Perhaps this is an odd confession
for someone who mistakenly classes himself (and is often classed mistakenly by
others) as being well-read to make, but I’ve always had a bit of
trepidation about reading novels that have only been translated into English.
That is, I’ve been putting off
attempting such monumental classics of world literature as War and Peace and much of Balzac’s back catalogue by telling myself
that, if I’m to get the full import and impact of such works – if I’m to read
them the way they really should be
read – then I should do so in the author’s original words. Of course, I’ve
convinced myself more fully of this whenever anyone has suggested that maybe,
just maybe, I’ve been putting them off because War and Peace is chuffin’ chunky, and there are enough books in
Balzac’s Comédie humaine that I could
have used them to build my shed.
However, over the past few years,
I’ve embarked upon – and been utterly bowled over by – works by writers as
diverse as Milan Kundera, Rabelais, Albert Camus, Roberto Bolaño, Reinaldo
Arenas, Blaise Cendrars and Italo Calvino. The combined force of which have
helped me see the error of my ways, and highlighted just how much of what is truly
vital in literature I was missing out on.
I have come to appreciate the
idea (heard previously but never properly, personally tested) that books from
other cultures, translated or not, are nonetheless windows into the innermost
workings of those cultures; even as the very fact of my reading works from such
seemingly distant places has shown up how all such boundaries of culture are,
and have long been (well before even the faintest conception of the Internet),
infinitely permeable and fluid, if only people make the effort to allow them to
be. Or, rather, cease making the effort to stop them from being.
It is this, which, by way of
growing familiarity with the early works of other Scandinavian writers such as
Knut Hamsun, as well as numerous recommendations, brought me recently to the
writings of Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson, known most commonly as Sjon.
And I am right bloody glad that it
did.
It is appropriate, I suppose, in
light of what’s mentioned above, that both The
Blue Fox and The Whispering Muse
are a kind of fusion-fiction, melding in some areas a sparsely poetic,
Hamsun-esque realism with blistering, unnerving elements of Icelandic folktales
and more widely-sourced myth. But, rather than allowing this to be a smooth,
magical-realist fusion, there is always an element of cynicism, a tension
created by the presence of disbelievers, which threatens to undermine the
works, even as, ultimately, it strengthens them and their closing intentions.
For instance, the latter book
includes the character of Caeneus, borrowed/revived from ancient Grecian tales
about the Argo. He can be seen as the embodiment of the way that myths and
stories can continue to shape and affect people – even, and this is perhaps
most crucial, if those stories happen to have originated somewhere far from
their audience. He becomes indicative of the germinant qualities of a good yarn
– its ability to adapt, survive, and, ultimately, to spread and become part of wider
narratives; of histories personal, social, and even global.
However, the novel’s narrator,
Valdimar Haraldsson, is far too busy espousing his obsession with the
supposedly scientifically-proven ideas on the positive correlation between
Nordic cultural hegemony and fish consumption (to a largely Nordic audience),
to give much credence to what he sees as Caeneus’ ‘ridiculous’ tales of his
adventurous past.
Because the story – and, therefore,
Caeneus’ tale - unfolds through this sceptical viewpoint, it is not clear how
seriously any of it should or even can be taken. That is, it is uncertain
whether there will be any meaning to the tale at all, or whether the cynicism
and close-mindedness/obsessiveness will undermine and override it in the end.
Indeed, in the first book, The Blue Fox, Sjon is perhaps even more
explicit in his depiction of this tension between the sceptical, hard-headed
nature of the men on display – particularly the priest, Baldur Skuggason, who
hunts the eponymous animal – and the more whimsical, free-flowing nature of
other figures, as well as the folk-tale-ridden landscape in which Skuggason
gradually becomes more immersed, both physically and mentally.
In this way, these works certainly
feel as though they provide an insight into certain areas of Scandinavian
history and culture, even as they interrogate the wider impact and reach of
that culture, and the way such interactions can impact upon a place, its
inhabitants and their ideas.
On that score alone, they make for
fascinating and worthwhile reading. Yet, the fact that they are written (and,
importantly, translated, by all accounts brilliantly, by Victoria Cribb) in
such an effective, compellingly direct manner, serves to make them even moreso.
At the close of each book, and
certainly after reading them back-to-back, I was left with a feeling of great
satisfaction, as though re-energised. Which, again, perfectly suits the way the
central conflicts and tensions are resolved. The last sections of these novels
come to act, both within and beyond the narrative, as both a celebration and a reward
for allowing something different, and difficult, to become a part of one’s
life.
The ending of The Whispering Muse in particular is a dramatisation of this – the
suggestion being that, no matter how far a story (or storyteller) has travelled
to reach you, and no matter how much may have been chipped away from that story
– lost in translation, as it were – if it seems there is some truth, some
vitality to it, it is probably best to stop making excuses, to simply dive in
and embrace what you find there of use.
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