Books – My Own RE:public

Once bitten…

“Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer” by Cordelia Edvardson, 2023.

Übersetzt aus dem Schwedischen von Ursel Allenstein, Hanser Verlag.

In his afterword, Daniel Kehlmann, describes the sheer visceral horror of reading this slight memoir of fragments of a childhood culminating in an actual horror; of confusion, betrayal and a young girl’s fight for survival – from the creeping Nazi terror of Berlin, to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. And having survived, reflections on the just that: the burden of being an Überlebende. It didn’t have to be, but Cordelia Edvardson had a life; a long, productive life – in Sweden, in Israel as the Jerusalem correspondent for Svenska Dagbladet, as a mother. I hope she also found some happiness and peace of mind.

I did not know Cordelia Edvardson (1929-2012), and her Wikipedia entry is brief and the accuracy of which I can not vouch for. (The German entry is longer but also confusing. At the Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon, a Swedish site, is a good biographical overview.) But her mother is Elisabeth Langgässer, a writer of some renown in the post-war years who has mostly disappeared from literary discourse in Germany – for good reason, Kehlmann says; has not dated well, he says; Catholic mystic, he says. Her name is only known to me through acquaintances that live in a street with her name in the Rhineland. I must say, after reading her daughter’s book and Kehlmann’s remarks I feel absolutely no inclination to pursue her any further. Only to wonder why there are streets, schools and literary awards in her honor.

Daniel Kehlmann makes the case for Edvardson’s book being one of the rare and most powerful first hand accounts of the industrial killing machine of the Holocaust, and one wonders why after its original publication in 1984 it did not find its place in the culture of remembrance. Or why it does not seem to have been translated into English (?). One wonders whether her familial situation, as a precursor to the events she describes or in the aftermath, was not just a little too complicated; whether she was just not Jewish enough; or was it that a mother’s betrayal, or at least her egocentricity, was not just too contrary to the maternal norms?

Above I referred to this book as a memoir, the publisher’s call it a Roman, that is, a literary novel; this something Kehlmann also wonders at. Edvardson does write in the third person, a narrative device most associated with fiction, but one could imagine she did so to create some distance from people and events and the emotions they gave rise to and that she had learnt to live with, but which no doubt loomed large still in her inner consciousness, ever threatening to overwhelm. In other words, there is no reason to doubt that das Mädchen in the telling is Cordelia Edvardson.

“Once bitten … twice shy” so it is said in English ; in German the expression is: “Gebranntes Kind scheut das Feuer”- literally, a child once burnt will tend to shy away from fire. But this child, das Mädchen, seeks it out – Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer. The imagery is devastating. The flames may no longer burn but the damage caused is never extinguished, nor is the urge, the necessity, to return to the source of her suffering. As if willing the flames to consume her as they did so many others.

An extraordinary account that, however horrendous the content, deserves much wider recognition.

Pas de deux

Le Pays des autres 2: Regardez-nous danser (read by me in German as Schaut, we wir tanzen, and available in English translation as Watch Us Dance) continues Leila Slimani’s family saga; a fictional dive into the colorful, often murky and treacherous depths of her own dynastic history, the first part of which I wrote enthusiastically about here and which ended with the beginning of the end of colonial rule in Morocco.

When the story continues, it is the summer of 1968 and more than a decade has passed since Morocco gained its independence from France (in 1956), but the country is struggling now under another – this time home-grown – brand of tyranny: defined through its authoritarian monarch, a brutal police and judicial system in cahoots with a corrupted elite and a patriarchal hegemony. It is to this Morocco that Aïcha, who so entranced with her intelligence and originality as a little girl, returns after some years studying medicine in Strasbourg. For one summer – and then perhaps a lifetime. One is tempted to say: she returns to the fold. But that is something for sheep, and an instinctive follower is this young woman not. Nor lost, nor castout. Rather it is to the bosom of her family in Meknès that she returns; their fortunes having risen in the ensuing years and now with a place amongst a burgeoning new marocaine bourgeoisie. The reader remains alert still to Aïcha’s contrariness: her self-possession and her selflessness; her wanting to please and her not giving a fig; her intellectual rationality and discipline and her emotional inner-life and flights into religious mysticism. One empathizes with Aïcha, with each dilemma she faces (and faces down) – her love of family, of friends and two nations; and the loyalties demanded and the conflicts that ensue – always knowing that the latest will be not the last.

