Ádám Bodor’s The Birds of Verhovina is a remarkable exemplar of translated fiction for several reasons: it is a labour of love from translator Peter Sherwood; it is the first UK-based publication of a major Hungarian author and a celebrated book; and the first foray into Hungarian literature from London-based indie publisher Jantar, mainly known for its focus on Czech and Slovak authors.
Founded in 2011 by Michael Tate, Jantar’s ambition was to make available previously inaccessible works of Central European literary fiction through translations into English. More recently, Jantar widened its remit to publish fiction and poetry exploring notions of difference and the borders of European languages and cultures. Thus it is most fitting for Ádám Bodor’s novel to end up as a Jantar publication: as a work exploring the very notion of the borderland, it is an invitation to address liminality and to ponder on what the periphery as such might actually mean.
Bodor tends to not specify exact geographical locations in his books, and as the blurb of The Birds of Verhovina indicates, the plot is set in “an unnamed totalitarian society” characterized by a sense of the irrational and the absurd. Apart from the fictional village of Yablonska Polyana, a single actual place name is mentioned (Czernowitz, now Chernivtsi in Western Ukraine, Paul Celan’s birthplace), though there are allusions to other recognisable places in the Ukraine, Bukovina and Transylvania. This lack of specificity has fuelled much speculation – especially since this is a consistent authorial strategy – and critics have been divided on whether Bodor’s books offer a portrayal of the Romanian version of communism, or of the general conditions in Eastern Europe in the post-war period. Yet others have argued that Bodor’s books are, in fact, much more universal insofar as they conduct an inquiry into the very problems of the human condition per se. As Viktória Radics argues in her review of the Hungarian edition of The Birds of Verhovina, “Smells, sounds, tastes, colours, forms and materials connect synaesthetically, and in our imagination the land, the people, the animals become palpable. Bodor’s extraordinary sense of taste creates a half-familiar, half-unfamiliar world, and this half-familiarity is loaded with tension: we feel this world, it’s familiar, but aren’t at home, or on the contrary, though we may feel at home, it’s still not familiar – the degree of foreignness, of the uncanny depends on the reader” (Radics in HLO).
Closely related to this observation, critics have also discussed the significance of the landscape in Bodor’s works: the setting generally appears to be somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, possibly around the Romanian–Ukrainian border, but it is always highly stylized and has strong allegorical potential. Bodor himself declared in an interview that while “Sinistra [the setting of an earlier novel] can’t be found on maps, Verhovina (the word means ‘highland’) is the northern part of historical Maramureș, today in the part of Ukraine known as Transcarpathia. … But where exactly are Sinistra and Verhovina situated? I think they’re situated right here, at the city limits – or closer yet: inside ourselves, with all their menace” (Bodor in Elek Tibor, HLO). Indeed, Bodor’s landscapes are never idyllic, even if they operate as a refuge of sorts for the protagonists who are distancing themselves in some way or other from mainstream society.
What one can state with some certainty is that the landscape has the qualities of a character in its own right, and benefits from extensive authorial attention. Landscapes are also an opportunity for Bodor to juxtapose the present and the past, so readers find out that Verhovina used to be a place known for its natural beauty but it has since become a wasteland under constant threat, scarcely inhabited and only accessible with difficulty. Not only has the train timetable been cancelled, but even the birds disappeared from the region. So at first sight, this is nothing but a place of decay, without any hope for redemption, off the radar of the so-called civilized world. Yablonska Polyana will simply become extinct, as the book’s subtitle states: these are “Variations on the End of Days” and Bodor examines “various shades, modes and segments of languish, ruin and extinction. Powerlessness is elemental, biological, natural and social — in other words, total” (Radics).
That said, the author’s trademark twist is to positon this dilapidated, endangered and at times sinister environment in contrast with the protagonists, who lead their seemingly meagre existence with a rare joie de vivre and are masters at taking pleasure in the small things in life. This juxtaposition leads to a genuine spectacle of life lived at the extremes and is the source of an all-permeating dark humour, also characteristic of Bodor’s other works – a humour that is often found in Eastern European culture as a means to cope with the bleakness of everyday existence. Because – make no mistake – this existence is thoroughly bleak, and it is made clear from the very outset.
