Michelle Bailat-Jones

Writer, Translator, Reader

Posts tagged ‘translation’

New Ramuz translation out – “Phimonette”

By

The Spring Issue of Metamorphoses—the journal of the five college faculty seminar on literary translation—includes my translation of Charles Ferdinand Ramuz’s short story, “Phimonette.” It took me several tries to find a home for this unique and sad little story. It is essentially the story of a life lived unhappily, and a sudden frenzied rush to do it again, this time happily, even if that happiness is imagined, even delusional. The title character, Phimonette, is an old woman who has suddenly shown up at a semi-secret dance party in a hay loft on the mountain where the young people of the village like to meet. Phimonette has lost her grip on reality and has imagined herself young again, this time with a fiancé, and so the young villagers tease and laugh at her, although they aren’t mean. However, as the day continues and the group descends from the hillside back into the village and we meet Phimonette’s sister, Angèle (also unmarried, also an old-maid and also very unhappy), it becomes clear that Phimonette’s delusion will have quite sad repercussions.

This kind of story involving two sisters – old maids – is one that Ramuz returns to again and again. It’s clear he was interested in solitude and the nature of sorrow created from loneliness. In “Phimonette” he pushes this idea to the extreme and shows that this lifelong unhappiness has finally caused a rupture. Phimonette is incapable of living with her unhappiness any longer and so she exchanges it for something equally dangerous – insanity. (I can’t help finding the French kinder here – “la folie” seems so much softer than “insanity.”)

Editions Slatkine in Geneva have been slowly producing The Complete Works of CF Ramuz, fully annotated and commented; there will be 30 volumes in total when they finish the series in 2013, including five volumes dedicated to his short stories. It is an enormous undertaking, but the result is spectacular. I have three of the short story volumes (Nouvelles et Morceaux) and it’s from these annotated texts that I’ve based my translations. These annotated volumes are also a wonderful source of information about each piece.

For “Phimonette,” for example, we learn that the story was originally titled, “Mariette” but that Ramuz changed the protagonist’s name for his second draft. The story was written in about one week in September of 1907, and there are five different drafts. It was rejected by a literary journal in Lausanne in October 1907 and was not published in Ramuz’s lifetime. Fun to think that it found a home in another country and language just over a hundred years later!

Here is a link to Metamorphoses.

 

 

1 Comment

Banana Yoshimoto – Lizard

By

Just over ten years ago now, when I was living in a small town in southern Japan, I read my very first book by Banana Yoshimoto. It was called Amrita (1994), and it was about a young woman with amnesia, whose sister has just committed suicide, and who has a strange relationship with a man that leads her (or maybe she just goes on her own) to the island of Saipei. I don’t remember much about the book except for the mood of it, which was dense and dreamlike, and a bit mysterious, and the fact that it introduced me to a different kind of Japanese literature than I’d been used to.

Before moving to Japan, I’d studied a lot of Japanese literature but almost all of it was pre-1950, and most of it was much older. I think that up until then, the most recent Japanese fiction I’d read was A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe (1964). So Yoshimoto’s more contemporary writing was an eye-opening discovery. Since then I’ve gone on to read other contemporary Japanese writers like both Murakamis and Yoko Ogawa, and, interestingly, Yoshimoto actually seems quite tame in comparison.

But it was high time I read another Yoshimoto, and so I picked up a copy of her short story collection, Lizard, published in 1993 and translated by Ann Sherif. There are six stories in Lizard, and while all of them have merit, the first two pieces really stand out. The first tells of a near-magical encounter on a train between a recently married young man and a homeless person, the second is about childhood trauma and how it can shape a person’s future. Both dealt with feelings of alienation and with love relationships.

Yoshimoto has an interesting style, one that in general I would call light, especially when busy with narrative summation and dialogue. This gives the stories an easy feel, almost too easy. But every once in a while, Yoshimoto lets her narrator linger on a description or a deeper observation and the result is quite different. Take this example, from “Newlywed”:

It seemed as if we had toured Tokyo from every possible angle, visiting each building, observing eery person, and every situation. It was the incredible sensation of encountering a life force that enveloped everything, including the station near my house, the slight feeling of alienation I feel toward my marriage and work and life in general, and Atsuko’s lovely profile. This town breathes in all the universes that people in this city have in their heads.

When she does this enough in a story, the story is transformed, becomes more universal, and I think this is what made “Newlywed” and “Lizard” stand out among the six.