And because she so fascinated me in In the Country of Others, I concentrate on Aïcha (and I suspect Slimani developed her character to be the focus – clearly inspired by her mother but also with a good dose of self one could think), others in the Belhaj family have central moments; both individually and in their interactions amongst each other. (The changing perspectives are – along with her blissfully short and elegant sentences – a defining quality of Slimani’s writing.) Aïcha’s parents, Amine and Mathilda, of course: the very personification of two nations in co-habitation; each with their own truth, intimately attached and profoundly detached, forgiving and unforgiving in equal measure. It is not always clear who is controlling whom. But there is a sort of love, that is frayed, tested, rarely acknowledged – and a lot of regret. The radical choices of Amine’s siblings, Omar and Selma, have only become more so since the first book. But this story here is one of more youthful years spent during a time of immense social and political upheaval, and so Aïcha’s path is very much juxtaposed against that of her younger brother Selim – restless, sexually awakened in ways unexpected. As Aïcha returns to the nest so does Selim take wing.

Aïcha pursues her career in obstetrics. Aïcha marries Mehdi – once, theoretically, a Marxist, now, practically speaking, beholden to the government. The book ends in 1971; the king has survived an assassination attempt, and Aïcha has brought her own child into the world.

Explicit in the title, dancing can be extended from the very reality of the clubs and bars of Casablanca and beyond where the young of Morocco gather to a metaphorical place; for it is a heady time of post-colonial uncertainty when power dynamics have changed and can be visualized as two parties skirting around each other, conscious of their position in any one moment, but unsure of their next step, and this reflected in the age-old story of when boy meets girl, of codes and signals, of swirling skirts and feigned youthful insouciance. Dualities abound in Leïla Slimani’s narrative, and this series could be well described as a pas de deux, whereby here there are no clear partitions; each blends into the next; from the entrée to the adagio and with some variations. I await with anticipation the continuation and culmination (coda) – presumably due from Gallimard this year or next.

Did I mention the translation? No, I did not. Translators should always be credited. I know enough to be quite confident that Amelie Thoma captures Slimani’s literary voice beautifully in German. (Of the English translation I cannot say, but Sam Taylor has creds so to speak!)

After-world & Afterword

My blog entry below in which I write on Zadie Smith’s novel, The Fraud, ended before it should have. I did have a couple of things to say to do with the book’s end … well, two and a bit actually:

In the final chapter: As William Ainsworth lays dead on his study floor, he is already entering Eliza Touchet’s memory, and she knows not whether it will be as the truth or as a false memory, or if ultimately there is any difference. Will the real Ainsworth stand up, please! With William’s death comes Eliza’s last shot at freedom; he is now just one of the cast of characters imagined in her own secret manuscript with the title, The Fraud. Or will ‘dear William’, in death, be party to another fraud, or at least another’s truth?
From the Afterword: If one were to doubt her existence, it is useful to know that in 2009 Eliza Touchet’s 1842 edition of A Christmas Carol, signed to ‘Mrs. Touchet’, was sold at auction for the highest ever price for a Dicken’s work.
Apropos Dickens: In Chapter 29, the Ainsworths and Eliza Touchet visit the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park and later Mrs. Touchet reads Dickens and Horne’s review of the event in Household Words. Now this piece I have mentioned before (and here it is)! Eliza’s reaction to the article, in which the two good gentlemen hail to the hilt the virtues of western progress (machines) and mock the traditional ware (crafts) of the east, and which is contrary to her own aesthetic reception of the items on display, has the touchiness of all her interactions with Dickens (as given in Smith’s fictional rendering). (Why do I think with Eliza T., the Boz had met his match? And knew it!)

Fakery is afoot

Zadie Smith’s latest work of big F fiction is anything but fraudulent but (The) Fraud is writ large on its cover and permeates the narrative – bold faced is the text even when writ small.

To my mind, a veritable romp of a read, but not one to be deconstructed to an allegoric tale of he who was once (and god forbid not future) American president as some – particularly on the other side of the Atlantic – would have it. I mean to say, contemporary comparisons and reflections are always warranted but, loathe as I am to repeat myself, Trump is far less of an aberration than many would have it – rather just the latest in a line of crooks and con-artists – yes, frauds! – who have, and in various incarnations and with various degrees of success, elbowed their way to center stage for times long and short. (Granted, an encore performance there did not have to be!)

