciting comparisons. Konitz was one of the white musicians Miles Davis had invited into his trailblazing octet for the Birth of the Cool sessions. One of the junctures at which a new language of jazz took shape. Another early inspiration for Konitz was the pianist Lennie Tristano. It was jazz history. Later, Konitz soared above it all. His lightness of tone and his lyrical playing gilded everything he touched.

But most impressive is his endurance. He’s always right in there, never afraid of new combinations, new challenges. It’s not just his tone, his way of playing that’s cool. It’s the way he is. He is a paragon of cool. Always present, always distant. Anyway, these were the kinds of associations that occurred to me when I learned I could meet Lee Konitz all these years after I lost touch with jazz. It was a supreme gift of chance.

Paul Motian I knew from the early Bill Evans Trio, whose café recordings of Waltz for Debby and a series of other tunes were so marvellous. This was the best of all trios. The deeply introvert Evans, the virtuoso bassist Scott LaFaro (who died all too prematurely), and then Motian at the drums. All of it fabulous, breathed poetry, immersion, lightness of touch. I remember Paul Motian from that time as a quite unrivalled, sensitive drummer.

I left it all behind years ago, at about the time when Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor were the renewers of jazz, and I know little about the newer names. I ended up with violent aversions toward the much too repetitive middle-ground jazz, usually tenor sax quartets in the style of Johnny Griffin, all of it a meaningless dirge. The last thing to interest me was Monk’s quartet, though I would have preferred them without Charlie Rouse.

Being so unaware of what’s going on in jazz today is not something I’m proud of. But I know what I like among the things I do know and still care for. I’m very choosy. I return all the time to Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Getz, Antonio Carlos Jobim (who became my good friend and did the music for one of my films, Det legende menneske/Moments of Play, in 1986), Joao Gilberto, Coltrane, Monk, Bud Powell (about whom I made my very first film, Stopforbud/Stop for Bud in 1963), Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Duke Ellington, Chet Baker. Those are probably my favourites, the ones who last through all time.

Now I know a little more. A lot more, I would say. It was a major thrill for me being in the Avatar Studios that day in September. To feel music so ethereal and so full of poetry is a fabulous experience. For music to possess such qualities is in itself exceptional. This was the feeling that was all over that day. I felt myself seduced and transported away by the slow dreaminess of the ballads from one cut to the next.

All of a sudden I’m standing before Lee Konitz, a slight, elderly gentleman. A gleam behind the glasses. I tell him right away how much I have admired him and how often I have written about him. In days gone by. He listens politely, but would rather talk about more legitimate things. He lives in Cologne, but owns a house in Poland, too. A house in Poland. Such excentricity. The information makes a strong impression on me. So many of my founding experiences in jazz are from Poland, way back in 1959-61 when I accompanied Danish musicians (Louis Hjulmand, Max Brüel, John Tchicai, Niels Brøndsted) to jazz jamborees, as they were called. I became good friends with the great Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda (who later did the music for a number of Roman Polanski’s films, and some of Henning Carlsen’s, too, among them Sult/Hunger). I arranged a residency for Komeda and the tenor saxophonist Jan Wroblewski (still active) for a few weeks at the Jazzcafé Montmartre in Copenhagen. Stan Getz was the first American jazz musician to play concerts in Warsaw. And now Lee Konitz has a house in Poland. Pure mythology! Jazz musicians are the most peculiar people sometimes. They seek out strangeness.

The musicians were getting ready. I took in the studio. In the centre, a very large room with the drum kit in the middle, then at the sides, three or four enclosed spaces with glass walls facing out toward the big room. This is just like a movie, I thought. And thought, too, that it was so obvious now, the famous acoustics had to come from all those wooden panels cladding the walls.

I talk with Lee Konitz again. About many years ago when he was in Haiti with the bassist Eddie Gomez (known from his long association with Bill Evans). They recorded an album with the Haitian jazz composer and pianist Gérard Merceron. Collectors may note this is a rarity barely figuring in the discography. I know of it only because my old friend Ebbe Traberg had a copy. He had everything. Knew everything.

The sight of Paul Motian fascinates me. I sense I still can be a total fan. Like with the bike rider Lance Armstrong. I know Armstrong, have looked into his eyes and taken in his replies to my questions so many times. Yet am still reticent as to approaching him directly. I’m not going to approach Paul Motian either, definitely not, I’m simply going to observe. He hides what is most probably his bald head beneath a woolen beanie. His presence is one of privacy. Very special. A very strong charisma. I am fully aware that he is a key figure in this exclusive set-up. He has played with Jakob Bro many times. Even before I have heard a note of Jakob Bro’s music, I know his class, I can register who it is he makes music with in New York.

And I needn’t wait any longer than the first ballad he’s prepared for them.

Paul Motian’s drumming with the whiskers and the sticks. I’ve never heard anything like this. Ebullient, yet simultaneously discreet. The tension thickens. Bill Frisell making the guitar sing, crisp and poignant. Konitz plays better than ever in my opinion. His tone and his arabesques touch me. I’m thinking that Jakob Bro can get so very much out of this. Bro and Konitz join up, a form of dialogue. Konitz, master of cool, putting his heart in. It’s the same thing with poetry. The sparser the language in a poem, the more sensuous it becomes.

I relish everything I experience in these rooms. I note that Lee Konitz insists on rearranging the light, not just in his own room, but in the room in the middle, too, Paul Motian’s room, for there’s a lamp reflecting in the cymbal and it’s in his eyes. It won’t do. Paul Motian laughs discreetly. Afterward we sit in the production room. Rows of chairs. We listen to the cut they just recorded, a fabulous ballad. Now they all have lights in their eyes, especially Jakob Bro. Lee Konitz is the only one with reservations. I sense that’s the role he wants to play: the perfectionist. He believes he can do it better. It’s hard to comprehend. He plays like an angel. A wise, inspired, elderly angel. But when it transpires everyone is crazy about the first take, he doesn’t push it, doesn’t want to “argue with everyone”. This is his way of marking his perfectionism, at the same time as he’s loath to give way.

When we get to Paul Motian’s miraculously subdued, economically meted little solo, Konitz turns around in his chair and sends Motian behind him a glance. No inkling of a smile. Just the head turned halfway and then the glance. For me this was a rare moment: one master’s acknowledgement of another. And this was how Paul Motian took it, too, I noticed. Without words. I must say that the moment touched me.

A year later, days sitting alone in my house in Jacmel, Haiti, on the top floor, the room with the blue tiles. I’m listening to the completed CD. I realize how unparalleled not just the project, but the work itself actually is. They play ballads – they balladeer. Not standard ballads, but original, flowing, impassioned pieces of music. It sounds like nothing I’ve heard. Which makes sense. That’s why they got together. It appeals so profoundly to me. So often I’ve felt irritation at the way jazz repeated its most hackneyed patterns. As though it worried about not pleasing everyone. Take, for example, the recipe for most recordings: first an uptempo number, then a ballad, then an uptempo – maybe even a jumpy – number, then maybe a ballad more. A dull recipe! It’s beyond me how jazz musicians, who ought to be noncomformists, ever got that neurotic thought that such variation of tempo was so necessary. I have so often wished they just would play a few more ballads. I mean, even Miles Davis constructed his records that way, but with him it didn’t matter, because everything was up in the stratosphere and in that certain mood, a climate that was created from album to album.

Just as infuriating is that old, unshakeable habit of standard quartet line-ups featuring tenor sax always running off the sax solo first, then the piano, then bass, then drums, as though some misconceived democratic notion dictated that everyone get his own – far too protracted – solo. This routine, too, worked absolutely fine for geniuses like Parker, Bud Powell, Gillespie, Max Roach. Note, though, that Max Roach never imposed long solos upon either his audience or his fellow musicians. Why should he, when his whole performance was almost a solo in itself.

And now Jakob Bro is here, throwing out the family heirlooms. His approach is crystal clear: He is pushing back the borders of the ballad. A context in which it’s legitimate to immerse oneself into a given state and to see what is going to happen. What I hear is that these musicians are exploring outlines, developing them, toying with them, reflecting upon their endless possibilities. Dreamy pieces in slow motion. Ethereal music. I’m reminded of Alexander Calder’s mobiles. And I think of the crackled resonances allowed to hang suspended, the intimate whispering of instruments to one another. The feeling sometimes that Frisell, Street and Bro are tenderly guiding Konitz through some strange landscape. And the feeling of time. Paul Motian almost stroking the surface of the drums, showing us what kind of an instrument a drum actually is when taken into consideration and caressed.

A point of departure is the crucial discovery of the innate lightness of the pianoless combination that Mulligan and Chet Baker introduced so early, and of course even earlier there was Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli. A wealth of associations occur to me when I listen to this music. The title of the first track, Weightless, provides a precise idea of where we’re going. Sometimes there is something about the musical progression like water rolling in an ocean, a feeling that a tone is established and pursued wherever it happens to go. And one can sense rings spreading out in the water. And time and again, Konitz across the decades, a voice issuing out of the dark currents of time – and in one piece ending so suddenly and so full of pain.

In the third track, Vraa, there occur what one may venture to call unison passages that can be construed as a kind of antithesis to those unison passages in Monk where piano follows horns note for note. Antithesis, because Monk’s unison passages were heavy and full of edge, whereas Jakob Bro’s are light as a feather, transparent, a crucial distinction. One has the feeling that the musicians are spelling their way through the material in a kind of forwardly directed, mumbled unison. Motian guides with smouldering intensity. Sometimes it is like a children’s song: a slow, slow naïvist narrative, no-one pushing.

The fourth cut, Starting Point. An effervescence from the fingerboard of the guitar, and suddenly amidst it all, clear, exclamatory tones from Frisell putting things into place and opening the door for Konitz to sneak in and commence his own narrative. Another association: This musicianship reminds me of Chinese caligraphy; we filmed a Chinese artist one time, all those light, rapid strokes, the truth test of it all residing in the fact that none of it could be corrected afterward. In the fifth track, Greenland, Motian, as though in some naïve painting, alludes to a more classical percussionism; it feels like push and shove up against a fluid movement. The theme fades slowly into silence, a quivering of drumskin and the crisp tonal dissolution of guitar. Another incomparable moment. Terrace Place, the sixth cut, sleepwalks; it comes to a standstill, it stops, the momentum is pulled tight, then Konitz’ sparklingly clear narrative, great brush strokes pointing on and illuminating it all. And inside this dynamically highly restricted field, the paradoxical gleam of light in the seventh track, Sort.

