He is a Pole, a man of seventy, a vigorous seventy, a concert pianist best known as an interpreter of Chopin, but a controversial interpreter: his Chopin is not at all Romantic but on the contrary somewhat austere, Chopin as inheritor of Bach. To that extent he is an oddity on the concert scene, odd enough to draw a small but discerning audience in Barcelona, the city to which he has been invited, the city where he will meet the graceful, soft-spoken woman.
The Pole, if I’m understanding it correctly, is all about what’s lost in translation between people: from what’s lost by an author as he attempts to translate his nebulous ideas into words on the page, to what’s lost when two strangers are forced to resort to “global English'' in a necessarily superficial effort to understand one another. And as this comes from J. M. Coetzee — a native of South Africa who does not consider English to be his mother tongue, and who has released his last two novels first in Spanish after having them translated from his English originals — there are layers of meaning and irony beyond what might appear to be a simple girl meets boy story. This is about art, and the effort to use art to transcend what can be put into words, and about the basic impossibility of any two people understanding one another at all; if I’m understanding this correctly. I loved every bit of this short novel. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
As it opens, we meet Beatriz: not exactly beautiful, but graceful and well-built; a wealthy banker’s wife, approaching fifty, who organises events for the Concert Circle in her native Barcelona. At the last minute, Beatriz is put in charge of entertaining the visiting Maestro, whose name has “so many w’s and z’s in it that no one on the board even tries to pronounce it — they refer to him simply as ‘the Pole’”; and as she has no idea if he speaks any Spanish, or even simple English, Beatriz invites an elderly French-speaking couple along for a post-concert dinner; after all, Chopin spoke French, didn’t he? Conversation at dinner proceeds in basic English, with imperfect understanding, and although Beatriz assures the reader that she is not “chatty”, she can’t help but confront this Witold Walczykiewicz over what she thinks is his improper interpretation of Chopin, even if Witold has been widely celebrated for his “controversial” efforts. After they part, and Beatriz files the evening away as unremarkable, she will begin to receive emails from Witold in which he proclaims an undying love for her — referencing Dante and his Beatrice in the old Italian — and she then proceeds as though she doesn’t even understand her own mind: “I’ll certainly not email him back,” until she does; “I’ll certainly not go to Mallorca when he’s playing there,” until she does; “I’ll certainly not invite the Maestro to visit our family vacation home after my husband leaves,” until she does. Long after these events, after Beatriz has filed them away as ultimately unremarkable, she will come into possession of a series of poems that Witold has written for her, and as she tries to have them appropriately translated from Polish to Spanish (discovering along the way that computer programs have no sensitivity for the task), she will need to confront the fact that maybe she never really knew Witold at all.
As for the layers of what’s lost in translation: The first chapter, in its entirety, reads 1. The woman is the first to give him trouble, followed soon afterwards by the man. And who is the “him” who is given trouble? Coetzee himself. He never lets us forget that we are reading a novel — a later passage reads: It is only a matter of chance that the story being told is not about Loreto and her man but about her, Beatriz, and her Polish admirer. Another fall of the dice and the story would be about Loreto’s submerged life. — so it’s interesting to begin with the notion that getting first the woman, and then the man, “right” had given the author some trouble. Coetzee is said to have released his most recent novels first through an Argentinian press, after having had them translated into Spanish, as an effort to combat the cultural hegemony of the English language and the Global North. For The Pole, I read (in The New Yorker ) that Coetzee even followed the advice of his Spanish translator, Mariana Dimópulos, and her suggestions for how a Spanish woman like Beatriz would actually “think, speak, and act”. So not only do we have a male author writing from a female POV about her inability to understand a foreign man’s intentions, but this male author enlists the help of his female translator to get his female character right — before she alters it all into a different language with its different shades of meaning. (I also found it nicely ironic that in a Dutch publication [netherlands.posten.com; the website won’t let me link it] — the language in which Coetzee previously had first released some novels — the English translation has the title of this novel as “The Pool”.) Beatriz and Witold not only face the barriers of sex and language, but there's a generational gap as well — the Maestro having been born in Poland at the height of WWII might explain his old-fashioned infatuation — and when Beatriz eventually travels to his apartment in Warsaw to retrieve the poems, she'll realise that she never asked him one question that challenged the way that she imagined he lived.
But this novel is about more than what’s lost in translation (or omitted) with the spoken word: Witold interprets Chopin “austerely”, which Beatriz doesn’t understand or like. We see Witold literally evoking Dante and Beatrice as a parallel for their relationship (which Beatriz does not understand or like), while in the background, we are to understand that their meeting in Mallorca metaphorically parallels events in the relationship between Chopin and George Sands. And when Beatriz attempts to get Witold’s poems translated — by a person from the university who usually deals with legal documents, and who warns that she can translate words but not a poem’s meaning — Beatriz does not understand (or like) them either. How much of this misunderstanding, through multiple art forms, is due to what is lost in translation, and how much of it simply represents how unknowable we necessarily must be to one another? This is a long review of a short book because it gave me so much to think about. Totally recommend it, rounding up to five stars for the extended experience.
