Another guest post today, this time from the delectable Anna Kelly, a woman of excellent taste. Anna is an editor at Hamish Hamilton, and has put together a special edition of Five Dials magazine.
On the 3rd December Five Dials will publish a special issue featuring writing by some dozen German-language writers, translated into English.
I've wanted to put together an issue of Five Dials devoted to German-language writers for some time - partly because it's a personal interest of mine that I'd like to share with the world, and partly out of a more emphatic feeling that somehow English-language readers should be experiencing these writers more than they’re able to at the moment.
I work as an editor in a mainstream publishing house and I’m also lucky enough to read French and German as well as English, so I feel it’s partly my responsibility to champion writers working in those other languages to other British readers, just so they know what’s out there. In reality that can’t always be done by publishing every single book that I read in German and love -- I work on a small, select list which can only publish so many books every year, and the majority of them are in English to start with. But with such a vast array of interesting names and novels turning up in my inbox from month to month, I've come across many submissions over the past few years which have made me feel excited about what's being written in German at the moment and made me want to do something about that -- so putting together an issue of Five Dials is a way to publish these talented writers, celebrate them, and in some cases, introduce them to British readers for the first time.
It's also an opportunity to set up an event which enables us to actually meet some of these authors. Five Dials is proud to think of itself as an international magazine, with readers all over the world, and one of the ways in which it tries to keep in touch with these readers and to publish work which is relevant to everyone is by actually physically travelling around and meeting people - both readers and writers. So in that way this issue of Five Dials actually follows on from a few others which have come before it - an issue devoted to Paris, for example, which we celebrated with a launch event in Paris, and an issue featuring Quebecois literature, which had its launch in Montreal.
There are thirteen German-language writers featured in this issue, and they're a mixture of the already-known-in-English (for example, the brilliant Peter Stamm, Juli Zeh, and Judith Schalansky, whose Atlas of Remote Islands struck a chord here last year), the writers whose novels are currently being translated into English for the first time (eg. Jan Brandt, Simon Urban and Tilman Rammstedt), and those who (as far as I know) haven't yet ever been published in English but whose work impresses me so much that I am sure -- and hope -- that it can only be a matter of time before they are (eg. Clemens Setz and Ulrike Almut Sandig).
One of the concerns I had while selecting work for the issue was that people would get up in arms about omissions of important writers. And to that I have to hold up my hands and say that this can only ever be a glimpse. There are numerous authors writing wonderful things in German at the moment and this issue could never show anything more than a handful. On a similar note, I always wanted this to be a German-language rather than a German issue, but it just so happens that the final selection includes far more German writers than it does Austrian or Swiss. This is purely coincidental, but to see the glass half empty, it does also leave open the opportunity that I might in the future be able to look into the option of doing a whole new issue dedicated to Swiss writers, or Austrian writers. There's no reason why not, and there would be plenty to fill either of these with.
But back to this issue. I wanted to include in it a mixture of fiction, non fiction and poetry, so there are stories by Simon Urban, Peter Stamm, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Tilman Rammstedt and Clemens Setz, and novel extracts from Marjana Gaponenko and Judith Schalansky; poems by Raoul Schrott, Marion Poschmann and Pedro Lenz; and non-fiction by Jan Brandt and Juli Zeh. Many of the writers featured are those whose work has been submitted to me to publish and who I've been impressed by and wanted to publish in some format ever since. Some were recommended to me by friends. Some, like Peter Stamm, are already established in the English literary world thanks to having already been published by mainstream publishers in the UK.