Always the exchange of lines in motion, halting, remaining stationary, a diversity of pulses entering in, jostling, opening up and exuding light. The light is there, it is visible on the outskirts, it forges a path through scrub and undergrowth.

Jørgen Leth

Translated by Martin Aitken

biking and blogging

2010-01-20T14:27:00.003+01:00

Back when I was an avid bike racer, heaving myself through three or four training sessions a week with the local club, I had a motto as regards bike maintenance. A golden rule, you might say, to the effect that the bike always, and without exception had to be cleaned after use. Unless, of course, you couldn't be arsed. The same is pretty much true of blogging. I haven't been arsed for quite some time now, and who wants to keep up with a blog if there's nothing to keep up with. It's all just old newspapers waiting to be binned. Anyway, I'm going to try to be conscientious now, if anyone should still be there, and without kidding myself that the world lost anything it loved.

I'll write something about translation now. Wait and see.

returned

2009-12-11T21:44:00.000+01:00

What can I say? I've been away. I've had a sinus infection. We got broadband TV.

blink

2009-10-10T14:00:00.005+02:00

"Nicklas let out a beery belch that reverberated through the churchyard. For a short moment he wondered if she had gone because of the argument they’d had the night before. But he pushed the thought out of his mind again just as quickly as it had appeared. That couldn’t have been it. Amanda had sworn she had forgiven him when he had asked her that same morning. And yet now she had gone off with a bloke she didn’t even know … or did she?
Nicklas emptied the second can in one swill. The beer made him think more clearly, and it occurred to him suddenly how stupid he had been. Of course she knew the bloke. She had said his name … Kristian or Karl, or whatever it was. How stupid he had been. The little bitch had found someone else while he was out bringing in the trawl, thinking about her blond hair and missing her. And it had been so easy for her to keep it from him, because she always knew exactly when he’d be home. The two of them had been screwing. Maybe even in Nicklas’ own bed. He felt a rage coming over him. Of course that was how it was. Now there was a whole load of other things that fell into place all of a sudden: friends acting funny and giving him sly looks down at the pub. They’d know all along she’d been two-timing him. It was always the way. The whole bloody town always knew about that sort of thing before the bloke himself.
He should have seen it coming, he thought to himself. Infidelity was a curse in his family. His grandmother had been a tart. His dad had told him about how she had two of those white china dogs there were so many of in the windows of fishermen’s homes. When they were facing each other, the fancy man could see that Grandad was home, and could stay well away. But as soon as he had put out to sea again, she would turn the dogs to face away, and the fancy man could see it was all clear.
He had heard that his grandmother was sleeping with the dairyman. Grandad had never said as much himself, but his dad had told him so while they were unpacking the china dogs from the case when Nicklas’ mother had been clearing out the house after their deaths. And he had gone out into the yard and smashed the two of them against the flags.
“There’ll be no more funny business with them,” he had told Nicklas’ mother. “You’ll not have things that easy when I’m away.”
Nicklas had never known his mother receive visits from men, but his father was in no doubt they’d been there. He had once yelled that the only way Nicklas’ mother could have afforded her new woolen overcoat was by screwing the builder, just like they all said she’d been doing.
And now it was Nicklas’ turn. A new generation with a two-timing bitch who couldn’t keep an itchy cunt in check while her bloke was at sea. It also explained why Amanda had been acting so strange of late. Bad-tempered and sulky in front of the telly all the time. Not like before, when she used to sing and dance around the living-room for him. Now there were some mornings she just stayed in bed, lying there and pretending to be asleep, even though he could tell she wasn’t. But she buried her head in the pillow and was too lazy to get up.
Nicklas smiled bitterly at the thought of how down he had been when he had got back from the baker’s that morning with the rolls Amanda liked. Now he realised it wasn’t only his fault they’d started arguing. He may have lost control, but she was defintely the one who had started it, all the while she was making plans to run off with her little shite of a boyfriend. But she’d got another thing coming now. He was going to find her alright. If it was the last thing he ever did. He was going to find her and put her in her place and bring her back with a firm, loving hand to Hirtshals where she could once again be the sunshine that kept him warm. He was going to make sure that everything was going to be like before and that she never again would be tempted by another man. And definitely not by that lad she’d gone off with earlier that evening. That little runt was going to regret ever having set eyes on Nicklas Frandsen’s girl. He’d make sure of that.
He sat for a while longer on the bench by Brønderslev church, shaking his head at his own stupidity. Then he left through the gates, staggering slightly, and went by the filling station and bought a new six-pack of Special Brew for the journey."

Mette Finderup: 'Blink'.

Extract from draft translation.

(c) Mette Finderup and Gyldendal 2009

Translation (c) Martin Aitken 2009

high maintenance

2009-10-06T10:08:00.002+02:00

"A decision to involve the author actively in the translation process is not one to be taken lightly, and his or her offer to ‘help out’ or to ‘take a look at the manuscript’ should not be accepted merely out of courtesy. Authors are as individual in temperament and personality as other human beings, if not more so, and there are ‘easy’ authors and, so to speak, ‘high maintenance’ authors. More than one translation project has foundered because of excessive authorial input (read interference).

(...)

There are authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who display a commendable awareness of the formidable tasks inherent in literary translation and have only good things to say about those who labor to reproduce their works in other languages.

(...)

The potential problem arises when an author thinks he or she is sufficiently fluent in the TL [target language] to judge the translation and even to propose changes in it. (...)

A cautionary tale: a certain Continental author, convinced despite never having written directly in English that his command of the language was beyond reproach, insisted in his contract on having final cut on the translation. Notwithstanding his unavailability for consultation during the actual translation process, which lasted almost a year, he nevertheless minutely pored over the finished manuscript, finally declaring it ‘amateurish and unacceptable’. To the consternation of publisher and translator alike, he demanded either a completely new draft or a different version by another translator. The publisher, faced with an unexpected doubling of translation costs and an inevitable delay in bringing the project to fruition, opted to cut his losses; the book was never published in English."

Clifford E. Landers (2001). Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. Multilingual Matters.

buddhist in boston

2009-09-19T15:44:00.002+02:00

The Buddhist by Dorthe Nors. My translation. The Boston Review Sept/Oct 09. Out now.

(photo from Dorthe's blog)

bargepoles and bestsellers

2009-09-14T17:40:00.005+02:00

At 6 am tomorrow, Mich Vraa will receive a mail to which will be attached a file containing Dan Brown's new novel. Then will follow approx. 30 days of nonstop translation work, some 20 pages a day, before Vraa's Danish version is done. In this illuminating article in Politiken, Vraa reveals among other things that he "never reads a book before beginning its translation" and that his 20 pages a day will be mailed to his editor every evening to be edited on the hoof. Interestingly, it transpires that the Swedish translation will be done by a team of six translators working independently - and fast enough to get the book out before you can say "goldmine". Vraa himself, understandably, "wouldn't touch that kind of project with a bargepole."

aidt

2009-09-11T10:21:00.005+02:00

Nordic Council Prize winner (for the collection Bavian) Naja Marie Aidt has included on her website my English version of a speech made by Information's critic Lilian Munk Rösing on the occasion of Aidt receiving the Danish Critics' Prize in 2006. Read it here>>. Also included (and a much better English read) is an excellent translation by Anne Mette Lundtofte of one of the stories in that collection, Bulbjerg.

i digress but slightly

2009-09-03T10:16:00.006+02:00

Jørgen Leth asked me the other day if I would translate some liner notes he wrote for an upcoming CD-release. It was about jazz, he said. I said I didn't know anything about jazz. He said it didn't matter, it was a lyrical text. I read the text and said yes immediately. It is a lyrical text. An excursion into a recording session in New York in September 2008. An excursion back into Leth's one-time interest in jazz. The recording session at New York's Avatar Studio was to lay down tracks for a new album of compositions by the young Danish guitarist Jakob Bro (here>>). A session featuring a whole array of jazz luminaries, unknown to me, yet brought to life by Leth's liner notes. And suddenly I realised that Jakob Bro until recently also was a member of the Copenhagen indie combo I Got You On Tape, whose first record has been languishing on my computer here without ever really being heard. Now I've heard it, and bought the second, from which the above video is culled. Listen to Jakob Bro's tender guitar.

karate chop

2009-08-07T14:20:00.003+02:00

More Dorthe Nors. My translations of the stories Ællingen and Den sommer gik hun på kirkegårde from Nors' acclaimed collection Kantslag (Samlerens Forlag, 2008) will be published in US journal New Letters (here>>). The English titles are The Duckling and She Frequented Cemeteries.

fruelund, river and sound, redivider

2009-07-24T13:19:00.005+02:00

Talking of Three Percent, they just directed me on to a new online journal called River and Sound. It looks great. First off, they even have Simon Fruelund's excellent piece Phosphorescence, translated by K. E. Semmel. Read it here>>. Incidentally, Fruelund's short novel Borgerligt tusmørke is well worth a read. Maybe someone will put it out in English. Maybe K. E. Semmel should translate it. Maybe I should.

And now I see that another of Semmel's translations of Fruelund's stories - What is it? - is out here>> in Redivider, a journal I didn't even know about until now. But then, I never did want to know everything.

inger christensen exists

2009-07-24T12:53:00.002+02:00

Inger Christensen, Denmark's major modern poet, died a few months back. Her monumental poems Alphabet, It and Butterfly Valley: A Requiem are all available in award-winning English translations by Susanne Nied. Now, Denise Newman has translated Christensen's novel Azorno for US publishers New Directions. It's reviewed here on Three Percent. Newman's translation of Christensen's novel The Painted Room came out in 2000.

There's a five-minute clip from Jytte Rex' 1998 portrait Inger Christensen - Cikaderne findes here>> (Danish).

jørgen leth / from 'sports poems'

2009-07-08T21:42:00.008+02:00

FAUSTO COPPI

Fausto coppi
was a fantastic human
most at ease entirely alone

When he attacked in the mountains
no-one could follow him, he
was a fantastic human

Departed early,
fausto coppi
fausto coppi

from Sportsdigte [Sports Poems] (1967)

© Jørgen Leth & Gyldendal, 1967
Translation © Martin Aitken, 2009

what I do when I translate

2009-07-04T11:18:00.001+02:00

1.
There are some thoughts in a mind. The thoughts are joined. The thoughts are joined into something meaningful. The meaning is not necessarily determinate. The mind represents the meaning in language. The mind represents it in words joined into sentences. The sentences are uttered. Now there are some words on paper. There are utterances on paper. There are utterances joined into text. The text is a representation of some thoughts in a mind.

