Ilija Trojanow - The Lamentations of Zeno

With The Lamentations of Zeno , Ilija Trojanow charts new territory in prose as well as geography. Not a native speaker of German, he has adopted that language and adapted it to his own purposes, taking full advantage of its lexical fecundity, creating words at will, and of its suspended syntax, with which he unleashes whole currents of consciousness. Alternating painterly descriptions of the natural world with cacophonic passages composed of song snippets, adspeak and “breaking news,” he contrasts the majestic stillness of the Antarctic with the clamor of human “civilization.” And all of this is framed within a confessional log that allows the reader to reconstruct the emotional course of the troubled protagonist.

The sheer range of registers is impressive — and quite a challenge for the translator. The title itself is a case in point: A literal “IceThaw” not only lacks the “aura” of the original EisTau , it also fails to convey the layers of meaning lurking in the German. “Melting Ice” seemed a bit lackluster, while “Meltdown” was more appropriate for any number of TV movies. Instead we decided to focus on the narrator who is the soul of the novel.

My primary task in translating the book has been to recreate the voice of Zeno Hintermeier — his gruff demeanor, deprecating self-irony, bone-dry wit, and great erudition. To this end I have broken up single-sentence paragraphs and recast them with somewhat shorter sentences easier on Anglophone ears. Otherwise punctuation remains light, echoing the German, although quotation marks have been added to set off some speech. Songs cited in the shorter bricolage passages have been substituted with popular English lyrics from the same period, and elsewhere I have similarly opted for equivalence over literal rendering.

Most of all I hope to have captured the deeper musicality of the prose, by paying as much attention to the rests as to the notes. Because for all his linguistic virtuosity Trojanow is equally a master of the unsaid, so that the words on the page are like the icebergs themselves — a sparkling intimation of what lies below.

THERE’S NO WORSE nightmare than no longer being able to save yourself by waking up.

Whenever we set sail from Ushuaia, we gather the evening before in one of the local dives that’s a little ways uphill and off the main streets, just when the last band of light is slipping from the sky. We haven’t seen one another for half a year, so we’re in the mood to celebrate as we crowd around a long wooden table. The man waiting on us is old, and judging by his face not very adventurous, although at one parting he confessed to me that he was getting along well apart from an occasional urge to puncture his hand with a knife. His place doesn’t have much on offer, but he’ll fill your glass for very little and I’m content to sit here holding my drink, surrounded by the hardworking Filipinos that make up most of the crew, now smiling broadly at our reunion. Every payday brings them closer to settling down to a home and the sheltering shade of a large family, and so they soldier on, slogging through their working days with an astounding ease. For me they will always be an enigma. Ushuaia is incapable of dampening their mood, as is any echo of the butchery, any painful reminder of the past — their ears are simply not tuned to that frequency, that legacy belongs to Europeans, those are the scars of the white man. They drift through this place just as they do through all the other places that have been defiled, all our ports of call (what a pretentious phrase from some liturgy of advertising), seeming not to touch the ground when they go ashore. That is what separates us, we have no common past: what paralyzes me seems to fill them with life. Apart from that, they’re “easy to handle,” as our onboard hotel manager never tires of repeating (by which he means: much better than the unruly Chinese), as if he had personally trained them to be so diligent so patient so tame. The Filipinos’ zeal would bother me were it not for Paulina, who at this moment is probably busy giving a personal touch to our shared cabin, equipping it with artificial flowers and photographs depicting an entire menagerie of relatives — the numerous grandmothers perched in front on dilapidated rattan armchairs dragged into the garden just for the occasion, and standing behind them all the daughters and sons, loyal to a man except for the one who ran off and is rumored to be chopping vegetables in a New York restaurant. I raise my glass to Paulina’s countrymen — mechanics, cooks, pilots — and to Ricardo, our dining room manager, as unobtrusive as a shrink-wrapped suitcase, but watch out, his true power will be revealed during the course of the trip, every passenger will get to know him and a few will appreciate him (“Howzit going, Mr. Iceberger?” he says, giving me a thumbs-up, always concerned to clear potential misunderstandings out of the way before they happen). It’s a sight for the gods, the way the millionaires from the northern hemisphere line up in front of his desk, eagerly bowing as they slip him an envelope to thank him for the coveted starboard table with a box-seat view of ice floes and leopard seals. My recent years at sea have taught me that rich people are prepared to pay considerable sums for little privileges. That sets them apart from the masses, feeds Ricardo’s confidence, and finances the expansion of his guesthouse in Romblon. He’s no more interested in fur seals, leopard seals or penguins than he is in glaciers or icebergs, but he takes advantage of every scenic opportunity—“What a view, fantastic, fantastic, please take your seats,”—as he parades his teeth in a broad grin. I’m sure he’d squeeze in just as many “fantastics” in front of a garbage depot as long as there were people willing to pay for a premium seat. All he really cares about is whether something is sellable or not. Whenever we’re all together he flirts with the blonde whale lady now sitting to his left, always resorting to the same lines, which he polishes like a fingernail, “You know some day I’m going to sit in on your lecture, I mean it, I really want to learn all about these fish, now that I’ve watched them from the restaurant and seen them spouting, they really are very beautiful creatures”—but when it comes to the beautiful Beate he has a hard time understanding why she prefers whales to people, which is why he’s going to sit in the first row during one of her next lectures and write down every single word she says. He promises this before every trip, when we’re gathered at the long wooden table that’s pitted and scored with random dents and notches. “This time I mean it,” he says, “I swear to heaven”—and the whale lady pinches his arm. She speaks English with a German accent, German with a hint of Spanish, and Spanish with Chilean intonation. Despite his assurances, nothing will come of Ricardo’s “cetacean education.” But what he will do for certain at the end of the trip is pass a chef’s hat around on behalf of the men in the kitchen, while they line up in front of the curved buffet and perform a song in Tagalog that sounds like the “Hymn to the Unknown Server” and is always received with thunderous applause.

The experts aboard the MS Hansen are also at the table, the lecturers tasked with educating the vacationers, just like I was doing for three years until yesterday when the captain summoned me just after my arrival and told me the expedition leader had been taken unexpectedly to the hospital in Buenos Aires with a suspected case of swine flu, there was no way he’d be able to join us at this point, at best we might be able to pick him up along the way, further down the Beagle Channel, but until then a substitute is needed, and he believes I have the necessary competence, I know the subject, I’m engaged, and I am worldly-wise (here his glance implied I also might be inclined to overshoot my target on occasion), and apart from that I have a lot of experience on board the ship.