{"id":1038,"date":"2019-08-13T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?p=1038"},"modified":"2019-08-13T12:00:01","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T11:00:01","slug":"olja-savicevic-singer-in-the-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/08\/13\/olja-savicevic-singer-in-the-night\/","title":{"rendered":"A road trip to remember: Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107, Singer in the Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Translated from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (Istros Books, 2019)<\/h2>\n

Singer in the Night <\/em>is the second novel by Croatian author Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107; the narrator tells us that it is \u201ca story about life\u201d, and encompassed within this is a story about love and memory, and their attendant joys and losses. Both hilarious and profound, this book is a reflection on the ways we love, the paths we choose, the exhilaration and peril of being open to new experiences and the stagnation and dessication of choosing safety and banality over desire and dreams.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Singer in the Night <\/em>is mostly narrated by Clementine, an eccentric soap opera scriptwriter. Clementine is a \u201cblonde orange\u201d with silicon lips and whitened teeth who gave up on art and followed money and popularity, for \u201cpeople needed a lot of cheap, quick emotion, they needed it in greater quantities than it was possible to produce \u2026 Let\u2019s face it, gunk has moved the vast majority of people and filled their thoughts probably more than the best work of art ever could.\u201d Clementine hasn\u2019t seen her ex-husband \u2013 the elusive poet Nightingale \u2013 in some time, but she is jolted into going in search of him when he disappears after leaving a series of letters for his neighbours in Split. The letters have been written in response to a bout of loud lovemaking in one of the buildings on the street; in this hot summer with all the windows open, the sounds of passion have carried, and inspired Nightingale to write from a variety of perspectives about love. There is no trace of Nightingale in Split; he has not been in contact with his friends and family, and even the yacht that he still co-owns with Clementine has been abandoned. Cue Clementine climbing into her golden convertible car and embarking on an unforgettable journey from Slovenia through Croatia to Bosnia in search of her lost love. Along the way she recounts her memories, which she sees \u201cas though through polished glass\u201d, and which are interspersed with the letters from Nightingale.<\/p>\n

Nightingale\u2019s letters delight in the possibilities of language; he is \u201ca ruler over words and colours\u201d who explores the breadth of lyric expression with his shrewd observations about society and human nature. Though they are ostensibly about the lovers keeping the street awake on the hot summer nights, this is really just a pretext to talk about love (\u201cwhere the heart is not free there cannot be love\u201d), resistance (\u201cWhy would a child write if it was well?\u201d), politics (\u201cPeople constantly sing about freedom, but at the same time with all their limbs, including their tongue, they stay on the border\u201d), and a range of other musings on war, (anti)heroism, contingency, and life in all its chaos.<\/p>\n

While Nightingale\u2019s missives are poetically crafted, there are occasionally some unexpected turns of phrase in Clementine\u2019s monologue. Given how distinctive the writing style is and how renowned Celia Hawkesworth is, I rather suspect they may have been there in the original too; I found the extended use of the imperative mood quite marked, but I can’t imagine that “Let mother come home soon” was chosen over, say, “I wish mother would come home soon” or “if only mother would come home soon” without a lot of thought, or that “starkers people” was chosen as a childlike colloquialism for naturists without deliberation over its unusualness.\u00a0Clementine is a unique character, and so I suppose it follows that she has a unique way of speaking, which Hawkesworth conveys ably in the translation. The repeated use of \u201cmy dear\u201d creates intimacy and hints at Clementine’s raconteur personality; it is an affected way of speaking that indicates the milieu in which she operates but also a form of self-address, as she is recording her voice for herself. For Clementine, we discover, is suffering from a progressive memory loss, and does not want to forget the detail of her life \u2013particularly not its joys and its passions \u2013 and for this she needs to evoke Nightingale, the lost love of her life.<\/p>\n

The final section of the novel is the one in which Nightingale finally speaks as a character, rather than through his letters. We find out why he left and how he perceives Clementine, as well as more detail on his life philosophies. But Clementine\u2019s own story is also full of thought-provoking pathos: Savi\u010devi\u0107 is a socially engaged writer, aware that \u201cit\u2019s the duty of anyone living in a dystopia to create a utopia.\u201d Her narrative calls into question the world that she and her contemporaries inherited, Clementine\u2019s personal tragedy mirroring the historical amnesia that post-war societies slip into, both encompassed in a phrase which could sum up the entire book: “what keeps us going is memory.”<\/p>\n

If the narrative is disorientating at times, this is indicative of Clementine\u2019s own confusion, her road trip an apt metaphor for the narrative ride she takes us on. Her outpourings fill the silences of a relationship and a youth that have faded away, and are populated by a cast of eccentric supporting characters, from the fearless, hairless Helanka and her twin daughters Billy Goat and Arrow to Clementine\u2019s platonic \u201ccomrade\u201d second husband Bert and her failed movie-mogul-turned producer Kalemengo. Part road trip, part social comment, part metaphor and part love story, above all this is an exploration of memory, with some fittingly memorable twists along the way. It is not Nightingale that Clementine is moving towards on this turbulent journey, but her past, her memories, and herself. This reflection on the fragility of memory \u2013 both personal and historical \u2013 is a poignant, innovative and politically engaged book that deserves attention.<\/p>\n

Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107 will be at the Edinburgh Literary Festival<\/a> on Sunday 18 August.<\/p>\n

Review copy of Singer in the Night <\/em>provided by Istros Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translated from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (Istros Books, 2019) Singer in the Night is the second novel by Croatian author Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107; the narrator tells us that it is \u201ca story about life\u201d, and encompassed within this is a story about love and memory, and their attendant joys and losses. Both hilarious and profound, this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA road trip to remember: Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107, Singer in the Night - Translating Women<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/08\/13\/olja-savicevic-singer-in-the-night\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A road trip to remember: Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107, Singer in the Night - Translating Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Translated from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (Istros Books, 2019) Singer in the Night is the second novel by Croatian author Olja Savi\u010devi\u0107; the narrator tells us that it is \u201ca story about life\u201d, and encompassed within this is a story about love and memory, and their attendant joys and losses. 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