The text is not an exact representation of the thoughts in the mind. The text does not fully encode the meaning. The words and the sentences are semantically underdetermined. They are not big enough on their own to contain all the meaning. They are blueprints for understanding. The utterances and the text may convey some or all or none of the intended meaning.

2.
There are some words on paper. There is a text. The text is an input to a decoding process. Decoding delivers a semantic template representing the encoded content of the words and sentences. The representation is a semantic representation that is underdetermined in relation to the meaning. It falls short of the meaning. The mind fills in the gaps by means of inference. The text means nothing without a mind to fill in the gaps.

The mind represents the text by combining the decoded semantic content with assumptions about the world and the possible intentions of the writer. It adds things up and works things out and makes informed guesses. The representations so delivered are contextually determined. They may bear some greater or lesser degree of resemblance to the writer’s intended meaning.

3.
They may bear some greater or lesser degree of resemblance to the writer’s intended meaning.

4.
The number of representations of the text is equal to the number of readers of the text.

5.
What am I translating? What am I not translating?

6.
I am translating my representations of the text. My representations of the text may bear some greater or lesser degree of resemblance to the writer’s intended meaning. I am striving to encode my representations of the text in another text. I am striving to encode my representations of the text in words and sentences whose encoded semantic content will provide an input to decoding and inference that is as similar as possible to that provided by the words and sentences in the original text. I am striving to encode my representations of the text in words and sentences that are stylistically as similar as possible to those in the original text.

7.
I am not trying to encode the thoughts in the writer’s mind. I have no direct access to the thoughts in the writer’s mind. The writer can only convey to me the nature of the thoughts in her mind by encoding her representations of those thoughts in language.

8.
I am doing my best to produce a text that provides just the right input to cognitive processing as will yield representations as similar as possible to my own representations of the original text.

9.
That’s it.

jørgen leth

2009-06-29T11:46:00.004+02:00

Just less than a week to go before this year's Tour de France kicks off with the traditional short individual time trial in Monaco. Just less than a week to go before the much-awaited return of Jørgen Leth as Tour de France commentator for Danish TV. A national event, no less.

Jørgen Leth. Poet, filmmaker, bon viveur.

A short selection of Leth's poems under the title Boredom will be published in my translations in The Literary Review this coming spring. A lengthier collection will hopefully be appearing in Canada some time next year.

In the meantime, here's an extract from a sample I did for Gyldendal from Leth's recent book Tilfældets gaver - tekster om at lave film [Gifts of Chance: Texts on Filmmaking].

Oh, and you can watch the trailer for De fem benspænd [The Five Obstructions] here>>

The Five Obstructions

DEAR DUMB LARS

It started with Zentropa Real’s chief executive, Carsten Holst, saying that Lars von Trier wanted to make a film with me and suggesting that we meet next time I was in Denmark.

We met at Lars’ bungalow. Lars wanted to know what I found trivial. I mentioned a few things. He nodded and said he would think. He would come up with something.
I returned to Haiti. During the time that followed we exchanged a number of short mails. Lars wrote that he still needed to “think a bit”, but that he would soon be in touch again.
A couple of months later he wrote that he now believed he had an idea. He called it Obstruction. He wanted me to make a film based on a number of hindrances.
What follows is an excerpt of our correspondence (December 2000):

“The challenge/film you are to make/solve is called: The Five Obstructions.
I’d like you to show me a film to begin with, and to talk about it, after which I set up a number of restrictions, orders or prohibitions that require you to remake the film. This we do five times … hence the title. I think it would be natural for our discussions to be included in the final film … plus of course the six small films.
Hope you like the challenge. Perhaps the subject for the first film could be something we agreed on? Obviously, it would be best if the subject were to allow as much progression as possible between film one and film six. [In our initial correspondence he referred continually to six films, although we ended up doing only five.]

Tell me what you think.

Hope the depression’s doing fine. I actually understand you now … the whole Haiti thing. A place where you’re allowed and expected to go to the dogs!!! You sure figured that one out.

All the best, Lars.”

I replied the same day:

“Re. The Five Obstructions.

Dear Lars

I find the challenge appealing. I can see an interesting progression between films one and six, the pathway around the obstacles, the discussions. I can see us making something out of it. A compelling prospect. I look forward to facing your obstructions.
(I’m reminded of Michael Laudrup, who so elegantly avoided being injured by the brutal challenges to which he was always exposed.)
I really like the idea of having to change, adapt, pare down according to stipulated conditions. Progressively.

But how do we get started on the first film you want me to do?
If I’m expected to devise it, alone or with you, and then shoot it here in Haiti, then obviously it would be on DV, with all the built-in restrictions, especially as to sound.

Or should the first film simply be a note? I’m sure that if I pull my head out of the morass in which it’s immersed – spurred by your brilliant idea, I’m certain I can – then I might be able to think up a simple story to tell which can be filmed here. Maybe.

Is that how you see it? Or do you want me to do it some day in the spring when I get back to Denmark?
Is this correspondence already a part of the project?

The depression’s doing fine. Bouts of cheerfulness. As you’ve discovered: My arrangement here is a good one.

All the best, Jørgen.”

Still later the same day, Lars got back to me with these words:

“Dear Jørgen,

Thanks for the mail. Glad to know you’re feeling as planned. The first of the six films could also be an excerpt from something you’ve already done. That would be about the most clear-cut option, I think. What about The Perfect Human! You know that was the one I sat and watched over and over back then at the SFC.

All the best, Lars.”

I thought that was a great idea. I very much wanted to go back to The Perfect Human, recultivate the film’s simplicity, its emblematic character. I could see the possibilities immediately. It was like going back to a motif in much the same way as a painter is able to return time and again.
Perhaps I could use the actor Claus Nissen again. Maintain the very stringent aesthetics, the empty space in which the characters perform a variety of simple actions and utter a number of words.

The arrangement was then to meet up at Lars’ bungalow at Zentropa when I arrived back in Denmark prior to my commentating the spring cycling classics for television.
We agreed that our meeting should be filmed using two DV cameras. Lars had already suggested that our discussion as to how the project should develop was to be documented and perhaps included in the final film. I liked the idea. At the end of the day I would be selecting what was to go in, completion of the project being left up to me.

I was received by Carsten Holst and Lars von Trier. We walked over to the bungalow together. I saw the two DV crews as soon as I came in through the door: photographers Kim Hattesen and Jakob Bonfils with assistants. They were already rolling.
Lars and I sat down on the plush sofa and chatted over a variety of topics, but in particular my original film The Perfect Human. Lars told me again how great an impression the film had made on him. He’d seen it more than thirty times and said he’d also had it in mind working on his latest full-length feature, Dogville. Then we watched it together on his TV, after which we said nice things about the film’s keeping qualities. It all felt good, and I felt at ease.

Later we had The Perfect Human lunch – poached salmon with white potatoes and Hollandaise sauce accompanied by a fine Chablis. That’s how he set me up for the impending attack. I lit a Havana cigar.

We were agreed on the starting point. I was to do a number of remakes of The Perfect Human and each time Lars was going to set up various obstructions to make it more difficult for me. Obstacles to be overcome. We agreed that the new versions – five in all as stipulated – each were to be five minutes in length.

Lars was eager to reveal his first obstruction, but first he tried to get me to say something about how I envisaged making the film if I had to do it over again. I was rather reticent about giving anything away. I might prefer to do it in colour, perhaps in a black room rather than a white one. But I had made no decision about anything. I evaded his attempt to get me to start the ball rolling. I realised that he wanted something he could obstruct and my response was that he could obstruct a repeat of the original film. That was my starting point.

Then he presented his conditions. The first he tabled was that no cut should be longer than twelve (12) frames, i.e. half a second. That was what he said. I took a sip of Chablis and said that would be fine. It was madness.
Then he wanted the questions asked by the narrative voice in the original film to be answered. Further, that the first obstructed version should be filmed in Cuba. Why? Because I was unfamiliar with Cuba.
He left the room for a moment and asked Carsten Holst if there was enough money in the budget to send me to Cuba. It didn’t sound much like a question. There was, and that was that. The film was to be shot in Cuba, no cut more than 12 frames, questions to be answered.
I wasn’t entering into any discussion about the conditions laid down, but I did ask a question about the Cuba shoot. I wanted to take a screen with me, in the style of the photographer Irving Penn, as I had previously done in e.g. Notes on Love in order to isolate the characters. That was the thing I mentioned.
Lars thought about it for a moment and then said: “It’s a shame. You can’t.”

blurb

2009-06-22T20:30:00.004+02:00

Pulitzer prize winner 2008 Junot Díaz, author most recently of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, has this to say about the stories of Dorthe Nors (here>>), soon to be out in my translations in AGNI Magazine, The Boston Review and now Fence Magazine:

Beautiful, faceted, haunting stories ... Dorthe Nors is fantastic ... a rising star of Danish letters.

Thanks, Junot. And thanks to Thomas E. Kennedy (here>>), author of the Copenhagen Quartet (soon destined for world fame courtesy of Bloomsbury in NY), who says this:

Meticulously observed glimpses of everyday life and its small dramas, Dorthe Nors' stories will make you chuckle, make you feel, break your heart and make you see - all in the turn of surprisingly few pages. These are stories for our time, paced for our time, yet old as the human heart. Dorthe Nors is the real deal!

Two more stories from Dorthe's Kantslag collection are on their way soon. Look out for them.

revenge of the lawn / gräsmattans hämnd

2009-06-18T11:35:00.004+02:00

Richard Brautigan's wonderful collection Revenge of the Lawn from 1971 has just appeared in a Swedish translation, Gräsmattans hämnd, by Jonas Ellerström and published by Bakhåll (here>>).

The first reviews are deservedly more than positive. Svenska Dagbladet's web edition (here>>) says "Major literature in a small format", while Borås Tidning (here>>) enthuses:

Brautigan's texts exude a marvellous joy of language and I can think of no better book than this to give as a source of inspiration to any young writer in spe (...) With this publication, Backhåll have once again done us a cultural favour.

My own translations of five of the texts in the collection have recently appeared in the Danish journals Apparatur and Den Blå Port (Lars Bukdahl here>>: "cool, wittily sensitive 70s short prose").

