Mikhail Shishkin and Marian Schwartz

I posted my initial impressions on the event with Mikhail Shishkin and Marian Schwartz presented by the Center for the Art of Translation that same evening, but have waited to post any of my transcriptions from the event. The Center has a podcast available of the audio on their blog: Two Voices: Mikhail Shishkin and Marian Schwartz in Conversation with Scott Esposito, along with a few highlights of the evening. More about the event and a video playlist can be found at Litseen.

I’m going to provide a rough outline and summary with notes and some transcriptions of the event. I hope to make it easy for anyone wanting to listen to all or parts of this wonderful event. Any errors in transcription are mine. All ellipses are my addition to smooth the written dialogue’s flow. Only sections in quotes are attempts to capture exact language. I’ve excised “yeah,” “and,” and “uh” for reading purposes. While I’ve thanked him separately, I have to say this was one of the best moderated events I’ve attended. It’s clear Scott Esposito had done a lot of preparation for the event, for both the author and the translator, and it shows in how he kept things moving and focusing on important topics.

After Scott Esposito (SE) introduced Mikhail Shishkin and Marian Schwartz they began a bilingual reading of the early passages in Maidenhair (this section runs from 4:10 to 15:54). They each read the epigraph, then a passage from pages 17 to 19 of the novel. Their readings gave the same feel of the interpreter's question and answer format in the passage. If you only want to listen to part of the recording, I recommend the first 16 minutes for a feel of the book.

(16:04) Was Maidenhair successful in Russia? Shishkin: Define success…sales, impact? These are very American ways to define success. He reluctantly admits it met with success.

(16:40) SE: “I read about one of your critics, and this story may be familiar to you, he said that he would eat his underpants in public if your book sold more than 50,000 copies in its first year. And it did.”
Shishkin: “No, he didn’t.”
SE: “No, but the book did.”
Shishkin: “Ah. … But these are critics. Yeah, they never, you see, do what they, what they promise. Yeah, unfortunately he didn’t.”

(17:30) SE: “So we were just hearing was you and Marian reading part of the interpreter’s section of the novel. There’s kind of, it’s a very difficult novel to summarize, but there’s more or less three main parts—“
Shishkin: “May I interrupt? It’s not difficult novel.”
SE: “Well…it’s a difficult novel to summarize but not difficult to read.”
Shishkin: “OK, good. No, I think it’s a simple novel very simply written, just some difficult…I mean, some different stories are told, but nothing difficult.”

(18:09 to 19:46) SE and Shishkin talk about the interpreter’s part of the novel and how it mirrors Shishkin’s own experience as an interpreter for asylum-seekers in Switzerland [from Russia and former Soviet states]. Shishkin notes how it was a bad job, although well paid. You’re supposed to come home at night and tell your family fun stories about your work, but his job provided nothing funny at all.

(19:46 to 21:17) How Shishkin ended up Switzerland.
Shishkin: “I will never go to Switzerland, how could a Russian writer live in this boring culture? Nothing happens. A Russian writer needs Russian stories. Russian pressure. In Russia, you see the atmosphere pressure is quite different. And so I came to Switzerland and through my job I came into the middle…of Russian stories, of the Russian pressure, because if you are in Russia you have a lot of such stories, you can’t just close the window… . No newspapers, no internet, no TV, but here the story is sitting in front of you and telling itself. You have no way out. You can’t escape, you just must take all this story inside, and for me it was clear from the beginning the only way to survive this job was to write about it. So for me it was the beginning of the novel.

