Can the two of you talk about how On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) came into the world—first, the germ of the original language, and then the translation?

Solvej Balle: : The idea for the book came up a long time ago—in 1987 actually. And that was just the first bits of it, just the idea of a woman stuck in time repeating one day again and again. It took a long time for the idea to actually develop and all the . . . What do you say . . . the philosophical material to kind of fall into place, because there’s a lot of questions about how is this universe working. So it took a long time and also the person had to develop, the person who ended up being Tara Selter, and also to find out when would it happen and all these little bits and pieces. So, there’s a lot of elements that prolonged the process. Also, there was a film coming out called Groundhog Day, which I didn’t see in the beginning because I thought it was too close. But when I finally saw it, I realized, ah, that’s a lot of nice research for my idea, because I realized it was so different. But anyway . . . In the meantime, this idea came up right after my first book, which was published in 1986. After that, I wrote quite a few other books. One of them was translated into English. It’s called According to the Law. It came out in Danish in 1993, in English probably ’95 or something, maybe ’96. and it was translated by Barbara Haveland, who has also translated On the Calculation of Volume, and we had a really good collaboration and it was a great experience to work with her because she’s so careful and so much into the details and wants to get it perfectly right and we were discussing a lot of little elements. And we kind of stayed in contact, at least part of the time, over the years.

And then slowly, actually very slowly, the book started to take shape, and I had realized that it was actually a book in several volumes. And then finally the book was published, and I published it myself. So I sent it to Barbara. and she read it and we talked about how great it would be to work on that project. I had this experience with her because the strange thing was that by the time I published Volume I I had kind of finished up to Volume III, but some of the other bits were still in the process of taking shape. And a lot of our discussions about the book, how she saw Tara Selter, how was Tara Selter speaking, because I mean the book is basically the main character’s kind of diary. And so it was about, you know, how does she express herself. And Barbara was actually shedding a lot of light into my thoughts about how Tara Seltzer was and I realized on the way that in a way Barbara might know much more about how Tara would express herself because maybe she was actually writing the book. I mean of course she didn’t write the book in Danish because she is actually half English, half Belgian and she might have . . . written the book in English. So in that case, Barbara would be the one who knew about how she would express herself. So I really liked that thought. But also the feeling that the way Barbara was kind of turning every sentence and sometimes she had false suggestions for the precise wording. And the great thing is that of course I had been sitting doing all these things, but having a translator who then renders it in another language and does that too. I mean, it’s something about, you know, tuning the instruments or something. I was working on tuning my instrument with the next books at the same time as Barbara was tuning her English instrument with the books. So that was, it was just a wonderful experience.

Barbara J. Haveland: I first worked with Solvej Balle in the early Nineties, when I translated her breakthrough novel Ifølge loven (1993). This work, which is actually four novellas linked by a common theme, introduced a fresh and utterly unique voice to the Danish literary scene. My translation, According to the Law, was published in 1996 by Harvill Press. I have been a great admirer of her work ever since. Zoom forward to 2020 and after thirty years of translating literature, with my seventieth birthday looming on the horizon, I was giving serious thought to retirement. Then the first volume of Solvej’s projected septology, Om udregning af rumfang (On the Calculation of Volume) arrived in the post and I realized that I would have to delay hanging up my translator’s hat—at least for a while. That first book and the whole concept of her project blew me away and I knew I had to take on this work, for Solvej and for myself. I might not be able to see it all the way through to Book VII, but I wanted to at least start it on its way.

Translating Solvej Balle’s work is a rare treat. Her writing is spare and taut. There is nothing superfluous here, nothing random. Every word is weighed, every phrase and sentence finely honed. The challenge for the translator is to produce a faithful and felicitous rendering in English of her distilled prose. The pleasure lies in working closely with the author to achieve this end—always a happy, fruitful and inspiring collaboration.

Solvej Balle was born in 1962, made her debut in 1986 with Lyrefugl, and went on to write the highly-acclaimed According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind (praised by Publishers Weekly for its blend of “sly humor, bleak vision, and terrified sense of the absurd with a tacit intuition that the world has a meaning not yet fathomed”). She’s also published a book on art theory, a political memoir, and two books of short prose. On the Calculation of Volume expands the possibilities of the novel and heralds the arrival of a major literary artist.

Barbara J. Haveland (b.1951) is a Scottish literary translator resident in Denmark. She translates fiction, poetry and drama from Danish and Norwegian to English. She has translated works by many leading Danish and Norwegian writers, both classic and contemporary, including Henrik Ibsen, Peter Høeg, Linn Ullmann, and Carl Frode Tiller.