Under Milk Wood – au bois lacté

Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood has a particular atmosphere that it is not easy to translate into another language. How should you say “limping invisible down to the sloeback, slow, crowblack fishingboating sea,” in French?  Or “The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea.” Even more challenging maybe would be “In Butcher Beynon’s Gossamer Beynon, daughter, schoolteacher, dreaming deep, daintily ferrets under a fluttering hummock of chicken’s feathers in a slaughterhouse that has chintz curtains and a three-pieced suite, and finds, with no surprise, a small rough ready man with a bushy tail winking in paper carrier”. 

Dylan Thomas's Writing Shed Milk Wood?

The main point is you probably can’t translate it accurately so you don’t. Except that in 1972 a French theatre company did translate it into French and performed it as a play at the Maison de la Culture in Rennes. What was lost in translation was made up for in the acting. There was totally in this piece the atmosphere of Thomas’s sleepy, intensely populated little village with all its secrets staring out at us. It may have helped that we were in Rennes, the capital of Brittany. Welsh and Breton is very similar when spoken. Chances are the people are similar too – especially the ones who live in small towns or big villages.

At any performance the audience contributes Who was the audience? It was made up of academics, scholars of English literature and language students. Yes, I was in that audience.

There were ten of us. Four French students who studied English and German.  Four English students studying French and German and two German students studying English and French. We were all fluent in each others' languages.

We watched the play, we ate together afterwards, we drank read wine and we discussed Dylan Thomas into the early hours. We spoke French. After all, we were in France. Just occasionally we would stumble and then we could speak in our own language. The others would understand. And sometimes only one of those three languages could quite accurately express exactly what we wanted to say. We had a real tool to play with there. 

Oh, and the Maison de la Culture, by the way?  Yes, a great initiative by André Gide, the novelist, when he was minister for culture under De Gaulle’s government. De Gaulle, remember, was the big guy who constantly refused to have us in the Common Market. We’re throwing that privilege away?!  Gide created buildings that housed a theatre, other small performance spaces, a music library, a book library, coffee bars and bars where creative practitioners and their audiences could meet. No longer did people need to dress up to go to  theatres and now it was affordable for the lower earners including students.  Our own Everyman Theatre (Liverpool) is a little like this. My Creative Café Project was inspired by the Maison de La Culture. Our theatres have come on as well, though they’re not quite as friendly as the Maisons de la Culture were. It’s important that we learn from each other.

Yes, I hear you. This is fine for the rich. But I‘m not rich. I was born working-class and am arguably middle class now but not rich. However, I did this on a student grant. Okay, now it’s a loan but students get their fees waived if they do two semesters on an exchange and help anyway even for one semester. The money? EU money. Yes, we’ve paid it in but it comes back bigger. Two or more heads are better than one. The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.

When we went to see Au Bois Lacté, ten heads and three languages were better than one. I guess also the writer in me was looking at how Thomas was achieving his effects and the adaption, including the translation, was fascinating.                          

Strangers are friends you’ve not met yet

The doorbell rings. The courier stands there, scratching his head, staring at the number on the  door. Yes it is a bit strange. We are number 15. To my left is number 17 and to my right is number 11. We should be number 13. Is this an English thing? Or a British thing? Does it happen elsewhere in Europe? This is the second time we’ve lived in a house that should be number 13.

“Can you take this for next door?” the man asks.

“Of course,” I say.

He mumbles as he fills in the details on his iPad. “Number thirteen?”

“Fifteen,” I say.

He frowns again. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he says. “My English isn’t very good.”

It is 26 June 2016. I wonder what he must be thinking. I feel sorry for him. He probably wonders what I’m thinking. Yes actually, even I can be impatient if people can’t speak English properly. However, there is another side to this. I taught languages for over 23 years and I find it incredibly rude when people make no effort to speak the language of the country they’re visiting. It’s usually in other countries that I get irritated and actually with my compatriots.    

Today, though, I’m not irritated.

