Jaan Kross

[Eric]

There's a biography of Jaan Kross written in Finnish and translated into Estonian. This is, of course, frustrating for those who would like to get more of an overview as to who this author was and what he wrote, but don't read those two relatively obscure languages. But I presume that it will gradually appear in French, German, Spanish and even English. One day.

This biography was originally publishing in Finland in 2008, because the author is a Finn, Juhani Salokannel, who has worked, for instance, as the head of the Finnish Institute in Tallinn. Strangely enough, this book appears to be the first full biography of Kross and, more especially, the first detailed bibliographical survey of what Kross has written, describing the books and their context. What is strange is that although Kross is regarded as perhaps the greatest postwar Estonian author during the latter half ot the 20th century, no Estonian seems to have written a book if such a scope as that of Salokannel (some 500 pages).

An interesting aspect of the book is that Salokannel uses the chronology of the centuries and decades that Kross' various novels were set in to move forward from those set in the 16th century right up to the 20th century. So about 280 of the 500 pages describe the 15 or so books in detail moving forward from the late Middle Ages via then eighteenth and 19th centuriess to the period where some of Kross' novels become semi-autobiographical. The rest covers Kross' life and other matters placing them in the context of the troubled 20th century history of Estonia.

[Liam]

those two relatively obscure languages

Every time I refer to Estonian as an obscure language you go bazooka on my ass, *grumbles*. I guess it's OK when YOU do, ain't it.

[Eric]

I'm trying to put him in the context of languages as most English-speakers think of little languages. So I was fully aware of what the Russians would call my "provokatsiya". It is a cleverly planned ploy to get people to notice things. You have to be devious to get people to read Estonian authors, as there are even Estonians who, because of past sins during the Communist era, would rather that we Western readers didn't know too much about police spies, labour camps, censorship, and so on.

[Eric]

By the way, postings #2 and #3 give some idea of how many books Kross has actually written, lamentably few of which are available in English.

[Stiffelio]

There's a biography of Jaan Kross written in Finnish and translated into Estonian. This is, of course, frustrating for those who would like to get more of an overview as to who this author was and what he wrote, but don't read those two relatively obscure languages. But I presume that it will gradually appear in French, German, Spanish and even English. One day.

How about proposing to undertake the English translation yourself?

[Eric]

I had already anticipated that question, Stiffelio. Little would stop me if I could find a publishing house willing to take what is after all a 500-page book about someone who is not yet a household name in many literary quarters.

I feel that it would be a better proposition if two or three more Kross novels appeared in English first. It is rare for a biography to generate interest in an author before a substantial number of his works are available in English. And so far there are only four novels in English (two of which are my translations) plus a book of short-stories that is out of print. There are a couple of his short novels or novellas available in Soviet editions, but I have not compared them with the originals to see whether they are good, bad or indifferent. One good translator from Soviet times was Oleg Mutt who spent some of his childhood in the States, as I believe. So he could translate into English, something which few non-native-speakers can do successfully with literary works. I would not wish to to retranslate anything he did. But there are also a few works translated via the Russian language, and you always lose a bit when it is a translation of a translation. So in such cases I could think of retranslating directly from the Estonian. Two of the four novels as mentioned above were in fact translated from the Finnish translations, so they too were not directly translated.

But surely it is the wholly untranslated (into English) novels that should be a Kross-translator's first priority. I can think of five of his novels that would stand a reasonable chance of being read with interest by an English-speaking readership, plus a further four that form a tetralogy. I believe that the books of this latter group have already been translated, but information is strangely hard to come by.

[leyla]

Eric, thanks for the five private mails urging me to review the Jaan Kross book you have translated. While I'm sure he has much to offer, I don't review books

1-written or translated by people who ask me repeatedly to do so
OR
2-that have not come my way via an independent selection process, ie me spotting the book on a publisher's list, receiving it out of the blue, being commissioned it, etc.

Please stop sending me repeated private mails. Please write all comments about books you've worked on which you would like reviewed in an open way. Can you imagine how it would look if I reviewed a book because I had received five mails pestering me to do so by the translator or author? I would lose all my integrity. By all means feel free to ask publishers to e mail me to ask if I would like a copy of a book. That way I can look at the book and decide whether or not I wish to review it. And of course, the final decision rests with my lit eds.

