Aamulehti Review

A review by Saara Kesävuori appeared in Aamulehti on Monday, December 10. It's not up on the Aamulehti website yet; I'll post the link here when it is. In the meantime, here it is in my English translation:

Saarikoski's Home was the Finnish Language

An author is faithful only to his or her mother tongue. Especially when he is Pentti Saarikoski.

Douglas Robinson’s (b. 1954) Pentinpeijaiset is an exhilarating biographical novel, because it avoids belaboring the obvious. The story, which runs from the fifties to the eighties, is based on actual events and Saarikoski’s own works, but Robinson throws in invented material from Agricola, Frank Zappa, and Heraclitus for spice.

Saarikoski’s internal interlocutors include Bear and Hipponax.

One of the novel’s narrators is Raven, who scrutinizes Saarikoski’s life from a distance. The meaning of that life consists of a love for language.

Over the years the wives change and the number of kids increases, but Saarikoski’s reality is not ordinary life but poetry.

The Translator as Bloodhound

Robinson’s mother tongue is English, but he has lived in Finland and translated Eeva-Liisa Manner and others into English.

Saarikoski’s work as a translator is interestingly illuminated against the backdrop of Robinson’s own work as a translator.

The translator sniffs out words in search of the best.

Both Robinson and Saarikoski have good noses.

In the sixties Saarikoski translated Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. In Pentinpeijaiset the chaotic translation process inspires carnal orgies.

Life and art merge. In addition to the translation, the result is a stay in a mental hospital.

Stylish Mixture

Saarikoski’s restless life is not glossed over in the novel, but Robinson refuses to build around Saarikoski’s alcoholism an inevitable poetic fate.

The work is a stylish mixture of the low and the high.

Especially noteworthy is the absence from the novel of an artificial closeness.

A fictional biography that tries to delve too deeply into its subject’s head begins to stink.

Pentinpeijaiset is a novel that spins out intellectual associations and trusts its reader’s understanding, and that despite its autobiographical nature shifts meaning from author to text.

Saara Kesävuori

Publicity

The buzz over the book at the Helsinki Book Fair was pretty exciting. It was not just that it was a novel about Pentti Saarikoski; it was also that the novel had been written by an American, who was there and spoke fluent Finnish. I was interviewed for every major Finnish daily, including the Helsinki student paper, where Pentti first made a name for himself as the author of the "Nose" column. Here are some of the articles that resulted:

Johanna Vehkoo, Aamulehti
Antti Majander, Helsingin Sanomat
Sanni Purhonen, Ylioppilaslehti

Kirjan kannet kiinni

This is close to the final cover for the novel:

Happy 70th Birthday, Pentti Saarikoski!

Pentti Saarikoski was born 70 years ago today in Impilahti, Finland--and died just over 24 years ago, on August 24, 1983. The novel (now titled Pentinpeijaiset) comes out this month--not today, as originally planned, but at least in the same month as his birthday. Problems with the translation made us miss the big day. We'll be maybe three weeks late.

Jarmo Papinniemi will be hosting a session at the Helsinki Book Fair on debut novelists--and I won't be included. See his blog post for discussion. I will however be one of the featured authors there, and will be one of the panelists, along with Saarikoski scholar Hannu Riikonen and Saarikoski's Estonian translator Piret Saluri, on a panel devoted to his work this fall of his 70th birthday.

Another translation

The novel is now being translated by Kimmo Lilja, who has rendered that first paragraph like this:

Kuljepa hetki hänen kanssaan, tämän Pentti Saarikosken, joka talsii Helsingin talvisia katuja parikymppisenä ja levottomana, kengänpohjat narsk narsk narskahdellen kovaksipakkautuneella, hiekantöhrimällä lumella, nenäkarvat ritiratisten pakkasilmassa, aamun kylmyys harteillaan kuin painovoima. Mikäli hän kuulee siipieni lepatuksen, hän ei näytä sitä eleelläkään. Hän on kävellyt kuudesta saakka, nyt kellon täytyy olla puoli kahdeksan, mutta päivästä ei tietoakaan. Hänen kummallakin puolellaan kohoavat kolmi- ja nelikerroksiset talot näyttävät kallistuvan kadulle päin ja kurkottelevan solan ylle katulaput johtokäsissään, ja lamput ryöpyttävät valokuvionsa harmaille ja ruskeille rapatuille seinille, ruskealaikkuisille kivijaloille ja portaikkoihin, joissa varjot lymyävät kuin salaliittolaiset vallankumousta juonimassa. Hän kulkee mieluummin sivukaduilla kuin valtaväylillä, ympärillään valaistuja asuinkerroksia ja niiden alapuolella vielä suljettujen kauppojen näyteikkunoita, joku satunnainen auto jyskyttämässä lumisilla nupukivillä, siellä täällä kuormuri, Sisu tai Scania, puoliksi jalkakäytävällä purkamassa lastiaan.