One slightly exceptional inclusion in the issue is an essay by German literary translator Ulrich Blumenbach, about his experiences translating David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest into German. This fits in with the theme in a different way to the rest of the issue, and in some ways represents the opposite of what the rest is about: it's about English being translated into German instead of vice versa. But I loved the idea of including this essay. I find the process of a book's movement from one language into another fascinating, and I thought that there was a sort of beautiful mirroring in the idea of English-language readers finding out about the process of a particularly well-known -- and famously challenging -– book being translated into German, at exactly the same time that they were reading, in the rest of the issue, writing that had been translated the other way. As well as highlighting the idea of a mutual cultural exchange, which I hope this issue exemplifies, I thought that Blumenbach's essay might also lead readers to respond differently and more deeply, maybe, to the German writing they were reading in translation: that they might be provoked into thinking about what it means to read writing in translation, about what is lost and gained in the process, about how close and far two different languages can be to one another, about what that says about our understanding of the world, and about how that understanding can be expanded.
To receive the issue as a pdf by email as soon as it’s available, you can subscribe here. It’s free.
And a word from me again: Monday, 3 December is also the launch party in Berlin. Please come. It's going to be the party of the year, with short readings from Jan Brandt, Joe Dunthorne, Clare Wigfall, Judith Schalansky and me. And dancing and drinking. So all your favourite things.
Thursday, 29 November 2012
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Writing Left
It was a little while ago now, but the three-day special at Berlin's Brecht-Haus did leave a rather lasting impression. Called Writing Left, it brought together a number of writers and publishers to talk about what exactly "left" means and how - and whether - to be left-wing writers and publishers.
A word to begin with: I can see the point of doing these things on three consecutive evenings, but I imagine most people didn't attend every night, just as I didn't either. Certainly nobody in the audience on the final evening had been on any of the previous panels. And I think continuity is key to discussions like this, so I would suggest spreading them out over a longer period, like the Literaturwerkstatt did with its series about writing the other a couple of years ago. At the session I attended, rather a lot of prose writers and poets freestyled on the topic, and you can read about the first evening in Der Freitag here and the second evening here.
So what happened? First of all there was no consensus about what "left" might mean. Some of the writers picked especially for being left-wing writers, including my favourites Raul Zelik and Michael Wildenhain, obviously think of their politics as separate from their writing and apparently don't define themselves as left-wing writers. Remembering where we were, I'd say that says a lot about the times we live in. In Brecht's day, from the 1920s right through to the 50s and of course beyond, it was perfectly viable for a writer to define their work in political terms. In East Germany, think Brecht but also Anna Seghers and Christa Wolf and of course the dissident writers, in the West Grass with his pro-SPD campaigns and Peter Schneider further to the left, and in fact large parts of a whole generation. And now? I can think of a few examples of writers who are fairly outspoken (Dietmar Dath, Ulrich Peltzer?) but the younger writers I know are very shy about airing their political views.
At the event, Tanja Dückers talked about distancing herself as a writer from that pro-SPD generation now that the SPD has waged wars on other countries and the domestic unemployed, not to mention their "asylum compromise" and the more recent chickening-out of reforming citizenship effectively (she didn't mention them in fact, so I have). But with no charismatic or convincing alternative and no dogma left standing, I felt many of the authors present were a little adrift. Dückers herself seemed to define her politics in opposition to others - the SPD, the radical right - and went as far as suggesting we reject the term "left-wing writers" in favour of "socially committed writers". Hmmm.
Two rays of hope and light shone through though. The first was poetry, perhaps a good form for pithy or even thoughtful statements. In fact the politically schizophrenic Die Zeit ran a series of new political poems not long ago. And the young Austrian poet Stefan Schmitzer read some exciting stuff and suggested a more useful term: progressive. The other part of the evening that refreshed my belief in utopias was Rery Madonaldo and Nikola Richter, alias Los Superdemokraticos, who presented a fabulous manifesto about how the fifth international will emerge from the internet, how Trotsky would be an internet troll, how creative work deserves fair pay and how sharing is the new black:
A word to begin with: I can see the point of doing these things on three consecutive evenings, but I imagine most people didn't attend every night, just as I didn't either. Certainly nobody in the audience on the final evening had been on any of the previous panels. And I think continuity is key to discussions like this, so I would suggest spreading them out over a longer period, like the Literaturwerkstatt did with its series about writing the other a couple of years ago. At the session I attended, rather a lot of prose writers and poets freestyled on the topic, and you can read about the first evening in Der Freitag here and the second evening here.