All best
leyla

[Liam]

I had received five mails pestering me

OK, that's called stalking, .

[Eric]

I liked the Tarkovsky film "Stalker". All drips and misery. All I was saying privately to Leyla was what I have said publicly: Old Tonkin is a fair-weather friend when it comes to translations. One minute he's dead enthusiastic. Then he gets cold feet. And he isn't even the boss, though he appears to farm out the books he wants reviewed. That's not y'r actual democracy and reduces Indy reviewers to a position where all they can say is "good book" or "bad book".

But I do, of course, hope that "Sailing Against the Wind" by Jaan Kross gets reviewed (hint, hint), as it was already translated into French and Swedish in about 1997, and now it has taken till 2012 for to appear in English.

Even the Wikipedia isn't too bad when it comes to a description of Kross' merits.

So: no marks for diplomacy.

[Eric]

By the way, I sent a "private e-mail" as it is termed in the trade to a fairly important British non-literary weekly, and instead of complaining about being "pestered" (or as Liam so amusingly suggested, "stalked"), he immediately said he'd review the Kross book. So clearly different reviewers have different priorities.

The problem is that we literary translators are in a terribly weak position. Reviewers, as is clear, have no backbone of their own but meekly review what the Big Boss in London tells them to. No private initiative, merely answering calls from book page editors who get literally hundreds of mostly unwanted books from wannabes in Jiffy bags and cardboard envelopes every week, and cannot possibly look through all of them and even make a fair assessment as to what to send out for others to review as they are snowed under.

Secondly, the British record in the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, and Independent is abysmal when it comes to reviewing any belles lettres at all that is not originally written in English, i.e. translations. So is that statistic of 3% of all books being translations. This becomes a vicious circle. As most reviewers in dailies have little interest in what is being written in Europe, they review the umpteenth novel by that runaway Brit Martin Amis, or yet another novel about incest, or a fictionalised account of persecuted women in Iran, or how we should treat Africa by a Moralist Novelist, or some crime novel with an excess of violence. So when a truly serious novel, like the Kross, comes along, one with attention being paid to style, narration, and so on, they fail to recognise its importance.

I repeat: look at the Wikipedia entry for Jaan Kross and judge by what is written there whether he is more worth reviewing than another first novel by a pretty photogenic British blonde who went to Oxbridge and speaks terribly-terribly and terribly loudly on the Mariella Frostrup Trendy Books Show.

[Bubba]

Eric's five private messages are almost certainly at least four too many, and I imagine even he is a bit ashamed of himself, but leyla's protests are perhaps a bit too vehement. After all, she herself uses the forum to encourage views of the reviews she publishes elsewhere (a perfectly legitimate use of the forum, in my estimation). But if she is to use the forum for that purpose, she should understand that it is then perfectly legitimate for any other forum user to return the favor, so to speak.

For the record, I've read three of Kross's novels now, and all of them are far more interesting than the books leyla reviews (almost all of which, I've noticed, are flavors of the month worthy of consideration only for what their publication, as well as the publicity campaigns rolled out for them, says about the degradation and bad taste of publishers, editors of books pages, and maybe even readers in general).

That leyla is merely "obeying orders" does not absolve her, not entirely, at any rate. (And needless to say, I won't be sending be sending her a PM, much less five of them, asking her to review my next translation!)

[leyla]