We have had a horrible racist incident on one of our trams. I’m pleased to say that everybody rallied and condemned what was going on. Presumably as I’m talking about Manchester at least 40% of the people on the vehicle must have been Brexit.  More if you listen to the assumptions about which type of people travel by which means. Who knows? Yet they came to the defence of the man who was being hassled. British values are still upheld then.  

I look at the man in front of me and assume he’s Commonwealth. He is dark-skinned and has small features. He is slim and young. I expect a lot of people think they have just voted to have people like him sent home but in fact by voting to keep EU citizens out they’re probably making way for more Commonwealth members.  

“Where are you from, then?” I ask as I sign the iPad.

“Germany,” he says. “Originally from Pakistan.”  Ah. Double whammy?  

 The courier firm is German. He’s been sent to the UK to train some others but is covering for a sick colleague today.

“Prima,” I say. We carry on our conversation in German. I manage to reassure him that most of the people he’ll meet will be decent and tolerant and won’t take it out on him personally. Most won’t. There may be a few.

I think I’ve made a new friend. The stranger I hadn’t met at the beginning of the day.                    

                       

How it all began

Year abroad

 

 

1972 – 1973 was the third year of my BA Dual Hons French and German at the University of Sheffield, which actually meant a year abroad half in France, half in Germany. So, I enrolled at the universities of Rennes and Stuttgart. 

 

Stranger on the shore

France was tricky. I had to enrol with the police before I could enrol with the university. The police wouldn’t let me enrol with them until I was registered at the university. So, there were a lot of temporary forms and treks across town.   

“It’s a pity you English don’t come into Europe. You would avoid all of this fuss then,” said the friendliest of the officials I had to deal with.

Er, excuse me.  We’re coming in in January. Sort of.

Sure enough late January I received a letter from the police. My residential permit was ready. Only, I wouldn’t need it because now the UK was part of Europe. Cheers. I left France anyway at the end of February. 

A fellow student felt ill and took advantage of a free medical for all students just before Christmas. There was some concern and she was referred to other doctors. She almost blew her travel insurance to establish that she had meningitis and she had to be flown back to the UK. No EHIC in those days.     

At home in Germany

Germany was much easier. All foreigners even from other Common Market countries had to have a chest X-Ray. There was a worry about TB. People from Common Market Countries didn’t have to pay nor did we have to a make an appointment or queue. I arrived at the centre and was ushered like royalty to the front.

When I looked for accommodation later and the elderly sisters from whom I wanted to rent a room picked up a foreign accent they hesitated. “Where are you from?” they asked tentatively.   

“England,” I replied.

They sighed with relief. “So you are a real European,” they said. “You are most welcome.”         

More than an economic agreement

Yes it all started then in many other ways as well.

I’d had a good upbringing in languages anyway. From the bubble gum cards that taught you a few words to begin with, through O-levels and actually starting my German A-Level before I  took my O-level to working in small groups in A-levels. By the time I went to Sheffield I was fluent and widely read in both languages. I was passionate about them.

However, it all went up to another level when I actually went to live in those countries. I began to see a different point of view and I found different ways of doing things.

In France they put all of the foreigners together. It was kindly meant but it caused us to speak creolised French. So, I joined a choir, started playing basketball and learnt Breton.  In Germany I was pushed more into the thick of it and shared an apartment with a German girl. I joined a chess club and swam a lot.

I can no longer distinguish what I learnt then or what I’ve learnt since. Four spring to mind now. 

1.      They’re apologising for the tram running two minutes late and it’s snowing this heavily (That was definitely Stuttgart, March 1973).

2.      They allow students to go up to the next level even if they haven’t passed the year? (Most school systems except the British insist on student passing the year before that go up to the next one)   

3.      Two four course meal a day. What’s not to love? (France- even at the university restaurant – and yes, French families do manage it)

4.      They have the heating on all the time? Well, if it’s cold it’s cold. Doesn’t it actually cost as much to keep having it go on and off? What do you think the thermostat’s for? (Yes it’s a peculiar British habit, this having the heating coming on twice a day. When our children were very small we went “continental” and had it on day and night.  The bills were no different.  We only have it off at night in our current house because it gets too hot when we’re in bed.)                                    

