{"id":428532,"date":"2020-01-08T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=428532"},"modified":"2020-01-15T15:53:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T20:53:14","slug":"what-did-we-have-to-talk-about-now-that-he-was-dead-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2020\/01\/08\/what-did-we-have-to-talk-about-now-that-he-was-dead-context\/","title":{"rendered":"What Did We Have to Talk About, Now That He Was Dead? [CONTEXT]"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of a larger series of initiatives involving Open Letter and Dalkey Archive Press, over the next few months, we’ll be running a number of articles from\u00a0<\/em>CONTEXT\u00a0magazine, a tabloid-style magazine started by John O’Brien and Dalkey Archive in 2000 as a way of introducing booksellers and readers to innovative writers from around the world. You can find PDFs of all twenty-five issues here<\/a>, and stay tuned for additional highlights from the\u00a0<\/em>CONTEXT archives. <\/em><\/p>\n

Stig S\u00e6terbakken (1966\u20132012), one of Norway\u2019s most acclaimed and controversial novelists and critics, whose latest novel\u00a0Through the Night<\/em><\/a>\u00a0Dalkey Archive Press released in 2013, took his own life last year. A translator and a champion of literature, he translated Nikanor Teratologen\u2019s\u00a0Assisted Living<\/em><\/a>\u00a0from Swedish into Norwegian. Here, Teratologen (aka Niclas Lundkvist) shares his insights into the man and his remarkable oeuvre.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"The title of this article is taken from one of the first pages of Stig\u2019s\u00a0Through the Night<\/em>. The father of the family, the book\u2019s ill-fated protagonist, speaks these words after his son takes his own life. And it is now that I truly appreciate their import. Because I don\u2019t know. What do we have to talk about? What is there to say when sorrow cuts through your entire being and all you want to do is fall silent, lie down, and draw a blanket over your head in the vain hope that the thoughts of what\u2019s been lost won\u2019t grind down your own inborn lust for life? Should one say what the suicide\u2019s teenage sister says in Through the Night when she finally breaks her torturous silence? \u201cHELVETES J\u00c4VLA SKIT\u201d (HELL FUCKING SHIT).<\/p>\n

The news, which came on the afternoon of January 25, that Stig had taken his own life, was a heavy blow for his friends, and an even heavier one for his wife and daughters. Stig was a good-hearted, sharp-witted man, a celebrated author, a gifted translator, an excellent literary critic, and a loyal, magnanimous friend, whose sudden disappearance has made me very sad, and reminded me how extremely grateful I am for all that he\u2019s done for my writing; gratitude that, of course, I\u2019ve already expressed to him. His essays and articles about my work are probably the best that have been written on the subject. He\u2019s produced masterful translations of two of my books,\u00a0Att hata allt m\u00e4nskligt liv<\/em>\u00a0(To Hate All Human Life) and\u00a0\u00c4ldreomsorgen i \u00d6vre K\u00e5gedalen<\/em>. It was largely thanks to him that Dalkey Archive Press has now published the latter in Kerri Pierce\u2019s excellent translation under the title\u00a0Assisted Living<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Today I re-read Stig\u2019s\u00a0Umuligheten av \u00e5 leve<\/em>\u00a0(The Impossibility of Living, 2010), a text of only fifteen pages that was published in a very limited edition, and remembered the strong impression it made on me when I first read it, and how I\u2019d told Stig via mail about that impression. On the title page, there\u2019s a black and white picture of Stig as a little boy, standing outdoors, looking into the camera. Stig writes:<\/p>\n

Most unfortunate: that the boy looks so anxious as he\u2019s standing there. As if he\u2019s looking right at something terrifying, so terrifying that it\u2019s impossible to look away. Is it his own future into which he\u2019s staring? Everything that lies before him, literally speaking, continuity\u2019s unbearable repast, existence\u2019s inedible banquet\u2014<\/p>\n

