الكلمة المكسورة

by Adam Foulds, طلال فيصل (مترجم)

يُعتبر هذا العمل الأدبى رواية قصيرة مكتوبة شعرا، تدور أحداثها حول ثورة (الماو ماو) على الاحتلال الإنجليزى فى الخمسينات، ويقوم فولدز برصد تفاعل الإنجليز المقيمين فى كينيا، مستخدما أسلوبا شعريا، يتوقف طويلا أمام التفاصيل الصغيرة، ويربطها فى سياق حدث الثورة الكبير. كل هذا بطريقة تجمع بين الشعرو النثر.

Genres: Poetry, Historical Fiction, Africa, Fiction, War, Kenya, Historical

120 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2008

About the author

Adam Foulds (born 1974) is a British novelist and poet.

He was educated at Bancroft's School, read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford under Craig Raine, and graduated with an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 2001. Foulds published The Truth About These Strange Times, a novel, in 2007. This won a Betty Trask Award. The novel, which is set in the present day, is concerned in part with the World Memory Championships, and earned him the title of Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. The report of this in The Sunday Times included the information that he had previously worked as a fork-lift truck driver.

In 2008 Foulds published a substantial narrative poem entitled The Broken Word, described by the critic Peter Kemp as a "verse novella". It is a fictional version of some events during the Mau Mau Uprising. Writing in The Guardian, David Wheatley suggested that "The Broken Word is a moving and pitiless depiction of the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be, and the terrible things we do to defend our place in it". The book was short-listed for the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize[6] and won the poetry prize in the Costa Book Awards. In 2009 Foulds was again shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and won a Somerset Maugham Award.

In 2009 his novel The Quickening Maze was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Recommending the work in a 'books of the year' survey, acclaimed novellist Julian Barnes declared: 'Having last year greatly admired Adam Foulds's long poem The Broken Word, I uncharitably wondered whether his novel The Quickening Maze (Cape) might allow me to tacitly advise him to stick to verse. Some hope: this story of the Victorian lunatic asylum where the poet John Clare and Tennyson's brother Septimus were incarcerated is the real thing. It's not a "poetic novel" either, but a novelistic novel, rich in its understanding and representation of the mad, the sane, and that large overlapping category in between'.
On 7th January 2010 he was published on the Guardian Website's "Over by Over" (OBO) coverage of day five of the Third Test of the South Africa v England series at Newlands, Cape Town. Fould's published email corrected the OBO writer, Andy Bull, who, in the 77th over, posted lines by Donne in reference to Ian Ronald Bell in verse form:

"No doubt I won't be the first pedant to let you know that the Donne you quote is in fact from a prose meditation. The experiment in retrofitting twentieth century free verse technique to it is interesting but the line breaks shouldn't really be there."

--Wikipedia

Reviews

[Ahmed Oraby · Rating 1 out of 5]

أيوة يعني ماله الكاسيت؟!

[Araz Goran · Rating 1 out of 5]

هذا التقييم يخص المترجم بشكل حصري عن هذه الترجمة الغير الموفقة على الاطلاق والمخيبة جداً، ليس من جهة الرواية فحسب بل على صعيد الترجمة بشكل عام، هذه الرواية التي كُتبت كـ قصيدة طويلة من تأليف الشاعر والروائي الانكليزي آدم فولدز في رأي غير قابلة للترجمة لأسباب بسيطة جداً، لأنها أولاً ضربت أساس الرواية وهي القائمة على بناء قصيدة شعرية موزونة تعطي للقارئ طعم الرواية ونكهتها عن طريق تذوق القصائد وربطها مع بعض في قالب شعري يستوحي منه القارئ في النهاية الهدف من الرواية وفك رموزها، من غير المعقول أن أقوم بترجمة هكذا قصيدة، من غير المنطقي أن أشعر أني إزاء رواية أو حتى قصيدة، فهي لم تُكتب كقصيدة محضة ولا كرواية كي أجول في تفاصيلها وأستمتع بأحداثها ومجرياتها..
ثانياً كان هدف الكاتب الرئيسي هو مخاطبة الشخصية الانكليزية والوعي داخله بطريقة شعرية عاطفية حيث تتحدث عن الاحتلال البريطاني لـ كينيا في أواسط القرن للعشرين، فليس لقصيدة كهذه أن تعطيني أي إنطباع وأي شعور تجاه ما أقرأ ..
ترجمة فارغة،فقط لأن الرواية حاصلة على جائزة وحظيت بشهرة في الصحف.. هل هذا كافٍ لترجمة أي عمل؟؟

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam Foulds is a writer I've been intrigued by for some time. Recently named Granta's Best Young British Novelists, writer Julian Barnes has said he’s “one of the best British writers to emerge in the last decade.” After reading this Homeric prose poem, I can see why.