(21:17 to 25:00) Scott Esposito raised my question [Thanks!] about why Shishkin includes a fabricated diary of Izabella Yurieva. I found this section intriguing, not just for the reason Shishkin chose her (which is important) but his personal reasons, too.
SE: “And there’s another plotline. I guess the interpreter finds a journal of this dancer, Bella Dmitrievna, who, I guess I’ve read that you had encountered some journals of your mother that you were reading and did that kind of get you interested in the whole format, kind of trying to explore that in literature, or how that whole part of the novel come about?”
Shishkin: “Izabella Yurieva was a very famous singer, not opera singer but romance singer. And she was actually the favorite singer of my father. We had her discs at home when I was a child. She was a famous personality. She was born 1899 and she died 2000. So she lived the whole horrible Russian 20th century. Actually after she died nobody knew anything about her. For example, where did she spend the civil war? Was she with the Russians? Was she with the Whites? After she died there were no information, no diaries, no memoirs, no letters, because people who lived at that time in Russia in the ‘30’s, 40s, 50s, they were so afraid of their past. Because you would never know what from your past could be dangerous tomorrow. And so they tried just to get free of their past. And for me she was this symbol actually of the epoch, because she lived in the country of slaves, like my parents were slaves, the parents of my parents they were slaves and she was singing for these slaves. She sang for them about love, and it was so important for them to survive. The singing was, for my father, much more important than money, than food, because singing about something very simple, about love, she gave them, these slaves, their dignity back. I invent that I got, from a publisher in Moscow, her diaries and her memoirs, and actually I’m writing her life. I’m inventing her life, I tried not to invent anything, but I had to. And I write in this novel her memoirs about her childhood in Rostov-on-Don before the First World War, then First World War, Civil War, ‘20s, 30s. It’s a very important part of the novel. It’s very simply written.”

Note: See here for more detail on Isabella. I don't know the sources for this information but it’s interesting to see how much of it matches or dovetails with the Isabella of the novel. To hear her sing “O Lubvi I druzbe,” click here.

(25:05 to 33:28) Marian Schwartz answers questions on how she got interested in translating this book and her process of translating it. She had translated two stories by Shishkin and she felt there was a “stylistic affinity,” that she “understood his voice.” Her initial reluctance to translate it centered to some extent on the difficult/not difficult issue. (See Scott’s entry on the Center’s blog for Schwartz’s process on translation, including 40 pages of notes from Shishkin that were answers to previous translator’s questions.) There’s an interesting section on the process of choosing a translator for The Light and the Dark. This section is highly recommended for anyone interested in the process of translation as well as providing Shishkin’s desire for what he hopes the translation accomplishes. Plus the reason Schwartz left out one sentence from the original book in her translation.

(33:28 to 36:08) SE: “So Mikhail, how long were you at work on this book before you were satisfied that it was complete?” … Shishkin’s reply focused on the frequency of his output—one book every five or six years instead of a “professional writer’s” output of one a year. “Actually there are two types of writers: the master of the novel and the servant of the novel. The master wakes up and after breakfast he takes the bell, he rings the bell, and the novel is running. ‘Master, what will we write today?’ And the master is dictating. And then the servant of the novel—I’m sitting and waiting for the bell, and then I hear the bell and I’m running. ‘My master what will we write today?‘ And he’s dictating, and it’s absolutely wonderful because the master is always, you see, cleverer than the servant. I don’t have to think why should I write this or why should I not write this, just writing. The main advantage of this is that I just have to obey. I don’t think. When he says, the master says ‘So that’s the end of the novel’ it’s the end. And the disadvantage is a servant could sit and wait for the bell, and wait, and wait, and one year, and two years, and three years, nothing comes. And then it could be very unpleasant. … I worked on this novel, actually, my whole life and I started it—It’s impossible to say when I started it because all the stories, I’m not professional because I can’t invent the stories so I just write what was in my life, what was with my parents, what was with my mom, with my brother, and so on. About five years just writing down.

(36:08 to 38:30) This section covers SE’s question about Shishkin being a master or servant of the Russian language. I don’t want to transcribe too much of this, although the struggle with his first love declaration is something I think many can identify with—it’s impossible to express what you feel in words. I mentioned some of these comments in my initial impressions and they capture some of the main themes of Maidenhair and The Light and the Dark. One focus is the role of the writer, resurrecting words in order to give them life again. He makes an important point on translation: he lets the translator “understand the book in the way which a normal Russian reader can understand the book. After that I can’t help them anymore, and they have to struggle against their enemies, against their languages, as I do in struggling against Russian to say anything, to resurrect words. So four times I’ve succeeded, just four times with four novels. Will my translators succeed or not? Who knows, I can only pray.”

