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Lawrence,
PO Enquist’s (autobiographical) *A Different Life* is tricky because of its
recurrent return to the historical present. In the Swedish it conveys an
acute sense of contemporaneity with the experiencing subject. It is in
common usage and not ungrammatical. However, in English this rhetorical
technique can come across as a bit laboured. Therefore, in translation it
is better to make the tenses more varied, shifting between the past and
continuous present, and, as we are prone to do when working from a Germanic
tongue, turn the phrases more “heavy on the right,” i.e. moving subordinate
clauses and phrases to the end of the sentence, as well as adhering to the
Anglican avoidance of so-called run-on clauses.
Would these considerations answer some your concerns regarding the excerpt?
In the Swedish Enquist completes the story by stating that “Then the roof
falls [or, alternatively, is falling] down.” However, the semantic sense
(or so it seems to *this* reader) is that the roof, metaphorical or
concrete, falls as a consequence of the meaning conveyed by the preceding
story. It appears, although input from native speakers is welcome on this
issue, that in the English a past tense construction is more appropriate,
more readable, and more conventional.
The excerpt makes further sense when connected to Enquist’s persistent
struggles with alcoholism. On reading it again it appears “obvious”
(whatever that phrase might mean) that Enquist here in some sense shifts
the blame over on his upbringing. Was it not his mother’s strictness that
the grown-up Enquist in reality was rebelling against when he turned to
hard drinks, and, in the light of the tyrannical and unreasonable nature of
her approach to child-rearing, was it not right of him to seek to overturn
her values? Such, we might conjecture, is the reasoning of a person
struggling to explain and make sense of their addictions.
Take care, -tor
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld <https://torgeirfjeld.com/>
~~ ereignis <https://ereignis.no/>: taking you to who you are ~~
On Tue, 28 Apr 2020 at 18:14, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Torgeir,
A provocative excerpt. One encounters what one at first believes is a
metaphor of a roof falling down standing for the mother learning that her
son had not stolen the caramel; although the nature of the store and the
perception of the grocery store owner causes speculation about how the
store owner can be sure that the boy did not steal a caramel. Were all the
caramel’s accounted for? Did the store owner have evidence that the boy
never entered the store. Was there another explanation?
On the other hand while the boy in his anxiety lied about stealing the
caramel in order to have a sin to confess. His mother may be unhappy that
the caramel-theft never happened, but now the boy, being caught in a lie,
has a true sin to confess. Why is the mother not pleased? It is puzzling
why the roof would fall in over the lie since the mother was anxious for
the boy to have a sin and now she has good evidence of one.
All this is so perplexing to this non-Swedish reader that I wondered if
perhaps I am misreading this event. Perhaps no metaphor was intended and
the narrator is describing the mother and store owner witnessing the
grocery store’s roof literally falling down.
Lawrence
*From:* lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Torgeir Fjeld
*Sent:* Tuesday, April 28, 2020 7:52 AM
*To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [lit-ideas] A different life
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Every Saturday at bedtime he shall confess to a sin that he has committed
during the week, and consequently receive Jesus’ forgiveness. They have
agreed to it. It may have been mostly his mother who agreed to it, but in
any case the decision is there, and it has become a source of great anxiety
to him, not because confession in itself is difficult, but because he
cannot recall anything to confess. He realises that he simply is too good.
As Saturday draws nearer he mulls over his upcoming confession with
increasing despair. He isn’t able to find anything suitable to admit to,
possibly because there isn’t anything there to find. He considers sinning
by design, just so as to have something to confess, but goodness is too
solid in him, kindness has grounded itself like concrete, so that even such
a path is impossible. Three consecutive Saturdays he disappoints himself
and his mother by not bringing any sin to the table. Then he solves the
dilemma by inventing a sin. With tears streaming down his face he admits to
stealing a caramel at the Coop in the Waterfall when the grocer was looking
somewhere else. His mother is shattered by the confession, but heaps praise
on him for having confessed, and after their prayers they fall peacefully
asleep as Jesus Christ has certainly forgiven the sinner. What he hadn’t
considered was that the following week his mother would tell the grocer
about the sin; she knows him well from their common and active leadership
of the Blue Ribbon Organisation for Sobriety. She tells him that her child
has stolen a caramel. That was when the roof fell down.
From Per Olov Enquist (1934-2020), *Et annat liv [A Different Life],*
Stockholm: 2008.
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld <https://torgeirfjeld.com/>
~~ ereignis <https://ereignis.no/>: taking you to who you are ~~
