{"id":302086,"date":"2015-08-17T15:20:34","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T15:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2015\/08\/17\/on-yoel-hoffmanns-moods-btba-2016\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:20","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:20","slug":"on-yoel-hoffmanns-moods-btba-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2015\/08\/17\/on-yoel-hoffmanns-moods-btba-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"On Yoel Hoffmann\u2019s "Moods" [BTBA 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is by translator and co-founder of the Buenos Aires Review<\/em>,<\/a> Heather Cleary. For more information on the BTBA<\/span>, “like” our Facebook page<\/a> and follow us on Twitter.<\/a> And check back here each week for a new post by one of the judges.<\/em><\/p>\n

Earlier this week, I returned home from a month abroad to find my hall closet overflowing with submissions to this year\u2019s BTBA<\/span>. I\u2019m glad there were no witnesses to my cartoonish glee as I tore into the bright yellow envelopes; not nearly as glad, though, as I am that over the next few months I\u2019ll have the chance to explore so many new translations I might otherwise not have read. To borrow a phrase from a canonical work especially dear to my heart: bring it on.<\/p>\n

Anyway. Mixed in among the bounty of this first shipment was Yoel Hoffmann\u2019s beautifully composed Moods<\/em>, luminously translated by Peter Cole. The text is a series of numbered vignettes narrated in the first person plural by a voice that is by turns mischievous, nostalgic, cynical, reflective, and often quite funny. (At one point, for example, Hoffmann recommends using the book as a prop to pick up a lover, or as a pillow to soothe an aching back.) A few readers I know have wondered aloud whether the book should be considered a novel, a memoir, prose poetry, or something else entirely; Hoffmann, who seems to have anticipated these questions\u2014or quite likely set out to provoke them\u2014replies, \u201cWhat\u2019s the point of classifying books as fiction or contemplative literature, when fiction is part and parcel of contemplation, and contemplation is entirely a matter of fiction?\u201d <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

My interest may have been piqued by this challenge to literary norms, but it was the spare yet surprisingly rich descriptions of Hoffmann\u2019s narrative world that drew me in, as well as the urgency with which the book seeks to bear witness to something as vast as a life in one moment, and then unwrite itself in the next. (\u201cIf it were printed on thinner paper we\u2019d suggest the reader use it for rolling cigarettes. The smoke would write the book in the air as it really is.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s begin at the beginning. \u201cEver since finishing my last book,\u201d Hoffmann remarks, \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking of how to begin the next one. \/\/ Beginning is everything and needs to contain, like the seed of a tree, the work as a whole.\u201d Following this observation, Hoffmann presents the beginning of a traditional novelistic storyline (\u201cI know it\u2019s a love story\u201d) which\u2014rather than developing toward the requisite \u201cmiddle\u201d and \u201cend\u201d\u2014is quickly absorbed by a series of divergent reflections that bind the personal to the philosophical with the twine of dry humor (\u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe that all this is taking place within a book. The people must be very small\u201d).<\/p>\n

Though this narrative gambit might look like a false start, the book\u2019s first chapter does indeed contain the seed of Moods<\/em>, which is in many ways a work composed of beginnings. Not only because its vignettes could be read in any order, giving rise to new interpretations with every new opening, but also because each chapter seems to double as the opening to another, untold story that intersects with the one on the page at only a single point. And so, across its many moods, this book is\u2014as much as any I\u2019ve read\u2014about what it does not say. Characters we never fully meet pass through the staunchly metonymic moments of a life that seems to remain unknown even to the voice recounting it. One of the great accomplishments of Moods<\/em> is the way this negative space bears as much weight as the words on the page. <\/p>\n

The specter of stories untold is especially pronounced in Hoffmann\u2019s lists, each element of which seems to contain an entire universe, not unlike Hemingway\u2019s famous six-word novel. \u201cHere are some other things that break the heart,\u201d Hoffmann declares: \u201cAn old door. A glass left out in the yard. A woman\u2019s foot squeezed into shoes, so her toes become twisted.\u201d Each image, vivid and universal in its understatement, is heavy with the moments that precede it and invites us to imagine those that follow. <\/p>\n

It has been said that one of the most difficult things to translate is the silence of a text\u2014those gaps made intelligible by shared cultural or historical touchstones that rarely pass without a struggle into the target system. In this sense, Cole has done an admirable job of preserving as inklings the hollows that Moods offers its readers. I gather from the English that his task must have been doubly challenging: not only is this a book of many silences, in his reflections on the limits of writing, and of language itself, Hoffmann also traffics in linguistically specific reflections. Cole\u2019s solutions to these challenges are deft, even artful, whether he is re-Englishing Hoffmann\u2019s adaptation of Joyce or rendering a nursery rhyme in one chapter\u2019s paean to unadorned language (\u201cIf only we could write like that\u201d). <\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

(Peter Cole at the University of Rochester)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good thing, too, since a skilled hand is needed to translate a work that operates with such intention, and such self-consciousness, on the level of the word. Just as the form of the book\u2019s opening was the object of reflection, so too is the way it will draw to a close. \u201cThis might be the last book we\u2019ll write,\u201d Hoffmann muses,<\/p>\n

\n

I wonder what how it will end. What its final words will be. Joyce, for example, finished his final book with the word the.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

We\u2019ve always thought it extremely strange that movies (and books) end with the word End.<\/em> Moreover, sometimes the definite article\u2019s added.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Maybe we\u2019ll end with a different word altogether . . . Imagine if the word turns out to be prow.<\/em> Or Binyamina.<\/em> Or epaulettes.<\/em> Or hydraulic.<\/em> Or gurgle<\/em> (which is probably onomatopoetic). Or drowse.<\/em> Or you.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Given the centrality of beginnings in this book, it is fitting that Hoffmann resolves this question by deciding to close with one\u2014THE beginning, in fact, which he describes as a \u201cbeautiful tale\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

In the beginning, when God was creating the heaven and the earth, the earth was formless and waste, and darkness was over the face of the deep . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cImagine the loneliness of countless years,\u201d Hoffmann writes. \u201cLike a giant, old, autistic man, He stared into what was and saw not even a crack.\u201d Having evoked so many beginnings with his silence, Hoffmann locates silence within this beginning, and in so doing, finds his final word:<\/p>\n

\n

The only consolation was His name (or, more accurately, His names). But when He uttered them, He heard (because of the absolute emptiness) not even an echo.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is by translator and co-founder of the Buenos Aires Review, Heather Cleary. For more information on the BTBA, “like” our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. And check back here each week for a new post by one of the judges. Earlier this week, I returned home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[35996,61536,46496,61416,25366,1646,25376],"class_list":["post-302086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba","tag-btba-2016","tag-heather-cleary","tag-moods","tag-peter-cole","tag-review","tag-yoel-hoffmann"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316596,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302086\/revisions\/316596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}