Improbably, Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir’s
Rosa Candida (2007, French translation by Catherine Eyjólfsson, Éditions
Zulma, 2010) is the third contemporary Icelandic novel I’ve read this year, following
Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s lyrical and moving Heaven and Hell and Sjón’s (Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson’s) shaggy, showy, wildly poetic cabinet of curiosities,
From the Mouth of the Whale. Both of those last books, as unusual and
inventive as I found them, are novels of the sea, self-conscious riffs, at
least in part, on folkloric fishing sagas of what I’ve come to think of, with
nothing uncharitable intended, as the “god and cod” variety. As though
announcing a deliberate departure from this staple of Icelandic writing, the
beginning of Rosa Candida casually notes that Ólafsdóttir’s appealing narrator
and main character, the 22-year-old Arnljótur (fondly referred to by his father
as “Lobbi”) has just finished a stint working at sea himself, but is leaving all
that behind, and in fact leaving Iceland behind, headed for warmer climes and
an atypical, rather un-Icelandic career path: that of rose gardener.
It’s not a choice
altogether encouraged by Lobbi’s kindly father, who doesn’t see it as an
auspicious direction for a young man, and who would prefer not to lose the
company of his son following the recent accidental death of his wife, Lobbi’s beloved
mother, who instilled in her son his love of plants – particularly of the rare
eight-petaled white rose species known as rosa
candida. Lobbi himself seems to lack a clear idea of what he’s doing; nor
are we, as readers, entirely privy to his motivations. Along with his bereft
father and a mentally disabled twin brother, Lobbi also leaves behind a newborn
daughter, the inadvertent offspring of Lobbi’s casual, one-time tryst with Anna,
a woman who has told him quite explicitly that she needs and expects nothing of
him in the way of paternal responsibilities. And so, with little left tethering
him to home other than the telephone lines he uses to update his elderly father
on his pilgrim’s progress, Lobbi quits Iceland and these few important people
in his life, with no convincing assurance to the reader that we’ll see any of them
again.
What subsequently
unfolds is a simply told story recounting Lobbi’s journey to the continent to a
remote monastery where he’ll occupy himself with the rehabilitation of its
famous rosarium – and where, subsequently, the major life events he’s just
lived through – his mother’s death and his incidental fatherhood - catch up
with his impulsive and altogether innocent flight from them.
There is little that’s
dazzling in the language of Rosa Candida, no ravishing lyrical passages
or unforgettable lines or great pearls of wisdom, no innovative narrative
structure or daring literary experimentation or overt concern with social or
political issues of the day (in the monastic world that the novel
circumscribes, the wider world’s great problems – war, famine, poverty, oppression
– exist beyond the frame). Yet, there is something quite remarkable here in
this quiet, luminous novel; the text exudes an inner glow, a radiance verging
on beatitude (not a word one often associates with contemporary fiction) that works
on the reader at considerable depth.
The linear narrative unfolds
with unusual gentleness and measured pace, and with an attention to the
quotidian that in less capable hands could have bogged down into a banal
account of Lobbi’s every waking moment. But Ólafsdóttir’s touch is so light and
so invested in the moment that one reads about Lobbi’s preparations, his journey
by plane and car, his meals, his life at the monastery, his visits to the
market, all the minor ceremonies of a day without finding them in the least bit
tiresome (including what is certainly the first engaging description of the
changing of a diaper I’ve encountered either inside or, for that matter,
outside of a book). There’s a great deal going on in the margins and growing
beneath the surface of this narrative. The deceptive simplicity of the story is
ringed by death, accident, and coincidence, and more subtly by notions of
foreignness and estrangement and the vagaries and difficulties of relation -
and of translation - in their broadest sense. In the novel’s acute
self-consciousness as regards departure from Iceland (I might add that all of
the Icelandic literature I’ve read expresses an almost deliriously fervent and ruminative
fascination with the natural landscape of the place that calls to mind that
notion of a “nostalgia of the present”), it’s likely that the novel has a
resonance among Icelandic readers that goes well beyond the usual elements lost
in translation (I was particularly taken by Ólafsdóttir’s intriguing comment in
an interview that “writers are foreigners to their mother tongue. Their job
is to misunderstand language”[1]).