Someone ought to do like Backhåll here.

husum and jesus

2009-06-12T10:07:00.005+02:00

Lars Husum went through the roof earlier this year with his debut novel Mit venskab med Jesus Kristus, which was sold to all over the place even before it was out in Denmark. I did the English sample translation for Gyldendal, and though Portobello in London already had a translator in line when they snapped it up, I'm still pretty chuffed about my own shot. A short extract from that sample is up here>> in the Danish Literary Magazine.

nordic voices

2009-06-11T10:20:00.002+02:00

Nordic Voices in Translation (here>>) is a new blog "devoted to the English translation of the literatures of the Nordic countries - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. And also Estonia." Among its instigators and regular contributors are David McDuff, known for his excellent translations of Pia Tafdrup, and "Reg" aka. Steven T. Murray, one of the most prolific forces in the translation of Nordic literature, most recently Stieg Larsson's megaselling Millenium trilogy.

louis jensen

2009-05-16T11:33:00.003+02:00

The Hans Christian Andersen Awards (here>>) are presented biannually by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) "to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children's literature." It's a prestigious award, often referred to as the 'little Nobel prize'. Among the nominees for the 2010 award is Louis Jensen for his book Tinhjerte og Ællingefjer, an endearing journey into Andersen's work and mindset seen through the eyes of an enthusiastic father and his inquisitive young son with a school project to do on Denmark's most celebrated author. The Danish publishers Rosinante asked me to do the English sample translation for the award committee. Here it is.

13: What makes the tale good

I have read my story aloud.
“Is it good?” I ask.
“It’s dramatic,” says my father.
“Is it as good as Hans Christian Andersen?”
He shakes his head. “It isn’t, but then not many can write that well. Not even real authors.”
“Can I get to be as good as Hans Christian Andersen?”
“Perhaps,” he says. “You can certainly become better if you practise. And if you want to become really good, you must read a lot!”
“Must I read Hans Christian Andersen?”
He smiles. “It would be a good idea, but there are many other good writers. The library is full of them!”
“Why was Hans Christian Andersen especially good?”
He scratches his nose and furrows his brow. He’s racking his brains. I hope his forehead doesn’t break, though it would be interesting to see what his head looks like on the inside.
“There’s more than one reason,” he says. “His fairy tales and stories are dramatic and entertaining. His plots are good.”
“Plots?”
“The things that happen. Like the princess declaring that she will marry the man who has the most to say for himself. Then we have three brothers. The first one knows the whole Latin dictionary by heart, and the town’s newspaper for three years. The second has learned all the articles of law. And the third can do nothing at all. At least, that’s what the others think!”
“Clumsy Hans!”
He smiles. “Exactly. The rest you know. And all the things that happen with the billy goat and the crow and the wooden shoe and the mud and the clever brothers, that’s the plot. Oh, yes, and there were blots of ink that got spurted on the King’s floor, too.”
“My plot was good as well!”
“Yes, it was! The plot’s important, but what happens doesn’t really amount to anything unless it’s told well!”
“Does it matter how you tell the story?”
“Certainly!”
“What do you mean by well?”
He scratches his nose again and furrows his brow. Racking his brains. At last he says: “It’s what matters most, the way the story’s told.”
Then he smiles. I think he’s found a way of explaining: “It’s like a house. A house built of bricks. Imagine you’ve two great piles of bricks, each exactly the same. Now imagine there are two builders. The first builder is very good. The second is careless and lays the bricks all wrong. Will their houses be just as fine, even if they’ve used exactly the same bricks?”
“The first house will be better than the second!” I say.
He nods. “It’s the same with words. They have to be put together in just the right way. We all have the same words inside our heads, but some use them in a special way. That’s what Andersen did. And even when he’s only writing about a green field and a blue sky, everything else in the world becomes a part of it, too, and one becomes so joyous it can pain the heart.”
I know how it is. I’ve felt it, though it doesn’t last long. It stops quickly.
He opens his mouth. Then closes it again. I don’t think he knows how to explain. Perhaps he hasn’t quite fathomed it yet? Sometimes you can feel you’re just about to grasp something, but then it disappears. Does he have that feeling, too?
“To tell a story well,” he continues, “means when the language, or more exactly the words, complement each other and the plot. When they sound well together, like a good tune. When they have a ring, and when the rhythm is fine and tickles the ears. There are many ways it can be done. Andersen had his own special way.”
“Isn’t there only one way to lay bricks?”
“There are many! I think everyone has their own way. That’s what it’s all about: finding your own voice. If you can do that, then you can write well.”
“Shouldn’t one imitate Andersen?”
He shakes his head. “That’s when it will fail, and fail miserably!”
He looks like he’s been given a turn. “But it’s as well to read him and see how he does things.”
We sit quietly. Then I ask: “So Hans Christian Andersen found his own voice?”
“He did, but it took a long time. The first things he wrote were magnificent. Novels, plays and poems, but he hadn’t yet found his own voice. Not quite.”
“You told me about that. About The Walking Tour. Just after he’d finished school.”
“Exactly,” he said. “And later came his novel The Improviser, and in no time at all he was famous all over Europe.”
A strange title. “What does improviser mean?”
“An improviser is someone who makes things up on the spot. That’s called improvising. Andersen had been called an improviser. And it wasn’t meant as a compliment.”
“Who called him that?”
“I think it was Hertz.”
“The one the Collin family thought better of?”
“Yes, but the most important thing was that he began to write fairy tales. And even more important: the fairy tales were written for children. The two things together were exactly what gave him his own special voice.
“So it takes a long time to find your voice?”
“I think so. It certainly took Andersen a long time. But all that he wrote prior to that was important, too. It was what had to be done in preparation, to make it possible for him to find his voice.”
He hesitates. Then continues: “There’s a famous example that’s always used to illustrate when Andersen found his voice.” He goes over to the bookcase, returns, opens the book, flicks through the pages and says: “I’ll read you a little excerpt from the fairy tale called The Galoshes of Fortune.”

Inside one of the houses close to King’s Newmarket a party was being given, a very large party whose purpose, like that of so many others, was to secure the others’ reciprocal invitations for the season.

That’s what Andersen wrote first, but then he changed it, and now it reads like this:

It was in Copenhagen, in one of the houses on East Street, not far from King’s Newmarket, that someone was giving a large party. For one must give a party once in a while, if one expects to be invited in return.[1]

“Can you hear the difference?”
I really can! “It’s quicker,” I say.
He nods.
“It’s like he’s talking,” I say.
He smiles. His whole face is smiling: “Exactly! That’s precisely what’s happened! And it means the reader is drawn right into the story. He can’t resist. He has to read on. In those days not many people thought that was a proper way to write. On the contrary! His friends told him not to. They wanted him to write as he had done in The Improviser, that had made him famous all over Europe. They were afraid he would ruin his good reputation as a writer. And it had all only just started. But Andersen persevered. He continued working on his fairy tales in his own way, and now everyone agrees that using everyday language, the way it’s actually spoken, was just the right thing.”
I’m taking notes. “The year?” Ruth wants a year.
“The year? How do you mean?”
“The year he found his voice.”
“That’s hard to say, but the first fairy tales came out in 1835.”
I jot down: 1835.
“You see,” he continues, “when the plot is good and surprising, full of unusual ideas and told in a lively manner, in a language like music, then it will be a good tale. Andersen was really quite daring when he put in everyday language and exclamations. Things like: Hi ho! Now it’s common, but in those days it wasn’t. And there’s another thing!” He looks right at me. I must listen carefully now: “It’s amusing! It’s humorous! And in a special way. His very own way of being amusing. The fairy tales are always, almost always, amusing. Not in the way of Laurel and Hardy throwing custard pies at each other, but amusing in another, more subdued way. He said so himself: Humour is the salt of my tales.”
“The salt?”
“It’s an expression. It means what’s important!”
Then Marie is my salt! But I don’t say so out loud.
“His diary is funny, too. You know he was very tall, and when he sailed to Germany on his first journey abroad, he lay stretched out during the night on a long bunk that was meant for three. At one end he was asked to keep his head to himself, and at the other to keep his legs to himself. Can you picture that?”
I can. He has to bend and curl and crumple himself up.
“And always, whether he’s sending up an emperor or poking fun at an old plaything, one senses he’s fond of those he’s being witty about. He feels for them. He understands their weaknesses and is forgiving of them.”
“And one more thing! Even though the fairy tales are amusing, beneath the surface they are deeply serious and tell us that despite all hardship and misery, the world is good, for a loving God always makes sure all is well in the end!”
“Always?”
“Always, even when it ends badly, it ends well!”
“I don’t get it!”
“Try reading The Story of a Mother, then you’ll understand what I mean. The way in which he tells the tale is uplifting, even though it ends unhappily and even though it makes you sad. Because you sense that despite all the hardship and misery there is nonetheless a meaning.”
So one can be both happy and sad at the same time, I think to myself. Then I ask: “Is there a meaning?”
“Certainly!”
“What is the meaning?”
“For Hans Christian Andersen it was God, and His doing what is best for us!”
I look up at him.
“Occasionally Hans Christian Andersen would doubt. Especially when he became old. But whenever he began to doubt he always ended up believing in God again, and then he would apologize to God for having doubted. When he was a child and a young man, he believed in God much as a little child who doesn’t know anything other than that God is up in heaven looking down and watching over us.”
“But he didn’t go on believing like that?”
“Not quite.”
We sit quietly. I’m making a note.
“It was God who gave him his voice. That’s what I believe he thought,” says my father. “In The Fairy Tale of My Life he writes in the very first paragraph of the very first page: The history of my life will say to the world what it says to me: there is a loving God, who directs all things to the best.”
I can see it before my eyes: God finds Andersen’s voice and hands it down through the clouds to place it on his tongue. From there, it descends into his arm, out into his fingers, into the pen, into the ink and onto the white paper.
“And there’s another thing, too!”
My word! I take up my pencil.
“Another secret is that the fairy tales are written for both children and adults. Andersen says that the children have the fun parts, while the grown-ups are given something to think about.”
I see. But didn’t he think that children could grasp the serious parts? I ask: “Is that a secret? That the fairy tales are written for both children and adults?”
He smiles. “Not at all. But it’s a fine thing. It enlivens the tales.”
I note down. I must talk to Marie about this!
“You see, there’s the plot,” he continues. “And there’s the language, there’s his compassion for his characters, there’s the humour. And the most important thing is that it all hangs together so well. It can’t be taken apart. The humour is in the language, and so is the compassion, often in the same sentence. And then there is God. God is behind everything and inside every little letter and comma. God is the heart of the fairy tale. If one takes away the heart, the tale will die!”
It can’t be taken apart, I think to myself. I don’t want to be taken apart either. Perhaps only to take out my heart and give it to Marie.
My father has gone over to the bookcase. He’s searching for something. He doesn’t hear what I’m thinking.
“Writing meant everything to him. Listen to what he wrote in the diary: Dreamt I was writing and the letters set fire to the paper.
“Did he dream that?” I ask.
“Indeed, there was so very much at work. The letters set fire to the paper. Just like the tin soldier and the paper dancer caught light. You’ll recall they were transformed by the fire. Do you remember the tin heart? Reading Hans Christian Andersen transforms us in much the same way. The flames rise up from the paper and catch into our hearts.”

