Away from introspection

An interesting and thought-provoking interview with Estonian poet Elo Viiding in the current issue of ELM (Estonian Literary Magazine), with reflections on poetry and the poet's task that times have echoes of earlier Nordic voices including, perhaps, Ekelöf, and even Tranströmer:

Recently I've been distancing more and more from introspection as beneficial. Instead of psychoanalysis, I'm more interested in how a person can realistically act for the good of someone with fewer opportunities, be those spiritual, intellectual or material. Not society -- that's too narrow a concept; society is made up of kindred thinkers who generally thumb their nose at others -- but rather to do good for those who suffer from abandonment, socially in a certain sense, instead of delving into yourself (and even into ideas). I'm striving to do that in this phase of my life.

In general, a varied and colourful issue of the magazine -- it's now one of the best English-language literary journals in the Nordic region, at times reminiscent of the now sadly dormant Books from Finland, but more often with a viewpoint and energy of its own, and quite unlike anything currently around in the U.K. or America. There's also a quiet tribute to the life and work of Estonian literary translator Eric Dickens.

Kross and Translators

A beautifully produced issue of ELM, the Estonian Literary Magazine, just arrived. Some interesting content, all available online, including interviews with Dutch translators of Jaan Kross, who have their own refreshingly non-academic views on literary translation:

There are many theories of translation, but from what I’ve heard, translators mostly shrug them off in practice and just keep going as they were. Is there any theory of translation or simply a translator’s creed that you hold dear? Did translating Kross put it to the test in any way?

FvN: I’m no theoretician, but I believe the practical summary of translating is an eternal question phrased by the poet and translator Martinus Nijhoff, whom the Netherlands’ most prestigious translation award is named after: “In what kind of Dutch would a foreigner have written their book if they were Dutch and have relied upon in terms of their conceptual form?” One must always keep that question in mind.

JN: Just like Frans, I’m no theoretician. Apart from a few courses on translating Russian literature, I also do not have much formal education in literary translation. I think I learned most while translating The Man Who Spoke Snakish in 2014, for which I received funding and practical help (a mentorship) from the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Since Frans was the only active translator from Estonian at that time, and was more experienced, he served as my mentor. He taught me many things, but most of all, I learned to be more precise. I remember him saying, “What is lost in your first version (or first ‘working’ translation) is most likely lost forever.” I always have that sentence in the back of my mind when I’m translating. And, needless to say, it’s a very important lesson when you’re translating the work and the style of a writer like Jaan Kross.

ELM - Autumn 2018 issue

The autumn 2018 issue of Estonian Literary Magazine is out - excerpts can be read on the magazine's website.

New Events

Among new and recent events: An Estonian Literature Festival is being held in London as part of the centenary celebrations of the Republic of Estonia. Participants include Mihkel Mutt, Andrei Ivanov, Kristiina Ehin,  Veronika Kivisilla, and a group of translators: Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov, Christopher Moseley and Adam Cullen.

Also, the inaugural meeting of DELT, the Association of Danish-English Literary Translators, was held on April 12. Hopefully this new organisation will extend and complement the work of SELTA as another forum for translators in the field of Nordic literature. Joining the association is at present done via Google Plus - here.

Estonian Literary Magazine

The spring issue of ELM , the English-language quarterly of Estonian literature, is now available as a free PDF download from the website of the Estonian Institute in Tallinn. The issue highlights the work of a number of contemporary authors, including Indrek Koff, Nikolai Baturin and the poet Sveta Grigorjeva. There are also features on Estonian classical literature. Although the offerings are diverse, with numerous black-and-white photographs, there's a slight lack of imagination in the way the material is presented, and one has a feeling that the magazine would be more interesting if the editorial approach were more dynamic and less curatorial - at present one has the sense of being in a museum rather than a meeting-place for living authors. There's also a problem with the English in which some of the articles and interviews are written: it doesn't always read naturally, and there's a distinct touch of 'translatese' here and there ('In one respect, she takes a realist attitude close to the land (with her feet on the ground, so to say)'). However, it's good to see the magazine still appearing regularly now.

