Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Subhash Jaireth, Transit Lounge, $29.99.
The opening page beguiles as a vivid portrait takes shape. “It starts to rain as I step out of my hotel. I want to return inside and wait for the rain to stop but I change my mind, pull the hood of my jacket over my head and walk across the little park at the red lights, watching the trams rattle past on the cobbled street…”
So begins Subhash Jaireth’s striking collection of essays on the writers, and their writing, which have enriched his own life. In each essay a new emotional plane is reached revealing enticing connections.
Astonishingly, it’s the works of Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, Marina Tsvetaeva, Hiromi Ito, Paul Celan, Mikhail Bulgakov, Franz Kafka and others who ignite in him the urge to travel, both physically and in spirit. It’s almost like a pilgrim to the places where such writers were born or wrote or died.
Reared in a multilingual environment, Jaireth considers translation an important part of his creative practice. He truly understands the power of words across languages and their integral connections to the life of the body and the spirit.
An adjunct professor at the Centre of Creative and Cultural Research, University of Canberra, Jaireth was born in Punjab, India.
Drawing on years of doing research, being an interpreter and travelling has held the novelist, poet, essayist and translator in good stead. The elucidation of deprivation, humanity and the trance of writing in Spinoza’s Overcoat will linger for evermore.
Having spent nine years in Russia studying geology and Russian literature, Jaireth migrated to Australia in 1986. He has published poetry in Hindi, English and Russian, conducted translation workshops (Russian to English) and published English translations of Russian, Japanese and Persian poetry.
Remarkably, Subhash has also translated poems of Indigenous Australian poets into Hindi.