© Louis Jensen & Høst & Søns Forlag, 2004
Translation © Martin Aitken, 2009

[1] Jean Hersholt’s translation in The Complete Andersen, 1949.

the host

2009-05-14T09:20:00.003+02:00

My translation of Stephenie Meyer's mega-seller The Host will soon be done. The equivalent title is pretty naff in Danish, so most likely it'll be called De vandrende sjæle [The Wandering Souls]. Here's how it starts, as yet unedited:

Healerens navn var Fords Deep Waters.
Fordi han var en sjæl, var han efter sin natur godheden selv – medfølende, tålmodig, ærlig, retskaffen, og fuld af kærlighed. Angst var en usædvanlig følelse hos Fords Deep Waters.
Irritation var endnu sjældnere. Men fordi Fords Deep Waters levede inde i en menneskekrop, var irritation somme tider uundgåelig.
Eleverne hviskede, så det summede i det modsatte hjørne af operationsstuen og fik ham til at presse læberne sammen i en tynd streg. Udtrykket føltes malplaceret på en mund, som ellers var mere vant til smil.
Darren, hans sædvanlige assistent, bemærkede hans grimasse og klappede ham på skulderen.
”De er jo bare nysgerrige, Fords,” sagde han sagte.
”En indsættelse er næppe nogen interessant eller ufordrende procedure. En hvilken som helst sjæl på gaden kunne udføre den i nødstilfælde. Der er ikke noget, de kan lære ved at iagttage i dag.” Fords studsede over skarpheden i sin sædvanligvis milde stemme.
”De har jo aldrig set et voksent menneske før,” sagde Darren.

attention

2009-05-13T11:31:00.001+02:00

There will now follow a so-called flurry of activity.

the marrow

2009-03-18T21:14:00.004+01:00

The three poems by Niels Hav that recently appeared in PRISM International (here>>) in my translations have been included in an online chapbook selection of Niels' poems entitled The Marrow (here>>). The book is part of a broader series called World Voices (here>>), edited by Walter Cummins, editor emeritus of The Literary Review (here>>), and Thomas E. Kennedy (here>>), novellist, essayist, translator, etc. Included in Niels' collection is this ace poem:

Epigram

You can spend an entire life
in the company of words
not ever finding
the right one.

Just like a wretched fish
wrapped in Hungarian newspapers.
For one thing it is dead,
for another it doesn't understand
Hungarian.

Translation P.K. Brask & Patrick Friesen
© Niels Hav

david peace is a brilliant writer

2009-03-06T09:22:00.003+01:00

David Peace is a brilliant writer. When they talk about him, they talk about Yorkshire noir. Or better: Dewsbury noir. I’ve been to Dewsbury. My father moved there after remarrying late in life. He died of cancer there. I think there was some drinking, too.

Like many boys growing up in Yorkshire, Peace feared that his father might be the Yorkshire Ripper. Every night his sister prayed that their mother would not be the next victim.

Now they’re televising David Peace. The Red Riding Quartet is on Channel 4. A film adaptation of The Damned Utd. is out soon. Read about it all here>> and here>> and here>>

An immodest claim: I’m probably the only professional translator in Denmark capable of translating the Yorkshire books: the Red Riding Quartet, GB84, The Damned Utd. I was there. I know what was on telly. It’s all impossible unless you were there. Try reading it.

David Peace lives in Japan. His second novel in a Japanese trilogy will be out this summer. The following is my translation of an excerpt from the first: Tokyo Year Zero. One Danish publisher has expressed interest. Nothing’s moving yet.

David Peace is a brilliant writer.

den 16. august, 1946

Tokyo, 32 grader, sol

De sorte lus klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg rejser mig fra det lave bord. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg går hen til køkkenvasken. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg trækker en kam gennem håret. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Lusene falder ud i klumper. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg knuser dem mod vasken. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Kropslusene er sværere. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. De er hvide og så meget vanskeligere at jage. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg åbner for vandet. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Vandet løber. Vandet standser. Vandet løber igen –
Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari …
Brunt og derefter klart, klart og derefter brunt igen –
Jeg skyller ansigtet. Jeg leder efter sæbe for at barbere mig –
Men der er ikke noget at finde, igen –
Jeg skyller munden og spytter –
Jeg er en af de overlevende …
Jeg tager skjorten på og bukserne, den samme skjorte og de samme bukser, jeg har haft på hver eneste dag i de sidste fire-fem år, den samme skjorte og de samme bukser, som min kone har plejet og repareret, lappet og lappet igen, ligesom strømperne og skoene på mine fødder, vinterjakken på min krop og sommerhatten på mit hoved –
Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Det klør, og jeg kradser –
Jeg er en af de heldige …
Der står en enkelt lille skål med zōsui på det lave bord, en grød med ris og grøntsager. Jeg lader den stå til min kone og mine børn –
Jeg tager mit ur frem. Chiku-taku. Og jeg trækker det op –
Klokken er 4 om morgenen. Min kone og mine børn sover endnu –
Det klør stadig, og jeg kradser stadig. Gari-gari …
Jeg tager mine gamle militærstøvler på og snører dem ude i genkan’en. Jeg åbner forsigtigt hoveddøren, lukker den og låser efter mig. Jeg går ned ad havegangen. Jeg lukker lågen efter mig –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Jeg går væk fra mit hus, væk fra min familie –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Jeg går ned ad gaden mod stationen –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Gennem lufthamrenes lyd –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Et nyt Japans frembrud –
Ton-ton …
Genopbygningsarbejdet begynder tidligt; de huse, der blev stående, sættes i stand eller rives ned, til erstatning bygges der nye; vejene ryddes for murbrokker og aske, murbrokkerne og asken tømmes ud i kanalerne, kanalerne fyldes og forsvinder. Men Tokyos floder og veje stinker stadig af pis og lort, af kolera og tyfus, af sygdom og død, af død og tab –
Ton-ton.
Dette er Det nye Japan; Mitaka station myldrer med mennesker i hundredvis, i tusindvis, der venter på tog i begge retninger; for at rejse ud på landet for at sælge billigt ud af deres ejendele for at købe mad; for at rejse ind til Tokyo for at sælge mad for at købe andres ejendele billigt: uophørligt frem og tilbage, tilbage og frem, uophørligt i gang med at købe og sælge, sælge og købe; Det nye Japan –
Hver eneste station. Hvert eneste tog. Hver eneste station …
Folk i to solide rækker langs begge perroner, svajende idet nytilkomne forsøger at mase sig foran, mens de træder og tramper på kroppene af dem, der har sovet ude hele natten på perronen, og så en sidste enorm bølgen frem, samtidig med at det første tog mod Tokyo kører ind –
Hvert eneste tog. Hver eneste station. Hvert eneste tog …
To tomme vogne forbeholdt Sejrsherrerne, en andenklasses med hårde sæder til de privilegerede Besejrede, og en lang række nedslidte tredjeklasses vogne til alle os andre –
Dem, der har tabt alt …
Vinduerne i tredjeklasse allerede slået i stykker, vognene fyldt til den sidste centimeter kl. 5 om morgenen, folk på perronerne, der presser flere bylter ind gennem vinduerne, som skal tages med ind til Tokyo, mens andre kæmper tavst for at få fodfæste på trinbrættet eller koblingerne –
Hver eneste station. Hvert eneste tog …
Jeg tager notesbogen frem –
Det klør, og det klør …
Jeg råber: – Politiet!
Det lykkes mig at komme med. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Jeg presser mig ind i en af vognene. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Folk bliver ved med at skubbe bagved mig. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Toget sætter langsomt i gang. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Armene hænger fastlåst ned langs siderne i trængslen. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Der står mennesker og bagage hvert eneste tænkeligt sted. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. De sidder på hug på sæderyggene, de sidder på hug på bagagehylden. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Jeg kan kun bevæge øjnene. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Drengens hoved foran mig er dækket af ringorm. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Der kravler lus ind og ud af håret på den unge kvinde til venstre for mig. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Mandens hovedbund ved min højre side lugter af sur mælk. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Toget slingrer hen over endnu et sporskifte. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Jeg lukker øjnene –
Jeg tænker på hende hele tiden …
Det tager over en time at nå frem til Yūraku-chō station, og så skal man kæmpe for at komme af toget og ud på perronen –
Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari …
Jeg går fra Yūraku-chō station hen til Politigården. Det klør, og nu sveder jeg, og klokken er ikke engang 6 om morgenen, og Tokyo stinker af lort; skidt og lort og støv, det skidt og lort og støv, som sidder i mit tøj og i min hud, og som skærer i næseborene og brænder i halsen for hver eneste jeep, hver eneste lastvogn, der passerer forbi –
Jeg stopper op. Jeg tager lommetørklædet frem. Jeg tager hatten af. Jeg tørrer mig i ansigtet. Jeg tørrer mig i nakken. Jeg ser op på den afblegede himmel og spejder efter den usynlige sol, der gemmer sig et sted ovenover skyerne af tyfus, skyerne af støv, af skidt –
Af lort, af menneskelort …
Vejsiden flyder med folk på måtter, mænd og kvinder, unge og gamle, soldater og civile, øjnene blanke eller lukkede, udmattede –
Mine hænder knyttes, brystet trækker sammen, lungerne skriger: Hvad venter I på?
Det er et år siden, at folk knælede på jorden uden for voldgraven og græd. Det er et helt år siden, men folket er stadigvæk på knæ, på knæ, på knæ, på knæ –
Rejs jer op! Rejs jer op!