Why English is best

In the Guardian, Martin Riker writes about The Estonian Argument for English Translations.

ELM - autumn issue

The autumn 2009 issue of ELM (Estonian Literary Magazine) is now available online. Its contents include a good many poetry-related items, to celebrate the birth in 1609 of Reiner Brockmann, who among other things wrote the first poem in the Estonian language. In an introductory essay, Marju Lepajõe presents the life and work of Brockmann, and also lists some of the anniversary events, which include an international conference. There are English versions of poems by Timo Maran, and an account of Moonstruck - the first international Full Moon Poetry Festival, which was held at Luhtre Farm and Haimre Village Hall in Raplamaa county under a full moon from the 12th till the 16th of September, with guests including Sujata Bhatt, Viggo Madsen, Mathura, Lauri Sommer, Kauksi Ülle, Andres Ehin, Ly Seppel and Ban'ya Natsuishi. Shetland poet Lise Sinclair writes of

the memory of walking in the Estonian forest; the particular trees and people met; hearing the songs and the stories; the cranes from beneath the surface of the lake; music and dancing; the night dogs; haiku voices of Estonian and Japanese; and the absolute warmth of friendship, sauna, dark bread... all are now as immediate as the moon appears on Shetland and Estonia at the same time and we are joined by those silver threads, woven through the sky of a whole winter.

Moira

By Doris Kareva

1

Life is not a story,
life is creation.

Is it true that we are given
all that we wish for?

Is it true that we are given
all that we deserve?

Is it true that we are overtaken
by all that we avoid?

Time, you fleeting one,
raker of surprises --

life is not a story,
just hope and creation.


2

Every thought that is thought to the end
becomes a butterfly, freeing itself.

Like a breaker falling on the springtime.

This storm
that you breathe, heart from top to toe.


3

Of love and death,
of debts, karma and dharma
I thought that morning too,
in my breath
as I held your back, your shoulder,
your sleep and the pulsing hours
until the operation.


4

Remind me what life is like
without memory, without fire —
a cave in a grey dawn coma,
a wound that doesn't hurt
although it suppurates.
(An absurd moloch, yes,
but methodical.)

Remind me that life is an arc,
not logical.


5

I age into beauty,
free of the buckle of hope
that thrashed my youth
with disillusionment’s belt.

Pain is the fear of pain.
Fear is the fear of fear.
The base of all pyramids is
the moment.


6

As you lean into that awesome abyss
your word falls like a stone
from the hurting, juicy
throbbing heart of life's fruit.

The circles fade and grow weaker.
And from the truth-soil a tree will arise,
as a picture darkening amidst flames
may give birth to sparks.


7

“Beauty is bounty,
balance is wisdom,
thought is deed,
truth is power.”

Simpler polishing
on a hunchback stone
is made only by water's
wordless tomb.

The Greek word moira (μοῖρα) literally means a part or portion, and by extension one's portion in life or destiny.

translated from Estonian by David McDuff

Marie Under: Au Jardin du Luxembourg

Les murs s'écartent! Il y avait encore de la verdure sur terre!
Comme Moïse l'eau, quelqu'un a fait surgir un jardin du rocher.
Il y a de la terre! Le jardinier a ouvert la bouche de la terre de la vallée de vie
par un long tuyau il conduit l'eau sur le gazon.

Par tout le parc les platanes portent le ciel,
et quelques-uns dans leur cime l'oiseau espiègle du soleil.
Pigeons gris et bruns, gorge jaune renflée:
l'un tend le bec vers le bassin, l'autre frappe une pomme de pin.

Et les taches claires fuient, suivies de leurs ombres,
par l'ouverture de l'allée, sur le gravier humide.
Devant, par-delà une étincelante robe d'eau,
on voit des naïades la hanche qui s'étire.

Autour de la vasque de la fontaine, un million de fleurs
plus de couleurs et de nuances que l'arc-en-ciel
Là les enfants attendent des bateaux, qui dans l'île
sont allés, au milieu du lac plein de rires:

au-dessus vibrent les arcs des rayons d'eau,
Déjà là-haut des feuilles sèches se déchirent
plus bas s'ouvre une fleur tandis que les autres tombent:
c'est le duel vie-mort... automne-printemps.

