Glimpses from a quarantine

This June has been a strange month for most of us, and the strangeness has taken different forms. For me, these four weeks have been especially marked by my return to Norway for the summer, and the preparations and practicalities this has entailed. Since I had spent the preceding six months in Sweden, there were several details concerning travel that needed to be sorted, and there was also the not so small matter of the quarantine upon my arrival in Norway. Luckily, as I live in the rural district, and since we, in my family, have a cabin that we normally rent to tourists, I could go into exile right in the middle of my favourite scenery. In this I have been extremely fortunate, and the lack of a stable Internet connection did, in the end, prove quite a boon as it did not provide me with distractions from the relaxing surroundings. I stayed in this cabin for eleven days, during which I enjoyed the many impressions of the landscape and its inhabitants - such as the flock of thirty-odd Canada geese that landed on the lake one morning - and during which I spent a lot of time reading. After months spent sitting in a small one-room building in Sweden worrying about the lack of concrete measures against the ongoing pandemic and going slightly mad, the wide, unrestrained vistas available to me were nothing short of paradisaical. As a conclusion to June 2020, I have gathered some glimpses from my quarantine here, and I hope to return to some of these excursions in future blogposts. 

On statues and collective memory

Two days ago, I wrote a thread on Twitter on the subject of statues and collective memory, as a response to the removal of a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol. Since tweets can often be difficult to find after a time, I decided to reiterate my point in this blogpost, because the discussion about whether or not we should remove statues of historical individuals who committed atrocities is a discussion that has surfaced before and will surface again.

Whenever we talk about statues, it is important to keep in mind their main function. Statues serve as vehicles for the perpetuation of a community's collective memory. This community might be a village, a city, a region, a country, or any other entity, but the function remains the same. Moreover, statues usually serve a celebratory function, they are raised so that whichever part of the community's history is represented by the statue, that is a part of its history that the community wishes to preserve in the collective memory. Here it must be emphasised that collective memory is always selective, and this means that a community decides which parts to remember and how to remember them. By erecting a statue of a historical individual or an event, that individual or event is almost always by default remembered in a positive way. This goes even for statues commemorating tragedies: By erecting statues, a tragedy is expressly deemed worthy of remembering.

Collective memory, however, is not a fixed entity, and it does not come fully form, it is something that is always in flux, and always subject to the changes of the community itself. Collective memory is a kind of spiritual property that belongs to the community, and as that community changes, so do the views, the priorities and the collective memory of the community. This, in turn, means that any community at any given point in time is completely in its own right to change what is being celebrated through its collective memory. A community is not beholden to the hero-worship or the tastes of past generations. When the community and its collective memory changes, this means that things that once were remembered in a positive way are no longer remembered in that way. The positive remembrance is changed or removed. This also means that if a community decides to remove the statue of an individual, the community is completely in its right to do so. The statue is not a fixed, unalterable fact of the community's landscape or memorial topography, it is part of the community's flux. There was a time when the statue did not exist, and it is no problem if there comes a time when the statue no longer exists. This is part of the evolution of collective memory.

One complaint that often is raised whenever there is talk of removing statues is that the removal of statues entails the removing of history from the collective memory. This is utter nonsense. Collective memory is not dependent on statues alone, but is maintained through a wide range of different media, including the individual recollections of each individual of that community. And as the historian David Olusoga pointed out in a recent article, the removal of a statue adds to the history and collective memory of the community in question, something which is proved by a poem by Vanessa Kisuule, Bristol City Poet of 2018-20, which commemorates the statue's removal and thus adds to the collective memory of Bristol. The often raised counterpoint of removing statues being equated to removing history comes, therefore, from an understanding of history that is both inexplicably static and rooted in a particular bias, believing that bias or that preference to be an almost natural law. History, however, does not work that way.

Furthermore, while the removal of a statue does not mean that history is removed, it is important to keep in mind that statues often do obscure an important part of history. Since statues are almost always by default celebratory, a statue of an individual who committed atrocities facilitates an erasure of the dark aspects of that person's past. It is a way of glossing over the crimes and sins of that individual, and this is in turn a useful reminder that collective memory also often entails collective forgetting, or a collective amnesia. A statue of a slave trader might not have been intended first and foremost to celebrate the slave trading, but by celebrating the slave trader the statue facilitates a collective forgetting of the slave trading, directing the attention instead to other aspects of that person's life. Memory and oblivion are not separate entities, they are parts of the same mechanism. If people truly are worried about the erasure of history, a good idea is to not put up statues of slave traders, warriors, abusers, corrupt individuals and so on.

Collective memory belongs to the community, and therefore the community is its steward. Statues that impose the celebration of atrocities - explicitly or implicitly - need not be part of the collective memory. To do away with such statues is therefore not a removal of history, it is a correction of memory.