© David Peace, 2007. Denne oversættelse © Martin Aitken, 2008

usual

2009-02-18T17:41:00.002+01:00

Something here>> in The Guardian about translated fiction in the UK. The usual three-percent sort of thing.

hav in PRISM

2009-02-16T22:35:00.002+01:00

Blindness: Three poems on a theme by Niels Hav in my translations. Out now, apparently, in PRISM International (here>>).

højholt in calque

2009-02-09T22:13:00.004+01:00

One of the judges in that best translation game (see below) is Steve Dolph, editor of the excellent Philadelphia and New York-based journal Calque. Calque has its issue #5 coming out on 14 February. Among a whole load of good stuff are my own selected translations from Per Højholt's fabulous Praksis, 8: Album, tumult (1989), a preview of which has already been published online here>>. The printed pieces are accompanied by my own short introduction to Højholt and his work. Sadly, this will be the final issue of an excellent and highly acclaimed journal that is going to be sorely missed.

best

2009-02-09T22:04:00.002+01:00

Over at three percent they're closing in on the best translated book of 2008. Maybe someone should play the same game for, say, books translated into Danish. Or maybe not. Whatever, long and shortlists can be perused here>>.

english christensen

2009-02-02T16:56:00.002+01:00

Inger Christensen (here>>), arguably Scandinavias greatest modern poet, died recently at the age of 73. Consistently touted as a Nobel candidate, Christensen has most notably appeared in German translation. However all three of her major works have appeared in award-winning English translations by Susanne Nied. The titles are It (here>>), Alphabet (here>>) and Butterfly Valley: A Requiem (here>>).

wallace in danish

2009-01-23T09:38:00.003+01:00

My translation of David Foster Wallace's story Suicide as a Sort of Present from the collection Brief Interviews With Hideous Men will be appearing in the Danish journal Den Blå Port. The Danish title is Selvmord som en slags gave.

crime

2009-01-23T09:33:00.002+01:00

A piece here>> in today's Guardian on the current UK vogue for Scandinavian crime literature.

the buddhist

2009-01-14T13:43:00.003+01:00

And then, quicker than you can say "But I don't want to be reincarnated ...", the second of my two Dorthe Nors translations, The Buddhist, has been accepted for publication by the prestigious Boston Review (here>>). Thanks here are due, not only to Dorthe for her excellent story, but also to 2008 Pulitzer-winner Junot Diáz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) for pointing us in the right direction.

apparatur

2009-01-13T10:11:00.002+01:00

Just out here is Apparatur #18 (here>>) containing, amongst a whole load of other excellent and exciting stuff, my short introduction to Richard Brautigan and his work, as well as three of his stories from the collection Revenge of the Lawn (1971) in my Danish translation. The stories are The Literary Life in California/1964, I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone, and Partners.

agni

2009-01-13T09:51:00.002+01:00

Like I said, I recently translated two stories by Dorthe Nors (here>>), taken from her excellent collection Kantslag [Karate Chop]. Now, almost before you could say Vadehavet, one of them, The Wadden Sea, has been accepted for publication by the American journal AGNI (here>>). First word is it'll be out in the fall 2009 issue (that's autumn, for the rest of us). AGNI comes out of Boston University and has previously published such luminaries as Seamus Heaney, Joyce Carol Oates and Derek Walcott, to name but three. Thanks to Rick Moody (The Ice Storm and much more) for the pointer.

three percent coincidence

2008-12-27T17:57:00.002+01:00

Like I said, only three percent of books published in Britain are translations. What a coincidence, then, to discover that in the United States the figure is, wait for it, three percent. Coincidence or not, three percent is also the title of a very good blog here>> at the University of Rochester, which describes itself like this:

Three Percent launched in the summer of 2007 with the lofty goal of becoming a destination for readers, editors, and translators interested in finding out about modern and contemporary international literature.

The motivating force behind the website is the view that reading literature from other countries is vital to maintaining a vibrant book culture and to increasing the exchange of ideas among cultures. In this age of globalization, one of the best ways to preserve the uniqueness of cultures is through the translation and appreciation of international literary works.

the host

2008-12-21T22:26:00.003+01:00

"Stephenie Meyer (née Morgan, born December 24, 1973) is the American author of the bestselling, young adult Twilight series, which revolves around the relationship between mortal Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen. The Twilight books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, with translations into 37 different languages around the globe. A film adaptation of Twilight was released domestically on November 21, 2008. Meyer is also the author of the adult science-fiction novel, The Host [published 2008]."

Thus Wikipedia. As soon as Christmas present is Christmas past, I'll be getting underway translating The Host into Danish for Lindhardt & Ringhof in Copenhagen. All 619 pages of it. Publication is scheduled for October.

(Interesting fact: Danes may be interested to learn that it won't be called 'Hostet')

three

2008-12-16T10:57:00.001+01:00

English novels are read all over the world, but publishers in English-speaking countries tend not to return the favour. Only three per cent of all books published in Britain are translated. As Christopher MacLehose – who for 21 years ran Harvill, Britain's pre-eminent publisher of translated fiction – once pointed out, that figure includes dentistry manuals, of course.

from this short article in The Times online edition yesterday

translation

2008-12-10T11:01:00.005+01:00

Representations of representations. Across languages and across minds.

That's it.

down under again

2008-12-02T11:49:00.003+01:00

For the second time, it seems I'll be appearing in the Australian Women's Weekly (actually a monthly, but who's counting). I've translated an interview journalist Tine Bendixen did recently with Denmark's Crown Princess Mary, who as everybody knows hails from Tasmania. The piece will be spread over a few pages, I imagine, with lots of nice photos. Published I think in the January, or perhaps February, edition. Just in case you want to order your copy now.

lodge

2008-12-02T11:34:00.002+01:00

David Lodge (here>>) has written some very funny books. His three campus novels - Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work - are an incisive take on university manners. His new book, Deaf Sentence, about an emeritus professor declining into deafness and oblivion, came out recently to critical acclaim in the UK. I've translated an extract into Danish, which will be out soon in ForskerForum, the magazine of the Danish university teachers' association. Don't bother looking for it at your local newsstand.

interesting stuff

2008-12-02T11:33:00.001+01:00

Talking about David Foster Wallace, there's some interesting stuff here>>

a poetic utterance found on the internet

2008-11-25T10:14:00.000+01:00

And he was very moved and wanted to translate Raymond Carver into Japanese, and soon he was convinced he wanted to translate everything Raymond Carver ever wrote.

blindness

2008-11-20T11:25:00.003+01:00

Did I mention that the Canadian journal PRISM International will be publishing my translation of Niels Hav's poem Blindebuk [Blind Man's Bluff]? Well, now they've decided to print two more. Which is all the more pleasing given that the three are thematically related. The titles are Blindeinstituttet [Institute for the Blind] and Om hans blindhed [On his Blindness]. I think they'll be out in the spring.

a sort of present

2008-11-18T11:59:00.002+01:00

I may have mentioned this before. That I'm translating a couple of stories by David Foster Wallace. That they ought to be coming out somewhere. That it's a puzzle he hasn't been rendered in Danish yet, apart from one story in a journal some years back. Anyway, one of the stories I'm translating, one that I've actually finished, as far as I can tell, is called 'Suicide as a Sort of Present', which is a poignant title given that Wallace only recently chose to leave this life and find another. The story is a raw, fleshy slab of psychology. That's how I want to describe it. It starts like this in the English original:

There was once a mother who had a very hard time indeed, emotionally, inside.

You can read the rest in the collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, first published in the USA in 1999.

have a cigar

2008-11-15T16:50:00.004+01:00

Thomas E. Kennedy (here>>) is a busy chap. If he's not lecturing in America, writing novels about his adopted city of Copenhagen, or translating Danish literature, he may well be updating his blog 'A Shout from Copenhagen' for the literary journal Absinthe: New European Writing. Have a look at this piece, for example, a great little story about translating celebrated Copenhagen beatnik Dan Turèll (above).

welsh for bladder

2008-11-06T22:57:00.003+01:00

More: Welshmen pissing themselves here>>.

welsh

2008-11-06T22:37:00.003+01:00

It's not Welsh's fault (see here>>).

filled newspaper space

2008-11-03T15:03:00.005+01:00

Here's a recent piece from The Times. An author slags off translators and then gets slagged back at by respondents in the comments box. I've already forgotten about it.

blind man's bluff

2008-10-31T10:55:00.002+01:00

Niels Hav, from Lemvig in northern Jutland, has already established himself overseas as a contemporary Nordic voice with a number of foreign-language publications in e.g. Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Turkish and Dutch. But it is in Canada in particular that he has made his mark outside Denmark. An English collection of his poetry, God’s Blue Morris, translated by Patrick Friesen and P. K. Brask was published by Crane Editions in 1993, with a second collection, entitled We Are Here, put out by Book Thug of Toronto in 2006. My own translation of Hav's poem Blindebuk [Blind Man's Bluff] will be appearing in the Vancouver-based journal PRISM International in the spring. In the meantime, here's the original.

Blindebuk

De gav ham et tørklæde for øjnene

og snurrede ham rundt, den leg elskede han.

Svimmel af mørke tumlede han henrykt omkring

mellem sine kusiner, tre gratier

hvinende af latter. De lo ad ham, hans eufori,

som også var deres. Han fangede dem én for én,

men gættede systematisk forkert, og festen fortsatte

hele eftermiddagen. Han var lykkelig i sit mørke,

utrættelig og dristig, en grænse var passeret,

han rørte ved deres blussende ansigter;

hans hænder var lykkelige. Og han ønskede bare

at blive ved, da de ubarmhjertigt løsnede sløjfen

og trak tørklædet af ham. Han stod fortumlet

og grædefærdig, chokeret af lyset,

som for et øjeblik gjorde ham fuldstændig blind.

the buddhist

2008-10-30T12:36:00.005+01:00

I mentioned how I was working on two new stories by Dorthe Nors. One of them is called The Buddhist. The first paragraph here provides a good idea of where we're at: it's an acerbic, stingingly caustic portrait of a man on his way over the brink, oblivious of everything but his own transcendence. As for the Citroën Berlingo, I think I can reveal that it plays a central role in the man's nemesis. It should be noted, however, that this work of fiction is of course in no way intended to characterise all Berlingo owners. Me, for example.

