Airmail (20 page)

In a hurry but affectionate

     Tomas

8 Nov, ’70

Dear Tomas,

I’ll ask some esteemed loonies in the literary world which time of the year they think most propitious for your descent—April or early October—and then I’ll set to work arranging some readings, and parties. If I’m lucky, I’ll figure a way to get travel expenses—your air fare—from some overfed, understaffed Scandinavian Cultural Foundation. But I do think maybe applying for Västerås funds might be useful too. If you get two travel grants, one could be used for travel
inside
the United States, which is costly too, especially the medical expenses incurred every time you step out of the railway station at night—bandages, arm splints, etc. We’ll have a good time—if you had travel expenses, you could even get out to California and see the soft underbelly of the United States.

I just came back from three days in the poet-hothouse at the State Univ of Buffalo. They get wonderfully excited there, and read everything they can find. After a reading one night there, a young man came up to me and asked me, “Are you going to do any more translations from Swedish?” with his eyes shining. It was very beautiful. I said Yes, yes, yes, and he thanked me, and rushed out into the night (trying to see the stars through the Buffalo smog, probably).

I think mörkerseende is simply night vision. Cats have good night vision, horses do not.

I have a question for you—what are the two best articles written about you in Swedish? Can you send me a copy of each? I think I’ll try to get them translated and printed here—several people have offered to do it.

[closing lost]
    Robert

12 Nov, ’70

Dear Tomas,

Almost every day now I’ll send you a new poem translated from
Night Vision.
Here is the first. As you see, I don’t understand “sisu.” (You sent me some notes on the poem, but I stupidly left them in Minnesota.) I’m not sure either about SARA. (What it means, or why it is capitalized.)

Meanwhile I have a few questions about other poems. Please be patient (be kind to your web-footed friends):

In “The Bookcase,” I’m not sure why the mercury pellet is described as rising. Doesn’t one usually see a mercury pellet sliding along a table horizontally? I have difficulty imagining it climbing. I’m not sure I understand if you mean there to be a connection between that and the inability to turn the head. And for the first of those two phrasings, which sentence do you think is closer to the muscle-feeling of the Swedish:

You couldn’t turn your head away.

or

You couldn’t get your head to turn.   ?

A second sentence I don’t understand—this time it is really vocabulary—is the last sentence of the second paragraph. I don’t understand “bär av,” unless it means “wear off.” And the bookcase is still stronger—than what?

*******

In “Preludes”: in Part III, I can’t understand the grammar of the clause beginning “trots att.” (unless it means: “despite the continuing circumstances of grief, it is the lightest apartment in the whole city.”)

In the sentence beginning “Saker” I can’t understand the words “med om,” though I understand the meaning of the sentence. Forgive my new typewriter—its mother was frightened by a Latin manuscript, and it doesn’t believe in pauses...

In “Med älven,” there are “igenkistrade ögon.” Are those eyelids stuck together by some sort of glue or are they merely pressed together (temporarily) by their owner?

*****

I just went in for lunch, and told Carol about the hen poem, which I managed to recite for her. When I finished, she said, “Tomas is marvelous. The whole poem is a revelation. And Tomas is a storyteller too, that’s what’s so good—so it is a revelation with story telling.” Or story telling with revelation.

Your hard-working friend...I’m the only person

in California working!...

Robert

What a wonderful poem!

[on envelope]

Thank you for “Skiss i oktober.” But “speak for yourself,” as my Grandmother used to say when I told her we were all descended from apes.

“Jag är jordens.” Or am I wrong? I don’t know.

Sorry to hear about BLM. Soon
The Sixties
will be the only magazine left alive? I worked on
Seventies
1 last night. You’re all over it.

12 Nov, ’70

Dear Tomas,

Please comment! I couldn’t get in “too long” for the stairway because of the adjective problem in English. I could try “lengthy”—but the sound is not so good.

The problem in the final stanza was to keep your repetition of “glömma” in “glömskans.” We can’t do that in English—“forgetfulness” and “oblivion” are both extremely weak and won’t join with a strong word like “hell.” So you can see how I tried to solve it.

For “snabbt snabbt” I can also say “quickly quickly” or “swiftly swiftly” but the first implies very short steps, and the second a kind of gliding motion.

I love the poem.

Your friend,

Robert

Västerås 18-11-70

Dear Robert,

I got 2 letters from you today, thank you, I am for the present confused and rather happy—suddenly there are not only unpaid bills covering my table. The other day I got the whole
Mörkerseende
in French—translated by a professor in Lyon and yesterday he wrote me that he has found a French publisher too. More sensational than that—some fellow is translating me into ICELANDIC. I also got a letter from Mr Leif Sjöberg in N.Y. ordering me to send immediately and by air my collected works to Miss May Swenson—he did not tell why. Is she going to criticize your translations somewhere? I think she is the same person as the poet May Swenson (whom I have not read), or is it a common American name? It sounds so incredibly Swedish.—

The letter from the professor in the solid brick house in Tennessee was shocking—I return it hereby. I did not know that Tennessee was that bad. (But it is in accordance with the election outcome, when Albert Gore was fired and replaced with a Nixon man.) Shall we make a reading in the Deep South? I have studied the election results carefully. A professor in Vermont has made a list of all the congressmen and given them an anti-war score from 0 to 100. I have gone through the list and looked after what people have been re-elected. For Minnesota there are 2 extreme doves: Fraser (100) and Karth (86). Both were re-elected. The moderate dove Blatnik (with a score of 70) was re-elected too. So was the hawk Zwach (25). The worst man in Minnesota with an anti-war score of only zero is NELSEN—I have not found out if he is re-elected or not. But another hawk, Langen (0) was fired. Were any of these people from your neighborhood?