In this sequence of 10 poems written in narrative verse, Tom, a young British man is sent to his family’s farm in Kenya during the summer before he enters the university. After arriving, he is thrust into the Mau Mau Uprising, a revolt by the native Kikuyu people that sought to gain independence from British rule in the 1950s. The rebellion is violent, brutal, and eventually disproportionately dominated by the British, as also chronicled in the recent non-fiction account, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya.

I don’t know too much about British Imperialism, but by chance, I happened to have also been concurrently reading Beer in the Snooker Club, which details a young Egyptian’s perspective of conflict with Britain at the same time (1950s). It was utterly fascinating to read these two accounts, one from the perspective of a young Brit (The Broken Word) and the other from a victim of Imperialism (Beer in the Snooker Room) at the same time.

In this poem, Tom walks through the coffee fields and hears the ritual worship of Ngai, the supreme God of Kikuyu. He's reminded of the liturgical hymns of chapel back in England. The last stanza wakes him from this memory and foreshadows the coming futility of violence.

4)Facing Ngai

Mid-morning after rain.
Mountains flowing rapidly under clouds.
The valley paths a freshened red
with yellow puddles, glittering weeds.

Tom walked between the lines
of coffee for half a mile,
knocking fragments
of water onto his sleeves --
little bubble lenses
that magnified the weave
then broke, darkening in.
He walked to within earshot
and no further.

A surprisingly dull sound of ceremony,
one voice then many voices,
one voice then many voices,
that recalled school chapel
although probably they were spared hymns.
Tom remembered the hymns,
the light, weakly coloured by the windows,
falling on the boys opposite,
standing, opening their mouths;
and the hymn books,
the recurrent pages greyish,
worn hollow like flagstones
with pressure of thumbs, over years,
years of terms, the books staying always
on their dark shelves in the pews.
The days he wanted to stay
all day alone in the pretty, scholarly chapel.

And then over the voices,
another sound.
Faintly, from behind the house,
Kate practising with a pistol,
its faint, dry thwacks
a fly butting against a window pane.

The grand build of these poems left me in awe. The last poem (10) was my favorite. In this poem, Tom returns and settles into university life, and he’s urged (society, family, and a personal desire to conform) to forget his experiences in Kenya and carry on with life as if nothing happened. He clearly has what we now call PTSD. To all around him, he’s a typical young man, but inside he’s scarred and decomposing. His passion, once characterized by restraint and innocence, now harbors aggression and a subtle viciousness.

This is an excellent narrative poetry collection that is easy to understand, powerful in scope, and beautifully composed.

[Rogius]

لو قلت أن المترجم اختار كتاب غلط يترجمه و موضوع غير شيق ممكن اكون غلطانة و يكون مهم لناس تانية، بس اللي واثقة منه ان الترجمة سيئة جدا برغم اني اشتريته عشان اشوف طلال شاطر ف الترجمة زي الكتابة ولا لا بعد ما قريت "سرور". لكن نظرا لأن الكتاب منشور من 2010 أظن اني هدي لطلال فرصة تانية في قراءة عمل من ترجمته أحدث من الكلمة المكسورة.

[سَنَاء شَلْتُوت · Rating 2 out of 5]

لو لم يكن هناك مقدمة لهذه الرواية أو القصيدة في بداية الكتاب؛ لم أفهم المغزى من كل ما قرأت.

مقدمة دافيد ويتني في الجارديان البريطانية، سهلت عليا فهم هذه القصيدة، التي لا تعد من ضمن القصائد ليس بها بناء القصيدة كما تعلمتها، وليست رواية، وليست قصة، وليست مقال.. هي حكاية شخص تحول من طالب لقاتل، ثم أكمل حياته العادية وكأن شيئًا لم يحدث.

آدم فولدز كنت قرأت له قبل كدا جنون المتاهة ولم يعجبني، ولكني اشتريت هذا الكتاب عندما رأيت اسم المترجم: طلال فيصل.
عامةً مش مهم إن الكتاب مكنش فيه متعة أو أي شيء، إلا أنه ذكرني ببعض المشاهدات في رواية القوقعى، عندما كان يأتي الجنود الجدد وينفذون العملية الأولى لهم في القتل، فكما قال فولدز:
أول مرة هي دائمًا أسوأ مرة.