I love this guy's style! At first I wasn't sure about "Kuljepa hetki hänen kanssaan, tämän Pentti Saarikosken"--it seemed a bit precious--but it keeps growing on me. It's rhythmically better than "Kuljepa hetki Pentti Saarikosken kanssa," and it seems to have the effect of making "hän" upper-case, kulje HÄNEN kanssaan, as if he were some sort of deity. I also like "talsii" (Anne and I had no verb there at all), "narsk narsk narskahdellen," and "ritiratisten." I was worried that the translation would be too timid! Clearly that isn't going to be a problem with Kimmo Lilja ...

Also note that I said in my previous post that Finnish can't do the long paratactic lists of gerunds, but here is Kimmo Lilja doing exactly what I thought Finnish couldn't: "kengänpohjat narsk narsk narskahdellen kovaksipakkautuneella, hiekantöhrimällä lumella, nenäkarvat ritiratisten pakkasilmassa, aamun kylmyys harteillaan kuin painovoima." This is exactly what I was hoping for!

Translation

You can't see the tiny print in that brochure image, but at the bottom left is an excerpt from the novel--the first paragraph, in fact, which in English reads:

Walk for a moment with Pentti Saarikoski, twenty and restless, down wintry Helsinki streets, his bootsoles barking narsk narsk on the dirty hardpacked sandstrewn snow, his nose hairs crackling in the subzero air, the cold like enhanced gravity in the predawn dark. If he hears the beating of my wings, he gives no sign. He has been out walking since six, it must be seven-thirty or eight by now, still no sign of morning. The three- and four-story buildings on either side of him seem to lean inward at the top, reaching across the gap with wiry hands to hold streetlamps over the middle of the street, the light casting yellow waterfall shapes on the plastered gray and brown walls and brown-flecked granite footings and steps, shadows like subversives plotting revolution. He favors the side streets over the main thoroughfares: lights on in the upper-story windows and the display windows of the shops closed below, a few cars bumping down over snowy cobblestones, here and there a Sisu or Scania truck pulled half onto the sidewalk to unload.

Anna-Riikka couldn't get ahold of Kimmo Lilja, the Finnish translator, and the brochure had to go to the printer, so she asked if I could do a rough translation of the passage for her, so that she and Anne could revise it for the brochure. Here's what I wrote:

Kävele kappaleen matkaa Pentti Saarikosken kanssa lumisia Helsingin katuja, hän on kaksikymppinen, levoton, hänen saappaansa narskuvat nokisessa hiekoitetussa kovaksitallatussa lumessa, nenäkarvat ratisevat pakkasessa, aamun pimeässä pakkanen on kuin tehostettua painovoimaa. Jos hän kuulee siipieni rapinan hän on kuin ei kuulisikaan. Hän on kävellyt jo kuudesta saakka, kello käy jo puolta kahdeksaa, ei vieläkään merkkiä päivästä. Molemmin puolin katua olevat kolme- ja nelikerroksiset rakennukset näyttävät nojaavan latvasta sisäänpäin, kurottavat langanohuita käsiään pitelemään katulamppuja keskellä katua, valo heittää keltaisia vesiputouksen muotoisia hahmoja ruskeanharmaaseen seinälaastiin ja kivisokkeliin, varjoja kuin salaliittolaisia hautomassa vallankumousta. Hän karttaa pääkatuja, suosii takareittejä: lamppuja palaa yläkerran ikkunoissa ja suljettujen kauppojen näyteikkunoissa, autoja pomppii lumisilla katukivillä, siellä täällä joku Sisun tai Scanian kuorma-auto on kaartanut puoliksi jalkakäytävälle purkamaan kuormaansa.