Interestingly, every narrator in Lizard, male or female, is a first-person narrator with a somewhat conspiratorial but also colloquial mode of expression. The shared confidences tend to sound like they’re being given directly to the reader, like this:

I won’t deny that I admired some of the residents, those who didn’t pompously claim that they had achieved spiritual enlightenment—you know, satori and all that.

While reading, I couldn’t help thinking how a translator is going to have a lot of impact on how this type of sentence reads. There were moments throughout the collection when the little sentences—the explanatory phrases, the dialogue tags and transitions—felt unnecessarily wordy, and I wonder if it was a translation issue. In the sense that in making certain decisions, the translator had gone a little overboard to make what was implied (happens often in Japanese) into something overly explicit. Or, in the opposite direction, allowing a lot of narrative filtering that might be innocuous to a Japanese reader but that can slow things down for an English reader.

I don’t have a copy of Lizard in Japanese or I would have done some comparing, but I have an example from another book. In Kitchen, Yoshimoto’s most famous novel, the narrator opens with the line: 私がこの世で一番好きな場所は台所だと思う. A strictly literal translation would be: I think that my favorite place in this world is the kitchen. Note the “I think,” which finishes off the sentence in Japanese. In Megan Backus’s translation of Kitchen, the novel begins: The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. It is a tiny difference, but Backus makes a choice to make the sentence more immediate, to get rid of the second layer of narrative filter. We could debate this choice, but I think that for an English reader, the second sentence is much smoother. And a novel made up of sentences requiring this kind of decision-making can be translated in two different directions.

I’ll get through Kitchen and see if I have a similar reaction to the writing as I did while reading certain stories in Lizard, and this time I can read along with the original and do some meaningful comparing.

 

9 Comments

Three catch-up reviews

By

I’ve reviewed a handful of books over at Necessary Fiction recently. Three very different books actually, and I enjoyed them all for very different reasons.

The first is A Friend in the Police by John Givens. I really loved this book, it was so different from much of what I’d read last year, and it had me laughing out loud. Often. The feel of the story will make you think immediately of Kafka, but then it’s set in a small unnamed SE Asian jungle. And the main character, Detective Sergeant Xlong, is one of the funniest (in a pathetic and moving way) literary characters I’ve come across in a long time.

From my review:

If the Detective Sergeant isn’t ruminating on the metaphysics of authority, he is musing on the definition of love. All the while keeping a firm inner eye fixed on himself and his own behavior. Xlong’s incredible self-preoccupation is a matter of extreme comedy, at many turns throughout the novel, but it is also the source of the reader’s sympathy. On the surface, we are meant to be worried about Philip Bates—what kind of mess has he gotten himself into? Is he working for the “rogue” geologist and tin miner upriver? Is he involved in smuggling contraband? Is he running an illegal gambling operation with another foreigner named Sprague?—but each time the story threatens to become more interested in either of the Bates men, Xlong steps forward to claim his due attention.

Read the full review here.

Next, I had the pleasure of reading The Brothers, from the small London-based publisher Peirene Press. Peirene publishes only novellas of works in translation. Their books are elegant, and the stories they select would probably not find their way into English without Peirene’s selection, so Peirene’s work is precious to me.

The Brothers is an incredible novella – set in a wintery Finland at the turn of the century, it is about a small Finnish farm and two men who have somehow found themselves to be enemies.

Despite the historical setting, The Brothers feels extremely contemporary. Not in the sense that the book bears any anachronism, but because of its embrace of such a timeless, even biblical conflict, as well as the spare purity of Sahlberg’s prose. He packs a lot of conflict and interaction and history into this slim book, but all the drama and quarrel is given to the reader so gently, so gravely. This is whispered rage. Devastating and dark. But always quiet.

Read the full review here.

And finally, a collection of short stories with a deceptively Science Fiction-y name—Omicron Ceti III by Thomas P. Balázs. I have always liked a good short story, but I particularly like collections in which the different stories talk to each other. Balázs has structured his collection to reflect the intellectual and emotional movement forward of an original Star Trek episode, “This Side of Paradise.” And it works. It’s very well done.

Now, it should be clear by now that despite the science fiction tease of the title of Omicron Ceti III, these stories are terrestrial, all-too-human and anchored in our contemporary reality. Time and time again, Balázs returns to this notion of “self-made purgatories” and what it means to be the architects of our own sorrow. Thankfully, Balázs isn’t out to condemn anyone. In the same way that glimpsing a potential happiness leaves a trace of real humanity in Spock, so do Balázs’s characters find themselves transformed through their experience. Happiness isn’t easy, and sometimes it is even impossible, but the contemplation of happiness—even, perhaps, the simple chance to imagine it—is certainly part of what makes us human.