Let us turn to the more pleasant battlefield of translating problems. I am very fond of your “Standing Up” version. I have the impression that you have caught the right tone—at the same time it should have the relaxed storyteller mood and the deadly serious mood of exposure before death.

I like the liberties of your translation. The start is almost SEXY “I managed to catch her!” The word “sisu” is the problem. It is a Finnish word, often used in Sweden in some special connections. Most frequently by sports journalists. It means “tenacity,” “stamina” and “fighting spirit”—not the theatrical fighting spirit of General de Gaulle but the silent, stubborn, discrete Finnish unconquerableness. I think the word got into our language during the Finland/Soviet war 1939–40 when the Finns were holding back a nation 50 times bigger than their own. But today the word is used mainly when describing sporting events, especially if some Finn is fighting. I think it is the first time the word has appeared in poetry, it gives a pleasant shock. It gives these trivial sports associations but at the same time the word is exotic, like the word “taboo” in the previous lines.

The Sara people is not a problem. Sara is a tribe in Chad. The scars on the cheeks are the signs of the tribe members (you can see it on the present, bad, president François Tombalbaye, who is a Sara). It has nothing to do with Sara in the Bible. “Tribe” is a better word than “race” here—it is not a special race, just a group among the Sudan negroes. I think the reason why I capitalized the whole word SARA was that if I wrote “Sara” I would think of the woman’s name, but “SARA” makes more exoticism.

The Bookcase.
Robert, I think you are too proud. Don’t despise your helpful friend, the dictionary. “Kvicksilverpelare” has nothing to do with “pellets.” “Pelare” is the same word as the English “pillar.” So it is an enormous column/pillar of mercury rising (as inside an enormous thermometer—when you have fever). I don’t know enough English to judge about the two proposals for head-turning expression. It means simply you must not turn your head away. “Bär av” is a typical spoken language expression. “Nu bär det av” a mother (or father) says when sitting with her child on a sled, just when they start sledding down a slope. In American films they often say “here we go” in such situations. Perhaps you should translate it “now when we set off” or something like that. Your last question “and the bookcase is stronger—than what?” is probably not to be answered. I don’t know. Well, it is unclear in Swedish, it could mean “the bookcase is still more powerful than I have succeeded to describe in the previous part of this damned poem.”

Preludes.
“Trots att det fortfarande råder sorg” is just a contrast to the lightness of the apartment, because mourning, grief, is associated with heaviness.

“Saker jag varit med om här” is a spoken language expression. It means simply: Things (events) I have taken part in (experienced)...“Saker” does not mean pieces of furniture, playthings, concrete substantives, it means
events.
Like “thing” in “a strange thing happened to me yesterday etc.”

Standing Up
again. You missed the word “varsamma.” Unimpeded but careful, when you stand up in a boat you have to be careful. The word “varsam” has nothing to do with cowardice, it is used when you take care of small babies or tiny animals, it has a certain tenderness around it.

Have Bonniers sent you
Böckernas Värld
with the prose poems? I am not responsible for the introduction about your life and work. It was
not
a very good introduction but I have seen much worse.

Love to you all! A word of praise from Carol’s lips is more dear to me than praise from hundreds of Pompidous. Monica sends her best greetings.

Tomas

P.S. Med älven. Their eyes are stuck together with some ideological glue.

Västerås 19-11-70

Dear Robert,

the messages go quickly down the long Atlantic mailroad in these days. I think your version of “The Name” is excellent except for one thing. You write “the Hell of unconsciousness...” But it is not “unconsciousness,” it is oblivion. I have in the previous part of the poem written: “I’m
fully conscious,
but that doesn’t help.” Well, then you can’t call it “unconsciousness” a few lines later. I don’t think it is important that “glömma” and “glömska” are related. You say that “forgetfulness” and “oblivion” are “weak” words in English. “Glömska” is rather weak in Swedish too. I think the problem is that in English the strong word “hell” comes first, and the weak word “oblivion” afterwards, so you get an anti-climax. In Swedish the weak word “glömskans” comes first and then as a terrible crescendo the strong word “helvete.” Then you get a climax, not an anticlimax. Is it possible to say “oblivion’s hell”? Another solution would be to use the words “wide awake” instead of “fully conscious” in the first part of the poem. That is all for tonight. Warm greetings

Tomas

20-11-70

Dear Robert,

Umph...Well, let us start the translation business again. Today we have “Breathing Space in July” or “Breathing Space July” as I prefer to call the poem (did you notice that?).

Monica thinks that your translations are a little better than the original texts. The poems grow a little. For instance this poem is bigger in space. You have translated the whole scene, from the Swedish archipelago with its small, gray bridges to a Californian scenery with “ocean docks,” it’s the Pacific no doubt.

I think the first stanza is wonderful.

The second stanza is “Californian.” I don’t know if I shall object to the “ocean docks” or not.

The third stanza sounds very good but the man is not necessarily r o w i n g (do you ever row in California?). Actually I wrote the stanza after a trip in a
motor boat,
around whole Runmarö.

That it is a
kerosene
lamp is never written in Swedish, but I think it is good to have it there. So no objections. But I am not sure what the “chimney” is? In my childhood we had, roughly, 2 types of kerosene lamps