Cordula Unewisse

The social life, the exchange of thoughts, the atmosphere of an island, the everywhere present history and the open horizon. These are some of the souvenirs that Cordula Unewisse will bring back home to Bonn in Germany.
– The inner space becomes wider in this place and that has influence on your work, for sure. I think that is the privilege and the advantage of the Centre. Here you have a special setting where you can reflect upon your own work and your identity as a translator, she says.

– Translation is a work and a state of being that makes me happy. Translating is like an expedition that enlarges the world. It also means constantly making decisions, choosing and rejecting words and their possible configuration in sentences, she is telling me about her choice of profession.

When we meet a Thursday in September at the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Visby, she will be leaving early next morning. The German translator Cordula Unewisse arrived in Visby in the middle of August and has stayed at the Centre nearly a month. This is her first stay on Gotland, and also her first visit to Sweden.
– I arrived to Visby by the ferryboat. When I came to the Centre at midnight the guests had just had a goodbye party and there were still some people sitting outside welcoming me, she says.
– Next morning when I woke up I saw this amazing view. From my room I can see the cathedral and the sea and that was my first impression of Visby in daylight. I really appreciate this open space and endless view, because that influences the inner space as well, I suppose.

Cordula Unewisse knew of the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators as being a cooperating organization of the German Translators’ Fund, DÜF. She learnt more about the Centre while staying at a residency in Straelen in Germany, the collegium for European translators, where two colleagues who would stay in Visby for a working residency later that year talked about the Centre. In Berlin, another colleague emphasized how important the residency in Visby was for her latest translation.
– Later, when I had the chance to apply for a working grant from the translator´s fund, I first wanted to go to Straelen again, but the house was full. I applied for a working residency in Visby, and now I am so glad that it didn´t work with the other residency. The time here has really been enriching in so many ways, she tells me.

During her stay in Visby she has been working with the translation of the French book “Les attentifs” by Marc Mauguin, which is going to be published by the German publishing house Verlag Freies Geistesleben next spring. “Les attentifs” is a collection of twelve short stories, inspired by twelve paintings of the American artist Edward Hopper.
– It is a kind of dialogue between painting and literature. The author has been trying to figure out what stories are hiding behind the paintings, what has happened before he was painting them and what is going to happen after.

Cordula Unewisse studied Romance languages and German Philology and Philosophy at the University of Bonn, and did study visits to France, Italy and Portugal. She has worked as a teacher of German as a foreign language, for DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service, in a research project at the University of Kassel about the culture transfer from France to Germany in the 18th century and has been teaching at the University of Bonn for several years. Since 2005 she has been free lancing as a literary translator and proof reader.
– French was my second foreign language in school, after English. I liked to study languages, but also sciences, and had some difficulties to decide what kind of subjects I would choose at the university, she says and continues:
– At the University of Bonn a teacher in French had a very deep influence on my choice of working career.

She did some translation courses, which weren´t obligatory and had no grades, just for practice. Participating in these seminars was essential for the decision to become a translator. She did her first professional translation when she was still a student. Cordula was lucky to have a professor in Philosophy who was also a publisher..
– He asked me to translate a text, which was quite challenging: a book by the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, she says.

Since then she has done quite a lot translations of academic articles for art exhibitions catalogues.
– For a long time now I have had the focus on art: history of art but also interpretation of works of art and biographies of artists. When I was a university student I saw a lot of exhibitions. I remember specially the retrospective in Paris of one of my favorite artists Alberto Giacometti.

Paul Cézanne, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Louise Bourgeois are some other artists whose work she likes and researched in in connection with a translation work. Cordula´s latest translation, which she worked with in Charente in France, was a book about the Flemish 14th century painter Jan van Eyck by Jean-Philippe Postel. Art, philosophy and fiction is her field of work and she almost always she translates from French into German.

Here in Visby, she was curious to participate in the local culture life. She visited the historical and the art museum, went to an organ concert in the cathedral and to Almedal library for a concert and a lecture, which a Finnish author translated for her.
– I didn´t understand anything, but nevertheless it was a pleasure to listen to the Swedish language. Anyway I had some ‘aha!’ moments realizing the proximity between the Swedish and the German language.

One of her morning rituals here in Visby was to walk down to the beach and the pier at Norderstrand.
– After a swim in the sea, I was sitting on the beach, doing my meditation and sometimes I tried to write a poem or a little text, just for fun, about this place, she says.

She appreciates the atmosphere of an island.
– I think that it´s very rare to have this view from a town: a wide view without any other islands, just the open horizon. I have seen the ferry boat from my window, leaving and arriving to the harbor, thinking that one day that should be me returning home.

She also likes the Botanical garden, where she has spent some time reading a French author that she would like to translate, Marie-Hélène Lafon.
– She has not yet been translated into German and I have tried to find a publishing house, but until now I haven´t find one. I hope I will succeed one day, she says.

During her stay on Gotland she has made excursions, to Fårö in the north and to Hoburgen in the south. For the trip to the island of Fårö a group of four women rented a car: Cordula, a Chinese novel writer, an American poet and a Finnish writer. On their way up north they visited some medieval churches. On Fårö they drove along the west coast covered with sea stacks, characteristic stones on Gotland called “raukar” in Swedish, stopped here and there, walking, talking.
– We have the whole collection of Ingmar Bergman´s films here at the Centre and we saw “Persona” before the trip to Fårö, the place where it was shot. We were looking for the beach in the film, but unfortunately we got lost in the forest and didn´t find it, she says smiling.

– For me it was a new impression, I didn´t know this sort of landscape before, this kind of severe nature. This is a place where you can make decisions or see things more clearly. A kind of serenity in the landscape.

As a break from the translation work at the Centre she has been walking in cobble stone streets.
– I am impressed by the diversity of architecture. Before coming here I didn´t know about the German history of Visby, and that the Hanseatic League was very important for the growth of the city.

She also has been walking along the seaside and this very day has done a biking tour to Fridhem, the former summer residence of the princess Eugénie, some kilometers south of Visby. There she finally found fossils at the pebble beach, and enjoyed the calm atmosphere of the early autumn.
– I have been moving to the countryside after many years in the city of Bonn. It is quite isolated, there is no urban setting, so I really appreciate it here – a small town life. You get to know everybody quite quickly at the Centre, because you spend quite some time together. You have the kitchen where you usually meet people preparing their meals, some of us spontaneously organize a movie night in Centre’s “Cinema Baltica” or meet for other shared activities, she says.

During her stay at the Centre the guests have organized poetry evenings, reading to each other. Cordula Unewisse chose the poem “You’re here, still” by Rose Ausländer, with the final words: “Be what you are/Give what you have”.
– Here at the Centre you have the opportunity and the space to be what you are and give what you have. I think it´s an important part of staying here: the exchange of our different work and culture, the talks about writing, creativity, language and literature.

Text and photo: Maria Molin