Read the full review here.

So there you go, three very different books: hilarious absurdity with a dash of poetry, dark and intense drama, and a shrewdly constructed collection with careful storytelling.

1 Comment

an unexpected disagreement

By

Something very interesting happened last night at my French book club. We are accustomed to small differences in opinion; this is probably what makes us all come back month after month, the idea that we will discuss and debate a work of fiction, not simply admire it. But last night went far beyond a small difference in opinion. I was especially looking forward to our discussion yesterday evening because I had suggested the book – Robert Pagani’s Mon roi, mon amour (The Princess, the King and the Anarchist, tr. Helen Marx) and was eagerly waiting to hear how much everyone loved it. But last night we got settled in to our seats at the carnotzet at one of our local wine bars, pulled the book out of either a purse or other bag, placed it on the table, and before I could say, “Wasn’t it fantastic?” four other women had torn it to pieces. They didn’t just not like it: they called it worthless, they said it was badly written, there was eye rolling and a symbolic tossing of the book away in disgust.

I was speechless, which is rare for me. And we hadn’t even yet received our wine so there was nothing for me to do but take an imaginary gulp and then charge forward to defend what I considered a lovely, unique work of fiction. I suggested it was not supposed to be read as historical fiction, I brought up theories of monarchy/anti-monarchy conflict and mythology, I said Pagani wasn’t writing stereotypes but ironic caricatures, I argued that it was laugh-out-loud funny. I even tried to read passages aloud in a meaningful voice. Nothing uprooted their disdain.

Now these are intelligent women – clever, articulate, worldly, multi-lingual, fantastically well-read. In short, absolutely entitled to their opinion, however greatly it varied from my own.

So why this huge difference in judgment? I was particularly unsettled by the charge of “badly-written” and so started to think back over my experience reading the book. Which reminded me that by a very strange twist of fate,* I had actually read the English translation of Pagani’s book and not the French original.

My memory of the English text is its delightful simplicity. It reads much like a fable. On the surface there is a lot to laugh at – the narrator very gently mocks each of the characters. But is it possible the English version was better written than the French? Is it possible that Helen Marx, an extremely accomplished translator, might have smoothed any awkwardness out of Pagani’s prose? I cannot say until I’ve read the French. I started last night and in all honesty, I do not find his writing flawed at all. Like the English, it is playful and simple.

But there is another difference between the French version and the English version – a thoughtful introduction opens the English version. And contrary to what I usually do, I actually read the introduction before reading the book. So before I even started, I had some notion of Pagani having deeper but subtly portrayed intentions. I firmly believe the book has a lot to it, as I wrote in my review at The Quarterly Conversation, but I can’t help wondering how influenced I may have been by the introduction. And also by the fact that I had just finished reading Vyacheslav Pyetsukh’s The New Moscow Philosophy, which brought me to this idea of literature being a more useful and beautiful copy of life’s first rough draft, an idea which applied so wonderfully to Pagani’s novel as he takes an historical event and then creates a vibrant fictional tale around it.

On the whole I’m amused by our disagreement last night and sometimes this just happens, so there may be no reason behind it, but as a translator I am now very curious how the French version and the English version might be wholly compared, not just in terms of the faithfulness of the English version, but in their aesthetic and textual presentation.

Recently, at Necessary Fiction, in a review of Lily Hoang’s unique story collection Unfinished, one of our regular reviewers, Jess Stoner, wrote about the importance of the paratexts that surround a piece of literature and how this information influences our reception of the text. Just a quick comparison of Mon roi, mon amour with The Princess, the King and the Anarchist brings an easy list of possibly significant differences: title, cover art, font choice, introduction, back cover text. All of this peripheral data sets the reader up for a certain aesthetic experience of the book. I could argue that the English version book with its black and white fairytale wedding photo gave me a sense of romance (like an independent arthouse film) that the French version with its stark white background and tiny wedding carriage (almost cartoonish) did not.

But this is just guessing, with a tiny measure of self-justification. Unfortunately, I cannot go backward and experience Mon roi, mon amour with fresh eyes so I’ll never really be able to resolve this question. But it will continue to fascinate me.

*I had requested the translation from the American publisher for a reviewer who was interested in reviewing it for Necessary Fiction, but once I had it in my possession I just couldn’t resist reading it quickly before passing it along. I fully intended to read the original before meeting with my book group but, as it happens, sadly never found the time.

