In 2008, for the first time, Dominique Poulain, coordinator of the HÖFN Association, followed for several days the festival LES BORÉALES, in Caen.
She was there again in 2017, and once again, the Festival was specially devoted to Iceland...
Dominique Poulain tells us here her own experience while at Caen, during the festival, between the 19th et le 25th of Novembert 2017...
« So… here I am in Caen, during the festival Les Boréales… about 9 years after my firt visit there...
HĂ–FN then did not yet exist, or at least its existence was only virtual (though perfectly official!).
In fact, our association was founded in 2007,
the residency place where we’d welcome our future residents was built during the summer of 2008,
our first resident arrived in March 2009.
To-day, in 2017, the Festival Les Boréales (which spotlights every year one Nordic country) focuses on Iceland, as it did in 2008.
Ironically, if the Festival 2008 was indeed a beautiful one, offering a multifaceted range of events (exhibitions, films, concerts, meetings with writers...)
a clever and thrilling programme – see here a succinct summary of Dominique’s experience then : A Nordic festival: LES BORÉALES ,17-30 November 2008, in CAEN (FRANCE-Normandy) "Deux semaines en Islande" - "Two weeks in Iceland" -
Iceland experienced at the very same moment, quite suddenly, very dark times, considering its recent history… After an extraordinary economic growth since its Independance (Iceland cut off all bounds with Danemark the 17th of June 1944),
(not counting though some fairly serious snags : the « cod war », the oil price shock in the 70’s),
- and certainly a boom more apparent than real (!) -,
the Icelandic people had just found out (in October 2008)
that the country had to deal with a major economic crisis,
and had been demonstrating for days and weeks
calling for the dismissal of the government
(you can read - in French! - this article)...
Nothing of the sort this time, in 2017! These pictures below will give you a glimpse of my wanderings and chance discoveries in the streets of Caen...
I have found a place to sleep in, very cheap, in a plain and bright flat, at the heart of the old town.
The young woman who lives there is genial and easy-going ;
People in Caen are friendly and talkative...
It took me some time to get to the nerve center of the Festival.
From churches to other churches (they are so many!!), from churches to bookshops,
from bookshops to churches... »
"... I finally stumbled on the church called l’Église St Sauveur…
And there, under the vaults, you’d find pleasant persons welcoming you with tea or coffee, and answering all your questions... "
« .. I could, thanks to them, at once, organize all my appointments, walking and bus trips for the next few days :
Le 22nd in the evening, I’ll take the tramway to go to the Bibliothèque d’Hérouville
(a library in the suburb not too far from the center of Caen) and I’ll meet there my old friend Sjón
who will talk about the last book he wrote and was translated in French: Le garçon qui n’existait pas" ( Moonstone : The Boy Who Never Was)... »
Above, on the left: At the library of Hérouville, (from left to right): a librarian, Eric Boury, Sjón, the event coordinator, PASSIONATE and enthusiastic reader of Sjón’s last book: « Le garçon qui n’existait pas » (« Moonstone : The Boy Who Never Was »).
On the right: Whispering between Sjón and his translator, as, little by little, the audience finds out, from the writer himself, how he works and what had been the actual origine of the book «Le garçon qui n’existait pas».
SjĂłn will explain us that he collects a myriad of details and information about subjects, themes, topics he is interested in for 10, 15 years, whithout knowing for certain whether he will use this huge amount of information or not, directly or undirectly, in any of his future books.
His previous books, at least those which had been translated in French (all of them by Eric Boury) will be mentioned during this presentation:« Le moindre des mondes » (« The blue fox ») - a rare and delicate gem… in my opinion! -
"Sur la paupière de mon père" (« With a Quivering Tear »), « De tes yeux, tu me vis » (« Made in Secret / Your Eyes Saw Me »).
As for « Le garçon qui n’existait pas », it all started for Sjón with a constant and thorough search for details concerning the vogue for spriritism in Iceland.
It led him to... the Spanish flu, which dramatically hit the country in 1918, (after the eruption of the volcano Katla)... AND these many characters in the book who appear, bubbling with life, to be finally baldly wiped out by the plague...
Indeed the Spanish flu was the prelude of a craze for spiritism - so many dead and loved ones that the survivors wanted at all costs to « meet » again - these countless and cherished dead persons, who will finally compose the fertile ground for this novel...
... where we understand, through Sjón’s comments (among much information and analysis) that the word homosexual did not even exist at that time, given how intolerable, unbearable, shameful the idea of such an « inverion » was...
Another comment from Sjón (concerning the relations between the Icelandic people and the Danes as we see them in the book): the Icelanders did not (any more?) experience the Danish colonisation as oppressive and unwanted, far from it (a fact that Sjón is presenting in a very different light from all I personally knew about this aspect of the Icelandic history)...
