A book that shook my soul - Women's Translation Month
Talking about translations as a part of life and Mercè Rodoreda's Death In Spring
I read women in translation all year long and to say that this is because of just that women translators get paid less or that women in general are translated less often would be to underplay my feelings.
I have led a life that has had significant challenges, and my gender and sexuality has played an important part in this. I consistently feel that I am unable to convey, put in words my trauma, my heartache and I’m in awe of women who turn their experiences, ideals and thoughts into art.
I have a medical condition that neurologically makes it impossible to produce serotonin in my body. It is a disability and I don’t lead what people call ‘a normal life’. This is one of the reasons why I just couldn’t post on the 1st of August, even though translations have been a part of my bloodstream now.
My most recent adventure was with Mercè Rodoreda, I read her book Death In Spring published by Open Letter Books.
Death In Spring at first reminded me of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. Reviews online also compared the two quite frequently, but as the book progressed I realised that this was far more than Jackson’s short story.
“The man cupped his hand in front of his lips, speaking to me out of the side of his mouth, so no one would hear – he told me that he enjoyed watching people die.”
― Mercè Rodoreda, Death in Spring
A lot of Death In Spring is about how we start believing things that just make sense in the moment but without have some perspective this is a dangerous ordeal. Superstition is an understatement for what unfolds in the pages of this book. It is insidious horror, it is a reflection of who we are when we are scared, it is an allegory which I daresay is written better than Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984.
“They want you to be afraid. They want to believe, and they want to suffer, suffer, only suffer, and they choke the dying man to make them suffer even more, so they’ll suffer till their last breath, so that no good moment can ever exist. If the rocks and water rip away your face, it’s for the sake of everyone. If you live with the belief that the river will carry away the village, you won’t think about anything else. Let the suffering be removed, but not desire, because desire keeps you alive. That’s why they’re afraid. They are consumed by the fear of desire. They want you to suffer so they won’t think about desire. You’re maimed when you’re little, the fear is hammered into the back of your head. Because desire keeps you alive, they kill it off while you’re growing up.”
― Mercè Rodoreda, Death in Spring
What hurts is that the characters follow these absurd rules of : filling the mouth of a dying person with cement so they don’t lose their soul (because they believed the soul comes out of the mouth when we die), of a graveyard forest - every time a person is born a tree is assigned to them with their name plate on it so when they die they’re buried by making an incision in the tree, pregnant women are always blindfolded so they don’t see another man and the child they bear will look like their father.
The prose just creeps under your skin and it doesn’t stop until time stands still and you’re forced to reflect upon what the hell is going on with the world, you begin to question everything. I think that is a novel quality of good books - they make you ask important questions.
There’s a stark contrast in the themes of the book and the lush poetic prose in which it is written.
If you haven’t guessed already, I recommend Death In Spring wholeheartedly. I’ll see you soon :)
Please feel free to get in touch if you want to discuss books and more, simply reply to this email of write me at nidhipande1@gmail.com