In conversation with the Irish poet, lecturer and critic Justin Quinn, his writing process and the manner in which a translator decides whom to translate gets revealed as well as how a lecturer perceives a seminar or that kindergartens trump the rest of the Czech school system.
- PERSONAL & ACADEMIA
Where were you born?
I was born in Dublin in 1968.
And was your childhood in any way affected by the Troubles?
No it wasn’t. I was born in the mid-class area of Dublin and there was no ... I mean some kind of Troubles affected life in Dublin but it was minimal and the Troubles were something I heard about on the radio from the Northern Ireland.
Considering that we’re just about to start working on our BA theses, can I ask you what was yours on and if you have any tips?
Right, ok, I don’t have any tips because I didn’t do my BA thesis at the University, I didn’t do my Master’s thesis, the first thesis I wrote was my PhD.
How’s that possible?
It was possible because the University I went to (Trinity College) had no BA thesis. You had to write a long paper about five thousand words, a couple of those, so you did several shorter papers instead of one BA thesis.
At what time and in what manner did you recognise that you are good at writing poetry and that it might be your vocation?
You never know if you’re good at writing poetry. You just ... you were drawn to it.
Something in the sense that you had to do it?
Yes, yes, well, the first poem I wrote was ... I was about 16 and it was written for a girl, the intention was to try and impress the girl and ... I’m still writing poetry but the girl has long disappeared (smiles). It happened by accident. And as another poet said what begins as a kind of hobby or something you do on the side it becomes the centre of your life. There’s no planning involved at all.
You have a lot of passions, you’re a translator, a critic, a professor; in the class you once talked about the potential awkwardness in introducing oneself as a poet so my question is when you need to introduce yourself which of these do you state?
Usually I introduce myself according to my employment that I work at the University. In that kind of social situation I reckon that I should introduce myself according to where my salary comes from.
When and why did you move from Dublin to Prague?
I moved in 1992 when I first came here. Ireland was economically depressed in the early 90s and I graduated with my BA in English and Philosophy from Trinity College in Dublin and I felt that Ireland was very depressing place to be at that stage, and I didn’t know what to do so I’d think I would come here for a few months and teach English.
So it wasn’t that premeditated?
It was, I had to...wanted to get out of Ireland for a few months and I came here to teach English and ... one thing led to another and I eventually went back to Dublin to do my PhD and I spent about three years going back, going between Dublin and Prague where my girlfriend was ... towards ’95 I got a job here, in 94/95 I worked in Hradec Králové at Pedagogická fakulta and then I got the job here.
What is the appeal of Czech Republic?
Well I initially came here just to get away from Ireland so the immediate appeal of this country was that it wasn’t Ireland.
And of the language?
I don’t really think in terms of the appeal of language. I don’t feel that one language is more attractive than another. I see it in terms that I’m here, I ... I have to use it. I think it’s always nonsense to say one language is beautiful and another language is ugly. These are subjective impressions which I’ve never really understood.
If you compare your students in the 1990s and nowadays, is there any remarkable difference? Besides the technology?
One of the main differences is I think that students in the early 90s were a deal shier. They had entered University in ’89 or ’90 and they’ve come through a rather unpleasantly regimented system of education here. So I sometimes found it very difficult to get discussions going.
To elicit responses?
Yes, exactly. A kind of turning point for me was one day when two students criticised the point I was making very strongly ... which was fine and they came up to me afterwards they said ‘we are really sorry’ (emphasises and smiles). And that I took as, you know, they were just balancing on the verge, they really wanted to say it and they did say it but then they started to worry they’d gone too far.
Felt guilty...
Yeah, exactly. I thought that was very nice and sweet. And since then it hasn’t been really difficult, that kind of shyness.
Do you see ways in which our department could be improved?
Well, it’s the problem of the faculty in general, it is considered to be one of the most advanced institutions for the study of the Humanities in the country but ... as with many things the prestige is inversely proportional to the finance that is coming to it, so the more prestige the less money. I think one of the huge difficulties of this department as with all the other departments in this faculty is the fact that, simply, most people cannot survive on the salary and they do other jobs.
Are you for privatization?
I wouldn’t see it in such terms as that. There are many other options at European Universities that are state owned institutions. They reward excellence in research. As a proportion of GDP, Ireland my own country, puts more money into education than this country does so I feel the respect for education here is not backed up with a check.
In class you praised kindergartens. What enchanted you about them?
Well Czech kindergartens are fantastic (smiles). I tell my American counterparts about Czech kindergartens that you pay a very small amount of money, the children go in there all day, they have three meals, they enjoy it, not always of course. It’s a nice environment to be in and certainly with my own two children, the further they go in institutional education, the less they like it. A friend of mine once said that after kindergarten, the Czech education system gets progressively worse.