So what happened? First of all there was no consensus about what "left" might mean. Some of the writers picked especially for being left-wing writers, including my favourites Raul Zelik and Michael Wildenhain, obviously think of their politics as separate from their writing and apparently don't define themselves as left-wing writers. Remembering where we were, I'd say that says a lot about the times we live in. In Brecht's day, from the 1920s right through to the 50s and of course beyond, it was perfectly viable for a writer to define their work in political terms. In East Germany, think Brecht but also Anna Seghers and Christa Wolf and of course the dissident writers, in the West Grass with his pro-SPD campaigns and Peter Schneider further to the left, and in fact large parts of a whole generation. And now? I can think of a few examples of writers who are fairly outspoken (Dietmar Dath, Ulrich Peltzer?) but the younger writers I know are very shy about airing their political views.
At the event, Tanja Dückers talked about distancing herself as a writer from that pro-SPD generation now that the SPD has waged wars on other countries and the domestic unemployed, not to mention their "asylum compromise" and the more recent chickening-out of reforming citizenship effectively (she didn't mention them in fact, so I have). But with no charismatic or convincing alternative and no dogma left standing, I felt many of the authors present were a little adrift. Dückers herself seemed to define her politics in opposition to others - the SPD, the radical right - and went as far as suggesting we reject the term "left-wing writers" in favour of "socially committed writers". Hmmm.
Two rays of hope and light shone through though. The first was poetry, perhaps a good form for pithy or even thoughtful statements. In fact the politically schizophrenic Die Zeit ran a series of new political poems not long ago. And the young Austrian poet Stefan Schmitzer read some exciting stuff and suggested a more useful term: progressive. The other part of the evening that refreshed my belief in utopias was Rery Madonaldo and Nikola Richter, alias Los Superdemokraticos, who presented a fabulous manifesto about how the fifth international will emerge from the internet, how Trotsky would be an internet troll, how creative work deserves fair pay and how sharing is the new black:
Hyper-left trolls always act in the interest of the group they're fighting for and lobby for hyper-left ideas. They write obsessively about a subject, wherever they can, even if they don't get paid for it. They are provocative. Words are their weapons. They don't hide their faces behind sock puppets; they stand up for their opinion in public. They react impulsively, are unconscious of commercial factors, take their orientation not from the market but from people. That's why one of the basic commandments of the hyper-left trolls is sharing: the better form of charity! And so these lone wolves build up textual cooperatives, which carry on trolling content independently and autonomously. Solidarity among trolls is a must, group trolling is the revolutionary tactic.For that alone, the event was worth attending. What a pity there was no room for more structured debate - but perhaps the Brecht-Haus can document what went on and build on it in the future?
Monday, 26 November 2012
Toledo Translation Fund and Rosa Luxemburg
A guest post today from Hamburg-based translator Henry Holland.
If you thought crowd-funding to finance translation & literature was something newish, like I did for at least a couple of days, well, then we were both wrong together. Going under the old term of collecting subscriptions, crowd-funding to publish print literature by major authors went on for centuries & at least into the 1940s. An edition of Yeats's collected works was published in this way. What is new about the Toledo Translation Fund, established this year to support the translation into English of major works in the humanities and social sciences, from a wide range of world languages and cultures, are the dynamics of donating.
And the guys running the TTF have chosen a more than dynamic author to translate, for the first major work in the series. Rosa Luxemburg (1871 - 1919) -- whose Complete Works are due to be published, thanks to the TTF, for the first time in English by Verso, in 14 volumes from February 2013 on. Those of you who've stuffed Rosa Luxemburg into the drawer marked “difficult, political, avoid”, may want to take a peek at Jacqueline Rose's fiery review in the LRB of the companion volume, titled The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.