The Fraud is Zadie Smith’s first foray into historical fiction, and she does it with aplomb, perhaps not with the absolute Leichtigkeit that she brings when her subjects occupy a space she so totally gets – the northern London suburbs, for example, and characters pulled from that landscape spreading their wings near and far. Here is a writer exploring what is, for her, new (literary) terrain. But I think she succeeds in constructing a 19th century tale that does not feel so distant in time nor in space, rather, has the immediacy of now; certainly, her main protagonist, Eliza Touchet, and those who rotate about her, and whether they be in London or the Home Counties, don’t present as somehow being stuck in a Dickens or Thackeray door-stopper but, instead, read as having the potential to be time-shifters in a Netflix show-stopper. (By the way, these two aforesaid gents I mention not by chance, but because they and others and most especially Eliza’s cousin, William Harrison Ainsworth, are of the cultural and social milieu from which the narrative springs. As a reviewer said, do keep Google at the ready, behind the Fiction are various degrees of Fact. There they are: those F words again!) The success of the novel may also have something to do with style; the post-modern realism in which Zadie Smith writes fits with the uglier, even brutal, side of the burgeoning global world and the intertwined strands leading from Andrew Bogle to the slave plantations of Jamaica and from The (Tichborne) Claimant to the still colony of Australia where England could still banish its unwanted or troublesome and make capital in the process. Suggesting that almost two centuries on, the ghosts of colonialism still haunt the global ambitions of both the once oppressed and the oppressors.

And F can stand for more than (just) Fraud. Recently, I read Daniel Kehlmann’s novel ‘F’ (Rowohlt, 2014), and I see now that, presumably on the back of his previous successes (especially this one) in the international market, it was indeed translated (Vintage, 2015). In any obvious way Kehlmann’s work, set in a contemporary German-speaking space somewhere (if specified, I seem to have missed it), would not necessarily have too much in common with Zadie Smith’s historical novel.

But then there are these damnable F words that call out to me to consider. And it is Fortunate for this comparison some words map quite nicely from German to English, and interconnected F words are prevalent in both languages. The now universality of Fake, for instance; after all just a shade of Fraud (or, is it, Freud?), or the other way around. And Fame and Fortune: Fortune-telling (show me the Future) and changing Family Fortunes for a Father and a Fraternity of three, each with a life defined by Finance and (non-) Fidelity, (not so) Fine Art and Forgery, Food and (feigned) Faith, This, again, is a novel about deception, the power of suggestion and, yes, Fälschung – about Fakery (or something more carnal) being afoot and other forms of Foolery.

And Fate. Towards the end of the novel, the mostly absent Father – he by whom the die was cast, Iacta alea est, and who casts his shadow from the first pages – says:

“Fatum” […].”Das grosse F. Aber der Zufall is mächtig, und plötzlich bekommt man ein Schicksal, das nie für einen bestimmt war. Irgendein Zufallsschicksal […”

“Fate” […] “The big F. But chance is a powerful thing, and suddenly you find yourself living a destiny that was never meant for you. Some random fate […]”
F by Daniel Kehlmann; my own translation

An imperfect book, but an interesting (and often funny) novel in which Kehlmann uses his narrative talents to philosophize on the blurring of lines between that which is true and that which is imagined and that which is just plain false. At the time of publication almost a decade ago, I am not sure that the range of possibilities for bad players to prey upon a digitalized, connected world were fully understood, nor the repercussions; ‘fakery’ mostly remained still in the realm of the classical and obvious forms of deception – human beings telling human lies in very human ways; even a charlatan or trickster of whatever persuasion, peddling whatever their wares is but a sophisticated version of this. Now, a new breed of ‘mover’ – regionally or globally – is sowing seeds of discontent – or just after the next quick buck; harnessing digital technologies to open up new fields of activity beyond the obvious – and anybody can just as easily be the next perpetrator as the next victim.

And F is for Fiction. Two really good works of fiction, from two terrific writers. I think I am correct in saying they are friends.

Emma B. & Elizabeth F.

Over a festive season that stretched my resources, I turned to a German translation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary; translated by Elisabeth Edl (admired by me for her translations of Patrick Modiano) and much lauded at the time of publication in 2012. And, I must say it seems to have left a greater impression upon me than whatever English version I may have read in the past (but not the one by Lydia Davis, also from 2012) did; for I don’t remember previously having been as stimulated … or, as moved … as this reading has left me.

To be said on this particular edition: Beyond the literary work, the notes throughout are extensive, as is Edl’s translation essay; included also in the volume are the proceedings from the law case brought against Flaubert for … what? … obscenity, shall we say … by the French public prosecutors of the day. This latter inclusion was a first in the German language, and whether it has found its way into any of the English translations to date I don’t know. At least, it – the trial, the outcome (‘case dismissed’, so to speak), the repercussions (for society, for literature) – lives, still, in academia. This essay by Christine Haines published in French Politics, Culture & Society Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer 2005), pp 1-27 and available on JSTOR is just one example.

