Essays One

by Lydia Davis

  The other tradition to which Alomar most obviously belongs—in this case by choice—is that of the very short story. But this tradition is complicated, for within the genre, we have different traditions and different types. While Alomar is working within his own particular cultural heritage, he is of course also sharing in a wider international legacy of the very short story or prose poem, the more contemporary part of which spans more than a century at least: from the prose poems of Baudelaire in the mid-nineteenth century to those of Francis Ponge and other French poets of the twentieth; the lyrical and nostalgic real-life stories of the early twentieth-century Viennese Peter Altenberg and the quirky numbered “handbook” instructions of the Bohemian/Czech Dadaist and pacifist Walter Serner; the Austrian Thomas Bernhard’s grim and syntactically complex paragraph-long stories in The Voice Imitator; the self-denigrating, anticlimactic, quarrelsome tales of the Soviet Daniil Kharms; the lyrical autobiographical sequence of the Spanish Luis Cernuda; and the pointed philosophical narratives of the contemporary Dutch writer A. L. Snijders (whose own chosen term, zkv or zeer korte verhaal—very short story—means exactly the same thing as Alomar’s al-qisa al-qasira jiddan); to mention only a few.

  And then there are the literary traditions in which the very short story shares, and Alomar’s work with it, including moral tales, fairy tales, works of magical realism, coming-of-age novels, and so forth ad infinitum. I read, for instance, Alomar’s “Conversation of the Breezes” and I hear, suddenly, an echo of the voice of the swallow in Oscar Wilde’s very moving late nineteenth-century tale “The Happy Prince.” I read his “Sea Journey,” in which a weary office worker dreams of delirious adventures in the waves and wakes to find he is late for work, and I am reminded not only of Kafka but also of the great early twentieth-century Dutch writer Nescio, both of whom so vividly evoke the man of imagination stuck within the rigid entrenched bureaucracy of the madly irksome office routine. Again I think of Nescio’s classic, Amsterdam Stories, with its interrelated stories of three pals growing up together, and also of a long early section of the multivolume My Struggle, by the contemporary Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard, when I read Alomar’s “Dividing Line,” one of the rare longer stories in the book and a succinct and crystalline tale of adolescent exuberance, heedlessness, rebellion, and epiphany. And—to return to the short form—Alomar’s insidious and powerful tale “The Hammer and the Nail,” deploying personification with such utter ease and inevitability, reminds me of the terrifying absurdist domestic fables of the contemporary American poet Russell Edson, while the eccentricity and anguish underlying the occasional simple friendly tale remind me of the weird and powerful twentieth-century Brazilian Clarice Lispector, one of whose main forms was also the short story.

  Although my frame of reference may be international, it is not particularly Syrian, which is of course my own loss. I have turned to Alomar’s translator, C. J. Collins, to learn what, in Alomar’s Syrian or Arabic heritage, have been the sources of his inspiration, particularly in the short form, and he has given me some interesting insights into the history of the form in the Middle East, both recent and older. There was an explosion of this form of writing in Syria in the 1990s; it became popular in magazines and newspapers as an expression of frustration at Syria’s bureaucracy, corruption, and lack of freedom of expression, since the short-short form allowed for more ambiguity than did the novel, for instance, and thus made it easier to write social and political critiques without drawing unwanted attention. In an economically depressed time, too, there was a demand for the densest, briefest, most compressed of stories; a longer literary work was in fact a luxury—time to write was scarce, and authors were expected to pay up front for publication of their books and to take responsibility for distributing them to bookstores. A book was expensive to buy, at a time when Syrians had little disposable income, whereas newspapers, besides being more accessible and affordable for readers, paid authors relatively well, and reliably. So access to literary works in those years tended to come through what was published in newspapers or shared informally, often orally; short-short stories were shared and circulated as freely and easily as we in this culture would share a joke.

  One of the best-known contemporary practitioners of the Arabic-language short story is the Syrian Zakaria Tamer, now in his eighties—many of his story collections have been translated into English and are available here. Going back another fifty years, there is the Lebanese literary and political rebel Kahlil Gibran, with his formally innovative spiritual stories or prose poems, hugely popular in the American counterculture of the sixties and an important influence on Alomar (Gibran himself being profoundly influenced by the earlier cosmopolitan Syrian prose poet Francis Marrash, who died in 1873). But the very short form has its roots in various Arabic literary traditions that go back to the Middle Ages and before, one important example being the mammoth story compilation One Thousand and One Nights (whose multicultural origins lie in the tenth century or arguably even earlier) and fable traditions like the Kalila wa Dimna, a third-century Indian set of interrelated animal fables imported into Arabic in the eighth century.

  The personification of animal characters in the Kalila wa Dimna, for instance, finds its direct descendent in the naturalness and conviction with which Alomar personifies many of his protagonists, whether they be natural elements—the ocean, a lake, fire and water, breezes, clouds—or everyday objects such as a wistful and ambitious drop of oil, that cruel hammer and that gullible nail, a proud bag of garbage—or, yet again, abstractions such as freedom and time, allowing us to move easily into the alternate reality created in so many of these stories, whose forms range from moral fable to political fable to political allegory, to myth, to realistic moral tale, even to undisguised political statement, as in the title story, with its crushing final sentence.