Eric, for you to say reviewers have no backbone but meekly review what the Big Boss tells them to is so obviously sour grapes that my respect for you has dropped. Many of the books I review are books that I find and review, and Boyd accepts the uncommissioned review. This happens with about 75% of my reviews for the Indy. But in order to assess a book objectively, I need to be sent a copy by a publisher without constant pestering and urging. I can then make my own mind up. To be honest, as soon as someone ups the pressure, I am far less likely to review a book. If it had been sent to me via the normal channels ie by the publisher, I would have considered it.
But it is also true that reviewing space is very tight in broadsheets. The lit eds and reviewers would love to review more books, including more translations, but with the limits on space, many wonderful books go unreviewed.
I think attacking a lit ed and reviewer because they haven't reviewed your book is really pretty puerile behaviour. Boyd has done more to publicise translated works than any other lit ed in the UK, he sat on the board of judges of a major recent prize for translated works. As for saying I don't review translated works, in the past year or so I've reviewed Joachim Fest, Laurent Binet, Gerbrand Bakker, Peter Stamm, Yan Lianke, Agnes Desarthe, Heda Margolius Kovaly, and others. All of these were books I chose and wrote uncommissioned reviews of. And I have read, but not reviewed, Dimitri Verhulst, Geling Yan, and others.
Bubba's point about 'returning the favour' ignores the vital need for integrity in a reviewer. A reviewer can not favour the books of people she knows. It is just not on. If I had been quietly sent a copy of the book with no pushing, I would have assessed it in the usual way, but the sending of the four excessive private mails almost guaranteed I couldn't review the book.

[Eric]

I am not ashamed of myself. We literary translators count for very little in the jostle of the publishing world. What galls me is that we are the people who actually know both source and target languages, and should be asked a great deal more to review things translated by colleagues whose languages we know. Most reviewers know lamentably little about the background to any translation they are reviewing unless the author is incredibly famous like Eco, Kundera or Houellebecq.

I do not think that the five private messages I wrote to Leyla constitute pestering or persecution, or the wanton destruction of the reviewer's objectivity and integrity. The first was a jaunty "why don't you review my translation?" message, suggesting that Jaan Kross was important. The second message gave some articles she could look at and contained my views on Boyd Tonkin. The third was pointing out that serious reviews were written by, for instance, Doris Lessing and Tibor Fischer, of my previous Kross translation back in 2003. The fourth was correcting a dud link I had sent her. The fifth was pointing out that the Wikipedia has a substantial article on Kross as she might not know who Kross is among those many European authors.

Since I last wrote, another editor from a perfectly respectable London periodical has also suggested that they will look at the Kross book. That makes two of them now. But they no doubt never knew the book existed in the first place, and this is why:

I personally am incensed, no not at Leyla, but at the fact that six months after the publication of my translation of "Sailing Against the Wind" by the most important Estonian writer of the latter half of the twentieth century, the Estonian Literature Information Centre, i.e. the very people who are supposed to be promoting the dissemination of information about Estonian literature abroad, have not even got a mention of this book on their website. And my translation is not into Lëtzebuergesch or Lallands but into standard English, the world language, and the world bridge language too.

The Wikipedia has a pretty good article on Jaan Kross: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaan_Kross

Whatever you say about Boyd Tonkin and his achievements, there are just not enough reviews of translations on the Independent books page compared with things written in English. Do you, Leyla, ever look at the books pages of European newspapers to see what proportion of books are home-grown, what proportion foreign? It's an instructive exercise. I do this all the time, as I know several languages. Boyd Tonkin blows hot and cold about literature in translation as does Claire Armitstead at the Guardian. There is no area of either of their book pages regularly reserved for translations so that there are guaranteed to be five or six translation reviews every week. The translation remains the poor relation.

The climate for translations is pretty poor in England, but if they would also focus on smaller presses on a regular basis, not only the subordinate publishing houses belonging to Random House, which has a great quasi-monopoly of ownership and visibility nowadays, reviewers could find more translations.

For me personally it's a double whammy: the Estonians ignore me, the Brits don't know the book exists. So I have simply started writing e-mails myself, promoting my own translation, which is a pretty infradig thing to do. But it is out of desperation that I do so. An author that was in the running for the Nobel, and about whom there is a pretty substantial article on the Wikipedia, deserves more attention than these very many derivative books that are automatically called "masterpieces" when their authors have written two books at the most.

This is why I continue to be sceptical of the Sigrid Rausing set-up (I was, long before her brother got arrested over the death of his wife). Portobello and Granta seem to be acting too hastily, skimming the surface for one-novel wonders from Brazil and elsewhere who have not written enough even to enjoy a genuine author's profile. There must be many middle-aged Brazilian, to name one country, writers who have written several books. It is wrong to go from one extreme (ignoring Brazilan writing) to the other (promoting untried but photogenic young things).