أتمنى أن تختار الهيئة، وأن يختار المترجم الروايات التي يستطيع أن يترجمها بما يتناسب مع الذوق العربي.

فالررواية لو قُرأت بلغتها الأصلية من الممكن أن تكون أفضل.

[ياسمين Thabet · Rating 2 out of 5]

انا قريت كلللل حاجة
اني افهم كلمة!!!!

[Gilgamesh Nabeel · Rating 2 out of 5]

بدأت قراءة هذه الرواية القصيدة القصيرة في أيّام إمتحاناتي ولكنّني لم أنتهي منها وأجّلت ذلك لوقت آخر، وقبل أيّام قرّرت معاودة قراءتها وشوّقني لذلك كتابة مؤلّفها بأنّه كان يود ترجمتها للعربيّة لأنّ هذه اللغة تضع الشعر في مقدمة ألوان الإبداع الأدبي، وثانيا لكونها تتكلّم عن ثورة الماوماو الكينيّة ضد بريطانيا وهي أحد كتابين فقط حول هذا الموضوع، وهو الأمر المختلف عن الثورة الجزائريّة التي يزخر الأدب والسينما الفرنسيّين بموضوعات تتناولها بإسهاب، ولكن وجدت في الرواية في المرّتين خللا ما، يلفّها الغموض وقد أضاعت الترجمة كل متعة فيها، هي تتكلّم عن شاب بريطاني يدعى توم يدرس في لندن ويأتي لزيارة أهله في كينيا فيبقى ليخدم وسط جيش بلاده ضد هذه الثورة، ونرى تحوّل شاب عادي إلى قاتل بدم بارد كما نستدل على ذلك من خلال عودته لدراسته ورغبته في الزواج من صديقته التي تقترح عليه الذهاب للإلقاء نظرة على فاترينات الجواهرجيّة. القصّة قصيرة والصور مقتضبة عن العنف وحرق القرى وتعذيب الأسرى من الماوماو وأساطير عن همجيّتهم وكونهم من أكلة لحوم البشر، الرواية تتناول وجهة النظر البريطانية للموضوع ولكنها ليست وجهة نظر الكاتب بل رغبته في تصوير عقليّة المستوطنين في كينيا في وقتها. ربّما ستكوت الرواية أجمل بكثير إذا ما قرأت بلغتها الأصليّة.

[محمد رشوان · Rating 1 out of 5]

ياخسارة الـ5 جنيه ..

أشتريتها ممنيّا نفسي بعمل عالمي من ترجمة العزيز طلال فيصل ، لكن فوجئت بمسخ

الكاتب الأصلي حاول يمزج مابين سردية الرواية واتساعها وحكي الأحداث من خلالها .. ومابين عمق قصيدة النثر و رقيها

فأخرج مسخ ..

المترجم حاول الالتزام بأمانة النقل حتى لا يخرج النص عن خصوصيته ولم يُرد التجويد

فلم يكن حالها بعد الترجمة بأفضل من حالها قبلها .. فلم تزد الترجمة طين النص المسخ إلا بلّة ..

الله يحرق هيئة الكتاب ..
حار ونار فى جتتكم الخمسة جنيه ..

كنت اشتريت بيها أي كتاب تاني محترم .. المفروض يفتحوا باب الاستبدال . أه والله ..

زعلتني يا د.طلال والله .. زعلتني :( :@ :@

[Aliaa Mohamed · Rating 1 out of 5]

مافهمتش حاجة!

[eman · Rating 1 out of 5]

طيب ..هو أنا اشتريته أصلا علشان لقيته ترجمة طلال فيصل ،ودة بردو من ضمن الهبل اللي أنا مش بطلع منه ،،يعني ليه أقرا كتاب لمجرد اني بحب المترجم ؟نعم يعني؟

وبردو خسارة الخمسة جنيه

[محمد جبر · Rating 1 out of 5]

أضم صوتي لجموع الساخطين الذين سبقوني في تناول هذا الهراء.

[عهود المخيني]

حسنًا. ليست الكلمة المكسورة عنوان النَّص بل صفة لُغة النَّص «المترجَم» نفسه أيضًا هنا.