We’Il talk also of course, about the phenomenal - and, for the young « heroe » Máni Steinn – salutary- craze that ALL Icelanders shared during th 20/30s for… CINEMA:slapstick movies, adventure and mystery films: 2 movie theaters in Reykjavik then, and new films every three days !!
Picture on the right : Eric Boury (Sjón’s translator) shows us that the Icelandic upper class did not mix with the rabble in the movie theaters, and much prefered at that time light theater comedies …
« Ragnar Helgi Olafsson arrived the same evening (22nd of November) in Caen.
Two of his books had been recently translated in French by Jean-Christophe SalaĂĽn:
Lettres du Bouthan and La réunion du Conseil national de l’audiovisuel du 14 mars 1984 et son influence formatrice sur la sexualité de l’adolescent… et autres histoires (Nothing less!).
We’ll go together the 23rd, at the end of the afternoon, breathe in sea air at La Villa Brugère,
which receives artists and authors in residence at Arromanches ( the very place of the Landing in Normandy June 6, 1944)…
I will use the opportunity to meet there the president of this association,Marie Thérèse Champesme.
(I got so much help to organise this trip to Arromanches - 30 kms from Caen - many persons actually, participating in different ways in the organisation of the Festival,
volonteers that I met int the Church St Sauveur, the manager of the book shop next door (Brouillon de Culture), Marion Cazy and Chantal Carlier, who was guiding Ragnar everywhere!)...»
When Ragnar Helgi Olafsson arrives at the beginning of the evening thee 23rd of November, at Arromanches, a 700 inhabitants’village on the coast in the heart of the area where the Normandy landings took place on D-Day, 6 June 1944 (a recent history that has become to-day, of course, a touristic manna !), it is as black as pitch... or almost...
A glimmering line floating on the horizon : a multitude of boats gathering together at the same spot, at the same time for few weeks ; the king scallop season opens, under a very strict regulation in France : 2 hours a day between October and December from one area to another;
Marie Thérèse Champesme, president of the Association, (who lives on the premises all year long), gives Ragnar a distinguished reception : a poster announces his coming to the Villa Brugère as you enter the garden, and little maps of Iceland are displayed everywhere !
Marie -Thérèse Champesme starts reading, and commenting a short story: « le chemin le plus court », from the book
" La réunion du Conseil national de l’audiovisuel du 14 mars 1984 et son influence formatrice sur la sexualité de l’adolescent… et autres histoires»
(Translator (in French) : Jean-Christophe Salaün). She’ll confess that she chose to read an excerpt certainly worthy of interest,
but also saving her from having to pronounce too many … Icelandic names !
She will note, among other observations, and more seriously, the very obsessive tendency, a major preoccupation in many characters throughout the whole book :
be in control in any situation, apply rules and regulations.
Ragnar will concede that it helps himself to exorcise his own demons, to mock himself, to criticise, with the help of humour (always there)
some outrageously rigorist aspects we can see in individuals as much as in society (in Iceland or anywhere else!).
He’ll share with us his own deep bewilderment (and uneasiness) when he noticed how spontanious and simple it was for him to handle the administrative and legal style and terminology !
There was another long reading, where, this time, Marie-Thérèse Champesme had chosen an excerpt from "Lettres du Bouthan".
«Why did you imagine in the first place that those letters would be sent from Buthan» ?
Ragnar’s answer: because for him (and the Icelanders generally speaking) BUTHAN somehow represents absolute exoticism.
(Ragnar never went there, by he way !).
He was actually realising, now that his book had been translated in French, for French people,
that this notion of pure and fondamental exoticism connected, for him, to Buthan, was for us, French people, as much connected to… Iceland !
(May be I should explain that this book is built on an exchange of letters - back and forth, not quite reguliar! - between Buthan and Iceland)...
The epistolary form that Ragnar very consciously chose, gave him a freedom he deeply needed :
because of, and through the patently erased words, the truncated missives (without us really understanding the reason for it : administrative/political censorship ? Lost pages?),
a space of imagination and freedom is opening FOR THE READER as well...
WE, as readers, may, and can, or not, fill holes...
Time, wear and tear, erosion, deletion and erasing of things, memory and forgetfulness pepper this book...
... Where a new aspect of this meeting with Ragnar Helgi Olafsson appears : he is not only a writer ; il is a poet, a visual artist, a publisher as well....
As quite a few examples of his work as an artist (or a publisher) are shown,
Ragnar Helgi tells us that there is really NO SEPARATION AT ALL for him between his work as a writer, or a visual artist, or a publisher.