[leyla]

Eric, I do sympathise re promotion. I have heard writers say that their publishing companies undergo no promotion of their books. I can understand the frustration of both writers and translators. That, when rubbed up against the hassle factor reviewers and editors feel, is not good for anyone. I should perhaps have been more patient in the face of your mails, I do feel inundated with books and information, though, so occasionally I will snap - sorry if I hurt your feelings. It is admirable that you are promoting the book you translated. I think the situation is far from optimum for everyone - editors do their very best but given how many thousands of new books are released every month, and the tiny space they have to run reviews, they have an almost impossible task. And of course major literary prize longlists then pop up, increasing the pressure on them to cover the longlisted books, as with the Man Booker, the longlist for which was recently released, and which took many in the lit world by surprise.
i think probably the best move is to ask the publisher to send copies of the book out to lit eds and reviewers. To give you an idea of the numbers of quality books that arrive for consideration for review, I pick out only the ten percent or so of releases that I think will be interesting. Inevitably I miss many not released by large publishers (though I do peruse lists for a few small publishers like Grants/Portobello, Old St, Corsair, Doubleday, etc.) I receive approximately ten books a week, sometimes twenty. I suggest a few every month to my lit eds - a small percentage of the fantastic books I have selected and received. Of those, I will be commissioned a small percentage, or I may write an uncommissioned review, which probably has a fifty fifty chance of being accepted ( it may well already have been commissioned, the eds are too busy for me to even want to bother them by asking that.) So if I then receive five mails in a row, I'm afraid my hassle defence factor causes my shutters to go up and a closed sign to swing on the door, and the moat to fill with icy water and a fleet of snapping crocs! I know you didn't deserve to be snapped at, it's just the natural response to being inundated. Add to this the fact that reviewers/eds have other things going on in their lives - lit eds have to write pieces and commission and edit amd make sure copy is in on time and keep abreast of what's happening in the lit world. Reviewers may write books or have families or have jobs or a combination of those. I spend every second week on the day ward all day Mon, Wed, Fri, getting an infusion that gives me a throbbing migraine and makes me feel intensely sick. And the past ten days, fb readers will know I've had symptoms of a partial bowel obstruction and have been referred to a surgeon. And I have a non- urgent op next Monday! I'm not trying to gain pity, I am actually lucky because I live somewhere where health care is free and good, and I'm lucky enough to have a loving partner and great friends etc, so my life is much less stressful than some people's. I'm just saying this by way of explanation. Do you want to ask your published to send me a copy of the book together with the promo sheet on the author? The chances of it being reviewed are very slim indeed, which is why I never ask authors/translators to send me copies of their books, I only ask publishers, who don't personally lose out on postage or the cost of the book when sending it. What month did it come out? It's only worth sending if it is going to be published for the first time in the UK in late July or later. If it is coming out later than late July 2012, ask your publisher to e mail me on leyla.sanai@talktalk.net and I'll look at the book, but I can only judge it completely objectively, which I know you'll understand.
cheers Eric
all best
leyla

[Eric]

Dear Leyla,

Thank-you for your reasoned reply.

I have known for quite a while that your medical situation is trying. So I have not tried to push it too much. I too try to hold back and not lash out. I have a very long fuse, but when it is lit, things do tend to go bang. And the translation of this book, i.e. "Sailing Against the Wind" has a symbolic dimension. Indeed, I feel as if I am in the shoes of the protagonist at times.

Let's put the thing in perspective. I've only translated three books by Jaan Kross out of the five published by British and American publishers. I am by no means the translator who has slogged away quietly the most. There are people such as Jouko Vanhanen in Finland who must, along with a couple of other colleagues, have translated a dozen Kross books between them. But that is into the Finnish language, not the world's most famous bridge language. Finland is right next door to Estonia, the countries share a common history of subjugation and colonialism by the same countries, and the languages are very similar. But this fact did mean that the other two Kross novels translated into English were translated via the Finnish versions by Anselm Hollo, someone of the Beat Generation and a friend of Allan Ginsberg.