Before the Buddhist became president of the aid organisation People to People he was an ordinary Christian and a government official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was he who wrote the Foreign Minister’s speeches and thereby put words into the Foreign Minister’s mouth. It was a way of lying and at first it didn’t bother him any. Then it started bugging him because he found out he was a Buddhist. It didn’t just come to him all of a sudden that he was a Buddhist. The Buddhist as an idea more like crept up and settled in him shortly after his wife said she wanted a divorce. The Buddhist came in to him and sat down at the opposite side of his desk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He contemplated the Buddhist and thought it was a good format to step into. Buddhists are good people. They’re deeper than most. Buddhists can see connections no-one else can. These were all qualities he recognised in himself, but which all could be improved upon, and so he became a Buddhist. If he hadn’t become a Buddhist, the divorce would have hurt that much more, but a Buddhist gains insight through pain. The more it hurts, the wiser the Buddhist becomes, the government official thought and stopped being a Lutheran.

a blog

2008-10-29T12:23:00.004+01:00

Here's an interesting site. David Hahn, an award-winning translator of Portuguese fiction, is blogging here >> on the process of his translating Angolan novelist José Eduardo Agualusa's novel Estação das Chuvas (it's okay, I don't know what it means either). He says:

In this blog, I hope to examine the translation process, working through a novel from my own first launching into a first draft, right up to publication. It's not a blog about the life of a translator, but intimately about a single piece of translation work, which I hope will bring you closer to the experience, to the pleasures it brings and the questions it raises.

Since he's just got started, this should offer a rare opportunity for insight into the kinds of ongoing considerations that go towards making a (hopefully) succesful translation, even if your Portuguese, like mine, is slightly more rusty than your Serbo-Croatian.

nothing

2008-10-28T12:15:00.002+01:00

If I had a calendar it would tell me that next week I'm back working on the English translation of Janne Teller's award-winning novel Intet [Nothing]. The first draft has been settling a while, and now I want to work on it again. The finished book will be published by Simon & Schuster in New York sometime in the spring of 2010 (!).

listmania

2008-10-28T11:07:00.004+01:00

The British Society of Authors recently compiled a top-50 list of modern translation greats (here >>). Who knows what the criteria were, but as far as I can see, there are only two representatives of Scandinavian literature included, viz. Sweden's Per Olov Enquist and Norway's Per Petterson, translated by Joan Tate and Ann Born, respectively. The Guardian had something to say about it all here >>. Needless to say, I haven't read any of them.

analogy

2008-10-27T20:46:00.003+01:00

As simple analogies go, I still like this one, from an English translation of the prologue to a recent Icelandic poetry translation anthology edited by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl (here >>):

Just as you can not translate anything between two languages, nothing is untranslatable once you realize that nothing is translatable. A translation of literary work is never the same work, but a new work related to the former – the German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher (1763-1834) said that an artist could view a translation of his works by imagining what his child would look like, had his wife had it with another man (the gender roles of this example are from Schleiermacher – they can be reversed without getting sand in one’s vagina).

things to do instead of dying

2008-10-27T16:59:00.005+01:00

So now I'm angling this differently. I read rule #1 and it said update the blog or it will die. Before, it was scraps of translation cast out whenever. Now I'm updating instead of dying. There'll be lots going on here from now on. Nobody wants to die. To start off, these are a couple of the things I'm doing right now:

Firstly, I've been working on two stories from Dorthe Nors' magnificent new collection Kantslag [we're calling it 'Karate Chop']. Not surprisingly, the one called Buddhisten has been turned into 'The Buddhist'. More unpredictably, Vadehavet has become 'The Wadden Sea'. This was news to me: that there is an English name for what I call Vadehavet, and that name is the Wadden Sea. I don't know if anyone has ever heard of it. But it doesn't matter: it's a wonderful name, especially in the context of Dorthe Nors' story, all Virginia Wolf-like. These stories are going off to journals in the US, maybe to Tin House magazine, maybe to McSweeney's Quarterly, maybe to the Boston Review.

Inspired by Jonathan Wichman's book Leth og kedsomheden, I recently did a selection of Jørgen Leth's poems around the theme of 'boredom'. These are still out being reviewed. In the meantime I've done another brief selection of seven 'poems and poetic fragments', as I've opted to collectively call them. There are two poems proper, both from Leth's 2000 collection Billedet forestiller [The Picture Represents]. These are supplemented by five 'fragments' which appeared in Banana Split #5 in 2005, having previously been published as parts of more expansive pieces in the aforementioned collection. The selection may become a chapbook for Calque, or they may come out elsewhere.

Thirdly, I'm working on two stories by David Foster Wallace from his 1999 collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The first carries the portentous title 'Suicide as a kind of present' [Selvmord som en slags gave], the second, as yet untitled in Danish, is called 'Signifying nothing'. These are bound for Danish journals, or perhaps a Norwegian one if it can get its mail server sorted out and stop throwing things back at me. Wallace has only once before appeared in Danish translation, in 2001, when the journal Passage published another story from this same collection entitled 'Octet'.

So now this blog is not dead anymore.

Richard Brautigan / fra 'Revenge of the Lawn' (1971)

2008-09-07T14:50:00.009+02:00

Richard Brautigan

(1935-1984)

fra samlingen 'Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970' (1971)

Lommeuld

Jeg hjemsøges lidt i aften af følelser, som intet vokabularium har, og begivenheder, der burde beskrives i dimensioner af lommeuld frem for ord.
Jeg har undersøgt småstumper af min barndom. Det er dele af et fjernt liv, som ingen form eller mening har. Det er ting, der bare indtraf ligesom lommeuld.

Oversat fra amerikansk af Martin Aitken

Peter H. Olesen / three short excerpts from 'Korrekturlæseren' [The Proofreader], Gyldendal, 2008

2008-09-06T13:03:00.008+02:00

Peter H. Olesen

from the novel Korrekturlæseren [The Proofreader], published by Gyldendal (2008)

I am a pedant. An important quality in a proofreader. Cantankerous. I find other people’s errors and descend on them. I thrive on it. I take pride in identifying and correcting mistakes. I have a fondness for the red marker breaking the sacred black type. I have an eye for inconsequence and irregularity. As the good proofreader must. Fussy, small-minded, incorruptible. I am a sadist, says my ex. Son of an accountant.

We’re both adults, after all, I say to my ex in an attempt to sound reasonable and reconciliatory amid yet another heated argument over the phone.
And that’s coming from you, she yells. From you!

I’ve stopped brushing my teeth entirely. Not by decision, it just happened gradually. What harm could it do missing just the once, I must have thought one late evening, tired and exhausted, and then I suppose it just went from there.
Other banal, though by no means insignificant signs: Unwashed dishes all over the place. Laundry piling up.
One final example: I’m now having problems with composite words. It’s a deeply shameful discovery. The lady at the publishers has made me aware. It seems I’ve overlooked a number of errors in the last couple of jobs. Had I been Japanese with a sword within reach, humiliation would have been short.
As long as you’re still smiling.

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Per Højholt / a selection from Praksis, 8: Album, tumult (1989)

2008-08-21T10:25:00.003+02:00

Per Højholt (1928 – 2004)

A selection from Praksis, 8: Album, tumult (1989)

3. Around the town, even on its more frequented thoroughfares, there are places where no-one or hardly anyone sets foot. Places which have not always been there, brought into existence as they are by the town itself, an architecture with the rectangle and the square as its basic forms. But since people in the main move in curves, these corners and triangles are in surplus, they fall outside the scope, though never on that account approaching nature. They are without growth and innocence and become places of sojourn for children, dogs, leaves, drunks and litter, which here, without inconveniencing more purposeful traffic, are able to play, shit, perish or rot, or move slightly in windy weather.

16. The way across the floor to the door I manage as a matter of course. It is going down the stairs I take exception to, all those steps, one merely referring to the next. If the last only referred to my death, but it refers as a simple matter of course to the floor down here in the kitchen.

26. The lobster. His one hand is large and red and chapped and wet, it severs the head and fins of the fish and tears away the skin with sacking and passes the parcel over the counter. The other is smaller, yellowish, without nails, and is wiped with a cloth.

39. Minor Kafka idyll. The more I spoke to him the larger his head became. Several times I tried falling silent to encourage him to empty himself, but he challenged me each time with new questions demanding detailed replies, and thereby against my will, little by little, I caused his head to take on a quite monstrous proportion. When later we accompanied each other along the street I noticed to my surprise that it was me people were staring at, not him, and when we took leave of each other and I remained standing a moment to watch him manoeuvre his great, egg-shaped head down through the pedestrian street, it was not him, but me they applauded.

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

© Per Højholt & Gyldendal 1989
Translations © Martin Aitken 2008

Niels Hav / On his blindness

2008-08-19T20:10:00.002+02:00

Niels Hav

ON HIS BLINDNESS

1
Is it cheaper now, I wonder,
to write in ink, since Borges dictated
his labyrinthine tales in Buenos Aires?
The Homer of the Argentine considered words to be
symbols we share with others. “I believe abstract
aesthetics to be a vain illusion,” he wrote
in one of his prefaces, where he delighted in renouncing
originality. Almost without affectation. Only after going
blind did he make eye-contact with John Milton
in his Paradise Lost.

2
Love makes blind. But it took forty years!
Forty years of preliminary studies, imitation and outbursts
of rage when the dreamtiger escaped. Now and then he’d
consult oculists, each time a disappointment. He studied
Joyce, who must have loved Nora, though he never went
completely blind. Only when Alonso Quixano lost his
mind and called himself Don Quixote did he leave his
father’s library; and not until forty years after finding
love in Geneva did Borges go blind –
as blind as Beethoven was deaf!

3
He worked in the dark and polished his sentences
in memory until they sparkled from sheer metaphysics.
“If one is a poet, one is always a poet, and all the time
assailed by poetry.” Borges absorbed nourishment
from his misfortune and replaced the visible world
with sagas and Old English verse, thereby transforming
blindness into a gift: Only now did he come eye-level
with Homer, and only now was he able to see deep
into the dark, wide world and into the dizzying
moment that is eternity.