Et les massifs de fuchsias: les flacons des fleurs
versent encore un brevage bleu et rose.
Là les artistes et leurs modèles
rompent le pain d'un nouvel amour.

Déjà par endroits a pali le drap vert du gazon,
mais le jet d'eau, clair, écume:
blanc de haut en bas comme un cerisier...
Les statues sont seules: la bouche qui chantait est fermée.

Mais les moustaches tombantes de Flaubert parlent d'ascétisme,
Verlaine est amer comme s'il buvait de l'absinthe;
George Sand, si féminine: les plis de pierre de la manche
ne laissent pas deviner l'encre sur ses doigts.

*

Les murs s'écartent et il y a encore de la verdure sur terre!
Comme Moïse l'eau, quelqu'un a fait surgir un jardin du rocher.
Il y a de la terre! Le jardinier a ouvert la bouche de la terre de la vallée de vie
par un long tuyau il conduit l'eau sur le gazon.

translation by courtesy of Leopoldo Niilus


LUXEMBOURGI AIAS

Et hargneb müüristik! Et veel on maa pääl haljust!
Kui Mooses vee, löönd keegi aia kaljust.
On mulda! Aednik avand maa suu: eluorust
vett juhib üle rohtmaa pikast torust.

Plataanid kandmas taevast pargist läbi,
ja mõne ladvas päikse edev lind.
Pruun-hallid tuvid, kummis koldne rind:
kel püüab vesiriba nokk, kel toksib käbi.

Ja helkjaid laike pageb, varjud järgi,
allee avausest üle rõske kruusa.
Ees läbi sätendava vesisärgi
on näha näkineitsi ringutavat puusa.

Fontääni vaagna ümber miljon lilli: värve
ja toone enam neil kui vikerkaarel.
Sääl lapsed laevu ootavad, mis saarel
käind, keset naerust kumisevat järve,

mis üle vesikiirte vibud värisemas, -
Ju ülal juivi lehti kärisemas,
all kargab lahti õis, kui teised pudenevad:
on elu-surma kahevõitlus - sügis-kevad.

Ja fuksiate tarad: õilmepudelid
veel kallutavad sini-roosat jooki. -
Sääl kunstnikud ja nende mudelid
on murdmas uue armu katsekooki.

Ju siin-sääl luitund muru roheline kalev,
on purskkaev aga vahutav ja valev:
see valge üleni kui kirsipuu...
Raidkujud endamisi: kinni laulusuu.

Askeetlusest kuid lausuvad Flaubert'i laskund vurrud,
Verlaine on mõru nagu rüübates absinti;
George Sand nii naiselik: need kivikäikse kurrud
ei lase aimata ta sõrmil tinti.

*

Et hargnes müüristik ja veel on maa pääl haljust!
Kui Mooses vee, löönd keegi aia kaljust.
On muida! Aednik avand maa suu: eluorust
vett juhib üle rohtmaa pikast torust.

Marie Under: Two Poems

Brecht At Night - 2

Eric's translation of Estonian author Mati Unts's Brecht at Night has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times:

Unt's novel becomes a witty portrait of Brecht and a model of how to understand the devastating effects of Stalinism. Unt well knows, as did Brecht, that focusing too much on details of human awfulness becomes debilitating to the story, but if you can only find a way . . . and Unt does. He particularizes the murders, by way of quotation from actual historical documents, fragments, poems -- the narrative is organized like bits and pieces of a documentary -- and by way of his own imagining of how the Communist takeover of Estonia was implemented.

Brecht at Night

Marie Under: Two Poems

Marie Under was born on March 27, 1883, in Tallinn, Estonia, where she spent her childhood. She attended a German-language school. The poetry of Goethe and Schiller was among the earliest things she read. As a member of the "Young Estonia" aesthetic movement in the years before the First World War, she developed a modernistic style, influenced by French literary models, and translated the poetry of Rimbaud, among others. Her first collection was published in 1917, and was followed over the years by many more. She and her husband, the poet Artur Adson, left Estonia before the Soviet occupation of 1944, and settled in Sweden. Marie Under died in 1980.

