Euro Vision : The Capital by Robert Menasse (translated by Jamie Bulloch)

"The Capital" by Robert Menasse

Translated by Jamie Bulloch 

A book review

Robert Menasse’s Die Hauptstadt, winner of the 2017 German Book Prize, has recently being published by MacLehose Press in an English translation by Jamie Bulloch.  In this incarnation, the novel’s title is rendered as The Capital.  This name, of course, a faithful and literal translation from the German, but I wonder whether it was also meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Karl Marx’s epic tome.  Indeed, political and economic theories also loom large in Menasse’s Capital, except that they are presented within the context of a zany novel about the workings of the European Commission. 

Die Hauptstadt has been described as the first great novel about the European Union.  It could well be the case.  I don’t profess to be some expert in Continental literature, of course, but the only other novel I know which uses the European Commission as a backdrop is “What happens in Brussels stays in Brussels” by the Maltese author Ġuże’ Stagno.  And that’s more a satire on Maltese politics and the Maltese representatives in the EU, than a novel on the European institutions themselves.   

Menasse’s work takes a wider view.  Its central plot element is a “Big Jubilee Project” which is being organised by the Commission as a celebration of the anniversary of its founding.   Ambitious EU official Fenia Xenapoulou hopes that this will be an occasion to improve the image of the Commission, whilst providing her with her big break.  Fenia’s Austrian assistant Martin Susman comes up with the noble idea of roping in Holocaust survivors, as a reminder that the European Union was built to ensure that Auschwitz would “never happen again”.  Unsurprisingly, as the organizers will discover to their chagrin, national interests and behind-the-scenes lobbying make the success of such an ambitious celebration unlikely.

Much as I enjoyed this novel, I must say that it took me some time to finally get immersed in it.  This is certainly not the fault of the translation – I’ve previously enjoyed Bulloch’s translations of The Mussel-Feast and Look Who’s Back, and as in those novels, The Capital is rendered in prose that is idiomatic and flowing.   I believe the problem is more with its sheer number of characters  (a recent theatrical adaptation involved 7 actors playing about 20 roles) – in the initial chapters especially, I thought that an introductory dramatis personae would have been helpful as a guide to the somewhat bewildering international cast. 

Another issue is with the proliferation of seemingly unrelated subplots involving, amongst other narrative complications: a pig on the loose in Brussels; a retired Professor preparing to deliver a final, memorable speech; a Holocaust survivor coming to terms with his impending death; a number of potential, never-fully-realised love stories and, more weirdly, a crime investigation which seems to have been borrowed from a Dan Brown thriller.  More frustratingly, some of these loose ends are never tied up.   

In other words, The Capital is a sprawling novel which could have done with some tightening.  However, its polyphonic narrative is, in itself, a good metaphor for the European Union, this patchwork of nations and cultures which, somehow, managed to build a future of hope from the cinders of a continent ravaged by war.  Indeed, this novel, despite its several comic and surreal elements, provides Menasse with the springboard to present his views on the European Union.  Despite the evident shortcomings, the bureaucracy and the backstabbing which seem to characterize the working of its institutions, especially the Commission, the central idea(l) of the EC remains a laudable one – the creation of a supra-national body to keep extreme nationalism in check, in order to ensure that the horrors of the 20th Century do no happen again.   In the age of Brexit and strident populism, its themes urgently relevant.

Kindle Edition, 432 pages

Published February 21st 2019 by MacLehose Press

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Auschwitz – Never Again, is the mantra that underlines Menasse’s The Capital, revealing an earnest and burning message at the heart of what might seem ‘just’ a comic romp.   That is why I have no qualms about pairing this novel with a cult work by Polish composer Henryk Górecki (1933-2010) – his Third Symphony, also known as “The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”. Premiered in April 1977, the symphony marked a clear departure from the composer’s usual dense and avant-garde style, in favour of a modal and emotionally direct language.  Its second movement sets a prayer scrawled by an 18-year old prisoner on the wall of a Gestapo camp in Zakopane.  This video is taken from the documentary Holocaust, featuring a performance recorded at Auschwitz.  Harrowing doesn’t start to describe this.