.jpg){kind=link}
A German version of this review is available here.
Authors are often received differently in different countries and languages; it is not uncommon for particular works or authors to resonate more strongly among some audiences than others. Jenny Erpenbeck, however, is a particularly notable example. The German author’s latest book, Kairos, was overlooked for the major German literary prizes before going on to win the International Booker with “considerable consensus” from the judges. This comes after Erpenbeck previously won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (the precursor to the International Booker) for The End of Days, not to speak of the predictions of her as a potential future Nobel Prize winner.
Others, including Erpenbeck herself, have discussed some of the reasons behind her prominence abroad but not at home; a sense in Germany of having read enough about the GDR, of English-speaking audiences finding a more appealing combination of historical interest and distance. Kairos is set in a time and place removed in cultural terms, yes, but not too far removed. Most readers know the general shape of this historical moment, and the book works to provide an easy welcome.
Kairos depicts the blossoming and ensuing disintegration of the relationship between 19-year-old Katharine and Hans, who is in his fifties, in East Berlin, playing out the themes of the final years of the GDR on a personal, intimate level. Erpenbeck builds up the layers of the couple’s early infatuation and ritual before they dissolve into paranoia and distrust, mirroring the breaking apart of the GDR. This is the crux of the interest among many English-speaking readers: a window into a time and place that are familiar enough to provide easy access yet without being too close to home, all wrapped in the well-trodden groove of an ill-fated relationship.
Take the very first pages of the novel. It opens with Katharina, on hearing of Hans’ death after a short exchange a couple of months earlier, travelling from Pittsburgh to Berlin. The English-speaking reader (and it is a small but notable choice that the English translation is American rather than British, dealing in vacations and eggplant) is welcomed into the world of the novel from what might well be their own world. Katharina herself accesses her memories – which are the bulk of the novel beyond the prologue – through pages and other mementos in her own home in the US.
When the main thrust of the novel begins, it maintains this expansive welcome. The narrative keeps a tight focus on Katharina and Hans and their first meeting, foregrounding the personal – relatable – dynamics that lay the groundwork for everything to come. Erpenbeck does retain a keen sense of place. The setting never dissolves into anything imprecise, instead playing out very carefully among the specific streets and cafes of East Berlin. The reader is taken past “the Alex”, on “the U‑Bahn north to Pankow”. While it does so, the relationship between Katharina and Hans remains foregrounded. Katharina and Hans are both self-absorbed, and this inward focus imbues the book with the same sense of interest on the personal rather than cultural level.
When the specifics of East Germany appear, they do not intrude. When Katharina is shown Hans’ apartment, for example, she remarks on the Lutz Rudolph lamp; this lamp, which was a popular choice among GDR intellectuals, provides a dash of specificity without impinging on the developing relationship between Katharina and Hans.
As the novel progresses, the explicit references to the wider political and cultural landscape do become more prominent. Time and again, however, Erpenbeck brings it back to the central relationship:
Katharina says: […] I’ve applied for permission to go to Cologne, it’s Gran’s seventieth birthday in August.
Is that right? asks Christina and is briefly struck dumb. She has no relations in the West, she has never received a parcel containing Nutella, tights, and washing powder.
[…] If she’s allowed to go, it means leaving him [Hans] a second time, she thinks.
Katharina sagt: […] Ich habe eine Reise nach Köln beantragt, im August wird meine Großmutter siebzig.
Echt?, fragt Christina und verstummt für einen Moment. Christina hat keine Verwandtschaft im Westen, sie hat nie ein Paket bekommen, in dem Nutella, Waschpulver und Feinstrumpfhosen waren.
[…] Wenn die Reise nach Köln genehmigt wird, muss ich nochmal weg von ihm [Hans], denkt sie.
This gives a flavour of how the novel refracts the historical moment in which it is set. It becomes a living thing, one that is viewed specifically as to how it relates to the two central characters, an effect which is heightened by the continual use of the present tense. The kind of items unavailable except through “West parcels” are laid out for the reader, but specifically the ones in which Katharina has an interest. And once this element has been introduced, the internal narrative returns not to the overall question of freedom of travel, but to the necessary separation from Hans.
The effect of this upon the reader lives or dies by the reader’s capacity to invest in Katharina and Hans’ relationship, with all its flaws. As Katharina tries her friends’ patience on various occasions by turning every conversation back to Hans, so too does the novel tie the wider historical events back into the central dynamic. However, the tight personal focus has the effect of making the historical echo the weaker one. Each gesture outwards is completed by a return inwards. Erpenbeck brings the familiar path of a claustrophobic relationship to its close with the same careful balance she maintains throughout the novel. She toes the line well, never devolving into trite one-to-one comparisons between the personal and historical levels, but it does still fit a well-worn path.
