The Smallnesses of War: "The Two of Swords, 3 volumes" by K.J. Parker

“I always say that music can’t be about anything, it ought to be as close to abstract as it’s possible to get in an imperfect world. Otherwise you get stuff like violins trying to sound like rainwater, which is very well, but rain does it so much better. What’s for dinner?”

In “The Two of Swords, Volume 3” by K. J. Parker

This book in particular, and K. J. Parker’s SF in general, reminds me of a quote by Yevgeny Zamyatin:

“It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.”

Zamyatin was referring to the deadening effects of Stalinist oppression on the arts but I think his quote can apply to bureaucratic and warring societies like ours as well. Go and apply for a bank loan or talk to a lawyer about an insurance claim and experience some treasured moments with the dead-alive.

Despite being fortunate enough to be married with kids and have enough close friends in my life, I like solitude. I've always identified with Graham Greene's protagonists, as well as those appearing in many of Haruki Murakami's stories. Maybe that’s why I'll probably never outgrow the teenage thing (SF, AOR music, dabbling in programming, rugby, etc.).

Anyway, veering slightly off topic, I realised recently that there isn't enough time left to probably read all the books I've ever wanted to read, which struck me as a bit sad. Imagine how you would feel when you got to the last page of the last remaining book which you wanted to read. It is a bit like money. It might seem to be a good idea to run out of it just as you get to the point of dying but it is probably more sensible to still have some left when arriving at that destination.

That is why love both Montaigne and now K. J. Parker: Montaigne in his essays (a genre he is credited with having invented), he seems to have covered the whole of human subjective experience and emotion, questioning and reflecting on everything from various perspectives; K.J. Parker is able to that with SF. His SFional-Weltanschauung reads like a never ending essay. We can think nowadays that even Shakespeare was indebted to Montaigne, most obviously in “The Tempest”. One little detail is that at during the period of Renaissance humanism, when the orthodox view was that man is the measure of all things, he asked whether his cat might not be playing with him as much as he plays with his cat. His radical scepticism paved the way for much of the scientific and philosophical progress of following centuries. Moreover, his writings always suggest a thoroughly reasonable and pleasant person. The same happens with K.J. Parker regarding the way he perceives the way society, and war in particular, works (or should work I should say). I have just finished reading "The Two of Swords". It is one of the most honest and insightful books on war, and leaves the reader in no doubt as to the dreadful waste and utter stupidity of war. Politicians, officers, you name it, are very much like the rest of us. They fail because we fail and we fail because success is not possible. No system, economic, social or political can be designed which is human-proof. The selfish urges within us will emerge in our actions and words corrupting whatever beautiful structures we create for national and international order. The best we can do is seek to transform ourselves and those around us into kinder, gentler versions of ourselves. This is a struggle that never ends and begins anew every time a new child is born. Success is only ever temporary and only ever a mitigation not a total victory. For all that it is an effort worth making but utopian dreams of a New Jerusalem are more of a hindrance than a help along the way. But it's one thing to say war is stupid, another thing is to say it's futile. It’s such a facile, throwaway line. Of course war is terrible, and futility is certainly a frequent aspect. It’s like saying that murder is bad, and claiming some moral superiority because you’ve said it. But irrespective of the claims of pacifists, it takes only one side to start a war. It’s just that a war with only one side is more commonly called a genocide. So rather than take a simplistic, clean view, one that protects your own conscience at the (possible) expense of other people’s lives, why not instead try to understand that war is deeply complex. 

Certainly the political machinations of the European Powers were not sufficient reason to fight a war. The First World War was the archetypal war of futility. And the Crusades, and the Alexandrian Campaigns, and Vietnam, and Iraq, and a host of other wars can also be properly categorised as futile. But the Second World War was not, nor the response to the Bosnian Conflict, nor the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In almost all belligerence, the real causes are hidden behind a veil of patriotism, religion or politics. These are the methods by which warmongering leaders get their populations to suspend their usual moral code. If a war is fought for any of these reasons, it is almost certainly futile. But if it is fought to protect people from these things, it might be far from futile. The nation state is not unlike feudal society like the one Parker depicts, with the only difference being is that we elect our kings and nobles now. The middle class and the poor for the most part enforce their will all under the guise of democracy, socialism, communism or theocracy. The ruling class were prepared to sacrifice some of their own young on the altar of conquest during the WWI. It’ no wonder then that they showed such utter contempt for the lives of the working class as they flung them into the slaughter in their countless thousands. And again in many conflicts since where the ruling and officer class remained well away from the butchery as the working class did their bloody work for them.

