The problem of happiness
by Tove Ditlevsen, translated by Michael Favala Goldman; Farrar, Straus and Giroux

“Jack of all trades” is a bit of a cliche, but in Michael Favala Goldman’s case it could be a fitting handful – or perhaps it could be changed to “Jack of many trades”.

Goldman, from Florence, is a jazz clarinetist and has also worked as a carpenter. But in recent years he has carved out a career as a translator of modern Danish literature and poetry, with 17 books to his name. He has also published three of his own poetry collections and teaches poetry workshops in the Valley (more details below).

Last year, Goldman received wide acclaim for his translation of “Dependency,” the third volume of the three-part memoir “The Copenhagen Trilogy” by Tove Ditlevsen, a famous 20th-century Danish writer who lived a tumultuous life that included drug addiction, failed marriages, abortions, and depression; his work has now begun to find a wider audience in the English-speaking world.

Among a number of accolades, “The Copenhagen Trilogy” was named one of the 10 best books of 2021 by The New York Times, while The Paris Review called it “an absolute tour de force, the definitive volume in particular.… Ditlevsen’s writing . . . is crystal clear and vividly, painfully raw.

Goldman has now translated a collection of stories, “The Trouble with Happiness”, which Ditlevsen wrote in the 1950s and 1960s. These 21 stories, divided into two chapters, might better be called vignettes, as most feature about six to 10 pages. They feature, as “The Copenhagen Trilogy” did, Ditlevsen’s sharp, stripped-down, unsentimental writing, with profiles of people, mostly women, for whom happiness is elusive – as it was for the author, who committed suicide in 1976.

Portraits of stale marriages and family dysfunctions abound, and thoughts and unspoken tensions buzz ominously behind bland conversations and daily routines. Physical closeness is rare, money is usually limited, and children are an afterthought or just a mistake.

A woman in a lackluster abortion clinic, waiting to be seen by a doctor, considers life with her partner and finds she misses it: ‘There was something clearly laughable about the idea of ​​having a child with him, and not the least heroic in hiding it from him.”

In “The Umbrella”, a housewife, Helga, shortly in a marriage that had seemed well enough started but is now sinking under her isolation and her husband’s alcoholism and mean talk, takes refuge in a recurring image of her childhood: a pretty woman in a yellow dress, carrying a mysterious umbrella. Helga buys herself an umbrella and briefly feels happy – until her husband angrily breaks it in half.

In “My Wife Doesn’t Dance”, a married woman with a leg damaged by childhood illness, who always felt ridiculed when she was young, thinks her husband has accepted her for his mind and heart. Then she hears him on the phone saying: “Thank you very much, that’s very kind of you, but my wife doesn’t dance.

Now she is once again struck with self-doubt, but cannot bring herself to ask her husband who he talked to or why he said what he did, even though a “hate cold” begins to invade her: “Now, someone has opened the door, and an invisible and icy cold wind has blown around her. Suddenly, she perceives her husband “as a complete stranger, a person with whom she happened to be in the room”.

Some of these things are not very subtle. “The Little Shoes” begins with this line: “Helene woke up early in the morning, feeling that her whole life was one big failure.” “Anxiety” is the title of another story, while “Depression” opens with “Lulu piled the dirty dishes on top of each other in nearly boiling water, so that sprigs of parsley, leaves of wilted lettuce and radish heads broke free and floated on top in a sad, greasy stew.

But Ditlevsen’s stories, while not exactly uplifting, are always interesting because of the characters the author observes closely and their tense emotions and thoughts, bubbling just below the surface of their lives.

As Publishers Weekly puts it, “Ditlevsen is extremely sensitive to how normal life can wear down. [people’s] hearts. Readers will recognize the recurring themes of anger, disappointment and frustration in the author’s universe. Along with this discomfort, however, is the opportunity for profound transformation.

little ruler by Michael Favala Goldman; Homestead Lighthouse Press

Goldman’s third collection of poetry, “Small Sovereign,” recently won first place for poetry at the Los Angeles Book Festival. The author writes on his website that he was stunned when he learned of the prize: “Was it real? How is it possible ? I’m still partially in disbelief, but acceptance and gratitude are gradually replacing my sense of shock.

If the translation of Tove Ditlevsen’s work puts him face to face with the dark scenes of this author, Goldman immerses in his poetry a wider range of emotions. In “Small Sovereign,” divided into three sections, the mostly short free-verse poems have their moments of despair, whether about the state of the world or personal relationships, but they also find moments of joy, luminosity and humor.

“A high time” remember the parents of the narrator, young people dressed “fringed suede” in the late 1960s and early 1970s who, at age 22, had two children and a cheap mortgage to “an attempt to crush the modesty of their parents, / in the tumult of exploits, assassinations, / their friend returning from Vietnam / with a tracheostomy and then dead.”

The poem suggests that the marriage did not last, but not for lack of sentiment: “but look again / how much they were doing, / under what circumstances / the events unfolded / and the love never died out, / not completely.”

The collection considers the ups and downs, or perhaps the push-pull, of other relationships. In “Lumière”, the narrator assumes that when he crosses his partner’s horizon “like a giant balloon” he might need “a touch / from my mooring. And guess what – / you tie me up, I float you, / we hover between / sand and clouds.

And Goldman says love is the most important bond in a troubled world; mediating for hours on end for world peace, he writes in “On the Other Side,” is more about disengaging from life.

“But don’t try to convince me / that it’s better to barricade yourself in the bedroom / of your thoughts / than to hold my hand before breakfast / to watch the pale moon / to merge with the sky / through the bare trees.”

To learn more about Goldman’s writing and translation, visit michaelfavalagoldman.com.

Steve Pfarrer can be contacted at [email protected]