Personally, I think it is a good thing to remove statues of individuals who committed atrocities, be they enslavers, warriors, or enablers of violence of any kind. Such statues are a form of hero-worship, and hero-worship is corrosive to society, especially when directed at those who have committed terrible, heinous, inhuman acts. It is therefore very heartwarming to see the footage of the statue in Bristol being tossed into the harbour, and it is heartwarming to see that calls for the removal of statues of King Leopold II of Belgium - the man who brought about unfathomable suffering in Belgian Congo - are now spreading across the country. This is how the collective memory is corrected, as a community has a reckoning with its past, and its part priorities.

Because Black Lives Matter - a short bibliography from my personal reading

As demonstrations against police violence is met with police violence throughout the United States, the racism against black people - an abomination sadly occurring across the globe - has once more become a widely-discussed topic. Tragically, it is a topic that never ceases to be relevant, and for that matter it never ceases to be talked about, but the issue of anti-black racism is only met with sustained media attention in the wake of tragedies such as the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. As calls for action against anti-black racism are vocalised, these are often met with dismissals from various media outlets, in various social media, or by sundry famous personalities. The statement that black lives matter is somehow found to be controversial by certain people, and the statement - which I wholeheartedly support - is often met with a mystifying response that all lives matter, as if such a statement was somehow a corrective. The response of all lives matter is usually presented by right-wingers, but occasionally also by non-black individuals who claim to be supportive of protests against racism, yet seem to find the phrase of black lives matter as too radical, too pugnacious, too on point. 

On social media, I have seen several black people currently living in the US - both of African ancestry and of African birth - express dismay and anger at non-black people who want the help of black people with finding books, films and other resources in order that non-black people might learn more about the experiences of black people and the systemic, deep-rooted, violent, all-pervasive racism that they encounter as an element embedded into their very existence, not only in the US but all over the world.

As a non-black person from Scandinavia, my experience with the world is so profoundly different from what black people in the US and elsewhere - including Scandinavia - are facing, and I try to see this difference as an incentive to listen to the voices of black people, and to read the works of black writers, but without demanding the time, the energy or the attention of black people. It is for this reason, that I have compiled this bibliography of writers of African ancestry or birth, i.e. descendants of African slaves brought to the Americas, African immigrants to the Americas, or Africans.

The following list is very short relative to what it could be, and this is because it includes only writers I myself have read. This is, therefore, only a starting point for anyone who wants to be exposed to a greater variety of literary voices, and who will find in this list several experiences and several cultures.

This list includes writers from the Americas and from Africa, and the list comprises a wide range of experiences. These writers have all broadened my horizon and provided me with knowledge of things about which I would otherwise have known little to nothing. The broad geographical range of this list is deliberate, to highlight the fact that anti-black racism is not limited to the US, and it is not limited to African-Americans. It is a list drawn from my reading as per today, and I keep looking for other writers to read. So feel free to add further suggestions in the comments.

This list will bring you into contact with writers who will expand your world and deepen your understanding. 

And, lest there be any doubt: Black lives matter. There can be no disagreement about this.

  

Anonymous works   

The Epic of Askia Mohammed (narrated by Nouhou Malio (Niger); translated by Thomas A. Hale)      


Germano Almeida (Cape Verde)    


Amadou Hampaté Bâ (Mali)


Marion Bethel (Bahamas)


Olympe Bhêly-Quénum (Benin)

           
Edward Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados)


Kwesi Brew (Ghana)


Aida Cartagena Portalatin (Dominican Republic)


Syl Cheney-Coker (Sierra Leone)   


Steve Chimombo (Malawi)


Merle Collins (Grenada)


Bernard Binlin Dadié (Ivory Coast)          


Mbella Sonne Dipoko (Cameroon)


Édouard Glissant (Martinique)


Nicolás Guillén (Cuba)        


Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (USA)


Kendel Hippolyte (Saint Lucia)


Shake Keane (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines)


Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua and Barbuda)


Henri Lopes (Democratic Republic of Congo)       


Ngwatilo Mawiyoo (Kenya)


Kei Miller (Jamaica)


Mitchell-Ottley, Carol (Saint Kitts and Nevis)


Lília Momplé (Mozambique)


Bai T. Moore (Liberia)


Hans D. Nahamuja (Namibia)


Christopher Okigbo (Nigeria)


Okot p’Bitek (Uganda)        


Angèle Rawiri (Gabon)        


Manuel Rui (Angola)


Barolong Seboni (Botswana)          


Joseph Brahim Seid (Chad)


Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal)  


Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)       


Véronique Tadjo (Ivory Coast)      


Alemseged Tesfai (Eritrea)  


Abdourahman A. Waberi (Djibouti)         


Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia)

Det er den draumen - a poem in two translations by Olav H. Hauge

As term draws to an end and work intensifies before the vacation, I have little time to do much work of my own. I have little time for research, I have little time to prepare possible projects, and I have little time to do much reading beyond that which is necessitated by my various duties as a supervisor and teacher. To unwind, and to calm my mind, I have turned to translating poetry, as seen in several blogposts from the past month in which I rendered works by Spanish poet Raquel Lanseros into Norwegian. This time, however, I go in the opposite direction, and I present one of my all-time favourite poems in two translations from Norwegian, one in Spanish, one in English.

