A kind of translation

Shadowselves – photograph by Liz Mathews

I’ve been reading a lot of books in translation recently, in one of those enjoyable chains of association that’s set off by chance, one thing leading to another, with new discoveries as well as re-discoveries of new contexts for things read separately before.  The problems (and odd advantages) of translation are perennial provokers of thought and discussion, but there’s no arguing about the different light that another literature can cast even on familiar ideas.

Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, for example, in a lyrical translation by Margaret Jull Costa, is referenced by that other much-translated Portuguese writer José Saramago, in his The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, which I haven’t yet read; I’m still on The Elephant’s Journey.  (After Saramago’s recent death, I was moved to read an account of his funeral in Lisbon, attended by  tens of thousands of people, many of them carrying his books.  There was a photo of a book held in the air like a flag, then the inevitable editorial comment that it was hard to imagine a similar outpouring of grief for a British writer – or any other kind of artist, you might add.)

Reis was one of Pessoa’s personae; in the Book of Disquiet he writes as Bernardo Soares.  The introduction explains that he had over 72 distinct ‘heteronyms’ which he used when writing the works which were largely unpublished in his lifetime.  Externally, Soares appears much the same as the writer, but Pessoa found the character different enough to merit its own name; ‘It’s me minus reason and affectivity’.  (Completely other, then…)  These complexities and levels of irony will be discussed and unravelled by scholars, perhaps in perpetuity, but at a simpler level the proliferation of authorial personae perhaps gives a clue to the crucial difference between the writer and their work, which seems almost imperceptible to many otherwise sophisticated readers.

Before going any further, I must confess here that I have read a review of a book by someone I know and immediately remarked that it sounded very autobiographical, before I’d even read it.  (But at least I can differentiate enough to understand that because murder is committed in the book, it doesn’t mean the writer is a killer.)  Any writer must be aware that their audience – if they are lucky enough to have one – contains a proportion of people who would simply lump all of Pessoa’s 72 heteronyms into one authorial autobiography, unmitigated by art.  I first encountered this long ago, at a literary festival, where I read a short story of a very lyrical and fantastic kind, then had an impertinent audience question about the ‘revealing’ nature of the piece.  It really hadn’t occurred to me that the poetic tale of archetypes (mermaids, gypsies at al) could be taken as any kind of personal confession.

This incident has recurred in various manifestations; one which I found disturbing was when a reader questioned me about the dedication in my long poem MOTHERTONGUE – apparently my relationship to the dedicatee (and who they were) made a difference to whether the work would ‘emotionally ring true’.  The implication of this is that a writer’s literal circumstances are what make the work ‘ring true’ or not, rather than some element within the writing and – indeed -  that they can only write about their actual life experience with any emotional conviction.  So, no writing divorces for the happily united, or vice versa; no observation, imagination, empathy, or even research? 

Then, imaginative works are open to the blunt interpretations of cod-pyschology, as though the artist is innocent of all such readings and might ‘accidentally’ reveal their secrets. Recently, in a very obvious train of thought onwards from news about my forthcoming novel, a relation remarked that – in a book he’d actually read – the hero was obviously the author’s fantasy-self, since a succession of beautiful women ‘couldn’t wait to get into bed with him’.  (I could only assure him that my novel is just like that.)  I comfort myself with the fact that The Principle of Camouflage has three very strange narrators, who couldn’t  – surely – be interpreted as anybody’s fantasy selves; not nearly as close as Bernardo Soares to Fernando Pessoa. The lowering part of this is the knowledge that some readers – perhaps the most avid – skim through books for scandal, intimate details, possible revelations, ignoring the dull truth that it’s a little more subtle than that. 

The moment comes when every artist has to accept this as a hazard of the work, and just get on with it.  I was half appalled, half encouraged when I read Maureen Duffy’s introduction to her first novel That’s How It Was – even this brilliant book has suffered from its own absolute success.  Since the author described it as directly autobiographical, it seems that some readers failed to perceive its superb technical command, and read it as an artless outpouring of youthful emotion.  She writes of these undervaluing admirers who have ‘failed to grasp its purpose and structure…[who] believe too that its vividness and intensity were a welling up from memory rather than the deliberate exercise of style’.

If it’s a kind of translation, from lived experience to art, maybe an awareness of the translating process is crucial to the appreciation of the work. And perhaps, for those who risk exposing their imaginations in print, the idea of the 72 alternative authors interposing themselves between the life and the work, will prove to be a virtual guard of honour.
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Breaking Bread with the Dead

Blossom and light – Photo by Liz Mathews

‘Art is the way we break bread with the dead’: W.H.Auden’s line perfectly expresses the close contact the reader or audience can experience with an artist who’s no longer living, but whose creative mind is still vital in their work.

It also, I think, gives an insight into the possible function of literary or artistic biography. Writers of this sort of book become used to remarks about the pointlessness of such life-writing, which are rarely based on the defensible critical position of considering that the work should stand absolutely alone, but generally express a more nebulous disapproval (and perhaps even some intellectual snobbery). These negative comments are countered by the assurances from some readers that discussion of the work in the context of the life has made it accessible/ comprehensible/ sympathetic for the first time.

As a writer who must plead guilty to having written about about a poet’s life as well as her work, I can understand both attitudes. Sometimes, after encountering over-simplified life-to-work readings, or particularly gossipy prurience, I’ve felt a strong revulsion against the whole idea. But on the occasions when I’ve seen somebody’s appreciation of a poem transformed – even to the extent where their attitude to poetry itself is radically altered – then the whole process seems more than justified.

Of course, it can illuminate a poem to know where, when, under what circumstances it was written. It can even sometimes transform what was obscure into a work that reveals. But – even if it does refer to autobiographical events – a poem is a separate entity with its own existence, which would continue even if virtually all knowledge of its author or context were lost, like a papyrus fragment bearing a line of Sappho.

Problems only begin to arise with the over-literal matching up of events in a life with its works of art, rather as though the artist is a sausage-machine; pour experiences in, and artworks pop out. This kind of interpretation is a complete denial of the creative process. The transformative alchemy, the fire of creation, radically alters the raw material into a different element, whether that initial material has been found in the maker’s actual experience or some remote landscape of the mind.

At its worst, the life and work study devalues the idea of art itself by ransacking works of creation merely for their clues to life-drama. This superficial approach leaves the more subtle interrelations between experience and creation unexplored, which, as a reader, I do find pointless. It’s much better to rely on one’s own perception than have the poems (or whatever) reduced to news-cuttings in this way. But, at its best, an artist’s biography may enable that breaking of bread through art; make it more possible by a work of interpretation which brings us close enough to contemplate the poetic ideal of feasting together. (What it can’t ever do, clearly, is replace that primary experience.)

Whether any such a book fits either of these descriptions depends partly on the way it is read; the interests of the reader as well as the intentions of the author. The reader who skims through for scandal can defeat the best intentions of the interpretative writer, while those who (while the life story may of course amuse or amaze) discover some common ground, are closer to the feast.