Even more pronounced is the welcome
and subtle sort of velvet revolution Ólafsdóttir performs with regard to gender
and family roles, gently turning them about with the naturalness and matter-of-factness
of a gardener tilling the soil, and presenting, in her image of a contemporary
holy family, a remarkably appealing model for paternity (anyone so myopic and reductionist
as to think of Rosa Candida as primarily a “feminist” novel, however, may
leave the room right now). One of Ólafsdóttir’s great strengths is an ability
to handle large questions and what could easily be ponderous religious and
natural symbolism with great dexterity and etherealness; this is not a novel of
surface effects. The novel exerts the organic irrepressibility and
assertiveness of life and of growth, as though a kind of inner gravity drew all
things towards unity, as towards the candida
rosa of Dante’s “Paradiso,” the multi-foliate rose of divine love and redemption
that marks the fulfillment of the poet’s journey. And while this may be an odd
thing to say about a novel - even to say to myself - I had the sense of being
“cleansed” by Rosa Candida. Stepping out of the house into the late
afternoon light just after closing the book, I found the world noticeably altered,
more sentient and vital, more astonishing.
Ólafsdóttir’s novel has
been popular in Europe; it was awarded last year’s prestigious Prix de Page in
France for best European novel of the year, and has received several other
Icelandic, European and Canadian awards. An English translation of the book
struck me as inevitable long before I’d finished reading the French one, as
this seems one of the rare contemporary novels capable of standing up to
literary critics and popular audiences alike. But, by a Rosa Candida-type
of unlikely coincidence, I was amazed to discover that an English translation has
in fact appeared today from Amazon Crossing (under the title The Greenhouse, and not The Offspring, the more literal title used in on-line
English commentary about the book). The novel’s thematic elements of soul-searching,
reconnection and the search for meaning will have wide appeal, and I wouldn’t
be surprised to see a film version of the book follow. But the delicateness of Ólafsdóttir’s
accomplishment is evident in imagining just how easily a film version could transform
the gossamer fragility of the work into sentimental pulp. One might also initially
mistake Rosa Candida as yet another of those proliferating contemporary literary
vehicles for tidy adult resolution of childhood conflicts that more often than
not adopt the language of therapy (a friend has exasperatingly warned her book
group that she’s had it with novels containing the words “Club,” “Memory,” or
“Daughter” in the title). But sentimental pulp is one thing Rosa Candida
is not. This is a highly accomplished, subtly vitalizing and ultimately ambiguous
work written with confidence and depth. Among the three impressive contemporary
Icelandic novels I’ve read this year, Rosa Candida takes the prize.
I like the sound of this one, Scott, and as prejudiced as this will sound, I'm much more likely to believe a foreign author could achieve a feeling of "beatitude" with a novel than a U.S. one could statistically-speaking (explanation/parallel: foreign filmmakers often create a different sort of vibe than American ones as well). Anyway, I'm curious if your Icelandic reading rampage is by design or did you just happen to stumble onto these three titles this year? Icelandic literature, to my embarrassment, is virtually a big black hole on my reading résumé.
ReplyDeleteRichard – I had no real plan or intention to read anything Icelandic this year, and had read nothing since Halldor Laxness’ fascinating Independent People many years ago. Rosa Candida was in the bookstores when I was in Paris last December, however, and just seemed to stalk me everywhere (some books are so insistent). I regretted not buying it then, but as a result I found myself, as the psychologists and marketers say, “primed” when Stefansson’s, and later, Sjon’s books came into view, which then led me back to Rosa Candida. I really was stunned, though, to find that the English translation of Olafsdottir’s novel was being published the very same day I was finishing up my post about it. The book also got a mention today on the Three Percent blog, which is devoting a whole week to Icelandic literature and culture. I suppose I should expect such serendipity from a work that is so unrepentantly receptive to coincidence.
ReplyDeleteOh, I love the sound of this, I really do. There's something very appealing about quiet, introspective novels with a lightness of touch. I like your comments on the cleansing effect of the book, how you found the world more vital, more breathtaking in a way. Funnily enough, I experienced something similar after reading Medardo Fraile's wonderful, luminous stories earlier this year. It's quite remarkable how some of the subtlest, most delicate literature can have that effect on us.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, you were right to point me in this direction. On the list it goes, especially now it's available in English!