[Nour · Rating 2 out of 5]

101 أسباب عدم قراية الشعر االمترجم

[Mohamed Gamal · Rating 1 out of 5]

ليه الإنسان يعمل كده في أخيه الإنسان يا طلال يا فيصل !؟

[Mariam Hamdy]

كتاب سيئ، لم أستطع تجاوز صفحات منه حتى
الترجمة لطلال فيصل جاءت على عكس المتوقع.

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was blown away by this slim little book. I haven't read any verse fiction since having a Dorothy Porter crush in my first year at uni, and now I want more.

Tom is an English teenager, returning to the family farm in Kenya for summer between finishing school and going up to university. He returns to the beginning of the Mau Mau uprising, as Kikuyu who were dispossessed of their land by British settlers stage guerilla attacks on British families and loyalist Kikuyu. In retaliation and out of fear the British set up detainment camps where most of the Kikuyu population is eventually interred. The uprising sets the stage for Kenyan independence in 1963, but not until after the loss of thousands of lives and hideous brutality on both sides.

Tom is sucked into this maelstrom in the most horrible way - and behaves hideously, and comes to an ambiguous end. Telling his story would ruin this experience for anyone, and I do so want more people to read this book.

Foulds's writing is like a set of forensic photos, picking out the details that stand for a complex story. You can imagine so much out of these 60 pages, that you wonder why most novels are 200+ pages long. Perhaps that imagination is enhanced as a New Zealander, living in a country with its own uncomfortable and occasionally tragic colonial past.Foulds's doesn't shirk any of the grim details - in fact, the poem is packed with them. An attack in a vilage:

The men labouring hard, queitly, as in a workshop, a boat builders' yard
limbs and parts scattered around them,
their wet blades in the flamelight
glimmering rose and peach.

Five prisoners are taken from the main camp to be interrogated:

Three weeks later two of the men came back,
wordless and unsteady, heavily edited. Between them:
nine fingers, two ears, three eyes, no testicles.
No good to anyone, they were let out
to wander briefly as mayflies
and die as a warning.

And yet his writing is so precise, so carefully weighted, that you don't feel poisoned by these details: rather than feeling bludgeoned yourself, you feel like Foulds has very skillfully, almost imperceptibly, injected this story into your mind in such a way that you'll never shake it.

Tom put down his biscuit, finished his tea,
and threw the cup against the wall.
It smashed wonderfully, as though charged,
into a thousand tiny white knives and powder.
Tom looked over the whole service,
deaf with pleasure, considering them for bombs.

There's something cinematic about the brevity with which Foulds tells his story; it's like a small collection of very carefully edited scenes. I had a mental flash of detective novels and murder mysteries while reading: the denouement when the detective - flash, flash, flash - tells the true story that's been hiding in plain sight under all the distractions all along.

'The Broken Words' couldn't be more different from the book by Foulds I read earlier this year, The Quickening Maze, in subject matter at least. But that lancing attention to detail remains the same, even if the book seems positively baroque in comparison. Highly recommended.

[Cheryl Gatling]

This book is about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. That was something I knew nothing about, so I naturally looked it up afterward, and was impressed to see how succinctly the author had slipped just the most necessary information into conversations between characters, and descriptions of scenes. The Broken Word was easy to follow even when the historical context was unfamiliar.

Tom, a British boy between high school and college, returns home to his family's farm in Kenya, and finds himself sucked into the growing violence. He is taken on a night-time raiding party, which is more of a murdering party. It turns Tom's stomach, but the older men consider this experience good for him, something to make a man out of him, an induction into the community. Tom goes on to become a guard in a prison camp, where he sees torture up close and personal, and grows more casually violent himself. He eventually goes back to college in England, but he goes back changed.

Wikipedia says, "Atrocities were committed by all sides," and this is presented, but the book focuses mostly on the British perspective, since Tom, our protagonist, is British. The cool, thoughtless, sometimes flip manner in which the Brits commit acts of brutality, and then return to their drinks and cigars, is chilling. All except for Tom, who participates, but has doubts, seem to feel completely justified.

All scenes are vividly presented, but the book is not cover-to-cover bloodbath. With economy, brief events suggest much more than is portrayed "on screen." So much is suggested that I think many long discussions could be started (or many school term papers be written) about what it all means. One of those long discussions could be about what the rather abrupt (and surprising) ending means, but I leave that for another day on account of spoilers. I think the book was successful both as story, and as poetry. It is both.

