Lottie Lomme
Annemart Pilon spent two years in Naples. Once as an au pair after high school and for a year during her Italian studies at the University of Leiden. This is how she got to know the city well.
After her studies, she completed a master's degree in literary translation in Utrecht and also attended various translation workshops. She received a Talent Grant from the Dutch Literature Fund and pitched several Neapolitan books to Dutch publishers.
Sometimes a publisher can orientate themselves with an available English translation, but sometimes they also have to rely on the enthusiasm of an expert, in this case the Italianist Pilon.
Two books by Erri De Luca were recently published by Uitgeverij HetMoet. The Dutch edition was published by Uitgeverij Van Oorschot Malacqua, also set in Naples, but written in 1977 by Nicola Pugliese, who wrote only one impressive novel in his life and then retired as a literary author.
Annemart Pilon translated the books. I read her translations of Erri De Luca.
Autofiction set in Naples
The first book published by HetMoet is The day before happiness came. Truly a story that takes you back to Naples just after the Second World War. The main character is a young boy who loses his parents and is raised by Gaetano. A beautiful and movingly simple story.
The second book is called Not now, not here and is De Luca's debut and an autobiography that is mainly about his childhood. You get to know De Luca as a modest, quiet and poetic man.
The publisher calls the book 'autofiction' because it also contains fictional elements. De Luca looks back at the past from today's insight and thereby gives words to the experiences of his youth. It is mainly about his happiness during the poor time of his life in a dark alley in Naples and why he felt less happy in a large Palazzo, when his parents got some more money and moved. He talks about this in a long letter to his mother.
It is also about a childhood friend who dies, and later about his wife's illness. When he was 18, around the time of the 1968 student protests, he left Naples for Rome. De Luca worked in construction for a long time before becoming a writer in his late thirties. He was also connected to the union struggle at that time, but that is not what this book is about.
Mysterious silences
In his youth, De Luca often felt the need to be quiet or not say things and later in life he can explain why that was the case, where it came from. He was a stutterer. Pilon and I agreed that De Luca can rethink things a bit and has an original view.
Everyone will have to make a story in their life of difficult or unpleasant things that happen to you and the trick is to ultimately arrive at some sort of positive conclusion. The book makes you think about that, based on De Luca's own story.
For the Neapolitan writer, talking is an act over which you have little influence, but when he writes he chooses his words himself. Sometimes you really have to let what you read sink in, because you feel that some kind of truth is being told, but that you have to take some time to understand it.
Pilon occasionally contacted De Luca to ask what he meant by something. For example: 'Intentions are not favorable to some people, only chance favors them.' According to De Luca, silence can help coincidence.
These types of sentences are quite enigmatic or poetic, but in doing so the writer also leaves a lot of space to the reader, through the silences that the writer feels and leaves within. It therefore invites you slow reading.
Puzzle with words
Pilon: 'If there is something strange in the original, the translation is often also a bit strange.'
So we started talking about the sentence: 'After all, it is clear that the end of the day is the end of the day and the scappava comes to an end, at the end of the day. '
That became in the translation:
"You didn't finish telling me until my blood welled up in my chest one last time and escaped my closed heart."
His (the first person) heart skipped a beat when his mother told him heavy things, that is the context. He felt a kind of tension with that, causing the blood to rise. It literally says: my blood made a final plunge into my chest, but it is about the tension and relaxation of the heart that therefore retains blood or not, as becomes apparent upon closer reading of the context.
Can't you write that blood took a dip, would that be a better solution? How strange can a translation be compared to a poetic original? Pilon chose the word 'welling', which has something fluid that you can associate with that blood, but also suggests the physical impulse of the 'dip' (dive).
It was nice to have a conversation about some of the sentences in that book. Translating is understanding, it often means reading back to understand the context or intention of a sentence.
Pilon often finds that one sentence takes her several days. She makes a part of the translation and the next day when she continues, she first reads back what she did the previous day and then often immediately makes a first revision.
Precisely because the context of a sentence is so important for its meaning. And that improves the quality of a translation.
The day before happiness came
by: Erri De Luca, translated by: Annemart Pilon
149 pp.
€ 23,50 (hard cover, also available as an e-book for € 6,99)
HetMoet Publishers, June 2022
ISBN 9789083206028
Not now, not here
by: Erri De Luca, translated by: Annemart Pilon
132 pp.
€ 22,50 (hard cover, also available as an e-book for € 6,99)
HetMoet Publishers, August 2023
ISBN 9789083206073
Malacqua
by: Nicola Pugliese, translated by: Annemart Pilon
168 pp.
€ 22,50 (hard cover, also available as an e-book for € 13,50)
Van Oorschot Publishers, June 2023
ISBN 9789028232013
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