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Other thoughts about Erik Fosnes Hansen's Løvekvinnen?
Løvekvinnen
Erik Fosnes Hansen
Reviewed by Susan Larson
Erik Fosnes Hansen has written a rich and fantastically sensitive description of being a permanent outsider in his novel about a bright, complex and passionate young girl growing up in rural, pre-war Norway. The story is well-told, complex and has a strong enough tempo to keep the reader engaged despite very archaic, but descriptive, language and long scientific passages about the main character and her interests in biology, medicine and other areas of natural science.
The novel begins with a sideshow barker running a spiel in broken Norwegian about the participants in his freak show, interspersed with several different, exotic encapsulated versions of the main character – Eva Arctander’s – life story, none of which prove to be true. Like the rubes in the small Norwegian village where the show is seemingly taking place, the reader’s interest is piqued to know more about this female who is covered from top to toe in soft, blonde, almost feline, fur.
Eva’s story begins with a brief introduction to her mother, Ruth’s, short life, as Ruth dies giving birth to Eva a winter’s night in 1912. Ruth is a beauty with great musical talents – and an idealization of womanhood that Eva can never hope to embody. Ruth gives birth to Eva in the rural town where her husband is a respected, but somewhat distant, stationmaster. The train station, its trains and personnel play a central role in the story as it develops. Accordingly, the novel uses a very specialized Norwegian vocabulary particular to railroads in general and locomotives in particular.
A little more than half of the novel is devoted to Eva’s childhood. Physically, Eva is a normal child, with the exception of her unusual hairiness. Her father decides early on that the best way to protect Eva from pointing fingers, gaping stares and cruel comments is to isolate her from their small community. Eva’s physical world is bounded by the limits of her room, her house and parts of the train station’s property that are least likely to be seen by the public. Her social world is limited to her nursemaid, Hanna, the pharmacist and his wife, who first cared for the girl when the shocked father could only reject his newborn “røyskatt” – ermine -, and the village doctor, Levin. Each of these characters has their own status as “other” in the village – Hanna, having become pregnant out of wedlock, the pharmacist couple with their atheism and interest in Communism and Levin, as a Jew living in the strongly Christian village. Yet, as the story reveals, each of these individuals provides Eva with important skills that she will need to break out of her isolation and experience life, for good and bad, in the world outside the station.
And Eva longs to be part of the life of the village. She is an unusually clever child and her longing for companionship, friendship and even love is a driving force in the novel. Her struggle to have a place in the outside world begins with a traditional Norwegian Christmas tree “plundering”, where on the last day of Christmas (6 January) children and adults gather to strip the Christmas tree of its candy ornaments and sing and dance around the tree one last time. Her first encounter with other children and their parents is a rough one. She both fascinates and repels the villagers.
Still, her great need to be with others drives her to begin school. The cruelty of the other schoolchildren and rigidity and repulsion of the teachers actually increases her sense of isolation and Eva, like her father, becomes extremely adept at hiding first her thoughts and ideas and, later, herself. But the experience also makes Eva even more determined to not let herself and her inner life be crushed by outsiders and to ultimately find allies who will aid her in living her own life.
Hansen’s use of Norwegian is very rich and I found his vocabulary to be engaging and enriching, but there are several potential problems here in translation. First, the language is very archaic. Understandably, the author is probably trying to recreate the speech common among educated people from the 1910’s to the 1930’s. This old-fashioned language was remarked upon by Norwegian critics and was considered the primary weakness of the novel.
This linguistic challenge, among others, will require a translator who not only has a very good background in, for example, translating an author active at that time, e.g. Knut Hamsun, but also one who can bring the depth and color of the “high Norwegian” to life for an American or English-speaking audience. It will also be important to decide if, and how, to translate the many passages in German, some quite technical, into English. In the original, they are not translated, presumably because educated people of the time in which the book was written would have understood German. My suggestion would be to translate them.
The French and Czech phrases would not suffer from being translated, but, on the other hand, they are short, few in number, and understandable in context. The Latin aphorisms, for the most part, are followed by a Norwegian translation. This formula would probably be suitable in an English translation.
As mentioned before, there is a good deal of technical language dealing both with locomotives and natural science. There is also a good deal of medical terminology and discussion, as well as some fairly specific language about Norwegian topography. In Norwegian, this gives the reader the understanding that Hansen has done his research and is intimately familiar with Eva and her milieu. It would be difficult to simplify or eliminate without losing the character of the book.
In summary, the book is compelling, well written and complex. It does, however, present challenges for translation into English and may take longer to translate than less complex contemporary novels.
