Irish Postmodernist Classic novel translated into Welsh

The Third Policeman, Irish Author Flann O’Brien’s landmark novel, has been translated into Welsh.

Y Trydydd Plismon is the fourth entry in Welsh publisher Melin Bapur’s Clasuron Byd (World Classics) series.

Dark, hilarious, ambiguous, playful and disturbing in equal measure, the novel is set in rural Ireland and concerns an anonymous scholar.

Eager to publish his life’s work, a definitive study of the fictional scientist/philosopher de Selby, the narrator becomes entangled with a petty criminal, John Divney, leading to the murder of their neighbour and an escalating series of often sinister and increasingly surreal encounters with various characters and impossible contraptions whose aims, nature and very existence are ambiguous.

Chief among these are local policemen Sergeant Pluck and MacCruiskeen, a sentient bicycle, an underground chamber in which time stands still, a box containing infinitely smaller versions of itself, and still stranger things.

Running parallel to the text in a series of often verbose footnotes is an exploration of the fictional de Selby’s patently absurd “theories”, such as that night-time is the result of an accumulation of “black air” and that all directions are the same.

Leading voice

Flann O’Brien was a pen name of Brian O’Nolan (1911-1966), a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature who wrote in both Irish and English.

Originally written in English at the end of the 1930s, The Third Policeman proved too radical for publishers and O’Brien later claimed to have lost the manuscript, which remained unpublished until after his death, when it became recognised as a seminal early example of postmodernism in literature.

Although a work which resists any kind of straightforward interpretation, the novel is immensely readable not least because of its humour, which translator Anna Gruffydd conveys perfectly in her translation, in which the colloquial Anglo-Irish of the original is substituted for Cymraeg as spoken in north-west Wales.

Originally from Pen Llŷn, Anna Gruffydd is a former lecturer at the Welsh College of Music and Drama who now lives in Italy.

Fluent in several languages she has previously published a translation, Pla, of La Peste Albert Camus, available through Gwasg Carreg Gwalch.

“The Third Policeman is one of my favourite books. My first goal when I embark on a translation is to settle on “a voice” and in this case I initally thought I had nailed it.

“But as I went on I found it evading me at every turn. It was like herding cats, as the eponymous policeman would say “a real pancake”.

“It was then that it dawned on me that my search for a consistent voice was a red herring. There was no “one voice” but many voices.

“Even the narrator changes voices according to his translocutors and as for the policemen and their foibles and malapropisms – at this point I almost gave up the ghost.

“But I screwed my courage to the sticking point. Flann O’Brien loved playing games with language. So I gloried in that and played along.”

Welsh first

Melin Bapur editor Adam Pearce added: “It has been a great honour to be approached by a translator of Anna’s quality and experience and to collaborate on this amazing book.

“It’s hard to say with certainty and there have definitely been plays, like Saunders Lewis’s translation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot; but I believe this may be the first translation into Welsh of a novel by an Irish writer.

“What I do know is that nothing quite like this is available in Cymraeg.”

Adam continued: “There’s a tendency to assume that there’s no market for translations from English into Welsh for adults—there must be, as so few have been published—but that’s not what we’ve found with books like Yr Hobyd.

“There’s a strong native tradition of postmodernism in Welsh literature with authors like William Owen Roberts, Robin Llywelyn and Mihangel Morgan producing works of remarkable originality and power—classics by any measure—and anyone interested in this kind of writing will want to explore one of the classics of the tradition from across the Irish sea.”

Y Trydydd Plismon, featuring an original cover illustration by Massimo Carulli and Marcella Menna, is available now from melinbapur.cymru and shortly from a number of bookshops across Wales and priced at £9.99 +P&P.

Also released this week from the publisher is Atgof a Cherddi Eraill by E. Prosser Rhys, priced at £7.99.