(38:30 to 42:10) SE asks Shishkin about his experience living outside of Russia and how much he keeps up with the country and language. Shishkin: “For me as a writer it was very important to leave my country. Now I see it was the crucial point, actually, because I think it’s very important for everybody not to spend his whole life in his own country but to live abroad. Not for just a couple of months as a tourist but for some years. If you don’t do this I compare it just with living in a house without mirrors, without looking glass. You can’t understand yourself. So living abroad helps you understand what is your background, what is your country, what is your language, what is your history, what is your nation. Everything. In Russia the language in the last years is changing very quickly because life the last twenty years, such changes in the life. I compare the changing of the Russian language in the last twenty years with a running train. … Leaving Russia helped me to understand that are you in the train or are you not in the train? The main thing is not to run after the language but to create your own language, which will be fresh and cool always, even after your death. And I would come to this idea in Russia, too, just leaving Russia helped me to come to this idea … .”

(42:11 to 51:10) SE asks Schwartz about any foreign “feeling” in her translation. Schwartz wasn’t concerned about letting the Russian come through on this novel. Her biggest concern was using English to its fullest extent to cover the scope of the book. Using English well will convey the meaning of the original in place of needing to add a foreign “gloss.” Shishkin joined in, noting that allowing all three possible translators for The Light and the Dark to proceed he would have three different novels in English. “I wrote actually this novel [thumping a copy of Maidenhair] and this novel was written by Marian Schwartz. … If you like this book, it’s my novel, sure. If you don’t like this book this is translation. I’m joking. If you like this book, of course it’s only because of the translation.” He notes that his Bulgarian translator asked no questions. The Bulgarian publisher said the translator thought everything was clear to him. “I have very bad feeling that if the translator understands everything it couldn’t be good.” The book was well received in Bulgaria and Shishkin met the translator. Asking why there were no questions, the translator answered “And what if I were translating Homer?” Shishkin joked the best writer for a translator was a dead one.
Schwartz tells about one issue in translating Maidenhair. In one case she was concerned with what English word to use until she found out the Russian word was a reference to a counting rhyme, which helped her come up with the right word to use. It wasn’t a question of literally translating the word, it was a question of what the English required.

(51:10 to 55:06) SE recalls a story about Schwartz translating Shishkin’s story “Calligraphy Lesson” and a dilemma she faced on how a particular word was used and how it tied into the physical act of writing—should she rewrite the passage to convey all of this? See the translator’s note in the linked story for more detail.

(55:06 to 1:07:10) SE has Shishkin talk some about his recent comments regarding his refusal to represent Russia at Book Expo America. Shishkin goes into detail. SE followed up, asking Shishkin if he was comfortable visiting Russia now. Believing Putin to belong to the past, he has no problem returning.

(1:07:10 to end) Q & A session. See Litseen’s link for more detail on these.
(1:15:53) Shishkin’s mention of Gogol’s Dead Souls and how it relates to Russian society.

The Center for the Art of Translation presents Mikhail Shishkin and Marian Schwartz

Mikhail Shishkin signing a copy of Maidenhair
(sorry for the poor lighting)

I wanted to post an initial impression on tonight’s event “Mikhail Shishkin's Amazing Maidenhair” before I went to bed. I plan to post more about the event...maybe an extended post with a transcription. I thoroughly enjoyed the event and it turned out to be great location at the Hotel Rex in San Francisco.

The informal setting was great, perfect for a turnout of approximately 50 people. I was happy to have a few moments to chat with Shishkin before the event and Marian Schwartz afterwards. The event started with a reading of a section of Maidenhair near its beginning, Shishkin reading the passages in Russian while Schwartz read from her translation.