The poem in question is "Det er den draumen" by Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge (1908-94), published in the poetry collection Dropar i austavind (Drops in an east wind) from 1966. The title of this collection should perhaps also be understood as a pun, since drápa is an Old Norse word for a praise-poem. Olav H. Hauge is one of the most important Norwegian writers of all time, and several of his poems have become an integral part of the Norwegian cultural identity. He was born in the village of Ulvik in Hardanger in the Western Norwegian fjords at a time when rural Norway was marked by poverty, rigid hierarchies and severe isolation in the winters.

While education in the districts was not very comprehensive, he did learn German, and he learned French on his own initiative, and he also learned English through reading materials sent by his uncle in the US, as well as through his friendship with the local librarian who had stayed in the US for several decades before returning home to Norway. Hauge was educated as a gardener, and he is still often referred to as the gardener from Ulvik.

Olav H. Hauge published his first collection of poems in 1946, Glør i oska (Embers in the ashes). These poems were marked by traditional rhyme scheme and a clear influence from Norwegian folklore, Norse mythology and Christian imagery. While all these elements remained throughout his writing years, he eventually became an avid proponent of free verse, and wrote poems about his embrace of modernism. Even so, he continued to write sonnets, a form he cherished, and a form few other Norwegian poets have used. He was also an avid translator from English, German and French, and these have been published in a collected volume. Hauge has himself been translated into several languages, and the perhaps most accessible English translations have been made by American poet Robert Bly who also met with Hauge and corresponded with him.

Several of Hauge's poems are greatly beloved by the Norwegian readership. This was proved in 2016 when the Norwegian National Broadcast (NRK) organised a poll to see which was the favourite poem of the Norwegian people. Hauge had two poems among the final six, and he won with the poem I have translated here, called "Det er den draumen". Personally,this is my second-favourite poem by Hauge - my favourite one will probably feature in a future blogpost - and to share this work as widely as I can, I have translated it here into Spanish and English.

For a reading of the poem by Hauge himself, a recording is available here.


Det er den draumen

Det er den draumen me ber på
at noko vedunderleg skal skje,
at det må skje –
at tidi skal opna seg,
at hjarta skal opna seg,
at dører skal opna seg,
at berget skal opna seg,
at kjeldor skal springa –
at draumen skal opna seg,
at me ei morgonstund skal glida inn
på ein våg me ikkje har visst um.



Es este sueño

Es este sueño que llevamos
que algo asombroso sucederá,
que necesita suceder –
que el tiempo se abrirá,
que el corazon se abrirá,
que puertos se abrirán,
que la montaña se abrirá,
que fuentes estallarán –
que el sueño se abrirá,
que, en una madrugada, entraremos
en una bahia que no conocíamos.  

It is that dream

It is that dream we carry
that something wonderful will happen,
that it must happen –
that time will open up,
that the heart will open up,
that doors will open up,
that springs will burst –
that the dream will open up,
that we, one morning, will sail into
a narrow inlet we did not know about.



A note on the text and the translations


Hauge wrote in an old version of Norwegian Nynorsk, one that was more attuned to his particular dialect, and whose endings are now considered obsolete. This version was called "landsmål", the rural tongue, or the speech of the districts, and it is in several ways different from the current version, Nynorsk (New Norwegian), in which several features are more harmonised with Bokmål, the other official version of Norwegian, which is based on the Eastern dialects influenced in large part by Danish.

As the text of the original poem is quite straightforward, there are few aspects that require extensive commentary. I did struggle with the decision to use the word "suceder" in my Spanish translation, as "pasar" and "ocurrir" are also possible options. I ended up with "suceder" because I think this is the word that most accurately captures the magnitude invoked by Hauge's description.

One word has caused me a lot of trouble, both in English and in Spanish. This is the word "våg", which is a geographical word, and these words are always among the hardest to faithfully render in a language marked by a different topography. "Våg" means both wave and small bay, i.e. a place where the waves come to their end. The word is not fully captured by the Spanish "bahía", as this is usually applied to landscapes of a greater scale, but while I did consider calling it a little fjord, "fiordito", I found that this neologism did not carry the necessary gravitas to render Hauge's words. The English "narrow inlet" is more accurate, although this is almost too bland to envision the landscape of the fjords. However, since this has to do with how languages develop in their specific topographies, I have settled for this.