- LITERATURE & LECTURING
Edward Thomas, or ... Thomas Hardy or ... TS Eliot or ... (smiles). At the moment, Edward Thomas, I enjoy him hugely and he’s made a come-back in the last twenty years to occupy a very important position.
Given you’ve read John Donne’s poetry recently, what beauty do you appreciate in the dirtiness?
Like, sex?
In the love verse.
Sex?
Yes.
Well, (in a tone of deep admiration) it’s just such a witty way of conceiving of the relationship between the sexes; the physical is just interwoven so beautifully with the spiritual.
Like in the “Ecstasy”.
Yeah ... the humour! the wit! the outrageousness! (smiles) Like how could he get away with it? And yet he does.
What books of fiction do you find yourself constantly re-reading?
Re-reading ... I just re-read Great Expectations, at Christmas and I enjoyed it very much. I don’t re-read fiction so much unless connected with school and other responsibilities but Dickens is somebody I like to re-read, yeah.
An aspiring poetess told me that there isn’t right now anyone dominating the Czech poetic and fiction scenes. Would you disagree that there isn’t any strong personality at the moment?
Ehm, it’s difficult for me to comment because I’m involved in this in a way ...
Besides Borkovec?
Well, besides Borkovec (smiles) that makes it easier for me. I don’t know, I don’t have a huge ... I don’t read every poet that comes out. Certainly I think that there is a new younger generation, say 15 years younger than Borkovec and his contemporaries, that is doing very well for itself like Jonáš Hájek and ... Hájek, Řehák ... Also I think that the work of Wanda Heinrichová is just absolutely fantastic and I was delighted when I came across that book of poems.
How do you perceive the debate today over poetry’s relevance? In what do you see its significance?
Well, in past times poetry was of course read much more widely, Tennyson for example had the status of a Rock star. Its significance ... I don’t know, what I know for certain is that I love to do it.
Is the Anglophone readership interested in translations of Czech poetry? Or translations from what country are the most popular?
There is very little translated and there’s little attention paid to current translations from Czech to English.
So for you it’s mainly about the passion?
Well, I like doing it and ... it does find some readers but there was much more interest in Czech, Polish, Russian poetry when the Communists were here so ...
Something was happening
Yeah, it was like a message in a bottle sent from ... but now lacking that context of the Cold War, it is very difficult to generate interest.
So how do you decide whom to translate?
You follow your nose (proverbially). You make those decisions, which I think are the most important decisions of a translator purely by instinct. You imagine you can get this poet or that poet into English. There might be many other poets you admire very much but you yourself or the language you’re translating from or into can’t take it.
So there are poems that you’ve read that you thought of as impossible to translate into English?
Yeah, it’s not often a question of the difficulty of the poems; sometimes these poems are extremely clear and straightforward but ... the difficulty is often in tone ... it’s not even whether it rhymes or doesn’t. I enjoy and find easier to translate rhyme poetry into English but it’s more ... it’s the lack of imagination: you can’t imagine that poem sounding as clear and beautiful in English and that stops you.
You just know that you won’t be satisfied.
Yeah, yeah ...
Have you tried composing something in Czech?
No! Letters, bureaucratic letters, when I write to the tax office, I write a lot of that administrative letters ...
Rather Kafkaesque...
(smiles) My wife says I’m really good at it ... which is not a compliment really.
Non-native people who write in English and claim it works better for them to articulate themselves artistically?
I think that it rarely ends successfully. I think that there’re very few cases in the 20th century that I can think of where an author writes with equal brilliance in the second language. There’s Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Milan Kundera ... but beyond that, you would have to be very lucky and very brilliant to do it ... And also a particular type of person. It’s rarely interesting. I can understand that people are entranced by, say Anglophone culture, music, the lyrics of songs but that doesn’t mean that is the only language for it.
As you leaned in on me, it reminded me of one of your verses from your poem “Seminar”: “I love the way they sit / and use their bodies to nuance what they say. / I lean forward to catch the drift of it.” What are other features of conducting a seminar you like?
... I like first of all ... well, I like finding out things (enthusiastically). I taught a masters seminar this semester in which we covered a lot of new material and I was depending quite often on the knowledge of the students, especially their knowledge of Czech literature of the 20th century.
The course is called (and a book of the same name in the process of creation) Transnationalism and Cold War poetry, correct?
Yes, I hugely enjoy that but I was also very nervous about it, because professionally I’m supposed to know everything when I walk into the class and...
But isn’t that the way a senior academic does his research, that he first conducts a seminar and then utilises the findings?
Yes, absolutely and this is one of the fun parts of the job ... but sometimes it makes me a bit nervous: when you walk into a class and you know you haven’t covered everything ... but it gives it a good edge.
That you’re not always the king?
Exactly, exactly—which is boring, as well.
- WRITING PROCESS
Now about your writing process: do you write in fits of inspiration or is it less romantic?
It’s less romantic and I write in fits of inspiration. It demands a huge amount of good time-management to be able to rearrange your life when you have a fit of inspiration ... unless you want everything to collapse like the rest of your life you have to be able to rearrange things quickly.
Has it ever happened that you would just run home to scribble down thoughts? Well ... No, because I always have a notebook with me.
So you do take notes?
Always, notebooks are just ... I don’t leave home without a notebook in my pocket. Maybe if I’m just going 10 minutes down the shop.
But you consider it?
Oh yes (laughs). And I also sometimes get ideas when running and I don’t bring a notebook with me so I have to try very hard to remember ... because notebooks, it’s not just making the note, but it’s also making a good quality note that would remind you a week later or two weeks later what was the tone.
What was the most surprising object/person/entity that became your muse, that
inspired you?
Well, that’s difficult to answer without getting too personal ...
If you want to skip it
... No, it’s ... I mean there’s one’s personal life and one’s relationship with the opposite sex is always a source of inspiration, that’s one thing. But the other ‘muse’, the second male muse I have would have been Petr Borkovec and the friendship that developed between us has been hugely instructional for me, as a poet and as a translator. Knowing him, knowing his work brought me in directions I would never have gone otherwise, so I am hugely grateful.
So you aren’t cringy about using the word ‘muse’?
No I think it’s really ...
Apt?
Oh yeah, absolutely. What the muse does is ... it is something that comes outside yourself. A poet or an artist is not this closed universe, but it has to be a very powerful intervention as well ... yeah, I definitely accept it.
How does a poet look at the world differently from other people, what is the mind-set, what is he attentive to?
Well ... for a poet, everything is reducible to words ... and it’s the play of words: you’d sacrifice everything to get those words out. Groucho Marx, the comedian, said that he would easily sacrifice his marriage for a good joke. That’s putting it in rather extreme way but there’s a strong sense in which poets arrange their lives so that they will be able to ... like any artists arrange their lives so that they will be able to get to the knowledge they need, to get the time they need to arrange it. One critic said about James Merrill that he engineered his love affairs and the break downs of the love affairs to enable his love poetry, his great love poetry.
It’s demonic
... It sounds cynical (smiles) but ... I don’t think it’s cynical. And I think it says something true about the creative process, that’s all.
Now a few last bits: if you could meet any writer, any historical person, who would it be?
Well this week (smiles) ... definitely would be someone like Edward Thomas and I imagine we would say hardly anything to one another ... I wouldn’t mind ...
Just absorbing
(smiles) I wouldn’t mind going for a walk in silence for three or four hours with Thomas—that would be fantastic. These meetings can often be quite disappointing with your heroes that they don’t disclose themselves to you in the way you would think they might, or hope they might. And so, having one or two of my poetic heroes over the years, not always but sometimes in one or two cases it was extremely disappointing and difficult to sit with them for lunch or dinner and try to make conversations so ...
And recognising that they are human beings as well
Yeah there’s that (smiling, rises in tone) I mean I knew that before but you hope ... you go hoping that you both love the art of poetry and that there would be common ground there but often writers like to protect that about themselves, not to talk about it too much.
What is your favourite word?
(grins) I don’t know, I don’t have a favourite word.
What about least favourite word?
The least favourite word ... world!
World?
Yes, world is a dangerous word in the world of poetry.
Finally, do you have any advice for aspiring poets?
I usually repeat Margaret Atwood’s advice to aspiring writers which is to ‘look after your back’. And not in the sense of looking after to see if anybody’s coming at you but to use good posture when you write and it’s one of the most difficult things for a lot of writers who are kind of hunched over their manuscripts so ... on a very practical level. Otherwise, I don’t think there’s good advice for writers; a good writer has to find his own way, however weird that might be.
So you don’t look very sympathetically at the creative writing classes?
Oh yeah I do. It depends on the type of the writer.
Have you considered conducting a poetry workshop?
I did one in the United States for one semester ... I did a kind of a creative writing workshop here for about 6 or 7 years ... but ultimately I found that if it’s creative writing conducted through English, it has not a great position in Czech Republic.
Thank you very much.
After the interview ended, I got myself picked up in the hallway and escorted gallantly to the station. I expressed concerns that occupy students’ minds, concerns about the value of studying the Humanities, about its impracticality in helping the world. He smiled and said that he can’t help me with that; that all he knows is that he loves doing what he does and leaves it to others to argue for the ‘intrinsic value’ of art. I was surprised, half-expecting a passionate defence. He bore himself very energetically, leaving idle topics limping in his shadow. Right after the Charles Bridge intersection we entered the narrowing sidewalk opposite to Karlovy Lázně, on whose end only one can pass. I mumbled my goodbye and turned back because, at that moment, I couldn’t follow.
- Prepared by Jaromír Lelek