  The range of forms within this collection of stories is matched by the versatility with which Alomar shifts tone, subject matter, and even structure from one story to the next. While some of the tales are explicitly angry or bitter, others are ironically detached, and still others make their point with a piece of sly wit, one of these being “The Pride of the Garbage,” in which a bag loaded with trash, in its vainglory, is satisfied only if it is placed on the very top of the heap of bags bound for the dump. Formally, some stories proceed straight to the final shock or stunning image, as in “The Drop,” with its beautiful closing opposition of earth and sky. In others, the focus shifts smoothly, subtly, and naturally throughout the story, so that, to our surprise, the subject turns out to be something quite other than what we expected.

  One of these might be “Expired Eyes,” in which the firm grounding of the plot in a realistic situation (a man enters his apartment after a day at work) allows us to accept its fantastical, perhaps futuristic ending (the man goes to his doctor to acquire a set of new eyes): here, realism is skillfully deployed, along with a reverberating emotional truth, in the service of fantasy. In Alomar’s stories, however, fantasy never devolves into mere whimsy. His magical imaginative creations are, every one, inspired by his deeply felt philosophical, moral, and political convictions, giving these tales a heartfelt urgency.

  “Tongue Tie,” one of the simplest, neatest, and hardest-hitting, in its humorous restraint, ably illustrates this and can be quoted in full, being also one of the briefest:

  Before leaving for work I tied my tongue into a great tie. My colleagues congratulated me on my elegance. They praised me to our boss, who expressed admiration and ordered all employees to follow my example!

  2013

  Haunting the Flea Market:

  Roger Lewinter’s The Attraction of Things

  28. If we choose to take Lewinter’s story for the truth—and it is no doubt close to the truth, since Lewinter considers it a piece of autobiography—we could say this: if his mother had had her way, he would not now be living alone in Geneva writing, translating, and allowing himself to be weirdly, mystically involved with such things as K
ashmir shawls, plants, and men-strangers glimpsed in the flea market or invited up from the street, but would be an academic, an academic married to a woman named Michèle.

  * * *

  31. What is his world? It is: his literary work, his intellectual preoccupations, his mother and father, his friendships, his flea market searches, his eccentric and erratic love life.

  * * *

  22. The flea market as commerce in used things, or usually used things—things available only by chance, and, often, seldom; things presided over by the dealers in these rare, often much-desired commodities—who chose them, endorsed them, now display them, and put a value on them; things often imbued with the intimacy of having belonged to others; things covered by a patina of the touches of others.

  * * *

  27. Some of the names in the book are: Margaretha Honegger, Musset, Binswanger, Kazuo Ohno, Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Perkins, Moriaud, Sandra

  * * *

  6. He is like Maurice Blanchot in that he resists summary. The way to read his work being to experience it word by word and phrase by phrase, to live it and live inside it as it goes forward. Not to try to reduce it to a précis.

  * * *

  5. Some of these long sentences require more than one reading: read them all the way through and then all the way through again; or read each phrase more than once and go on to the next.

  * * *

  29. More names: André Bonnard, Spontini, Sophocles, Rosa Ponselle, Neury, Callas

  * * *

  30. The end of one paragraph spins off into a realm abstract, sometimes mysterious, sometimes only half understood, on first reading. Example (in Careau’s exact translation): “with a patience that I didn’t understand was intended for me, orienting me then in the space from which, through her gaze, radiated the highest pitch of divine madness.” After which, in the beginning of the next paragraph, we are returned calmly to a more quotidian reality, and grounded: “On Friday, May 27, at noon, while, at my father’s, I attended to the meal…”

  * * *

  7. A new paragraph is indeed experienced as a fresh start—following a deep breath—rather than as a continuation. Or, as a continuation, but from a fresh angle.

  * * *

  4. Wilhelm Fränger, Bosch, Musil, Georg Groddeck, Martin Grotjahn, Geneviève Serreau

  * * *

  34. His asides. How strange is this punctuation!: the dash followed by the comma, something we don’t do in English. It often indicates that we have come to the end of an aside before a pause, or before the second of a pair of commas. There are many asides. They imply a hierarchy of thoughts. Not a hierarchy in importance, necessarily, but a hierarchy of order, how information is presented within a particular sentence. The asides are contained within pairs of dashes, and also within pairs of commas.

  * * *

  21. Godefroy, Gérard, Schütz

  * * *

  20A. Another eccentricity of punctuation: a colon followed within the same sentence by another colon. He presents us with this idea, and then, still within this idea, presents us with another. A colon, or more than one, or a semicolon, or more than one, may also be contained within a pair of dashes, the dashes being widely separated, to hold all that information. And perhaps it is not so much about asides and more about containment. The punctuation of containment within a sentence. Like the containment of the flea market objects, within the rooms of his apartment.