QUESTION

We saw those berries, overripe and glowing,
in weak and tepid light of the October sun
persisting red as blood, in right full-growing,
without much inkling of the winter clouds to come.

And then a wind-gust brushed those heavy bunches:
and some of them burst, falling to the ground
on wilted grass, soon after, under branches
gold leaves with purple berries lay around.

And hand in hand we walked uphill together
and pushed by the capricious wind's bad weather,
eye to eye, as in anxiety, we asked:

our love's moist, joyful red in present flowering,
will life's breeze carry it away, devouring,
or will it fall to the grave's soil, and last?



CHRISTMAS GREETINGS 1941

I walk the silent, Christmas-snowy path
that goes across the homeland in its suffering.
At each doorstep I would like to bend my knee:
there is no house that doesn't know mourning's sting.

The spark of anger flickers in sorrow's ashes,
the mind is hard with anger, soft with pain:
there is no way of being pure as Christmas
on this white, pure-as-Christmas lane.

Alas, to have to live such stony instants,
to carry on one's heart a coffin lid!
Not even tears will come now any more -
that gift of mercy also died and hid.

I'm like someone rowing backwards:
eyes permanently set on past -
backwards, yes - yet reaching home at last ...
my kinsmen, though, are left without a home...

I always think of those who were torn from here...
The heavens echo with the cries of their distress.
I think that we are all to blame
for what they lack - for we have food and bed!

Shyly, almost as in figurative language,
I ask without believing it can come to pass:
Can we, I wonder, ever use our minds again
for sake of joy and happiness?

Now light and darkness join each other,
towards the stars the parting day ascends.
The sunset holds the first sign of the daybreak -
It is as if, abruptly, night expands.

All things are ardent, serious and sacred,
snow's silver leaf melts on my lashes' flame,
I feel as though I'm rising ever further:
that star there, is it calling me by name?

And then I sense that on this day they also
are raising eyes to stars, from where I hear
a greeting from my kinsfolk, sisters, brothers,
in pain and yearning from their prison's fear.

This is our talk and dialogue, this only,
a shining signal - oh, read, and read! -
with thousand mouths - as if within their glitter
the stars still held some warmth of breath inside.

The field of snow dividing us grows smaller:
of stars our common language is composed....
It is as if we d started out for one another,
were walking, and would soon meet on the road.

For an instant it will die away, that 'When? When?'
forever pulsing in you in your penal plight,
and we shall meet there on that bridge in heaven,
face to face we'll meet, this Christmas night.

translated from Estonian by Leopoldo Niilus and David McDuff

Sirje Kiin and the "Letter of Forty Intellectuals"

For those who think that Iran is the only place where freedom of expression is disapproved of by the powers that be, have a heart for Sirje Kiin, growing up in Soviet Estonia during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980, the now famous “Letter of Forty Intellectuals” was signed by 40 Estonian writers and intellectuals complaining about the lack of press freedom, and hoping to preserve the Estonian language and culture. Their wish for it to appear in Pravda was ignored. And they were all ultimately interviewed by the KGB.

The extracts below come from Sirje Kiin's English-language website. The full story of her political biography can be read there.

Sirje Kiin (born 1949) published the autobiographical sketch below in the cultural album or almanac entitled Wellesto, which has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog. Nowadays she has become a poetry critic and lives in the United States.

My Political Biography (extracts from an essay)

In 1980 the political pressure of the Soviets became intolerable. I wrote in my diary of unendurable silence, in which it seemed like everything was alright, but deep inside tension was building. In October, flare-ups occurred in the schools against Russification of the school system. The Soviet militia responded to this misbehavior by beating the high school students who were involved. For some of us, this was the limit of our tolerance.

I was involved in writing a letter of protest and getting 40 well-known intellectuals to sign it. We did it in an attempt to protect those young people, as well as the Estonian language and culture, against Soviet repression. For two weeks there was feverish activity around our kitchen table. Sometimes we worked through the night, then collected signatures during the day. There were conversations with dozens of people, silences, refusals, disappointments, tensions, fights, new friends and the loss of some old ones, before the letter was actually sent by mail on the 28th of October. We rushed the process because there was a pressing need – we had already received threats from the KGB to search our house.