Jacqueline Rose would like us to pull Luxemburg back out of the drawer & stick on new labels: “must-read, audacious, lyrical”. Rosa Luxemburg's Complete Works should also break down other categories inside our minds: does our fascination with / professional work in translated fiction mean we're somehow disinterested in translated literary non-fiction? Which of us manage to be simultaneously really into Ingo Schulze's novels but able to blank out all his critiques of capitalism, shouting out from any German newspaper you care to open?
Your own answers to these questions can tell us why the TTF model could also work for translating fiction in the future. Enough people enthusiastic about a book or group of books, & willing to put their credit cards we're they're mouths are. As you may have guessed by now, I'm going to be one of the translators in the translation-team for the Luxemburg edition, so my interest in the Toledo Fund raising the $ 11 000 / c. € 8500 it still needs -- (up to now they've already raised $ 19 000 / c.€14500) -- is not solely altruistic.
And I'm going to be enjoying the fundraising work, by sending the appeal letter (no email for such serious matters) to famous well-off Germans who have at any time shown an interest in that side of philosophical & political life that Luxemburg embodies. You know the type: champagne socialists, others we may love to hate, others still who we would love even more if we knew more of them -- Günter Grass, Stefan Raab, Fritz Raddaz, Charlotte Roche, Gregor Gysi, Ingo Herzke -- and a hundred other individuals of that ilk who might wish to back the intellectual inheritance of one of the most intriguing women in German history. Writing to celebs & the nearly-famous in the off chance they'll back your project isn't just childish, it has pedigree: a good Hamburg friend got £1000 for acting school through an unsolicited letter to Anthony Hopkins. And a very polite refusal letter from Richard Briers as part of the same fundraising offensive.
So, if you're now itching to lung for the credit card & donate online to making quality translation happen, then ... Don't let me stop you: toledotranslationfund.org
With many thanks, Henry Holland
If you thought crowd-funding to finance translation & literature was something newish, like I did for at least a couple of days, well, then we were both wrong together. Going under the old term of collecting subscriptions, crowd-funding to publish print literature by major authors went on for centuries & at least into the 1940s. An edition of Yeats's collected works was published in this way. What is new about the Toledo Translation Fund, established this year to support the translation into English of major works in the humanities and social sciences, from a wide range of world languages and cultures, are the dynamics of donating.
And the guys running the TTF have chosen a more than dynamic author to translate, for the first major work in the series. Rosa Luxemburg (1871 - 1919) -- whose Complete Works are due to be published, thanks to the TTF, for the first time in English by Verso, in 14 volumes from February 2013 on. Those of you who've stuffed Rosa Luxemburg into the drawer marked “difficult, political, avoid”, may want to take a peek at Jacqueline Rose's fiery review in the LRB of the companion volume, titled The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.
Jacqueline Rose would like us to pull Luxemburg back out of the drawer & stick on new labels: “must-read, audacious, lyrical”. Rosa Luxemburg's Complete Works should also break down other categories inside our minds: does our fascination with / professional work in translated fiction mean we're somehow disinterested in translated literary non-fiction? Which of us manage to be simultaneously really into Ingo Schulze's novels but able to blank out all his critiques of capitalism, shouting out from any German newspaper you care to open?
Your own answers to these questions can tell us why the TTF model could also work for translating fiction in the future. Enough people enthusiastic about a book or group of books, & willing to put their credit cards we're they're mouths are. As you may have guessed by now, I'm going to be one of the translators in the translation-team for the Luxemburg edition, so my interest in the Toledo Fund raising the $ 11 000 / c. € 8500 it still needs -- (up to now they've already raised $ 19 000 / c.€14500) -- is not solely altruistic.