Parker has written a major essay in the form of fiction, the best kind there is. And can I even call it SF of the fantasy kind. There’s no better speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy writer at the moment. What a delicious way to wrap things up 2017-wise. No other SF writer could put into words and philosophise at the same time the question “on how humanity can ever achieve the peace between people”, or “is our nature itself the well spring of conflict?”. If a large country makes a claim and can seize some land or other by little effort, e.g., Ancient Rome wrt Israel, the lot of the many can be said to be improved, while the lot of a few would be reduced. But doesn't all change adversely affect a few? What drives the change, real material gain overall, or the satiation of a covetous and acquisitive nature? Either way it's always the prospect of the future that capture my SFional imagination. Is the present really so bad? Perhaps we need to learn to savour what we have in the present rather than what we could have in the future. Is it our inadequacy, which drives us to gamble all on gaining something more? And what is our inadequacy other than a mistaken belief that we are in some way inadequate? Perhaps that is the pivot point, believing that we are acceptable and loved?

The way the bit of a scrap between Forza and Senza in the middle of the desert is narrated ("show-don't-tell" in play) is worth by itself the price of having these three huge tomes on my bookshelf.

NB: Read the three volumes published late 2017.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

The Society of Cousins: “The Moon and the Other” by John Kessel

“[…]’The One and the Other’. But who is the One, and who is the Other, eh? Male or female?”

In “The Moon and the Other” by John Kessel

I feel that there is a big dividing line between good authors and great authors in science fiction and fantasy; I always find that there are loads of books where I enjoyed the characterisation and romped along in the story and had a good time, but very few where you feel that you need two days after finishing it, just to complete appreciating it. Recently, John Kessel is one writer who has reached those moments for me, the same with Dexter Palmer and, in his lovelier works K. J. Parker. Having said that, I would reserve judgment on whether being literary in style means you are actually good. I think there are plenty of writers of what most would consider 'pulp' style genre fiction, who are infinitely more engaging and thought provoking than those involved in intricate lyrical stylings and homages. It's not exclusively one way or the other though; I've enjoyed Murakami just as much as I've enjoyed Stephenson. I grew up with SF, but read less and less of it now. Perhaps ironically, my feelings for the genre are fairly well summed up by Master Ultan's words to the apprentice Severian:

"I began, as most young people do, by reading the books I enjoyed. But I found that narrowed my pleasure, in time, until I spent most of my hours searching for such books".

I gradually stopped reading much SF in my mid-20s, after spending too many hours scouring the SF sections of Bertrand Bookstore and finding far too many re-hashings of the same few ideas, themes and characters.

Well, quite.

I'm sure there are still great SF books being written. But it can be infuriatingly difficult to find them among the mountain of juvenilia. I imagine this is because publishers see a lucrative market in escapist SF for teenagers and young adults; a market that re-cycles itself every five years or so, making it less sensitive to repetition.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, but surely there's also a market for intelligent speculative fiction written by and for people who are interested in ideas but who also value good writing and strong characterisation?

What does Kessel bring to SF that others can’t? Well, for starters, he brought me “Corrupting Dr. Nice” one of the finest works of SF ever put on paper. I must write something about it soon. But now, it’s time for “The Moon and the Other”, also one hell of a SF specimen. Some friends of mine who also read SF as a way of living, have been giving the book stick. I’m not sure why. The way some people rant, rave, whine and drool, you'd think "political correctness" meant "execution of the first-born male child in every household" rather than "giving all sections of society a fair crack of the whip". In any case, I fail to see what's so dreadfully "politically correct" about letting an author use reversed character roles with a higher voice and some slightly different genitalia, and playing in a completely fictional Moon-Space-Being... can anyone explain? Listen mate. If you think that a fictional character, from a fictional moon race who has been shown to switch sex when they regenerate should not be a woman (and the inverse would also apply), then you are part of the problem and you have no business reading SF for grown-ups. Men and women? “Two vines, intertwining, never meeting. Men and women, men and men, women and women. The one and the other, the living and the dead, irrevocably woven together, never touching.” Enough said.

Kessel built characters that do not seem at all contrived which is a very tall order when it comes to SF. I can't help feel the following argument permeating so much of today’s SF: "he's a timelord, he can regenerate into any sex" is a bit redundant in era where gender reassignment is increasingly common place. It’s arguably easier for a human to change sex now than it is a timelord; they don't have to nearly die then become a completely different person to do so. With that in mind, what exactly would be wrong with James Bond having a sex change in one of the films? Or a new Sherlock as a woman? Or bring back “Only Fools and Horses” and have Del identifying as female. I don't think any of this should be off the table. Should a writer fret about "How will a female character fight the baddies if she has to keep worrying about her period?" Etc., etc. All I can say is I've watched every episode of 24 and Jack Bauer didn't once get his cock out to clean under his foreskin so have some faith in SF writers to get around issues such as bodily hygiene. It doesn’t matter what each character does as long as it’s credible. That’s the only thing that interests me. As Kessel so rightly puts it:

“I am the one.