He switches from a form, a role, a way of thinking and creating to another, very freely, almost without thinking about it, because each is consistent, and/or in harmony with what he needs, or desires to express (and experience) at this precise time of his life.
If the work of a writer is in essence a solitary one, the same could be said about the work of a visual artist.
BUT it might also lead to many and diverse collaborations, all kinds of collective creations, which indeed mark a very important part of Ragnar’s work.
We’ll find out that MUSIC plays as well an integral part in Ragnar’s life, and artistic life (both inseparable)...
This evening around Ragnar ended in a pleasantly relaxed and friendly way, all having a drink together just after Ragnar Helgi was finished presenting the many facets of his work...
Above, in the center, Ragnar Helgi Olafsson with his « guide » during the Festival, Chantal Carlier (to-day a retired school librarian) and Johary Ravaloson,
writer in residence at the Villa La Brugère in 2017, who had just received the award « Prix Ivoire de la Littérature Francophone » (a prize for francophone literature).
After lively conversations and toasts, an essential work for any author : book signing...
 « On the 24th, (the day before I left), I wandered at dusk along the harbour,
on my way to the huge, and quite magnificent library Alexis de Tocqueville, a very new library in the center of the town (I was told that it was opened only few months before) ».
Along the water, leisurely stroll to the library Alexis de Tocqueville...
 « At the library Alexis de Tocqueville, on the ground floor, a fairly wide space devoted to an exhibition : David Templier’s photos.
(there are of course many other exhibitions - photo exhibitions or not, dedicated to Iceland or other Nordic countries – during this festival – I’m only mentioning here what I could see during only 4 days ! »
«It was finally time for the meeting between Jón Kalman Stefánsson, his translator Eric Boury and the readers...
An event coordinator was with them in order to present the last two books that Jón Kalman Stefánsson had written which had been translated in French» :
ALL Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s books (at least the books that had been translated in French) are exceptionally for sale in the library:
a trilogy: Entre ciel et terre (Heaven and Hell), La Tristesse des anges (The Sorrow of Angels ), Le Cœur de l'homme (The Heart of Man)
but also, under the designation : « family chronicle », a bit reductive in my opinion : D’ailleurs, les poissons n’ont pas de pieds (Fish Have No Feet) and À la mesure de l'univers (About the Size of the Universe)
Here above Jón Kalman Stefánsson reads an extract of his book "A la mesure de l'univers", (About the Size of the Universe), in Icelandic.
D'ailleurs, les poissons n'ont pas de pieds ((Fish Have No Feet), then A la mesure de l'univers (About the Size of the Universe) constitute a diptych that brings a galvanising tone, rythm, environment shift,
quite enthralling for the reader, after the trilogy : Entre ciel et terre (Heaven and Hell) , La Tristesse des anges (The Sorrow of Angels ), Le Cœur de l’homme (The Heart of Man).
I personally read this «triptych » as one listens to a symphony :
the very physical, palpable quality of the words becomes a spiritual experience
where nature and men (and women) blend into one another as the writing unfolds, stripped down, rough, and lyrical...
As, in front of an obviously bewitched audience (!), the conversation between the event coordinator and Jón Kalman Stefánsson goes on, the latter takes a mischievous delight in demolishing a few clichés about Iceland.
This miraculous island where the air is supposed to be the purest in the world… but in Jón Kalman’s opinion, one the the most polluting country in the world, avoiding a major environmental disaster only because so few people live there (just a bit more than 300.000) !
Not without humour, Jón Kalman tells us about this island at the edges of the world , that Icelanders tend to see as being… the center of the world!
On the left, it’s now Eric Boury’s turn to get a wicked pleasure from translating for all to hear what Jón Kalman Stefánsson just summarised about Iceland in few striking words :
" Regarding politics, regarding environmentalism, regarding feminism, BEWARE OF ICELAND ! Never take Iceland as an example ! Never trust Iceland ! »
As a matter of fact, concerning women, and the status they have in Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s books, he gets straight to the point : according to him, Icelandic society is deeply « macho »...
He tells us about his own experience : as he still was a very young man, almost a boy, working in a fish factory for the first time in his life, surrounded with women who had been slogging there for years,
the boss stopped by every day to give instructions… He spoke to nobody else than this boy among the women, handing him the reins, because he was in his view, despite his youth, his unexperience, the only MAN, and only acceptable person to speak to...
BUT, at least, JĂłn Kalman will concede (will indeed state loud and clear!) that if Iceland has demonstrated its incompetence and irresponsability as far as politics, environmentalism, feminism are concerned, its only and main strength, undeniably, takes root in Culture and Art...
An obligation at the end of any litterary meeting with the autor...
JĂłn Kalman devoted himself to this task with much kindness towards his many and fervent readers!...
(the 24th of November 2017, rather late in the evening...)