[Rui Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found The Broken Word a beautifully written narrative in verse that was compelling to believe the experiences of the protagonist during such turbulent times. However, since the tale is told from the colonial English point-of-view and torturing of Africans and other senseless violence is involved, I felt the story was one-sided, intentionally so, and therefore lacking in a multifaceted perspective of many individuals who may have been involved in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising. That and at times locating who is speaking or who is the subject of the line of verse can be confusing, but only slightly. It truly makes me want to inquire further into what took place in Kenya in the 1950's when my parents lived there and my mother waited for a bus while a frightening Mau Mau rebel was within arm's length. It makes me want to read a novel, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji, that also deals with the same time period and subject matter. I thank the publisher's representatives at Penguin for sending me an advanced reader's copy as The Broken Word doesn't come out in the States until April 2011.

Upon re-reading the text, I realize that Foulds perhaps is making an indictment of the flailing British Empire in its death throes. That the language sounds exploitative is only because that is what took place back then, exploitation and oppression of the indigenous culture. This is perhaps one of the most beautiful books that I've read in a while, it ends perfectly, so sweetly after such horrors witnessed. I think this novella would be a good text to use for a class on historical verse writing, as Foulds creates such an amazing narrative that it needs to be read over and over until the reader is sick of what took place in Kenya in the 1950's.

[Alexander Kosoris · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I still probably consider poetry the writing form for which I know the least, I’m slowly stepping in and getting some basis of understanding. But let the previous statement context for the following one: I’ve never encountered anything like The Broken Word before. This isn’t to say that Foulds necessarily does things that have never been done before, but rather that I will forever compare anything similar to this work, mainly because it was the first of its kind I read, but also because it was so well-written.

The Broken Word is a narrative poem that recounts a young man’s experience in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising of the ’50s, and his subsequent attempt to re-enter polite English society despite being thoroughly traumatized during his stint there. While there are specifics in the text that very much place the story within that conflict––such as Louis Leakey discussing the Gĩkũyũ taking their oath––the central conceit of trauma coming from atrocities strikes me as being quite adaptable to all manner of conflicts throughout the ages. While this is likely a significant portion of what makes the poem meaningful, the fact that Foulds remains unflinching in his portrayal of the horrors humans felt content inflicting upon their fellow man while staying sympathetic to his troubled protagonist gives The Broken Word a great deal of its poignancy.

In short, I found The Broken Word concise, chilling, and unique. It’s definitely worth the read. (And, you know, it’s really short, so you have very few excuses to avoid it.)

[Salsabil Emam · Rating 3 out of 5]

أفريقيا مرة آخرى :)
هذه المرة في كينيا .. آبان ثورة قبائل الماوماو على المحتل الإنجليزي ..
الرواية أو القصيدة من وجهة نظر كاتبها الإنجليزي الذي جعل بطل روايته "توم" الإنجليزي الذي يزور أهله في كينيا قبل بدء الجامعة في إنجلترا .. فينضم في كينيا للخدمة العسكرية ضد أصحاب الأرض ..
يتحدث الكاتب -من وجهة نظره- عن التعامل الوحشي للماوماو مع العدو المغتصب و المحتل !!!!! فهو يبين الممارسات الغير آدمية التي فعلها الإنجليز في الكينيين .. من تعذيب لرجالهم و إغتصاب لنسائهم !

لم أستطع التعاطف بالقطع مع المحتل مهما مورست فيه ممارسات بالنسبة لنا حرام فيجب إحسان القتل .. و لكني لن أتعاطف مع المحتل المغتصب بأي شكل ، كل الإدانة للمحتل المغتصب و كل من عاونه.

أهمية الرواية أنها عمل من وجهة نظر المحتل نفسه..

لكن للأسف أنا لا أؤمن بأن القصائد يمكن من الأصل أن تترجم لغير لغتها إلا بحرفية شديدة جداً .. و هي ما لم أجده هنا .. و لكن على أي حال هي مقبولة بشكل لا بأس به ..