The novel opens with the arrival of a boy named Adam, the foster son of Brigadier Anatol Korkodus, at a dilapidated railway station. Although this symbolic start takes place at the break of dawn, when a new beginning could potentially be underway, there is no sense of hope in sight. János Szegő comments in his erudite introduction to Sherwood’s translation that Bodor has a distinctive way of opening his books, signalling precise timings for events, unusual family bonds, rare references to places and venues, and introducing surprise gifts and ominous events. Indeed, soon afterwards Korkodus is arrested, for reasons unknown and unrevealed. This sense of mystery is retained for the duration of the book, and as Ágnes Orzóy points out in a detailed study for Hungarian Cultural Studies, Bodor’s protagonists “seem to be part of the landscape: they talk and act dispassionately, and accept suffering, cruelty, or betrayal, as if these were facts of nature. The identities of inhabitants are destabilized by the roles the authorities bestow upon them” (Orzóy 2018).
The Birds of Verhovina is not a linear narrative, yet it has a sort of onward movement. The narrative is presented from various angles in the 13 chapters, each based on and named after a particular character whose perspective it covers. The reader is introduced to a host of weird and wonderful characters with really striking, Balkan-flavoured names that suggest transnational origins, such as Edmund Pochoriles, landlord of the Sign of the Two Queans inn, Brigadier Anatol Korkodus, Clara Bursen, Nika Karanika, seamstress Aliwanka and Madam Chief Constable Isadora, one of several authority figures whose role is to maintain order in the face of all the depravity and decay that takes place in Verhovina. As the storyline progresses, new details make the reader reflect and question anew what they have just read, precisely because of the absurdities that are gradually revealed. All this is done with ebullient imagination, which is why Bodor’s work has been likened to magic realism, not in the least because its South American variant foregrounds the absurdities of a similarly strange and apocalyptic world, in geographical isolation and on the verge of collapse.
Ádám Bodor is considered one of the most important contemporary authors writing in Hungarian. Born in Kolozsvár (now Cluj in Romania) in 1936, he was convicted for political reasons at the age of 16 and spent two years in Romanian communist prisons, following which he moved to Hungary in the early 1980s, working first as an editor and then as a freelance writer. He achieved unanimous critical praise in Hungary with the novel Sinistra körzet, and his subsequent works, published at regular intervals ever since, all gained critical acclaim. Yet, as Orzóy pointed out in her 2018 essay, despite his works having been published in more than twenty languages, “the only book available in English by Bodor other than Sinistra körzet [published as The Sinistra Zone by New Directions, trans. Paul Olchváry, 2013] is a collection of short stories.”
The English translation of Verhovina madarai (2011), tries to rectify this hiatus and was undertaken by Peter Sherwood without an initial commission. This is an important aspect to signal, as it offers a commentary on the status of translations from the Hungarian more generally and it eloquently stresses that translations from languages of relatively lesser circulation are still happening at the translators’ risk, and are dependent on their commitment, enthusiasm and stamina. There is a lot of discussion in translation circles on supply-driven translations, and this is an ultimate case in point: Sherwood went on a literal quest to find a publisher while deciding to translate the full book on spec, in the hope that in this way editors will see the merits of the novel and publish it because they (also) want to do justice to its worth and bring it to the attention of English-speaking readers.
Bodor’s prose, in Sherwood’s translation, retains its casual and conversational tone, almost inviting readers to have the text read out loud to enjoy its aural pleasures. That said, the translation also successfully negotiates the nuances of a complex text, and excels at conveying its dark and subversive humour. Most importantly, the translation resists explicitating the original’s ambivalence, in an attempt to refrain from patronizing readers and intrusively helping them navigate Bodor’s frequently disorienting prose. This is not to say that the result isn’t a work in excellent (British) English, on the contrary, but that it is bold enough to challenge and provoke readers, allowing them to fill in any potential gaps as and when they see fit.
Bodor, Ádám. The Birds of Verhovina. Translated by Peter Sherwood. Jantar Books, 2021.
Jozefina Komporaly is senior lecturer at the University of the Arts London and a translator from Hungarian and Romanian into English.
Works Cited
Bodor, Ádám. The Sinistra Zone. Translated by Paul Olchváry. New York: New Directions, 2013.
Elek, Tibor. “Sinistra and Verhovina Are Inside Us — Interview with Ádám Bodor,” Hungarian Literature Online, 17 July 2013.
Orzóy, Ágnes. “Reading Ádám Bodor’s Sinistra körzet [The Sinistra Zone] in English.” Hungarian Cultural Studies. e-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association, Volume 11 (2018).
Radics, Viktória. “Danse Macabre — Ádám Bodor’s ‘The Birds of Verhovina’,” Hungarian Literature Online, 8 October 2021.