I do not blame my present publisher, i.e. Northwestern University Press, for not promoting the book. They are a small university set-up with no more than half a dozen people working there. They are not Random House with its huge marketing machine. They chose to take a long-term approach to farming out review copies. The people who have made me angry are, however, the two people running the Estonian Literature Information Centre (ELIC) in Tallinn, a small set-up, admittedly, but they have, for several years now, put all their eggs in the book fairs basket, and not updated their website much. So that people cannot refer to up-to-date Estonian literary information online, but are very much more reliant on what these two employees of ELIC tell them face-to-face at book fairs. And everyone has their favourite authors.

Last year, I pointed this out to them, but they took umbrage, and wrote some nasty things back. This may have caused them to totally ignore my translation this year. But as I have suggested, not least by drawing people's attention to the Wikipedia article, this is a major author from a small country (like Iceland), not a representative of a "minor literature". When Jaan Kross celebrated his 80th birthday in the year 2000, this was a national event housed, if I remember rightly, at the biggest theatre in Tallinn, the Estonia, and with all the literati and others present, plus his foreign translators, including me. The then President, Lennart Meri, attended (I spoke to him briefly). I even read out a speech in Kross' honour in Estonian at a smaller event the next day.

But the literary scene in Estonia has moved on. Kross is now dead, and has been sidelined surprisingly quickly by some. Luckily his books continue to enjoy reprints in Estonia, but nowadays younger - but not necessarily more important - literary figures are promoted abroad. The focus has changed. I could say, tongue-in-cheek, but with a strong element of truth, that the KGB (embodied by the Estonian literary promotion society at the time, VEKSA) managed to promote Kross' works better than they are being promoted now. Russia was, during Soviet times, adamant to show that the Soviet Union, with its policy of "friendship among nations" also had significant writers from the little republics surrounding the Russian core. Jaan Kross was wily enough not to become a full-time dissident; he had already spent 8 years in Siberia, and didn't want a repeat of this. He went along with certain things, so that his books, often crafty critiques of Soviet life disguised as historical novels, could get published and promoted by what you could perhaps term his enemies, although even the Estonian Communist élite were themselves very ambiguous about being dominated by Russia.

[leyla]

Thanks, Eric. I'm sorry to hear of the troubles you had with the ELIC. And Kross does sound a very interesting writer. It sounds like he had a fascinating life, full of both trials and rewards, and he was certainly held in very high esteem both nationally and internationally. I would like to see this book if your publisher can send me a copy. Do pass on my e mail address to them if you want to. And I am always interested in hearing about translated works, so in the future, please feel free to ask for any you think might be of worthy of review to be sent to me. I am sorry that I don't have time to respond to individual translators and writers, and I think in the interests of objectivity, it is probably also best if I stick to accepting work from publishers, so there is no direct contact between the writer/translator and myself. I have been in awkrward situations in the past where fb friends have asked me to review a book by a friend, and I have asked for the book to be sent and read part of it only to realise it is not a book I can review. It then creates a bit of awkwardness for the friend. Much better to have it done impartially and professionally by the publishers. Thanks.
All best,
leyla

[Bubba]

My post upthread was unnecessarily hard on Leyla, and I apologize to her. It's not, after all, as if she reviews only books by Geoff Dyer!

[Eric]

OK, we've had our little spats and made our apologies, so let's focus on Jaan Kross for a bit. This is his thread.

Kross did write quite a bit, and what is important is that he combines an awareness of national feelings (not "nationalism") with a sophisticated narrative style. The inner monologue, as I believe it is called, is a key feature in most of his novels, in other words, the novels are often wholly or partly first-person narration, and this inner monologue often takes place when the narrator is in a problematical situation, or is looking back to one. So Kross is neither a national propagandist, nor does he simply tell "a thumping good story". There's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing of thought, agonising at times, because people in his novels are often on the horns of dilemma.

[leyla]

Just wanted to say thanks, Bubba, no need for an apology but gratefully accepted nonetheless. Eric, Kross does sound worth reading. Let me know a few months ahead when and if the another book of his is translated into English, and I'll check it out. Right, two reviews to write now in one week, so I'd better get on.