This is also evident in Hofmann’s generally masterful translation. I’d like to focus for a moment on one of the very few awkward translation choices, namely Hans’ figures of speech. Much of the novel contains a mix of Katharina and Hans’ narrative voices and thoughts, interweaving and intermingling with each other. Hofmann keeps tight control of this style in the English, deftly conveying Erpenbeck’s stylistic choices. For Hans, this entails not only the more obvious learned references to German cultural figures and works, but also a more subtle sense of his age compared to Katharina. His position within the novel is one of looking backwards, to contrast with how Katharina comes to face the future. When he says “see the poor fellow’s Stasi expression”, this reflects the slightly older feel of his phrasing. When he then uses phrases such as “That’s the way the cookie crumbles” or “in cahoots”, however, it interjects a more jarring note of timeliness into his voice. They may be phrases that have existed since the 1950s, but they do not suit the otherwise careful balance Hofmann strikes as he creates a present-tense atmosphere that also sits comfortably in the novel’s setting.
Such missteps are rare, however, and Hofmann otherwise deals confidently with conveying the strong yet undemanding sense of place that Erpenbeck creates. He makes a number of small but careful decisions that add up to a strong impression. One good example comes near the beginning of the novel, as the older Katharina ponders the boxes of mementos:
A long time ago, the papers in his boxes and those in her suitcase were speaking to each other. Now they’re both speaking to time. A suitcase like that, cardboard boxes like that, full of middles and endings and beginnings, buried under decades’ worth of dust; pages that were written to deceive alongside other pages that were striving for truth; things itemized, other things passed over, all lying together higgledy-piggledy; the contradictions and the denials, silent fury and mute adoration together in one envelope, in one folder; what is forgotten just as creased and yellowed as what, dimly or distinctly, one still remembered.
Vor langer Zeit haben die Papiere, die aus seinen Kartons und die aus ihrem Koffer, einen Dialog miteinander geführt. Jetzt führen sie einen Dialog mit der Zeit. In so einem Koffer, in so einem Karton, liegen Ende, Anfang und Mitte gleichgültig miteinander im Staub der Jahrzehnte, liegt das, was zum Täuschen geschrieben wurde, und das, was als Wahrheit gedacht war, das Verschwiegene und das Beschriebene, liegt all das, ob es will oder nicht, eng ineinandergefaltet, liegt das sich Widersprechende, liegen der stummgewordene Zorn ebenso wie die stummgewordene Liebe miteinander in einem Umschlag, in ein und derselben Mappe, ist Vergessenes genauso vergilbt und zerknickt wie das, woran man sich noch, dunkel oder auch hell, erinnert.
Hofmann takes pains here to recreate the very precise tone of the German in the translation. Some of the repetitions, such as “Zeit” / “time”, are recreated directly, while others, such as “stummgewordene”, are swapped for a more concise English phrase: “silent fury and mute adoration” keeps the two more common adjectives for the nouns in English. When the internal rhyme of “Verschwiegene und Beschriebene” is lost in “pages that were written to deceive alongside pages that were striving for truth”, this – while keeping the clarity of the German – introduces the repetition lost with “stummgewordene”. The rhyme is then compensated for with “higgledy-piggledy”: when something is lost in direct translation, Hofmann retains it elsewhere, ensuring that the entire run-on sentence maintains the same feel of layering up, a verbal pile of papers.
The novel maintains its careful throughline between the personal and the political, driving through to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond. Katharina misses the moment of the border crossing opening, and only crosses later:
It’s salad niçoise forever, now. It took three weeks after the Wall came down for Katharina to cross into West Berlin for the first time. Hans took her to his favorite bare on Savignyplatz. Directly across the square, under the railway arches, is the art bookshop […] of course completely unaffordable, 80 marks for a book, that’s about 650 GDR marks, more than a printer makes in a month.
Salad Nicoise nun für immer. Drei Wochen hat es gedauert, bis Katharina nach dem Mauerfall zum ersten Mal nach Westberlin hinübergegangen ist. Hans hat sie in sein Lieblingslokal am Savignyplatz eingeladen. Schräg gegenüber unter den S‑Bahn-Bögen der Kunstbuchladen […] natürlich unbezahlbar. 80 D‑Mark für ein Buch, umgerechnet sind das 650 DDR-Mark, mehr als ein Schriftsetzermonatsgehalt.
“It’s probably not so different from here.” These words are spoken by Katharina’s friend Christina to describe West Germany, but they are also an accurate summary of why Kairos is so popular among English-speaking readers. The scope of the novel is not so different as to provide any difficulties for readers looking to immerse themselves in it, with merely an easy and easily explained sprinkling of the historical time and place on top of the developing relationship. It is likely this combination which elevates Erpenbeck’s writing to such popularity abroad; and it might be the lack of distance which proves less interesting to German readers.
Being very familiar with the locations of the novel, and having a reasonable grasp of the time period, did not elevate the novel for me; instead, it left me looking beyond these details. They rooted the novel, but they are not as powerfully sketched as the personal dynamics. As they fade with some familiarity into the background, the relationship between Hans and Katharina is left to hold its own.
And despite the care with which Erpenbeck developed this relationship, it offered me little new interest or insight. There are many novels out there that tread similar ground, that depict similar doomed relationships, and I did not find myself relishing the chance to read another. It may be that it requires the zest of slight unfamiliarity for the personal-historical combination to prove satisfying, or perhaps just a deeper capacity to be interested in another unwise romance between two ill-fated characters.
Translator-in-Chief
Emil’s Berlin in Translation
A Different Perspective
Rethinking the Art of Translation
A Tale of Two (or so) Translations
This is the long story of how I – thanks to the intoxicating translation of…