I want to note that there is a tension in Shishkin’s works that came out in his talk, with comments such as “The Russian language is my enemy,” “language is deaf,” and the need to “resurrect words to give it [language] life back.” Such comments dovetail nicely with comments in The Light and the Dark, where words are defined as bad translations of the original they attempt to describe. Elsewhere in the book, though, language is lauded for defining reality. In my comments on Maidenhair, I noted that Shishkin focuses on how words define us and provide what remains of us when we’re gone. Maybe it isn't a contradiction, just opposite sides of the same coin? We’ll see if the transcript provides more answers than my questions.

If you get a chance to attend Shishkin's April tour, I recommend taking advantage of it. Many thanks to The Center for the Art of Translation's Scott Esposito for hosting the event. A huge thanks to him for including a question I had about the choice of Izabella Yurieva as one of the narrators (though her 'diary'). Shishkin's answer provided some insight on how to approach Maidenhair.

Thanks to everyone involved for a great event!

Update: A podcast of the event is at the Center's blog. A little bit about the event and a video playlist is available at Litseen.

Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin

Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin
Translated by Marian Schwartz
Open Letter Books: 506 pages, paperback
ISBN: 9781934824368

Add me to the chorus praising Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin. The funny thing about saying it’s a chorus is that the novel probably means different things to each reviewer. There are some clear themes throughout the novel and I’ll focus on a couple of these, with excerpts, while providing links to other reviews.

I want to highlight Lisa’s review at Lizok’s Bookshelf first since she read it in the original Russian and her post was my introduction to the novel. She hits many of the highpoints and covers many of the story threads. I recommend reading hers and a few of the following reviews before reading the book.

An excerpt provided by Open Letters Books
Review at The Quarterly Conversation
Review at Three Percent
An article at Words without Borders that covers a discussion including the author Shishkin and English translator Schwartz
An interview with Shishkin at Publishers Weekly
For anything I missed, check the review and links at the complete review

There are several narrative lines in Maidenhair. The central character works as an interpreter in Switzerland, processing asylum seekers who are mostly from former Soviet states. Through the interpreter we find out about what he is reading, learn how his marriage failed, read his letters to his son (as they pretend to be rulers of imaginary countries), and explore the diaries of a Russian opera singer (based on, if not intended to be Izabella Yurieva). There is another narrative thread, using the format of the interpreter’s question and answer interviews, covering a wide range of topics with a changing cast of questioners and answerers.

One topic that resonates throughout the novel is the focus on our mortality and what remains after we are gone. One answer constantly surfaces—words. The importance of words figures daily in the work of the interpreter dealing with the asylum seekers. As he hears similar stories repeated over and over again he explains the office’s approach to the interview:

Sob stories! They wanted to live in paradise! Martyrs we get! But it’s not about compassion. It’s about clarifying circumstances. In order to keep them out of paradise, we have to ferret out what really happened. But how can you if people become the stories they tell? You just can’t. That means it’s all very simple. Since you can’t clarify the truth, you at least need to clarify the lie. (page 21)

The words define what we are, their importance highlighted by those seeking asylum—they “become what gets written in the transcript.” This is echoed again during a Q&A session where the answerer describes what happens when you are in prison and someone call you a name. If you fail to respond to that name, then you become that name: “If you agree to a word, you are that word. Now they have to defile you. And then there’s no living for you.” The words are also important because they help us remember and help others remember us. Isabella’s journal highlights this point in several entries, such as, “If you don’t write down what in fact happened, Papa says, everything disappears and nothing remains, as if it never was.” The meaning of what is written, whether recording the past or in stories, changes as we age and “live to the last page.”