At a party meeting in the Writers’ Union, the leadership punished an older lady, a translator named Ita Saks, who was one of the 40 signers of the letter. In my fiery speech defending her, I used a statute of the communist party which said that every communist had a right to send letters to communist party newspapers.

During a recess in the meeting, the chairman of the Writers Union, Paul Kuusberg, invited me to an empty room and asked me strongly to stay silent. He asked why did I not sign this letter, if I was willing to defend it now in such fiery terms? I told him that only one person from each family signed the letter, because we were ready for the worst, for the signers to be arrested. My husband and I agreed that he would sign it so that I could stay home with our six year old son. “Then we should really punish you, too, because you were so deeply involved in writing the letter,” he said. “You had better be silent,” Kuusberg suggested, like he was my wise father. Other older communist writers Vladimir Beekman and Villem Gross accused me of being under the spell of strange enemy forces, an agent of some foreign ideology. When I tried to explain that it’s not right to punish a messenger for reporting a fire, Villem Gross said that you cannot quench a fire with gasoline from the CIA.

The actual text of the whole "Letter of Forty Intellectuals" itself is available here on the same website.

The translators on this occasion are Jüri Estam and Jaan Pennar

Kadri Kõusaar: "Free Rise" (excerpt)

We all have our translation failures, book excerpts we eagerly translate, only to find no publisher is interested. One of my failed projects in this respect is the second novel Vaba tõus (Free Rise) by the Estonian author and now film-maker Kadri Kõusaar (born 1980), a book that appeared in 2004. I didn't find her first novel particularly interesting, but liked her second one. I translated more than the statutory twenty pages and there was a synopsis, but alas, nothing came of this project. While still involved with the project, I wrote, back in 2004:

"Her literary models are writers such as Michel Houllebecq and Milan Kundera, and her website [now defunct] contains published articles about the Russian writers Nabokov, Pelevin, Dovlatov, as well as Sontag, Kureishi, Lorca, Neruda, Pessoa, plus film-makers such as Pedro Almodóvar and David Lynch. Kõusaar is not averse to mild provocation. She has appeared on several occasions on the covers of women's and popular magazines which she does as a deliberate tongue-in-cheek ploy to contrast her photogenic nature with her intellectual core. In late September 2004, Kadri Kõusaar began hosting her own lifestyle programme 'Mandolino' on Estonian television." [She subsequently gave up the honour, not being in agreement with the choice of interviewees.]

Kadri Kõusaar matriculated from the Tallinn English College secondary school in 2003 (an institution that taught subjects in English even in Soviet times!) and studied Spanish philology at Tartu University. But she has had her share of bad luck in the arts world. In 2007, her film Magnus was sent to Cannes, but the Estonian courts banned its distribution in Estonia on account of the personal nature of some of the film, too closely resembling what they interpreted as a libellous version of real life events. The court finally backed down in March 2009. But by then her chances at Cannes had passed by.

No legal problems are attached to the excerpt from Free Rise, reproduced below:

Part One - LIFE

FIRST STEP

It was perhaps the fourth night after Miroslav's death that I woke up at three. A raging hunger awoke me. A hunger which exploded inside me as if I had not eaten for days. And I liked this - I even liked it a lot because now I could at least think about something else besides Miroslav and death.

I put some spaghetti on the stove, heated up some tuna in olive oil and tomato purée, added a double dose of garlic, fresh basil and... Something else too. I even added something else.

But the taste was not from dreams. It wasn't right. I can't stand... imperfection. I simply can't. I had to have something perfect right away. I thought of making real hot chocolate. I boiled half a glass of milk with some cocoa powder, added cinnamon and Baileys... but something was still wrong.

Nothing for it but to make something simple and wholesome. Freshly squeezed orange juice with ginger - yes, that was always right. I picked three of the most beautiful blood oranges from the fruit basket and squeezed them, but I stumbled and the glass smashed to pieces. The red splashes on the white walls were...

I wiped the wall clean and staggered back to bed.

