Diego Marani: New Finnish Grammar

[hdw]

I really like the sound of this novel, which is reviewed by Nicholas Lezard in his Paperbacks slot in the Guardian Review section. I quote:

"It was, naturally, the flatness of the title that attracted me: it bespoke, in its quiet confidence, a deep, rich and eventful inner life. And besides, I have some inkling of what Finnish grammar is like: fiendishly complex, basically, and related to no other languages on earth save Hungarian and Estonian (I simplify). Learning Finnish involves not only beginning to appreciate the most beautiful of languages, but grasping, among many, many other things, 15 cases for nouns, such as the inessive, the elative, the ilative, and, everyone's favourite, the abessive. I will return to the abessive in a minute.

The story is simple, as the best stories are. A man is found on a quayside in Trieste during the second world war, having been clubbed almost to death. A tag inside the seaman's jacket he is wearing bears a Finnish name: Sampo Karjalainen. When he regains consciousness he has no memory, no language. He is simply a consciousness devoid of context. The doctor on the hospital ship riding at anchor, though, is Finnish, and, with nothing else to go on, starts teaching his gradually recovering patient Finnish, in the hope that memories will be triggered, and he can rediscover who he is. Eventually, when Karjalainen is well enough, he is sent to Helsinki, where perhaps he can find more fragments of his identity.

Now, the concept of learning languages is something close to Diego Marani's heart: as well as working as a senior linguist for the EU, he has invented Europanto, a language without rules which can incorporate words from as many European languages as you like in order to help yourself be understood. (You can speak it. "Je suis going für ein walk" is, I gather, perfectly acceptable Europanto.)

... There is more than one reason, one comes to realise, why Marani - an Italian - chose Finnish as the lost language of his hero. This is a novel about loss, about not having: asked by a nurse what he likes most about the language, Karjalainen replies: "the abessive ... a declension for things we haven't got: koskenkorvsatta, toivatta, no koskenkorva [Finnish vodka], no hope, both are declined in the abessive. It's beautiful, it's like poetry! And also very useful, because there are more things we haven't got than that we have." ...

The book is translated by Judith Landry and is published by Dedalus at £9.99.

Harry

[Eric]

The book certainly looks amusing. I found the URL at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011...-marani-review

Those of us that know a bit of Finno-Ugrian are automatically interested. I wonder how the author gets round the fact that he doesn't want to introduce too many words that the readers won't get. I suppose it's the learning process that's important, not all the things learnt. Sampo is also the name of a leading insurance company. I wonder whether they sponsored him. It must have been a very special book to translate. I couldn't quite read the name of the translator on the tiny book cover. I think it says Christine Donougher. I see that it's a Dedalus book. Shows they're keeping their head above water.

The abessive case is pretty rare, but they use it a good deal more in Estonian. I wonder how much Finnish Lezard has actually heard. He waxes lyrical, but when you hear a drunken fifty-year-old man shouting "Voi vittu, perkele, jumal'autta!", it doesn't have the same aura as when a sylphlike blonde is whispering it into your ear.

[hdw]

See my original post, where I said that the translator is Judith Landry.

I have a translation of the Kalevala with an excellent introduction by Keith Bosley. The Sampo is a mysterious object whose nature is never made clear in the epic.

Harry

[Ziggurat]

If I may quibble a bit, the words mentioned above would rather be koskenkorvatta and toivotta, although I would be surprised if anyone has ever actually uttered those words. Those are not cases where you would use the abessive. If you wanted to say you are hopeless, you would probably say that you are toivoton.

[mesnalty]

I'd never heard of this author, but the book sounds interesting, especially since I've learned some (extremely) rudimentary Finnish. I'll have to pick it up.

[Eric]

I can see the name Judith Landry now on the Amazon website. They must have been showing the cover of another book. Has she translated other things from Italian?

[hdw]

I can see the name Judith Landry now on the Amazon website. They must have been showing the cover of another book. Has she translated other things from Italian?

Here she is -

http://www.dedalusbooks.com/catalog.php?id=107&s=4

Harry

[Stewart]

Quite enthused to a see a thread on this book. Following Lezard's review, I bought a copy of the book and proceeded straight to it. It never quite engaged me for the first thirty pages - but that just may have been because I had other things that needed doing and the gap between reads rendered it too difficult to resume. I suspect, though, that my limited reading didn't quite scratch at what Lezard outlined was still to come. Would certainly go back to it.

(Aside, the quality of the actual book feels a bit down on Dedalus's usual: the covers wilted quite quickly.)

[Liam]

New Marani novel being translated into English, for those that care.