You are the other.

I am the other.

You are the one”

And yes, I don't think women are 'naturally' any nicer or kinder than men - which seems to surprise some people! I have always taught my children that an arsehole is an aresehole - they come in all genders, religions, colours, etc. Every individual is responsible for their own behaviour. There's definitely hints of gender swapping and questioning related to broader themes of humanity's relationship to the divine and to nature in the novel. At its heart are themes of “orphan-hood”. see a lot of bad things in modern society – I recently saw a TV piece on vietnamese slaves being used to cultivate vegetable farms in Alentejo. Slaves in 21st century Portugal! There's the occasional piece about FGM. There's pieces on austerity hurting the disabled, etc., etc., etc. To think that any one piece of history is better than another is stupid and fatuous. We tend towards a slow progression (no warlords running the country today, but we do have localised gangsters and organised criminals). What we didn't have back then was identity politics that looks at a couple of issues and uses them as the only bell-weather of progress. "Oh, look, you can be openly gay today" they say (not realising you could be back them too), or "oh look, women can go to work all day like men do" and ignore everything else. I doubt we've really progressed much when some women are locked away all day, and only allowed out dressed in a tent, with a male to make sure she doesn't do anything. Where our kids will never afford a house or career or kids of their own - unless they're on benefits. Where the economic system is so skewed towards the rich in a way they never were before. Yeah, we've made progress... and taken too many steps backwards in the name of looking away from uncomfortable truths. I think the 80s, and the 70s were a lot more honest and fairer than today. By a long way.

How does Kessel’s attempt compare with “The Handmaid’s Tale”? The former is infinitely superior to the latter. I seem to remember reading “A Handmaid's Tale” and thinking “Oh Dear this is what a mainstream author thinks is science fiction.” We'd just been through a complete literary revolution in the early '70s in science fiction writing, led by Harlan Ellison and others, producing ideas and stories against which Atwood's Tale seemed very tame. Unfortunately, the transference of SF from books to video, while increasing its popularity, has led to a regression almost back to the days of Asimov and Pohl among writers seeking the next Star Wars. The real SF is still in books, unfortunately not in “The Handmaid's Tale.”

Kudos to Kessel for writing such frigging good SF in this day and age. One of my best 2017 reads so far, be it SF or other stuff.

SF = Speculative Fiction

2016 Pessoa Award: Frederico Lourenço

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"New Hellenic and German Essays" (above-mentioned picture) was the book with which I first discovered Frederico Lourenço in 2008. At the time I was quite familiar with other distinguished Portuguese Germanists. To wit: José Gomes Monteiro, Paulo Quintela, Vasco Graça Moura, João Barrento, Viriato Soromenho Marques, and others, but I hadn't yet come across Frederico Lourenço as a Germanist. And what a surprise it was. 

What Frederico Lourenço has been doing for the Portuguese culture in the last years is huge. Portugal is the country where Paulo Coelho, Cristina Ferreira (Portuguese TV host) and José Rodrigues dos Santos (Portuguese TV host) are best seller authors!

My native language is Portuguese, and my command of English is nothing to be ashamed of, If I may say so, so I read English authors in the original. When I can get them in English; sometimes I will have to buy (or get gifted) a German or Portuguese  translation - some of which will anger me no end, after I've spotted one or two completely false idiom translations, which make nonsense of a sentence... It's a strange, but proud feeling to be able to recognise the (ghost of the) original English idiom or phrase which has been replaced with a false one - but it does wreck a book for me. That's one of the reasons for reading the works worth reading in the original, be it English or German.

A few years ago I undertook the translation of two slightly obscure poems by two also obscure Portuguese poets (*). This was for a friend who wanted to read them and there were no German translations available. The experience was quite eye-opening. The problem was not that my German was inadequate, but that it was not up to representing the poetry of the poems. After that I did many more translations from Rilke, Celan, and others (from German into English/Portuguese and vice-versa), and my preference is always to read in the original even if I struggle. I also did some writing in German just to see whether I could, as well as writing some book reviews in German, but my first love will always be German poetry. That's why I always feel uneasy reading translated poetry. How much of the musicality and rhythm is lost? That's why I have a crave for bilingual editions. Double the enjoyment. Celan, Schiller, Hölderlin, Rilke must be read in German, Shakespeare in English, and Pessoa in Portuguese. Failing that I hope for a translation that contains the ideas of the poet. Anyway, translations can't be trusted.