Producing a concert, making sure that every thing runs smoothly, is no small feat. The burden has now fallen squarely on her. She spends the afternoon at the concert hall, chivvying the staff (their supervisor is, in her experience, dilatory), ticking off details. Is it necessary to list the details? No. But it is by her attention to detail that Beatriz will prove that she possesses the virtues of diligence and competence. By comparison, the Pole will show himself to be impractical, unenterprising. If one can conceive of virtue as a quantity, then the greater part of the Pole’s virtue is spent on his music, leaving hardly any behind for his dealings with the world; whereas Beatriz’s virtue is expended evenly in all directions.
As it opens, we meet Beatriz: not exactly beautiful, but graceful and well-built; a wealthy banker’s wife, approaching fifty, who organises events for the Concert Circle in her native Barcelona. At the last minute, Beatriz is put in charge of entertaining the visiting Maestro, whose name has “so many w’s and z’s in it that no one on the board even tries to pronounce it — they refer to him simply as ‘the Pole’”; and as she has no idea if he speaks any Spanish, or even simple English, Beatriz invites an elderly French-speaking couple along for a post-concert dinner; after all, Chopin spoke French, didn’t he? Conversation at dinner proceeds in basic English, with imperfect understanding, and although Beatriz assures the reader that she is not “chatty”, she can’t help but confront this Witold Walczykiewicz over what she thinks is his improper interpretation of Chopin, even if Witold has been widely celebrated for his “controversial” efforts. After they part, and Beatriz files the evening away as unremarkable, she will begin to receive emails from Witold in which he proclaims an undying love for her — referencing Dante and his Beatrice in the old Italian — and she then proceeds as though she doesn’t even understand her own mind: “I’ll certainly not email him back,” until she does; “I’ll certainly not go to Mallorca when he’s playing there,” until she does; “I’ll certainly not invite the Maestro to visit our family vacation home after my husband leaves,” until she does. Long after these events, after Beatriz has filed them away as ultimately unremarkable, she will come into possession of a series of poems that Witold has written for her, and as she tries to have them appropriately translated from Polish to Spanish (discovering along the way that computer programs have no sensitivity for the task), she will need to confront the fact that maybe she never really knew Witold at all.
Years later, when the episode of the Pole has receded into history, she will wonder about those early impressions. She believes, on the whole, in first impressions, when the heart delivers its verdict, either reaching out to the stranger or recoiling from him. Her heart did not reach out to the Pole when she saw him stride onto the platform, toss back his mane, and address the keyboard. Her heart’s verdict: What a poseur! What an old clown! It would take her a while to overcome that first, instinctive response, to see the Pole in his full selfhood. But what does full selfhood mean, really? Did the Pole’s full selfhood not perhaps include being a poseur, an old clown?
As for the layers of what’s lost in translation: The first chapter, in its entirety, reads 1. The woman is the first to give him trouble, followed soon afterwards by the man. And who is the “him” who is given trouble? Coetzee himself. He never lets us forget that we are reading a novel — a later passage reads: It is only a matter of chance that the story being told is not about Loreto and her man but about her, Beatriz, and her Polish admirer. Another fall of the dice and the story would be about Loreto’s submerged life. — so it’s interesting to begin with the notion that getting first the woman, and then the man, “right” had given the author some trouble. Coetzee is said to have released his most recent novels first through an Argentinian press, after having had them translated into Spanish, as an effort to combat the cultural hegemony of the English language and the Global North. For The Pole, I read (in The New Yorker ) that Coetzee even followed the advice of his Spanish translator, Mariana Dimópulos, and her suggestions for how a Spanish woman like Beatriz would actually “think, speak, and act”. So not only do we have a male author writing from a female POV about her inability to understand a foreign man’s intentions, but this male author enlists the help of his female translator to get his female character right — before she alters it all into a different language with its different shades of meaning. (I also found it nicely ironic that in a Dutch publication [netherlands.posten.com; the website won’t let me link it] — the language in which Coetzee previously had first released some novels — the English translation has the title of this novel as “The Pool”.) Beatriz and Witold not only face the barriers of sex and language, but there's a generational gap as well — the Maestro having been born in Poland at the height of WWII might explain his old-fashioned infatuation — and when Beatriz eventually travels to his apartment in Warsaw to retrieve the poems, she'll realise that she never asked him one question that challenged the way that she imagined he lived.
But this novel is about more than what’s lost in translation (or omitted) with the spoken word: Witold interprets Chopin “austerely”, which Beatriz doesn’t understand or like. We see Witold literally evoking Dante and Beatrice as a parallel for their relationship (which Beatriz does not understand or like), while in the background, we are to understand that their meeting in Mallorca metaphorically parallels events in the relationship between Chopin and George Sands. And when Beatriz attempts to get Witold’s poems translated — by a person from the university who usually deals with legal documents, and who warns that she can translate words but not a poem’s meaning — Beatriz does not understand (or like) them either. How much of this misunderstanding, through multiple art forms, is due to what is lost in translation, and how much of it simply represents how unknowable we necessarily must be to one another? This is a long review of a short book because it gave me so much to think about. Totally recommend it, rounding up to five stars for the extended experience.
