Originally published
by the now-defunct New Warsaw Express on May 12th 2006
Sounding Off in Translation
Polish literature was
turned on its head in 2002 when 20-year-old Dorota Maslowska published her
novel ‘White and Red’, (or ‘Wojna Polsko Ruska Pod Flaga Bialo- Czerwona, as it
was then known) to universal acclaim.
Translated into English
only last year, the book brings us into the unhinged world of the Gdansk-based
wanderer Andrzej ‘Nails’ Robakowski who, constantly high on amphetamines,
lurches through incidents with a series of other characters in a fit of
misanthropic despair.
What gripped Polish
readers when they picked up ‘White and Red’ was that it was the first novel in
the language to employ the street vernacular of the post-communist period. Gone
were the long strokes of literary introspection beloved by classic writers such
as Witold Gombrowicz.
Here was something raw and
immediate, analogous to the bewildering pace of change in the real world of 21st
Century Poland.
“I think it has been worth
living 40 years to finally read something so interesting,” wrote critic Marcin
Swietlicki, after reading the book when it first came out.
The English version -
translated ably enough by Benjamin Paloff – captures much of the frantic
impatience of the original but one constantly feels a nagging sense of distance
from the essence of the book. One
oft-quoted parallel for Maslowska’s work has been the impact of Irvine Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting’,
written in the harsh working-class vernacular of his native Edinburgh.
In Warsaw in March, Welsh
summed up some of his reservations about ‘White and Red’.
“I have a problem when I
read any European novel translated into English,” he told NWE. “They either
sound as if the characters come from some small American town or somewhere in
inner London. Translation often has the impact of taking something that you can
tell is fairly specific – and has its own vitality and culture – and homogenising
it. I think that translators could sometimes be much more creative.”
Yet he said he appreciated
‘White and Red’ despite all that.
“I enjoyed the book but kind
of felt I was missing out by not reading it in Polish. I could feel there was
much more to it than I was getting,’ he went on. “It was like seeing the top of
an iceberg.”
Since ‘White and Red’ was
published in English, reviewers have been queuing up to compare Maslowska to
Welsh. Even with the limitations inherent in the translated version, readers
are still treated to much the same urgency and high-octane bile in ‘White and
Red’ as they experienced in ‘Trainspotting’. It is in that feature of the novel
that lies both its strength and weakness.
Nails’ rant begins after
being ditched by his girlfriend Magda. The tirade continues as he careers
around town, slipping the odd nugget of texture – that the city is up in arms
against the ‘Russkies’ – the traders from Russia who are supposedly violating
Polish soil - and that Nails has himself
had it with Poland’s brand new model of capitalism.
His response is to get
off his head on speed and try it on with various women, at turns a goth, who
pukes up stones into his bath, a psychotic amphetamine freak who tears around
his flat looking for a fix and a truly scary arch-Catholic, who lectures him on
the evils of tobacco and alcohol. Nail’s angst intensifies when he fails to have
sex with any of them and as a reader you experience it as if he is shouting in
your ear.
Welsh’s prose is often the
same. The characters reel off a litany of tales and complaints without taking a
breath. In neither Maslowska nor Welsh does there seem time to take a pause for
thought. This is because of their preoccupation with how a novel ‘sounds’, as
Welsh himself said.
But we do not read with
our ears. Sometimes we need to switch off from the din and feel prose seep into
our minds without any noise, taking us from the daily grind and leading to the
gradual throb of enlightenment. Maslowska and Welsh, products of our
high-volume times, could do with turning it down just a touch.
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