And this is Anne's version of that:

Kulje hetki Pentti Saarikosken kanssa lumisia Helsingin katuja. Hän on kaksikymppinen, levoton. Hänen saappaansa narskuvat kovaksi tallatussa lumessa, nenäkarvat ratisevat pakkasessa. Aamun pimeässä kylmyys on kuin tehostettua painovoimaa. Jos hän kuuleekin siipieni rapinan, hän on kuin ei huomaisikaan. Pentti on kävellyt kuudesta saakka. Kello käy jo puolta kahdeksaa, ei vieläkään merkkiä päivästä. Molemmin puolin katua kolme- ja nelikerroksiset rakennukset näyttävät nojaavan latvasta sisäänpäin, kurottavat langanohuita käsiään pitelemää katulamppuja keskellä tietä. Valo heittää keltaisia vesiputouksen muotoisia hahmoja ruskeanharmaaseen seinälaastiin ja kivisokkeliin, varjoja kuin salaliittolaisia hautomassa vallankumousta. Hän karttaa pääkatuja, suosii sivukujia. Lamppuja palaa yläkerran ikkunoissa ja suljettujen kauppojen näyteikkunoissa, autoja pomppii lumisilla katukivillä, siellä täällä joku Sisun tai Scanian kuorma-auto on kaartanut puoliksi jalkakäytävälle purkamaan lastiaan.

The big difference there, obviously, is that the long sentences were too awkward in Finnish, so Anne broke them up into shorter ones. Finnish can't do the long paratactic lists of gerunds that work so niftily in English (bootsoles barking, nose hairs crackling), so I had to go to full sentences, which gummed up the works, syntactically speaking, when strung together in long parataxes.

Brochure

The page for my novel in Avain's fall brochure

First Novel

So my first novel is being published: Saarikoski's Spirits in English, Pentinpeijaat in Finnish, by Avain.

What happened was this: I finished the novel in 2000, and spent several years (rather desultorily) looking for a publisher in English. No interest. The editors that had a look at it liked it well enough but didn't see a market for it--a fictionalized biography of a Finnish poet and translator who died two decades ago! An editor at Grove Press suggested I try the Finnish-American press, and North Star Press of St. Cloud, who had published my translation of Aleksis Kivi's Heath Cobblers, said they'd be happy to have a look at it. So I sent them a proposal and a sample chapter, and never heard back from them.

So finally, when Anna-Riikka Carlson of Avain asked me to translate the first seven chapters of Elina Hirvonen's Että hän muistaisi saman ("That He'd Remember the Same," literally, but the novel is now being published by Portobello Books in my translation under the English title When I Forgot, 2008 release date), so she could market the translation rights at the London Book Fair in the late winter of 2006, I was so impressed with the way she was running her relatively young publishing house that I offered her my Saarikoski. She took a few months to look it over, and when I was in Helsinki in June of 2006, visiting my daughter Laura, I met with Anna-Riikka and her summer intern Anne Rutanen, and we all more or less agreed that they'd do the book.

Since then, we've been working on it, editing it long-distance, spending hours on Skype chatting about it; about a month ago, it was finally pronounced ready for translation, and was sent to the Finnish translator, Kimmo Lilja.

When Anna-Riikka said she wanted to publish it in September, 2007, I had an idea: why not launch it on September 2, 2007--Pentti Saarikoski's 70th birthday?

My plans now are to fly to Finland in late October to promote the book at the Helsinki Book Fair.

The book's title:

My original idea in English was that the "spirits" in Saarikoski's Spirits would be both the booze that killed him and the tutelary spirits of the dead authors he's translating, who appear in the novel. When it was finally settled that the book would appear first in Finnish translation, I realized of course that the English pun on "spirits" wouldn't work in Finnish, and for several months wracked my brain for an alternative.

What I finally came up with was a variation on the Finnish concept of the karhunpeijaiset, the ancient Finnish bear-kill feast that was intended to guide the dead bear to Manala, the land of the dead. So instead of the bear (karhu), the dead spirit that would be guided to Manala would be Pentti: thus, pentinpeijaiset. But I didn't like the rhythm of that, so I suggested an older form of the word instead, -peijaat.