(c)SRL 2007
Løvekvinnen
Erik Fosnes Hansen
Reviewed by Susan Larson
Erik Fosnes Hansen has written a rich and fantastically sensitive description of being a permanent outsider in his novel about a bright, complex and passionate young girl growing up in rural, pre-war Norway. The story is well-told, complex and has a strong enough tempo to keep the reader engaged despite very archaic, but descriptive, language and long scientific passages about the main character and her interests in biology, medicine and other areas of natural science.
The novel begins with a sideshow barker running a spiel in broken Norwegian about the participants in his freak show, interspersed with several different, exotic encapsulated versions of the main character – Eva Arctander’s – life story, none of which prove to be true. Like the rubes in the small Norwegian village where the show is seemingly taking place, the reader’s interest is piqued to know more about this female who is covered from top to toe in soft, blonde, almost feline, fur.
Eva’s story begins with a brief introduction to her mother, Ruth’s, short life, as Ruth dies giving birth to Eva a winter’s night in 1912. Ruth is a beauty with great musical talents – and an idealization of womanhood that Eva can never hope to embody. Ruth gives birth to Eva in the rural town where her husband is a respected, but somewhat distant, stationmaster. The train station, its trains and personnel play a central role in the story as it develops. Accordingly, the novel uses a very specialized Norwegian vocabulary particular to railroads in general and locomotives in particular.
A little more than half of the novel is devoted to Eva’s childhood. Physically, Eva is a normal child, with the exception of her unusual hairiness. Her father decides early on that the best way to protect Eva from pointing fingers, gaping stares and cruel comments is to isolate her from their small community. Eva’s physical world is bounded by the limits of her room, her house and parts of the train station’s property that are least likely to be seen by the public. Her social world is limited to her nursemaid, Hanna, the pharmacist and his wife, who first cared for the girl when the shocked father could only reject his newborn “røyskatt” – ermine -, and the village doctor, Levin. Each of these characters has their own status as “other” in the village – Hanna, having become pregnant out of wedlock, the pharmacist couple with their atheism and interest in Communism and Levin, as a Jew living in the strongly Christian village. Yet, as the story reveals, each of these individuals provides Eva with important skills that she will need to break out of her isolation and experience life, for good and bad, in the world outside the station.
And Eva longs to be part of the life of the village. She is an unusually clever child and her longing for companionship, friendship and even love is a driving force in the novel. Her struggle to have a place in the outside world begins with a traditional Norwegian Christmas tree “plundering”, where on the last day of Christmas (6 January) children and adults gather to strip the Christmas tree of its candy ornaments and sing and dance around the tree one last time. Her first encounter with other children and their parents is a rough one. She both fascinates and repels the villagers.
Still, her great need to be with others drives her to begin school. The cruelty of the other schoolchildren and rigidity and repulsion of the teachers actually increases her sense of isolation and Eva, like her father, becomes extremely adept at hiding first her thoughts and ideas and, later, herself. But the experience also makes Eva even more determined to not let herself and her inner life be crushed by outsiders and to ultimately find allies who will aid her in living her own life.
Hansen’s use of Norwegian is very rich and I found his vocabulary to be engaging and enriching, but there are several potential problems here in translation. First, the language is very archaic. Understandably, the author is probably trying to recreate the speech common among educated people from the 1910’s to the 1930’s. This old-fashioned language was remarked upon by Norwegian critics and was considered the primary weakness of the novel.
This linguistic challenge, among others, will require a translator who not only has a very good background in, for example, translating an author active at that time, e.g. Knut Hamsun, but also one who can bring the depth and color of the “high Norwegian” to life for an American or English-speaking audience. It will also be important to decide if, and how, to translate the many passages in German, some quite technical, into English. In the original, they are not translated, presumably because educated people of the time in which the book was written would have understood German. My suggestion would be to translate them.
The French and Czech phrases would not suffer from being translated, but, on the other hand, they are short, few in number, and understandable in context. The Latin aphorisms, for the most part, are followed by a Norwegian translation. This formula would probably be suitable in an English translation.
As mentioned before, there is a good deal of technical language dealing both with locomotives and natural science. There is also a good deal of medical terminology and discussion, as well as some fairly specific language about Norwegian topography. In Norwegian, this gives the reader the understanding that Hansen has done his research and is intimately familiar with Eva and her milieu. It would be difficult to simplify or eliminate without losing the character of the book.
In summary, the book is compelling, well written and complex. It does, however, present challenges for translation into English and may take longer to translate than less complex contemporary novels.
(c)SRL 2007