 More come to mind as I write. I’m not saying here that the European way is the better, just that it’s an alternative and some of it rubbed off on me. That is the point of all exchange, of all connection isn’t it?

When I came back to the UK, the UK had moved on too.. I was no longer only British.   

I still have the friends  I made back then. 

A feeling of loss

By Gill James

Rude awakening

24 June 2016. The radio alarm goes off. It’s not quite time for the 6.30 news. There’s something soothing on Classic F.M. I can’t remember what now but it involves violins or a cello. Would we be celebrating tonight? Maybe some other bubbles, not the normal Friday evening beer. We’d be gentle of course. We wouldn’t flaunt our victory. Staying in would not be good news for everyone. We suspected all along the vote might be close.

Then the announcement. “The people of the United Kingdom have voted to leave the EU.”  

What? Am I dreaming?

 

Commiserations

I work with a lot of people from other EU states. Some others are married to or partnered with citizens of other EU states. A few colleagues come from further afield.  All of us have lived and worked abroad at some point.

We send our commiserations to the colleagues who are from other EU states.

“I feel like a foreigner all of a sudden,” says an Italian colleague – an expert on Shakespeare.

Two others have already started the process of obtaining British citizenship.

 

The last laugh

We pause. Maybe the commiserations should be coming the other way. Our colleagues from other EU states will be able to continue to work freely throughout the  EU. We will not. Might some of the other fall-out of Brexit make UK universities a less attractive place to be?  What with that and actual living being more difficult, won’t a lot of them look elsewhere for employment? I fear a brain drain.

Changing nationality?

One colleague comes from Northern Ireland. Those with connections in the Republic can get Republican passports. “I know a lot of eligible bachelors and spinsters,” she quips. “Would anybody like me to set you up?

So, Scotland wants to stay in. Will they try and split from the UK again? Can we go and live in Scotland please?  

“Scotland actually needs immigrants,” says our Scottish colleague. She finds us the information about how to move to Scotland.  

Our son has already looked into obtaining German nationality. They owe us, don’t they? It would all be a lot easier if my father-in-law had been on the Kindertranpsort but he’s English. We might yet give it a go though.

What about the Netherlands? Didn’t they say when we lived there that it was just a matter of going for a glass of sherry with the mayor? Yes, we lived there for a couple of years and Martin worked there for another three, commuting weekly.   

We’ve owned property on Spain for over twenty years. Does that help?   

We read that our children should remain EU citizens after Brexit, as they were born in the EU, but we can’t quite find the mechanics for ensuring that.

Are we clutching at straws?

 

It’s all about the Polish plumbers

They’re undercutting the native English ones apparently. Now our plumber is Lancashire through and through. He’s very efficient, very reliable and very reasonable and I don’t think he feels threatened. Then we remember that actually he’s Irish. From the Republic. He goes there quite often at the weekend. The Lancashire accent is just to fool you.        

The headache

Okay, so it isn’t the worst migraine I’ve ever had but it is there until the following Monday as is the tendency to be tearful, angry and disbelieving. It feels like the end of a love affair. Yet for me personally it’s much more. I’ve been invested in inter-European understanding since 1972, possibly earlier.   

A dull ache is behind my eyes all the time and I have an incapacity to think of anything other than what has just happened.  

“Get away from Faceache,” says my daughter. “Do something nice.”

It’s a little too early by day four. But yes, getting away from Facebook is a good idea.

“You lost. Get over it,” says a so-called friend. I decide it would be petty to unfriend her and ask myself whether I would have said the same had it been 52% Remain and 48% Leave. I hope not.  

I still await any explanation that convinces me why Brexit is a good idea yet here I am, on this blog, patiently putting forward my rationale.