Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Qupperneq 16

Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Qupperneq 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. 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