  * * *

  3. He is perhaps, with his own elaborate constructions, agreeing with Proust’s idea that one thought, however long or complex, however qualified or digressive, should be contained within a single sentence.

  * * *

  19. Marcella Sembrich, Rainer Maria Rilke, St. John of the Cross

  * * *

  9. Convincing are the repeated “whens” and “whiles.” Implying an earnest effort to locate events in time; the evident effort implying the narrator’s seriousness: he is endeavoring to be accurate, and we should trust him.

  * * *

  26. He seems to be establishing some essential information—as though “for the record.”

  * * *

  8. There is also an illusion of dependability regarding his specific dates, frequently offered: “It was in February 1980 that I first heard of La Argentina”; “In July, one Saturday at the flea market”; “since the previous September.” The firmness with which dates and days of the week are supplied seems to tell us that this report is true, that this report is trustworthy. But of course we should be a little wary in trusting it.

  * * *

  23. La Argentina, Roger Kempf, Madame de La Fayette, Denis Diderot, Marivaud, Suzanne Cordelier

  * * *

  24. The proprietors of the booths or stalls at the flea market are also named, in a matter-of-fact way, as though they and their presence are inevitable: Julmy, Leuba, Novel, Pauline Cohenoff. They are often named only with single names, without description—as though for persons of such solidity and importance, description is superfluous. The proprietors of the stalls become oracles, or minor gods or goddesses, like Aeolus, Aether, Aristaeus, Artemis, Asclepius. They grant favors—precious items, precious goods—in return for a tribute, which is money. As well as, no doubt, the tribute of respect.

  * * *

  38. There is the touch of the dealers on these objects, and the touch of others before them on the objects that Lewinter’s protagonist (who is evidently Lewinter himself) will in turn touch, and then there is the touch of strangers on the body of the protagonist, strangers who have also been brought home from public places, brought in off the street, and who have also been touched by others, possibly many others.

  * * *

  35. Anne-Lise, Ria Ginster, Joseph Roth (whose novel The Radetzky March is found at the flea market)

  * * *

  36. As though the flea market were the only possible source of goods, as in the case of the Roth novel, acquired for his father for one franc. If you can’t find it there, by chance, then you will have to read something else.

  * * *

  32. Alexandre Brongniart, Houdon

  * * *

  36A. As though this were during a time of war, or this were a black market. You want a pound of ball bearings; I want Roth’s Radetzky March.

  * * *

  33. Stall proprietors Lometto, Fontanet, Madame Inès, Csillagi

  * * *

  37. Sabine, at the Ange du Bizarre, Audéoud

  2016

  Red Mittens: Anselm Hollo’s Translation from the Cheremiss

  [UNTITLED]

  FROM THE CHEREMISS

  TRANSLATION BY ANSELM HOLLO

  i shouldn’t have started these red wool mittens.

  they’re done now,

  but my life is over.

  I rarely cry over a poem. Maybe it is easier for me to cry over something that is not so good, something in which the sentiment is very obvious, very frontal, completely lacking in subtlety and finesse. The bluntness of the sentiment may be relaxing, and maybe it is easier to cry when you’re relaxed, or when your brain is not asked to be very perceptive. When I read a really good poem that moves me, I am at the same time slightly distracted by how good it is, and by considerations of the ways in which it is good. I am so interested in how it works that my thinking brain is as engaged with it as my heart is. Of course, sometimes my brain is engaged first and then, afterward, my heart, and part of my emotion comes simply from how good the poem is. But I would not cry over that—it would make me happy. Even a sad or very serious poem that was very good might make me deeply happy, or deeply happy at the same time that I am moved, almost to tears.

  I want to talk about this very brief poem, a translation by Anselm Hollo—who died not many years ago (2013)—because it has both moved and mystified me for the past thirty years or so that I have kept it nearby, sometimes in front of me on a bulletin board and sometimes in my memory, though in that case somewhat inaccurately reproduced, even though it is so brief. In the physical form
in which I have it, it is printed on a postcard published in 1980 that has suffered from the passage of the decades, two corners chipped away, one edge slightly torn, the front still whitish but fly-specked, the back not yellowed but browned, almost burnt, with age.

  Anselm Hollo was born in 1934 in Finland, and after living in Germany, Austria, and England, he finally settled in the United States in the late 1960s. He had a long career of writing eccentric, rebellious poems (“give up your ampersands & lowercase ‘i’s / they still won’t like you / the bosses of official verse culture”) and translating (from no fewer than five languages). I do not believe I ever met him in person, but I corresponded with him briefly. I have just reread the one letter I can find from him, and I can tell from it that I wrote him twice about this poem, forgetting, the second time, that I had written him before. The first letter he did not answer, the second he did. He told me then: “The little poem is a translation from traditional Cheremiss/Mari folk sayings, and I still like it too.”