And I'm going to be enjoying the fundraising work, by sending the appeal letter (no email for such serious matters) to famous well-off Germans who have at any time shown an interest in that side of philosophical & political life that Luxemburg embodies. You know the type: champagne socialists, others we may love to hate, others still who we would love even more if we knew more of them -- Günter Grass, Stefan Raab, Fritz Raddaz, Charlotte Roche, Gregor Gysi, Ingo Herzke -- and a hundred other individuals of that ilk who might wish to back the intellectual inheritance of one of the most intriguing women in German history. Writing to celebs & the nearly-famous in the off chance they'll back your project isn't just childish, it has pedigree: a good Hamburg friend got £1000 for acting school through an unsolicited letter to Anthony Hopkins. And a very polite refusal letter from Richard Briers as part of the same fundraising offensive.
So, if you're now itching to lung for the credit card & donate online to making quality translation happen, then ... Don't let me stop you: toledotranslationfund.org
With many thanks, Henry Holland
Thursday, 22 November 2012
Bookshelf Paranoia
Is there a phobia of letting people peruse your library? My bookshelves are divided into three sections, the least presentable of which is hidden away in the bedroom. While I'm fairly casual about guests looking at the non-fiction and the German fiction in the living room, my really quite random collection of English-language writing is not for all eyes. I left a guest alone with it for a minute recently and felt quite exposed when I returned.
Herbert Grieshop is possibly my worst nightmare. He and some friends run the very professional-looking video blog Herbert liest (there is an exclamation mark in the title but I believe I've made my standpoint on punctuation in proper names clear in the past). Aside from recommending some rather fine reads, he does bookshelf analysis in people's homes. Being German people, their homes are very clean and tasteful, and Herbert is quite kind about their book collections. He's not coming round my house though.
Herbert Grieshop is possibly my worst nightmare. He and some friends run the very professional-looking video blog Herbert liest (there is an exclamation mark in the title but I believe I've made my standpoint on punctuation in proper names clear in the past). Aside from recommending some rather fine reads, he does bookshelf analysis in people's homes. Being German people, their homes are very clean and tasteful, and Herbert is quite kind about their book collections. He's not coming round my house though.
Monday, 19 November 2012
Please Slap Me with a Rollmops
I have failed to notice German Literature Month 2012, taking place on all number of blogs right bloody now. Jeez.
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Translation and the Academy
As I've probably mentioned before, there are few links between practitioners of literary translation and Translation Studies scholars - at least in the UK and Germany. In the US, however, the links are more obvious because many translators are also academics. I have no clear explanation for why this might be, other than a feeling that language learning takes place earlier (and more commonly) in Europe than the US, which means Europeans can reach the high level of understanding of foreign languages required to translate without necessarily having to gain a doctorate. Or have been able to in the past, when it comes to the UK.
I find European translators are often dismissive or wary of translation theory, or at least often say it has no influence on their work. I'm not sure that's actually the case - all of us are aware of equivalence of effect or translator invisibility, foreignising and domesticating, ideas that have trickled down over the centuries from scholars to practitioners. Personally, I think it makes sense for translators to take a look at translation theory, if only to help us defend our translation decisions in a more coherent way.
Whatever the case, those American translators working in academia seem to be gradually gaining more respect from their scholarly peers, as this interesting piece in Publishing Perspectives points out. Anna Clark tells us about what's going on at various American universities, including a cross-campus Translation Theme Semester at Michigan. Fascinating stuff.
I'd like to add a footnote on the subject of translation as part of creative writing courses. For writers, translation is a wonderful exercise in duplicating style, and a skill that they can hone, for example, on Columbia University's creative writing programme. I met a group of students taking part in an exchange between Leipzig and New York last year and felt they got a lot out of it. In fact one participant later received a PEN translation grant to continue his work. It would be great to see other creative writing courses adopting translation - although of course that will always require students to have sufficient foreign language skills, which may not be a problem in Germany but may well be in the States, and almost certainly will be in the UK, what with the general decline in language learning there.