أفضل مقطع أعجبني كان؛
تساؤل البطل "توم" عن هؤلاء الماماويين الذين يتمسكون بقسمهم ((إما الحرية و إما الموت)) في حين إنهم إذا قالوا أنهم تخلوا عن قسمهم و لو تحت التعذيب فسيخلوا سبيلهم ! .. هو هُنا لم يستطع أن يفهم أنهم يضحون بأنفسهم من أجل ((قيمة)) .. و أنهم رجال لموتهم معنىَ بتمسكهم بها :

"قَسمُهم ظل مثل الكريستال في مكان ما داخل أجسادهم المهمشة.
لكن لم ؟ لم يفهم توم.. لماذا لا يكذبون فقط ليخرجوا .. ثم يستمرون ؟"

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A narrative poem describing in a series of narrowly focused scenes the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950's and its effect on a young man who has returned to Kenya from school in England. Amazing economy of presentation, unforgettable descriptions, implications that go far beyond what is specifically covered in the poem. Only about 60 pages and can easily be read through (the first time) in an hour. It never went where I expected, and yet it always seemed right. The poem ends (optimistically?) on a note of very precarious happiness, with the young man returned to England to attend university.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely blisteringly good! It's a story told in the form of a poem and the horror of the situation (the mau mau uprising in Kenya and the british colonials' draconian attempts to keep a lid on the situation) is conveyed with a subtle but irresistible power.
The early images of britons being hacked to pieces by africans brought back memories of the Woolwich murders a few days ago, and a more thoughtful reviewer might want to compare and contrast the two situations but I'm not that reviewer.

[Gregory Norminton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The work of a major talent, and one of the best narrative poems I have read; easily the rival of Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate and Les Murray's Fredy Neptune, though much shorter and more spare than either.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Friday Drama:
Adam Fould adapts his poem about a white family caught up in the Mau Mau time in Kenya.

[جابر طاحون · Rating 1 out of 5]

يعني أما حد يسألني بتقرأ إيه ؟
هرد أقول له دي رواية ؟! مجموعة شعرية ؟! مسرحية ؟! اسكتش اذاعي ؟! منولوج ؟!

بلاش

لو حد قال لي بتتكلم عن إيه هقول له أنا لمحت كلمة انجليز و الماوماو و أنا بقرأ ؟!

بلاش

طب لو سألني استفتدت إيه ؟! أقول إيه ؟!!!

[Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

الفصل الأخير: الإغفاء
لطيف عجبني، ويعتبر نوع الشعر الوحيد الي يصلح ترجمته هو الشعر الرومانسي الذي لا يحتوي على أحداث. باقي الرواية مكتوبة بلغة شعرية لكن مليانة أحداث والترجمة قتلتها، وترجمة الشعر شبه شرح النكتة كدة.
بس اخر فصل جميل

[Mariam Omar]

قرأت بها صفحتين ، وشعرت بالملل الرهيب ، ربما أعيد محاولة قراءتها فى (مود ) اخر
:)

[Marwa Eletriby]

ليه يا اخي كده ليه بس ؟

[Anthony Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a narrative poem of 61 pages in which Foulds describes the experience of a young man who has just finished school and who is returning home until it is time to take up his place at university, probably either Oxford or Cambridge.

So far, so relatively unexceptional. But the youth in question, Tom, is white and British, home is in Kenya, and the time is 1953 during the Mau Mau rebellion. And thus the young man and his family - father, mother, and his sister Kate with whom he gets on well, perhaps ‘swimmingly’ might be the word – is pressured into the social role of defence volunteer and upholder of British values, of law and order, and of European hegemony over the black man – especially when it comes to defending land seized from the Africans as the self-declared right of the colonizer.

Suffice it to say, he learns to kill and is brutalized by witnessing the casual racist cruelty of the detention camps run by the British for Mau Mau prisoners. Eventually he hears the camp commander declare of a resisting prisoner ‘“This one’s just bought a ticket to Compound Nine”’. (Although Tom has not been in Compound Nine he knows it is the worst of the worst because he has seen the men who are returned from it where they have been under the supervision of “specialists”.) Foulds’ laconic line that follows - ‘“Oh no he hasn’t,” Tom whispered’ - is followed by an event that leads to Tom’s being retired from the volunteers.

The narrative concludes during Tom’s first year at university where he is studying Classics:

‘Bright metalwork of Trojans, Danaans,
well-greaved Achaeans
buckling and unbuckling
over an abstract plane
as he went over and over,
adjusting his translation.’