Xenophon’s Anabasis gets mentioned a few times in the novel, but an entry in Isabella’s diary captures the importance of his words across the centuries. She is at a party talking with an artist:

He kept talking about death and immortality. He said he was reading a lot of the ancient authors, the Greeks. Right now he was reading Xenophon. I said I’d tried to read him but he was terribly boring, the endless crossings, the parsangs, everyone killing everyone else. I asked him what he found interesting there. “You’re right. These people aren’t interesting. Mercenaries come to a foreign country to kill and replace one tyrant with another, and then they spend the whole book trying to find the sea and head home. There’s nothing beautiful or noble in it. But it’s not about them. They’re no better or worse than today’s soldiers, who are shooting at someone right now, this very minute.” “If not them, then who?” “The author, Xenophon. Imagine, how many people have slipped by (that’s what he said, slipped by, it has an unpleasant ring!), and these Greeks held on because he wrote them down. And now for the third millennia, each time they see the sea he has led them to they rush to embrace one another and shout, Thalassa! Thalassa! Because he brought them to a very special sea. Thalassa is the sea of immortality.” (page 294)

The ugly face of war, as mentioned in that excerpt, is a recurring theme in the novel, echoing through the ages. We see it through the interpreter’s interviews. Isabella’s diary covers some of World War I and the following Russian civil war. There’s a blurring of Xenophon’s story with World War II that creates a particularly jarring effect. The unnamed Q&A sessions relive aspects of various conflicts that still stick with me. Those caught in the middle of war, facing life and death, can’t always talk about it, though. A letter to Isabella from her fiancé on the front line during World War I says that instead of talking about the “main thing”…the war and their possible death…the soldiers talk about trivial things, like boots.

There are beautiful sections with themes mentioned in the other reviews, but I want to focus on the central message that permeates the novel. As Shishkin commented in the PW interview,

“Even though there is much cruelty in the narrative, the novel is really about humanity and love, both of which help to overcome violence. The title of the novel, Maidenhair, is taken from the name of a fern, Adiantum capillus veneris. This fern grows like a weed in the Eternal City of Rome, the setting for the end of the novel. In Russia this type of fern is a houseplant that would perish without human love and care. My novel is about love and care in its various guises.”

The sections including nurturing or caring are few and far between for most of the novel and the practical aspects of it can be annoying, such as the advice given to a pregnant Isabella. She realizes after her father’s death that she never really had a meaningful talk with him about the important things in life. The implication in her diary, although she doesn’t necessarily come to the realization, is that the many times she was together with her family incorporate...are...the important things in life.

In the midst of so much violence and cruelty, the ability to enjoy life and find happiness becomes more important. Isabella works through this conundrum for much of her life, coming up with a working argument later in life:

It’s like with happiness. Since everyone can’t be happy anyway, whoever can be happy right now, should. You have to be happy today, right now, no matter what. Someone said there can’t be a heaven if there’s a hell. Supposedly it’s impossible to be in heaven if you know suffering exists somewhere. Nonsense. True enjoyment of life can only be felt if you’ve known suffering. What would the leftovers from our soup be to this mongrel if it hadn’t had a whiff of hunger?

It’s always been this way. Someone’s head is being cut off, while two people in the crowd on the square in front of the scaffold are knowing first love. Someone is admiring the picturesque sunset, while someone else is looking at the same sunset from behind bars. It will always be thus! It should be thus! No matter how many tens or millions have their head cut off, at that very moment someone should know first love. Even that adolescent. I can see his face before my eyes. We were returning from the Crimea by train and had stopped at some junction, and directly across was a Stolypin car [a modified railway car used for prisoner transport], and there were bars and someone’s almost childish face in the narrow window. While on our little table we had food, flowers, bottles.

We only stopped for a minute. Everyone in the compartment fell silent. And when we moved on, our gaiety was gone.

Or should it all be the reverse? After that should we all have lived even more gaily? And should the food have been zestier? The sunset prettier? (page 474)

It’s not a formula for ignoring others or for failing to aid them. It is a call to appreciate and enjoy what we have, and that includes the people around us. And words…never forget the importance of words in this novel. The book's epigraph lets you know immediately the essence of what you will find in the pages that follow:

And your ashes will be called, and will be told:
“Return that which does not belong to you;
reveal what you have kept to this time.”
For by the word was the world created, and by the word shall we be resurrected.
–Revelation of Baruch ben Neriah. 4, XLII

Update: An interview with the author at The Morning News

Update: An essay by Shishkin on the relation between literature, freedom and Russia.