Or, in reality, is it an old man standing there? One who\u2019s looking not forward, but backward, one who knows that life\u2019s already over, that what could\u2019ve happened has already happened, and that it wasn\u2019t pleasant, all that happened, and that all that\u2019s left is to relive the whole thing one more time (see Kierkegaard)? And that the one thought that\u2019s buzzing around in his skull is: This won\u2019t work! Fucking hell, this won\u2019t work!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"At 22:34 the evening before he died, Stig sent me a few words in answer to my question about whether he was feeling better now compared to earlier in the month: \u201cNot much. As you\u2019ll soon understand. Glad our death-condemned paths crossed each other, Niclas, and thankful for the chance to work with your incomparable prose. It\u2019s only too bad we never met and got to live it up together. Heilige\/Stig\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t see his parting salutation until the news of his death reached me twelve hours later. When the protagonist in\u00a0Through the Night<\/em>\u00a0confronts the most horrible and grievous things he can imagine in the Slovakian nightmare house, he says:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing here. Apart from me. Everything is dead, I\u2019m the only thing alive. I can do what I want, but that\u2019s about it. Everything I\u2019ve believed in and taken part in, they\u2019ve only been my own illusions, created in order to conceal the emptiness I\u2019ve lived with, where there\u2019s nothing to be found, where there\u2019s never been anything to be found, other than what I\u2019ve been forced to imagine in order to endure it. [. . .] We live apart. We convince ourselves that we share our life with someone, but we don\u2019t, we live alone, surrounded by others, who also live alone. None of what\u2019s inside me will ever be a part of them. What they have will never be mine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the most insightful text I\u2019ve read concerning Stig\u2019s life and death, Stig is cited in an interview as saying the following:<\/p>\n

To lift us out of our isolation, that\u2019s perhaps what the greatest books do for us\u2014the fact that they introduce us into an otherwise unattainable fellowship, into a greater connection, where our individuality, and therefore our isolation, is destroyed for the sake of something greater. And where we lose ourselves, more than we find ourselves. That\u2019s the great thing about it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s how it is with Stig\u2019s texts, including the darkest of them. “The Impossibility of Living” circles in its naked pain and deep sorrow around the theme of suicide as liberation, and alcohol as a surrogate for the self-chosen death:<\/p>\n

\"\"The need to become intoxicated bears a close affinity to the desire for death. Which itself is in the same family with an incurable Unf\u00e4higkeit<\/em> [inability], [. . .] vis-\u00e0-vis the realities of adult life.<\/p>\n

For who should it be, if not the child in me, who constantly awakens the thought in me that suicide is always a possible way out, if things get too bad?<\/p>\n

Having been a child is the greatest sorrow of our lives. We go around and carry with us a dead child, and so it is until we die. In that sense it\u2019s already too late to commit suicide, because when someone goes so far as to wish for his own death, he\u2019s already dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just hold the course as you steer down Absurdity\u2019s Way, which ends in Suicide sooner or later. Let chaos reign, Parnasses rage. The cosmos collapse. Ambition wither away. Time flow backward. Petals fold up, flower buds implode and go to seed again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite the fact that it was impossible to go on living, just as it has been for so many other sensitive and intelligent people who have died by their own hand, Stig lived for forty-five years. He gave people happiness and warmth, and despite everything, experienced much happiness\u2014many of his books, such as\u00a0Siamese<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sauermugg Redux<\/em>, are cheerful amidst the blackness. He\u2019ll live on, in an ocean of tenderness, through his work and also in our memories of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then it shines: we\u2019re all dust. Wait for me at Niemandswasser.\u201d \u201cThe rest is silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translations from <\/em>Through the Night by Se\u00e1n Kinsella, other translations <\/em>by Kerri Pierce.<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/h6>\n

Titles Available in English Translation:<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Don’t Leave Me<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(translated by Se\u00e1n Kinsella)<\/p>\n

Invisible Hands<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(translated by Se\u00e1n Kinsella)<\/p>\n

Self-Control<\/a> <\/em>(translated by Se\u00e1n Kinsella)<\/p>\n

Siamese<\/em><\/a> (translated Stokes Schwartz)<\/p>\n

Through the Night<\/a> <\/em>(translated by Se\u00e1n Kinsella)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of a larger series of initiatives involving Open Letter and Dalkey Archive Press, over the next few months, we’ll be running a number of articles from\u00a0CONTEXT\u00a0magazine, a tabloid-style magazine started by John O’Brien and Dalkey Archive in 2000 as a way of introducing booksellers and readers to innovative writers from around the world. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":428762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[3316,33986,70002,69992,70012,32026],"class_list":["post-428532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-context","tag-kerri-pierce","tag-niclas-lundkvist","tag-nikanor-teratologen","tag-sean-kinsella","tag-stig-saeterbakken"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428532","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=428532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428592,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428532\/revisions\/428592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}