8 Comments

Robert Pagani – The Princess, the King and the Anarchist

By

Also while I was away, The Quarterly Conversation published my review of Swiss writer Robert Pagani’s The Princess, the King and the Anarchist:

Which is better? An imagined literature which takes a true historical event as its beating heart? Or a richly-detailed but otherwise straightforward account of that same occasion?

Robert Pagani’s The Princess, the King and the Anarchist raises this question in the subtlest and sneakiest of ways, offering itself up as a piece of evidence for the truth of the former. Its claim is based on the idea that every history has an unrecorded element, the part of the moment that can never be precisely known. That element remains hidden in the minds of the witnesses and participants. Historical fiction, by daring to go inside the minds of its characters, can work to uncover this truth, to present certain possibilities, to offer a possible consciousness to what are otherwise facts and chronologies.

This beautiful gem of a book, translated and published by the late Helen Marx in 2009, did not get much attention when it came out and will probably fade away in relative obscurity. That would be very sad. So here is my attempt to give it a little more of the press it deserves.

Click here to read the full review.

Vyacheslav Pyetsukh – The New Moscow Philosophy

By

 

Today at Necessary Fiction I reviewed The New Moscow Philosophy by Vyacheslav Pyetsukh and translated by Krystyna Anna Steiger:

There is a wonderful layering of thematic project in this novel, deftly smoothed together by the chatty omniscient narrator. Beyond the meaning of the actual events which transpire in the apartment and Chinarikov and Belotsvetov’s philosophical examinations, the novel spends many a word on an intertextual reckoning of the complicated bond between life and literature…

This (preoccupation) proclaims with unabashed joy that literature and life have become equal sources of human memory, of human thought. To a convinced reader, this is nothing extraordinary except for the thrill of the thought being written down and thus sanctioned. That a fictional conversation between Raskolnikov and Sonia might carry as much truth, or better yet, a greater, more perfect truth, than one between a real-live Russian student and his impoverished prostitute sweetheart is something all committed bibliophiles believe with something as powerful as religious faith. In literature, life is refined, perfected, distilled.

Click here for the full review.

 

Filippo Bologna – How I Lost the War

By

 

Today at Necessary Fiction I reviewed How I Lost the War by Filippo Bologna:

One of the more interesting aspects of How I Lost the War is the way the narrative meanders through and around its primary preoccupations. Despite his claim to the contrary, Federico isn’t really telling the reader about one event that happened to him—the war against Aquatrade and Ottone Gattai—but about a series of experiences that began before he was born and that have culminated in him. In that sense, the end of the book is not the end that really matters. Federico—his self, his simple existence—is the end and his understanding of that truth is the lament that connects all the other stories, both historical and contemporary.

Click here for the full review.

 

1 Comment

Peter Stamm – Seven Years

By

 

Yesterday at Necessary Fiction I reviewed Peter Stamm’s Seven Years:

Alex’s narrative is, in essence, a comparison of the two women. Ivona, a simple individual whose devotion to Alex borders on mental illness, and Sonia, a kind but distant partner whose passion for her work outstrips her passion for anyone and anything else. Where Ivona is self-less, Sonia is self-full. That essential difference informs Alex’s connection to each woman.

Click here for the full review.

 

Jean Louis Fournier – Where We Going, Daddy

By

Today at Necessary Fiction I reviewed Where We Going, Daddy by Jean Louis Fournier and translated by Adriana Hunter:

Where We Going, Daddy is not a memoir in the traditional sense. This is not Fournier’s attempt to work his way to some form of catharsis through well-structured essays, poetic descriptions of his suffering and a philosophical attitude toward Thomas and Mathieu’s handicap. This slim book, written in part as a letter to his sons and in part a collection of vignettes of remembered moments, is appropriately stark.

Click here for the full review.

Quim Monzo – Gasoline

By

This week I reviewed Gasoline over at Necessary Fiction:

Satire is best when it doesn’t pull its punches, and Humbert is thoroughly skewered in Part Two. But Monzo takes this a step further by casting a shadow backward on Heribert, the very standard used to set Humbert up in the first place. Suddenly, he is no longer a foil, an example of true artistic integrity to be held against Humbert’s absurdity. We begin to suspect that Heribert, in the heyday of his own artistic success, was equally ridiculous. This cannibalizes Monzo’s questions and broadens the scope of the novel’s irony.

Click here for the full review.