In the morning, I painted my lips the same orangey-red colour, put on a Prada which Miroslav had once given me and went to the funeral. Through the taxi window, I saw all the bellavital arches, baker's shops, well laid-out gardens - all as before but now so different.

My hunger for perfection and beauty had evaporated, all the arches and gardens seemed too beautiful. Suddenly I wanted something industrial, I wanted to be a machine.

"Hang on, hang on," said the taxi driver. "You are after all an actress. In this submarine with this transparent calypso... You've saved the world!"
"Yes," I replied. "I have been an actress. I changed and I wanted to change. But right now I want to be a machine. Be all the same and do all the same... And I want others to be the same too. Because the more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel."

The taxi-driver wound down the window and lit a cigarette.

"Please don't smoke," I said. "My perfume..."

The taxi-driver stubbed out his cigarette.

I made that scene up. Nothing like that ever happened. It could have happened but the reality was quite the opposite.

I was cooking all right as before. On the face of it, Miroslav's death didn't change anything at all. Everything was the same but I wanted it to be different. I wanted to change not only that surreal feeling inside, but everything else, too. I wanted to change and I wanted to be away: above and away, and I wanted others to change too. At the same time, I was in the clutches of a strange lethargy, not only me, but everything around me. I could, of course, have travelled away, but the point was to notice change in things that had always surrounded me. I wanted greatness - greatness and nobility, refined tragedy. I would have liked scenes like in "The Godfather": eyes of feverish flame, blood-red lips, impeccable black suits, empty cathedrals, Italian houses with turrets and balconies passing by through the tinted windows of the limousine; servants and especially their ebullient admiration and loyalty... I would have liked that throat-clutching feeling of innocence, Miroslav to have been a good mafioso who had been killed... by a sniper, while trying to make the world a better place as he sat with two old gentlemen at a table with a white tablecloth (in the background a bright green plain with cypresses). Hm, Hermes, my dream: the god of both robbers and thinking, the god of solutions. Miroslav was just taking a swig of Bellini - champagne, fine champagne with freshly squeezed peach juice when the bullet hit and bright red spots fell on the white tablecloth... like the stains of blood orange on the white wall.

But in reality - what happened in reality? The grey tones of everyday life - the sensitivity was there, but it was kind of mundane. Nothing exceptional. Maybe that was what disturbed me, that mundanity. I didn't want to identify with anything, I wanted a hero.

I went home, it was raining and the air was humid - what lecture had I just been attending? - wooden houses on both sides of the road did not make it a cosy suburb, simply a slum. Everything was dull and dirty, a car alarm was wailing. I opened the door, threw my coat on the hanger and wanted to make some tea. I had to throw the old tealeaves down the toilet, so I opened the bathroom door and...

... the next moment I checked mechanically to see if the keys and the mobile were still in the pocket of my jacket (strangely enough I didn't panic) and was outside again a second later. No, actually it all took two seconds. First I glanced at the mantelpiece. I was used to looking at it, registering it, and I wanted this to be the last I would remember of our flat. Ikebana, limes, oranges, apples, chopping board with ginger root, chopping board with cloves of garlic, jar of honey, stub of a candle, newspapers - one second. And the stairs which had once had the smell of my kindergarten (of semolina and games), but which now had the smell of exams - another second. By the third second I was already in the bar round the corner, ordering a tea. "If you find a corpse on the kitchen floor it's best to make yourself a nice cup of strong tea," someone once wrote. I remembered this as I was drinking mine. It brought about the first wave of panic - when I had read that sentence long ago, it never occurred to me that I would be learning the moral by personal experience.

"I'm never going back to that flat!" I said when the police, the ambulance and my parents arrived.

"I'm never going back to that flat!" For some reason, I felt the urge to repeat it.

"I'm never going back to that flat!"

"I'm never going back to that flat!"

Hm, it already felt like the game of a beautiful sentence.

Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens

Brecht At Night

Eric's translation of Estonian author Mati Unt's documentary novel about Bertolt Brecht's life in Finland will be published by Dalkey Archive Press on August 20. The book is already advertised on Amazon, and pre-orders can be taken there.