Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Blaðsíða 16

16
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2010 If you like 'The Ambassador', you'll probably love Bragi's other novel that's been
translated. It's called 'The Pets' and was also published by Open Letter.
A Novel, A Translation And
Unapologetic plagiarisms
Who’s not afraid
of the big bad
wolf of plagia-
rism? The poet
and central
character in
Bragi ólafsson’s
second novel
to come out in
English, ‘The
Ambassador’,
that’s who.
‘The Ambassador’ is an apt name, not
only for the subject matter of the source
text (‘Sendiherrann’, 2006), but for
the translated text, the envoy of a mi-
nor language within the hegemony of
English. The story follows Sturla Jón
Jónsson, a middle-aged poet/apartment
superintendent/deadbeat father of five
as he travels from Reykjavík to attend a
poetry festival in Druskininkai, a small
town in Lithuania, and almost simul-
taneously faces charges of plagiarism
back home and of petty theft abroad.
In Iceland, the newspapers allege that
Sturla’s latest book of poems is actually
the work of his deceased cousin, while
certain dignitaries at the poetry festival
accuse him of having stolen the expen-
sive overcoat of a major patron of the
festival.
When Laurence Sterne wrote ‘Tris-
tram Shandy’ in mid-eighteenth centu-
ry England, he incorporated entire pas-
sages from the works of others, which
would later incite accusations of pla-
giarism. Yet today, ‘Tristram Shandy’
is considered a forerunner to stream of
consciousness and self-ref lexive modes
of literary expression. Like ‘Tristram
Shandy’, ‘The Ambassador’ is primar-
ily concerned with how both poetry and
life experiences are formed through
what John Locke first termed “the asso-
ciation of ideas.” In brief, the relations
that ideas (or words or family relations)
have with one and other are more tell-
ing than the essence of the ideas them-
selves.
Sturla Jón is a poet who does not
apologise for his material and intellec-
tual borrowings. By revealing how the
poet’s memories and ideas only end-
lessly beget other associated memories
and ideas, the novel questions the no-
tion of original creativity. And Sturla’s
fancy yet replaceable overcoats under-
line his inescapable indebtedness. The
overcoat also alludes to the Russian au-
thor Nikolai Gogol’s short story by the
same name. In some way, ‘The Ambas-
sador’ reads like a narrative re-working
of Dostoevsky’s famous quote regard-
ing his literary contemporaries and
their predecessor Nikolai Gogol: “We
all come out from Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’”.
Sturla is himself an admirer of Gogol.
Despite these various allusions,
‘The Ambassador’ remains accessible
and funny. It is not necessary to un-
derstand every reference in order to
appreciate the humour of the novel. In-
deed, a large part of the humour lies in
poking fun of the idiosyncrasies of the
artist figure, a paradox given the com-
monplaceness of such a figure in Ice-
landic society. Throughout the novel,
Sturla continually encounters dubious
characters who claim to be poets and
artists—a salesperson in a men’s cloth-
ing store, a dim-witted neighbour, a fat
Russian at a strip club, a taxi driver in
Druskininkai. Thus the artist figure is
humorously demystified: if everyone’s
an artist, then nobody is.
Just as Sturla knows that releasing
a few CDs "isn't necessarily any indica-
tion of success or fame nowadays," he
also questions the social merit of priori-
tising personal creativity: "Is there any-
where in the world where you can't find
insignificant men struggling to write
some insignificant texts which are of
no use to anyone but themselves—in
other words, useless products that ac-
tually prevent the people who write
them from being human beings of any
value." It is this deprecating self-aware-
ness of the relative insignificance, even
damaging effects, of his selfish obses-
sions, that endears Sturla to the reader.
The novel's humorous overcoat
only thinly shrouds a darker underbelly.
There is something evidently both com-
ical and profane about having an apart-
ment super double as a poet, which is
reinforced through one of the poet's
drinking companions, the “big-bellied"
Russian oligarch who proclaims him-
self a novelist over champagne at a
strip-tease show. The gross, gooey stain
that Sturla finds on the carpet in the
middle of his hotel room in Vilnius un-
derscores this rank ambiance.
It seems no coincidence that the
Icelander finds himself among the
Lithuanian other, a favourite ethnic
scapegoat in the domestic discourse
about immigrants in Iceland. How-
ever, Sturla's prejudices and feelings
of alienation are soon displaced by his
affinity for the beast of the east. As one
of Sturla's daydreams brings to mind,
Icelandic homes also have their history
of "heavy air, saturated with meat fat or
potato-and-cabbage stock."