Of course, he is adjusting his own translation from that of a semi-war footing in a foreign land (where his ‘home’ still is) to an environment of cultivated quiet studiousness where he is expected to study a text about warfare, and he is not finding it easy. He has violent dreams about his tutor and a coal shovel. He witnesses a pub fight with a girlfriend and finds himself shocking her, and himself, by saying “They’re not hurting each other…If you want to see them hurt / I know how to make them suffer,” and later he is sexually aggressive with the same girlfriend. Nevertheless, his sensitivity is not utterly lost to him. Distraught at her coolness and indifference to him afterwards, Foulds’ sub-text allows us to see Tom beginning to know that he must hold fast to that which is good about himself and human experience, and come to terms with what he has felt pressured to do elsewhere.

I have some reservations about this sort of subject matter as used by those for whom the events described are history. (Foulds was born in 1974.) Nevertheless, what Foulds does is take the historical reality and use it as a poet should – to say something important to society. In this case it is to offer us the chance to encounter both the appalling things human beings are capable of and the capacity we have to heal. Lord knows, the latter is not always achievable, as evidenced in Tom’s father whose experience in WW2 has affected him so deeply, he is understood by the rest of his fellow expatriates to be excused defence duties. But Foulds’ story also considers the power of fear and courage, the pressures of social expectation, the dreadful strength of parental emotional blackmail and the disgraceful misuse of religion. I was stirred emotionally, and felt the need to think through what I had read.

Finally, Foulds’ adopts a paragraphed, short-line free-verse form that makes his narrative very readable. But though the verse is free, there is a sense that it is tautly put together, well honed, anything gratuitous edited out. For the most part it is strikingly plain - prosy might one say? – in its styling, as one might expect from a novel -

‘Two more numbers were called.
The five were led out,
past three prisoners up to their necks
in the ground for a minor offence…’

- but then an unexpected image will be used to sharpen the impression –

‘…their heads sticking up like croquet hoops.’ (Personally, I think the facts speak more than enough, though maybe Foulds wants us to understand that Tom’s mental state is deteriorating into seeing the brutal as ludicrous.)

And then the poetic urge towards imagery will sometimes take over to re-engage the reader –

‘Arm high over his head, he flexed
his little black leather bible
like a muscle sprung from his body.
His centre-parted hair flapped
its stumpy wings as he jerked,
his pale lips gymnastic.’

Anyway, for me, this approach to writing a mini-epic worked well, and shows what the imagination at its most focused can achieve. ‘The Broken Word’ is well worth trying, but be warned, it’s not a comfortable journey.

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

Citaat : De rituelen, de beloften:

Meedoen of je keel door./ Of erger. Hier niet ver vandaan/ waren er twee die niet wilden./ Aan stukken gesneden, begraven, weer opgegraven/ waarna anderen, om ze in het gareel te houden,/
Review : Adam Foulds (1974) is de schrijver van drie romans. Voor Het gebroken woord, zijn poëziedebuut, ontving hij in 2008 de Costa Poetry Award. De vaak bekroonde Engelse dichter en romanschrijver is geprezen om dit epische gedicht, dat meermaals is bekroond, o.a. met Somerset Maugham Award 2009.



Het gebroken woord is eerder een novelle, een opvallende tussenvorm van proza en poëzie. Foulds zelf noemt het boek een gedicht, maar een novelle in verzen lijkt me wel correcter. Hoofdpersonage Tom brengt eind jaren vijftig zijn laatste zomervakantie in Kenia door: daarna zal hij naar Engeland vertrekken om daar te gaan studeren. Zijn leeftijd wordt niet geëxpliciteerd, maar hij is nog jong en op weg richting volwassenheid. Daarom is hij des te ontvankelijker voor wat er zich in Kenia afspeelt. Het land is nog een kolonie van Groot-Brittannië en de Kenianen zijn de situatie beu. Dat leidt tot een opstand tegen de onderdrukkers.



Twee vrienden van hen worden vermoord en Tom sluit zich aan bij een door Britten gevormde militie die de opstand wil neerslaan. In de militie leert hij mensen doden, wreedheden begaan en een meisje verkrachten. Terug in Engeland merkt hij hoe moeilijk het is weer een normaal leven te leiden.



Het was Foulds’ bedoeling om een vergeten koloniale oorlog onder de Britse aandacht te brengen – en met zijn poëzie iets teweeg te brengen. In de zes jaar sinds het Engelse origineel verscheen, heeft de Britse regering schadevergoeding betaald aan de slachtoffers van martelingen, vertelt Foulds graag in interviews. Niet dat hij dat in zijn eentje voor elkaar heeft gekregen, maar het stilzwijgen is verbroken. Het gebroken woord is wel een confronterend literair werk over volwassen worden in tijden van geweld.