Some years ago I stupidly set myself the task of reading at least one book by every Nobel Laureate novelist. The ones writing in English and German I read a few of them. I think it was Jay Rubin (translator of Haruki Murakami - I know, not a Nobel Laureate as yet) who said something like every translation is a new work of art, which I think is very telling. To my knowledge, Murakami has three translators, Rubin, Phillip Gabriel and Alfred Birnbaum. Although I speak not one word of Japanese and consequently have no clue which of these three translators is most 'faithful' (in a kind of word-for-word way) to the original Japanese, I have come to be able to recognise the translator from their own style and to have a definite favourite - Rubin. Does this make Rubin as Murakami's translator of choice? I don't know. Poetry and prose are so much more than just the words. There's the style, the tempo and the meaning behind the words. I would suggest that reading a fiction book in the original is the only thing to do, a translation can give you a snapshot, a taster, but no more than that. The words in every language are so much more than just their surface meaning, they all have a whole baggage of associations spreading behind them which convey so much.

Frederico Lourenço is not exactly recognised for this formal translations. As far as I know, there aren't any, if I don't account for his translations in his essays. What makes Lourenço stand out when it comes to the German Language is his passion for the German Culture and Literature (that's why he's a Germanist at heart): "Sobre a Ifigénia na Táurida de Goethe" (On Iphigenia in Tauris by Goethe), "Notas sobre o 'amor grego' em Goethe e Schiller" (Notes on Goethe's 'Greek Love'), "Camões em Viena: Um poema de Johann Mayrhofer" (Camoens in Vienna: A Poem by Johann Mayrhofer), "Templo(s) na audição? Problemas no primeiro Soneto a Orfeu de Rainer Maria Rilke" (Temple(s) in the Audition? Problems in the first Sonnet to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke), "A Morte em Veneza de Thomas Mann, novela homérica" (Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, Homeric novel), "Hoffmansthal, Schwarzkopf e a primeira frase de Maschallion no Cavaleiro da Rosa" (Hoffmansthal, Schwarzkopf and Maschallion's first phrase in Der Rosenkavalier), "Beton e Der Untergeher de Thomas Bernhardt: retrospectiva e prospecto" (Beton and Der Untergeher by Thomas Bernhardt: retrospective and prospectus), "Der Cembalist" (original short-story written originally in German by Frederico Lourenço).

I liked his short-story Der Cembalist so much that I'll post here the first page:

(*) 

NB: 2015 Pessoa Award: Rui Chafes

Thoughts on Translation: "The Strange Library" by Haruki Murakami

4:25 pm 14 December 2014

Published December 2nd 2014

My first Murakami experience.

I’ve always avoided Murakami. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I don’t read Japanese. Or maybe it’s because I’m very particular about the use of stream-of-consciousness and magic realism in a story. Saramago is to stream-of-consciousness what Borges is to magic realism. José Saramago is for me the Nirnava when it comes to the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique and Borges is the magic realism counterpart. Everyone else I always found wanting when it came to these two types of narrative.

Unfortunately this vignette is not a good example of stream-of-consciousness, due to the fact that it’s very short. This story is another thing altogether. What we have here is something Kafka would have liked (or not) to have written. It’s nightmarish, haunting, and very peculiar indeed. Setting: a library posing as a torturous entity, a “sheep man”, a mysterious girl, a dog, and an old man. As with Saramago, we have lots of symbolism and imagery, ie, there’s a lot of meat to sink your teeth into. Putting all this imagery and symbolism aside, at the end of the day, it’s about a boy imprisoned in a library, but underneath it all, it’s a tale about loss, fear and loneliness. I’ve been ranting lately about the short-story being a superior kind of story when compared to the longer forms (eg, the novel). This short-story, because that’s what we are really talking about here, has much more to it than meets the eye, ie, stuff to be discovered and pondered over. I’m planning on reading it again very shortly to discover its inner workings.

I’m always a sucker for translated fiction, mainly because of its tendency to defy expectations. Sometimes it’s even better than reading it in the original, because if the translation is good, we have a dual interaction with two authors: the one writing it, and the one doing the translation (in this case Ted Goossen). We have wonderful examples of this tandem work in translation: Rilke vs Mitchel (into English), Rilke vs Vasco Graça Moura (into Portuguese), etc. I still remember one of Gass’ translations of Rilke where he struggled, I think in the Elegies, with the concept ofInnerweltraum, Weltraum, Raum in English. Gass’ struggle was palpable and sometimes painful to read (his overblown style of translating does not sit well with me).

I’ve read all of Rilke in German. Then I started getting curious on well he would be translated into another language, in my case, English and Portuguese. After reading him in translation I came back to reading Rilke in the original, but I still maintain that we learn a lot by reading him in two (or three) different languages. This duality, German vs English/Portuguese, is very enriching. It allows different takes on the same piece of text, because reading something in a different frame of reference that every language implies makes all the difference at the end of the day. What I wouldn’t give to be able to read Murakami in Japanese…

I firmly believe Rilke is impossible to translate. Rilke in translation is another thing altogether. Is it the same with Murakami? I need someone who reads Japanese to answer this…

As a bonus, the coloured pages and the design makes it also worth reading.