My second footnote is on an academic conference at IULM in Milan, home to Tim Parks and his theory of globalisation leading to bland literature. I can heartily recommend Michele Hutchison's take on the conference and the issue on the English PEN website, partly because she shares my opinion that we have no proof of the phenomenon taking place to a significant extent. Swiss writer Peter Stamm had a chance to defend himself against accusations of writing plain style specifically with a global market in mind, and I particularly like the view of the Mexican writer Jorge Volpi:
I find European translators are often dismissive or wary of translation theory, or at least often say it has no influence on their work. I'm not sure that's actually the case - all of us are aware of equivalence of effect or translator invisibility, foreignising and domesticating, ideas that have trickled down over the centuries from scholars to practitioners. Personally, I think it makes sense for translators to take a look at translation theory, if only to help us defend our translation decisions in a more coherent way.
Whatever the case, those American translators working in academia seem to be gradually gaining more respect from their scholarly peers, as this interesting piece in Publishing Perspectives points out. Anna Clark tells us about what's going on at various American universities, including a cross-campus Translation Theme Semester at Michigan. Fascinating stuff.
I'd like to add a footnote on the subject of translation as part of creative writing courses. For writers, translation is a wonderful exercise in duplicating style, and a skill that they can hone, for example, on Columbia University's creative writing programme. I met a group of students taking part in an exchange between Leipzig and New York last year and felt they got a lot out of it. In fact one participant later received a PEN translation grant to continue his work. It would be great to see other creative writing courses adopting translation - although of course that will always require students to have sufficient foreign language skills, which may not be a problem in Germany but may well be in the States, and almost certainly will be in the UK, what with the general decline in language learning there.
My second footnote is on an academic conference at IULM in Milan, home to Tim Parks and his theory of globalisation leading to bland literature. I can heartily recommend Michele Hutchison's take on the conference and the issue on the English PEN website, partly because she shares my opinion that we have no proof of the phenomenon taking place to a significant extent. Swiss writer Peter Stamm had a chance to defend himself against accusations of writing plain style specifically with a global market in mind, and I particularly like the view of the Mexican writer Jorge Volpi:
who claimed similarly that, ‘all novels take place in imaginary space’. His own novels are set in Germany, France and the US. It was only when he was published in Spain that he realised, to his great surprise, that he was considered ‘an exotic Mexican writer’. He repeatedly had to defend himself against the question – why had a Mexican written about Germany. The only possible answer was: why not?
Thursday, 15 November 2012
Utlu Meets Aotearoa
Deniz Utlu is a Berlin-based writer doing fascinating things with short fiction. Rest assured that if he does ever finish a novel, it will be good and you'll hear about it here. An Aotearoa Affair is a "blog fest from Kiel to Kaitaita" celebrating New Zealand's year as guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair and featuring writers and bloggers from both countries.
One of the things I've found fascinating during my brief peeks at New Zealand literature this year is that the relationship between - oh God, what words to use? - white and of colour, majority and minority, Paheka and Maori - is the opposite to the one we seem to have in Europe, at least for many of the writers I became aware of. In that the Maori were there first and everyone else came later, and in that I sensed a different kind of respect and a great deal more interest for and in their cultures.
So Deniz's "minimals from the belly of the beast", imagining a Berlin without the immigrants and their descendants who make the system work, seemed the perfect piece to submit to An Aotearoa Affair. I'm so glad they came together.
One of the things I've found fascinating during my brief peeks at New Zealand literature this year is that the relationship between - oh God, what words to use? - white and of colour, majority and minority, Paheka and Maori - is the opposite to the one we seem to have in Europe, at least for many of the writers I became aware of. In that the Maori were there first and everyone else came later, and in that I sensed a different kind of respect and a great deal more interest for and in their cultures.
So Deniz's "minimals from the belly of the beast", imagining a Berlin without the immigrants and their descendants who make the system work, seemed the perfect piece to submit to An Aotearoa Affair. I'm so glad they came together.
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