Of an evening (that is, in bed!) my seriously serious book reading is intermittently interrupted by other forms of Lektüre, sometimes of a more frivolous nature and sometimes not. Definitely belonging to the latter; the latest (or the one before that) issue of the LRB. And, it was there, around about this Christmas time, that I was interested to read a review piece by Julian Barnes (Vol. 45 No. 24 · 14 December 2023) inspired by a new Monet biography by Jackie Wollschläger. With that, I won’t flex my (puny) Impressionist muscles; Julian Barnes may be able to get away with being an amateur art critic/historian/connoisseur, but, I not! It just reminded me that Barnes and Flaubert appear to have taken up firm residence in a similar crevice of my brain. Hardly surprising says she (to herself), recalling a stuffed parrot. But, amongst other things, I also remember his essay (also in the LRB) on the Lydia Davis translation of Madame Bovary, and that it was far from complimentary. And, this I remember because I remember it having coincided with my reading of the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time in a then new translation and also from Davis, and I further remember having been momentarily concerned that I wasn’t getting the best of Proust. What, if anything, Barnes has had to say about her Swann’s Way, I don’t know. Or, just can’t remember!

And still more on Hilary M. (2)

In a timely fashion The Booker Prize webpage has a pair of additions to their Hilary Mantel section. Firstly an essay, originally published in 2012, called ‘How I came to write Wolf Hall’ extracted from the just published collection spoken of in the previous post. Well chosen, for it was for this first in the series that she won the Booker in 2009 . The last words of the piece are surely worth dying for: “What I wanted to create is a story that reflects but never repeats, a sense of history listening and talking to itself.” And, then, there is an article by her editor, Nicholas Pearson, that traces the idea of Wolf Hall to its publication, and culminating with the UK’s most prestigious literary prize. (As an aside: How I love that he read the raw manuscript on a long haul to Australia!)

Remembering Hilary Mantel still (1)

& with regret …

An abiding regret for the space left in my literary life with Hilary Mantel’s death; all those bodies and ghosts – royal and heavenly, and not – silenced. Now, just over a year later, today is published in the UK a collection of her essays, exquisitely – albeit misleadingly – titled A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing (pub. John Murray). Pulled together by her former editor (at Fourth Estate and now at John Murray), Nicholas Pearson, are pieces from Mantel’s long writing career – on many subjects and from the many stations of her personal and professional life. It is not, then, a memoir in the usual sense, rather I read somewhere it described as a ‘memoir of the mind’ – and what a singularly brilliant mind it was. Perhaps this book will go a little way to fill that space that I still feel.

As her unpublished work and diaries are being deposited with her other papers at The Huntington Library in California and sealed until her husband’s death, for some, this collection is perhaps the last opportunity to wonder at Mantel’s gifts.

In April, a memorial service was held at Southwark Cathedral, around about which time it was revealed that, at the time of her death, Hilary Mantel had been working on an adaption – mash-up of sorts – of Pride and Prejudice, told from the perspective of the over-looked Bennett sister, Mary (the ‘plain Jane’ middle one), and tentatively or maybe definitely titled: ‘Provocation’. Lordy! Pride, prejudice AND ‘provocation’! Jane and Hilary in conversation (and now in heavenly union)! Regency England given the Tudor treatment – what a treat that would have been.

Here is The Guardian magazine piece that ends with the extract provided by Mantel’s widower, Gerald McEwen, and which was read at the memorial service. (What a divine thought: Darcy is not the brightest!) There are interesting reflections from McEwen and others, and I was reminded of Mantel’s Reith Lecture in which she said: “the dead are invisible, they are not absent”. I didn’t remember that to be a quote from Saint Augustine (looking back, those were indeed the first words of her first lecture), but it does then seem appropriate that her memorial service was held in Southwark with its ancient Augustinian tradition.

As I say, there can only be regret.

The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson review – a bravura feat | Homer | The Guardian

Six years on from her translation of the Odyssey, Wilson revels in the clarity and emotional clout of Homer’s battlefield epic
— Read on www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/27/the-iliad-by-homer-translated-by-emily-wilson-review-a-bravura-feat

There are sure to be many in the next days, weeks, so as I come across new reviews I’ll directly post them (if possible) – and comment later if I think necessary . This from Edith Hall, who hardly needs an introduction – but here’s one anyway.