‘The Ambassador’ lends itself well
to translation, not least because it com-
ments on the process of translation it-
self. Indeed, the novel at times gives the
reader the rare pleasure of sensing that
the translated text is actually a richer
realisation of the source text. For ex-
ample, with Sterne's ‘Tristram Shandy’
still in mind, it hardly seems acciden-
tal that Lytton Smith should translate
Sturla's son's disdain for his father's
“interest" (áhugamál) in poetry as "that
hobbyhorse, poetry".
Lytton Smith's brave use of foreig-
nising techniques is also refreshing. In
addition to preserving the sometimes-
cumbersome long sentences of the
source text with their attendant dashes
and semi-colons, Lytton sometimes
goes so far as to translate proverbs
and idioms word-for-word, producing
brilliant novelties such as when the
chapter ‘Skúlagata’ opens with "[t]he
clock shows seven minutes on the way
towards 12:00," or when Sturla's father
calls his son "Sturla mine" (“Sturla
minn”). In this context, a seemingly
innocent gesture—when Sturla sips
whiskey in his hotel room, imagines the
translator of his own poems and offers
“Cheers to the unknown translator”—
gains both prophetic and ironic signifi-
cance.
While Bragi Ólafsson's sixth novel
has recently been published and now
sits among the best-sellers of this year's
Christmas book picks, ‘The Ambassa-
dor’ offers the more limited English-
language reader a chance to be swept
away by the Christmas book f lood
(jólabókaf lóð) that inundates Iceland
every year. In this case, it is perhaps to
the reader's advantage that there is less
to wade through in the translation sec-
tion of new publications. Although ‘The
Ambassador’ is among the few options,
it is among the best, as well as a healthy
alternative to the predominance of
crime fiction in translation. To be sure,
‘The Ambassador’ may require the
reader to do a little of her own detective
work by way of contextualisation, but
hardly more than what a little Wikipe-
dia search—that modern-day inheritor
of "the association of ideas" theory put
into practice—can't handle
The Ambassador
(tr. Lytton Smith)
Bragi Ólafsson
Open Letter (2010)
ALdA KRAVEC
Books | Review
VALUR GUNNARSSON
commercialisation, even though there
were few of these left in the country at
the time.
Unlike other troubadours, who often
may appear as white or dark knights,
Megas always plays the part of the joker,
pointing out faults but rarely
proposing solutions. His songs are of-
ten socio-critical but rarely political. His
sympathies lie with the freaks, the out-
siders and the bums, and he sometimes
seems to oppose all groups and organi-
sations equally.
His career is never predictable,
except perhaps in its unpredictabil-
ity. Every time he has some inkling of
commercial success, he always takes a
step back and goes in a different direc-
tion, as he seems to be doing right now.
After the comeback success of 2008,
who would have thought his next move
would be a team up with old friends and
drinking buddies Gylfi and Rúnar, both
long out of the limelight?
REVOLUTIONARIES ANd CyNICS
Megas largely managed to preserve his
sanity through the general craziness of
the boom, and his analysis in a Grape-
vine interview from 2003 (when the gold
rush was really taking off), is as sharp
as any:
“Poverty is increasing. People are fooled
with a carrot called “good times are
coming,” so they invest heavily and un-
soundly. Everyone becomes heavily in
debt, and has no choice but to continue
being where they are, doing the jobs
they do. It was the same in the old farm-
ing society when people where literally
banned from moving about.
Nero and Caligula were both men
who were reasonably sane before they
came to power, but then suddenly be-
come raving mad. A bit like Icelanders.
In most countries, it takes absolute pow-
er to corrupt absolutely, but here a little
power is enough… these men would sell
their own grandmother, but not even
hand her over once they had gotten the
money, and then sell her over and over
again.”
This, in fact, is more or less exactly
what was going on in Iceland, though
few at the time could see it.
His solution: “You can try to express
your opinions as clearly as possible, and
give those who are still struggling ideo-
logical weapons… but the good guys are
always by nature weaker than the bad.
The victory of good is never more than
symbolic, and then only in retrospect.”
There is a lot to this. Hörður, how-
ever, would probably disagree. His ap-
proach is more direct, and a good thing
it is too. We need our white knights as
well as our jokers.
CONTINUEd FROM pAGE 13
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