Morte D'Author
Harkness, James
NORTE D'AUTHOR nval~', jealous scions bumping he.ads over the patnmony of the rex[ JAMES HARKNESS S HORTLY~ publication date, l noticed un, casily how often I'd begun to speak of "'my...
...concepts themselves differ from lan...
...a Gulliver-like colossus to their Lilliputian swarm...
...ered tb0~gh unfailingly respectful dis- tance...
...What the translator believes the author should have said...
...Does a translator do a better job, that is, a more faithfully sub-~-rvient one, by following close on the author's heels...
...NORTE D'AUTHOR nval~', jealous scions bumping he.ads over the patnmony of the rex[ JAMES HARKNESS S HORTLY~ publication date, l noticed un, casily how often I'd begun to speak of "'my current b o0~, " * Uneasily because, stncUy stinking, it both was and wasn't mine...
...Moribund or not...
...of what the translator presumes to say on his behalf...
...Or by keeping a consid...
...the ideal translator is a genealogical paradox: so passive he conforms to the parent's fondest wishes, so active he redeems the W" ent's gravest flaws...
...guage to language...
...IIIII II I Commonweal: 564...
...Bloom we're now accustomed to thinking of pot:tics as parricide, while scholars wbo've examined Mozart, Flaubert...
...and KMka appear well on the way Io a new aesthe-ticof crtalivity as lineal ressenrimem: rebellion, hopelesmess, frustration by what Michel Fo~cault once called le No,n du pl, re Translation is a perfect example of such intergeneranonal and interllngual viole.nc~, an extended tantrum sparked by "the father's No" It is ~ccisely not...
...Toward what end...
...or else interjects into another something it cannot quite hear Most translators are ytmngcr than the authors they re.present --in many cases, by millennia...
...Resurrection and rebirth, per...
...If the child is sometime, father to the man...
...The most hermetic arguments m the world rage over questaons of vocabulary and phrasing that matter not a whir, while Her~ule.an feats of intelhglbtlity go unnoted, as if floating weightlcss]) above the bed of an utterly l~mpid stream of consciousness Along with eternally recurrent re-translations of classic works, these squab~ings have about them the aspect of a kind of sibling III II I I "Liberal or literal" --the trans-lator's freedom is always posed in terms of fidelity...
...Only their energetic straggle postpones the fatal morrmnt of rest...
...Ot~pal...
...tt...
...or, if linguists themsehes, take trivial exception to idiomatic inte~rctations...
...Thanks to Ik...
...Predictably...
...what most people assume...
...Like the ideal son...
...aher all...
...Honest labor dcservcs a marginal claim to authority, if not authorship...
...the vast father's condition in no way hampers him from carrying on tile most vigoroos discourse with his coo- veyors --commenting on the scenery, reminiscing about his former life, suggesting ways around obstacles...
...erenced and cross-referenced, cor-rected errors, composed an index...
...The cntic Jonathan Culler offers a simple lUuttratlon: in English a fiver cormrasts with a stream on the basis of size...
...permittmg the dead father to continue journeying on toward the blank horizon...
...Or the true death of obliteration, the lnhefitczrs' long awaited cmancipa...
...restsfrom one language something it cannot quite say...
...while in France fleuves flow to the sea while rlviires don'L The more complex the topic, the mole likely, no~ to say perilous, the divergence The fact ,s that you can commumcate things ,n French (or German, Japanese, or Arammc) that you justcan't get across in English, and vice versa --~anet:r of experience unique to the particular culture...
...Publishers treat them vaguely as intermediaries, not infrequently neglecting to add the, r ha.rues to dust jackets and hale pages Revmwers generally ignore them...
...Hence translation's scandal of meamng, al the limit, it doesn't so much serve as a conduit between tongues for shared thoughts...
...The author's own obscurities, or what (the translator thinks) the autM~r meant to say...
...they are be,r to all the indian,ties commonly heaped upon the offspring of domineering parents...
...Throughout Donald Barthclme's The Dead Father, dutiful progeny drag across an interruinable landscape the corp~ of some enormous Dad...
...To whom, then, does a translation "'belong...
...On such grounds I suppre$.~l the guilt of the possessive --and on the somewhat less theorctical ones thai "my book" was just convenient verbal for "my translation of the book by...
...rmnutely directing every- moment and movement...
...Or the ambigu-out afftrmaUon of a prodigal son...
...How Oedipai...
...Pre~twe style at the ~crifice of clarity'?The contours of idiom at the expense of content...
...as they say, was it...
...Like all tramJations, this one was a chimerical beast, shy to confront ~ labyrinth of its timage...
...from settling down heavily, inertly amid the s,lcnt dust of the grave...
...I2 Non du pire...
...a seq~nce of more or less exact re~-ements --words for e~uivalent MI, c~ Fmwm~s ~ h Not a P~ fUaiII words, ideas for corresponding ,de&s, like putting Firestone tires on a car that came with Goodyear...
...1 assured myszff that I WLS the source of eve~" actual word: the English rendering of the French text, the punctilious introduct/on, tl~ exten- sive no/ca, in addition, it was I who had tmdergone the excruciating tedium of acquiring various rights, including those to illustrations not included in the fo~ign edition I'd checked facts, ref...
...Less obviously than signs but more fundamentally...
...A more irritating, more brutally loquacious back-seat driver is ,mix.sable to imagine Yet only children's initiative prevents the clutt-tenng cadaver from becoming what it alread) Is...
...whose claim of paternity comes first...
Vol. 111 • October 1984 • No. 18