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

© Niels Hav
Translation © Martin Aitken 2008

Jørgen Leth / New Tyres

2008-08-19T12:44:00.002+02:00

NEW TYRES

The white man fucks the black woman.
Amid vodou and death.
That’s how simple I see it.
Let me go on.
The palm tree trembles.
The sea prostitutes itself every day.
Animals murmur in the inner sanctum.
The gate is closed all day
and there’s no water in the pool.
I buy four new tyres and arrange a repair
of the chassis.
That’s all.

from Billedet forestiller, Gyldendal (2000)

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Excerpt from the biography Frederik: Kronprins af Danmark [Frederik: Crown Prince of Denmark] by Gitte Redder & Karin Palshøj (Høst & Søn, 2008)

2008-08-19T12:34:00.001+02:00

Gitte Redder & Karin Palshøj

Excerpt from the biography Frederik: Kronprins af Danmark [Frederik: Crown Prince of Denmark] (Høst & Søn, 2008)

During 2001, Frederik and Mary also find time for a couple of holidays alone together. At the summer hideaways of Mary’s friends, Frederik gets to see some of Australia’s most stunning areas of natural beauty.
“During one of my visits we stayed in a little cabin right up by the border to Queensland where the climate is subtropical, everything there is so lush and very, very beautiful. On another visit, Mary took me off south of Sydney to a lovely house right on the coast. We went for long walks along the beach, prepared good food – or rather I did, because Mary isn’t that good at it – so we were able to really get to know each other. It was all laughing and talking and gradually opening up for one another. Just being there with each other.”
Frederik recalls these clandestine romantic getaways down to the smallest detail. Frederik himself says he made no special effort to tell Mary about the Royal House or what it might take to be a crown princess in the world’s oldest monarchy.
“Not at all. It was all more about the joy and innocence of being together. She knew of course who I was. I don’t know how much she checked me out on the web – at any rate she found nothing to frighten her off. We didn’t talk that much about how things were back in Denmark, about our parents, or where we came from. It was more the fun things, the tenderness, as it is at the outset of any romantic relationship. The feeling of being in love escalates. It was wonderful, innocent, a total romance. We looked very much out for each other, and for ourselves individually. Not quite wanting to reveal too much, how much it actually meant, even though we obviously couldn’t hide the fact that we were in love.”
Frederik smiles awkwardly at the recollection of that difficult balancing act of showing one’s true feelings and at the same time hiding them for fear of becoming vulnerable.

Frederik’s love for Mary grows steadily during that first year. There is a new-found profundity, a joy and naturalness about his feelings for Mary that he has never experienced before. He is in no doubt about the nature of his love.
“It was just everything about her I was attracted by. It’s difficult to pin down more exactly, loving her as I do. To begin with it was her eyes and her relatively dark voice, and then of course she is such an exciting person, but also very responsive.”
In October 2001, Frederik again travels to Sydney to be with Mary and to enjoy springtime in Australian. They have now known each other for thirteen months, and it is during Frederik’s two-week stay that they decide that Mary should move to Europe. Things have become unmanageable with the couple being able to see each other so seldom. Now their love must stand the test. For Mary in particular, this is a radical decision with far-reaching consequences. She will be leaving her family, her friends, her job. Yet neither of them is in any doubt that they are doing the right thing as they kiss each other goodbye on Friday, November 9, 2001.
This was to be their last time together in Australia as an anonymous couple. After a secret romance lasting more than a year, the Danish press finally gets wind. Who is she? Who will get the story first? Less than flattering methods are brought into play. The print-runs of the weekly gossip magazines are set to sky-rocket with news of royal romance. Se og Hør and Billed-Bladet go all-out to be first with the story. Already in September, 2001, Se og Hør – much to Frederik’s amusement – identifies his new girlfriend as Belinda Stowell, a sailing gold-medallist at the Sydney Games.
Years of living under the constant eye of the press have taught Frederik that it is a matter of time, weeks or days, before news gets out. But he and Mary have more than a year’s head-start on the gossip press and are as yet still able to enjoy a stroll around Sydney away from prying eyes.
All that changes three days after Frederik’s return home. When Mary Donaldson leaves her office at Belle Property late in the afternoon of Monday, November 12, Billed-Bladet’s journalist Anna Johannesen is waiting to pop the question: Are you going out with the Crown Prince?
“No comment,” is Mary’s reply. A photographer reels off a series of pictures and on Thursday that same week Mary appears on the front cover of Billed-Bladet, which thereby is able to live up to its slogan “Denmark’s Royal Weekly”. As if by the wave of a wand, Mary Donaldson of Belle Property is now famous in Denmark. Peace and anonymity are lost for ever. Her office is descended upon by press photographers and journalists. One of the Danish gossip weeklies hires an Australian freelancer to go through Mary’s rubbish bin in the hope of digging something up about the shopping habits of the Crown Prince’s new girlfriend.
But Mary and Frederik have made their decision. Mary hands over the lease on Porter Street to her friend Andrew Miles, packs her bags and moves initially to Paris. Closer to Frederik. Now they are able to meet at weekends.

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

© Gitte Redder & Karin Palshøj and Rosinante&Co/Høst & Søn, 2008
Translation © Martin Aitken, 2008

David Peace / uddrag af romanen Tokyo Year Zero (Faber, 2007)

2008-08-19T12:18:00.002+02:00

David Peace

uddrag af romanen Tokyo Year Zero (Faber, 2007)

2.
den 16. august, 1946

Tokyo, 31,7 grader, sol

De sorte lus klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg rejser mig fra det lave bord. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg går hen til køkkenvasken. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg trækker en kam gennem håret. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Lusene falder ud i klumper. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg knuser dem mod vasken. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Kropslusene er sværere. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. De er hvide og så meget vanskeligere at jage. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg åbner for vandet. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Vandet løber. Vandet standser. Vandet løber igen –
Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari …
Brunt og derefter klart, klart og derefter brunt igen –
Jeg skyller ansigtet. Jeg leder efter sæbe for at barbere mig –
Men der er ikke noget at finde, igen –
Jeg skyller munden og spytter –
Jeg er en af de overlevende …
Jeg tager skjorten på og bukserne, den samme skjorte og de samme bukser, jeg har haft på hver eneste dag i de sidste fire-fem år, den samme skjorte og de samme bukser, som min kone har plejet og repareret, lappet og lappet igen, ligesom strømperne og skoene på mine fødder, vinterjakken på min krop og sommerhatten på mit hoved –
Det klør. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Det klør, og jeg kradser –
Jeg er en af de heldige …
Der står en enkelt lille skål med zōsui på det lave bord, en grød med ris og grøntsager. Jeg lader den stå til min kone og mine børn –
Jeg tager mit ur frem. Chiku-taku. Og jeg trækker det op –
Klokken er 4 om morgenen. Min kone og mine børn sover endnu –
Det klør stadig, og jeg kradser stadig. Gari-gari …
Jeg tager mine gamle militærstøvler på og snører dem ude i genkan’en. Jeg åbner forsigtigt hoveddøren, lukker den og låser efter mig. Jeg går ned ad havegangen. Jeg lukker lågen efter mig –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Jeg går væk fra mit hus, væk fra min familie –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Jeg går ned ad gaden mod stationen –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Gennem lufthamrenes lyd –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Et nyt Japans frembrud –
Ton-ton …
Genopbygningsarbejdet begynder tidligt; de huse, der blev stående, sættes i stand eller rives ned, til erstatning bygges der nye; vejene ryddes for murbrokker og aske, murbrokkerne og asken tømmes ud i kanalerne, kanalerne fyldes og forsvinder. Men Tokyos floder og veje stinker stadig af pis og lort, af kolera og tyfus, af sygdom og død, af død og tab –
Ton-ton.
Dette er Det nye Japan; Mitaka station myldrer med mennesker i hundredvis, i tusindvis, der venter på tog i begge retninger; for at rejse ud på landet for at sælge billigt ud af deres ejendele for at købe mad; for at rejse ind til Tokyo for at sælge mad for at købe andres ejendele billigt: uophørligt frem og tilbage, tilbage og frem, uophørligt i gang med at købe og sælge, sælge og købe; Det nye Japan –
Hver eneste station. Hvert eneste tog. Hver eneste station …
Folk i to solide rækker langs begge perroner, svajende idet nytilkomne forsøger at mase sig foran, mens de træder og tramper på kroppene af dem, der har sovet ude hele natten på perronen, og så en sidste enorm bølgen frem, samtidig med at det første tog mod Tokyo kører ind –
Hvert eneste tog. Hver eneste station. Hvert eneste tog …
To tomme vogne forbeholdt Sejrsherrerne, en andenklasses med hårde sæder til de privilegerede Besejrede, og en lang række nedslidte tredjeklasses vogne til alle os andre –
Dem, der har tabt alt …
Vinduerne i tredjeklasse allerede slået i stykker, vognene fyldt til den sidste centimeter kl. 5 om morgenen, folk på perronerne, der presser flere bylter ind gennem vinduerne, som skal tages med ind til Tokyo, mens andre kæmper tavst for at få fodfæste på trinbrættet eller koblingerne –
Hver eneste station. Hvert eneste tog …
Jeg tager notesbogen frem –
Det klør, og det klør …
Jeg råber: – Politiet!
Det lykkes mig at komme med. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Jeg presser mig ind i en af vognene. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Folk bliver ved med at skubbe bagved mig. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Toget sætter langsomt i gang. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Armene hænger fastlåst ned langs siderne i trængslen. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Der står mennesker og bagage hvert eneste tænkeligt sted. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. De sidder på hug på sæderyggene, de sidder på hug på bagagehylden. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Jeg kan kun bevæge øjnene. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Drengens hoved foran mig er dækket af ringorm. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Der kravler lus ind og ud af håret på den unge kvinde til venstre for mig. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Mandens hovedbund ved min højre side lugter af sur mælk. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Toget slingrer hen over endnu et sporskifte. Det klør, men jeg kan ikke kradse. Jeg lukker øjnene –
Jeg tænker på hende hele tiden …
Det tager over en time at nå frem til Yūraku-chō station, og så skal man kæmpe for at komme af toget og ud på perronen –
Jeg kradser. Gari-gari. Jeg kradser. Gari-gari …
Jeg går fra Yūraku-chō station hen til Politigården. Det klør, og nu sveder jeg, og klokken er ikke engang 6 om morgenen, og Tokyo stinker af lort; skidt og lort og støv, det skidt og lort og støv, som sidder i mit tøj og i min hud, og som skærer i næseborene og brænder i halsen for hver eneste jeep, hver eneste lastvogn, der passerer forbi –
Jeg stopper op. Jeg tager lommetørklædet frem. Jeg tager hatten af. Jeg tørrer mig i ansigtet. Jeg tørrer mig i nakken. Jeg ser op på den afblegede himmel og spejder efter den usynlige sol, der gemmer sig et sted ovenover skyerne af tyfus, skyerne af støv, af skidt –
Af lort, af menneskelort …
Vejsiden flyder med folk på måtter, mænd og kvinder, unge og gamle, soldater og civile, øjnene blanke eller lukkede, udmattede –
Mine hænder knyttes, brystet trækker sammen, lungerne skriger: Hvad venter I på?
Det er et år siden, at folk knælede på jorden uden for voldgraven og græd. Det er et helt år siden, men folket er stadigvæk på knæ, på knæ, på knæ, på knæ –
Rejs jer op! Rejs jer op!

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken