Set during World War Two, New Finnish Grammar is both an exploration of the hopelessness of war, and a study of linguistics. But more importantly, it is an examination of self, of how language and memory make us or destroy us. What are we, without our past? Who are we, without language?
The plot itself is simple: in 1943, a gravely injured soldier is rescued by a German ship anchored at Trieste. There is little hope for his survival, but when the Finnish doctor on board notes the soldier’s uniform monogrammed with a Finnish name, he can’t help but take a vested interest in his patient’s recovery.
There are three protagonists in this story, the doctor, his amnesiac patient, and the language that brings them together. The doctor, Friari, has a difficult past with his Fatherland, and has a score to settle, a story to conclude. His patient, Sampo, on the other hand, has nothing: no memory, no language, no sense of who he is, no story at all. But through Finland’s language and culture, the doctor tries to create something for his patient.
Sampo is sent to Finland to try to recreate his past, to find some memory to which he might be able to cling. There he experiences all the pain of a city on the edge of war. He meets a young nurse, and a mentor in the form of a strange, spiritual pastor who continues Sampo’s education in Finnish. The pastor has a passion for Finnish culture that begins to take over Sampo’s development, and indeed the entire narrative. His feverish descriptions of Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala, are evocative and bizarre and his description of the language practically religious:
“Finnish syntax is thorny but delicate: instead of starting from the centre of things, it surrounds and envelops them from without. As a result, the Finnish sentence is like a cocoon, impenetrable, closed in upon itself; here meaning ripens slowly and then, when ripe, flies off, bright and elusive, leaving those who are not familiar with our language with the feeling that they have failed to understand what has been said.”
It is a melancholy endeavour, to read such descriptions as an English speaker, and worse still to read it in English. It is almost depressing to know that out there in the world, there are languages whose words transcend meaning, the very structure and form of which are like a song, or poetry, that those of us who never learnt anything other than English are somehow bereft.
What is particularly interesting about New Finnish Grammar is that its author, Marani, is from Italy, and the book was originally published in Italian. It is intriguing, as an English speaker, to wonder what is lost and what is gained in this translation by Judith Landry. How much of the nuance of Finnish as described in Italian is changed by the introduction of a third language? It is impossible to know, but certainly it plays upon the mind as one reads.
New Finnish Grammar is truly a marvel. The interweaving of plot and language is extremely well executed and the central mystery provides an urgency that will keep you turning its relatively few pages until the end. Meanwhile, the philosophical and psychological implications of the connection between memory, language and self will leave you deep in thought for some time after turning that final page.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
New Finnish Grammar
By Diego Marani
Translated by Judith Landry
Paperback, 320pp, $27.99
ISBN: 9781922079664
Text Publishing
