The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics)

by Leys, Simon

  Paradoxically, the translator must know more about the work than the author knows himself, for the author, carried by inspiration, can sometimes yield to the intoxication of words. Such transports are forbidden to the translator, who must forever remain sober and lucid. A cunning writer may bluff his readers, but he can never deceive his translator. The work of translation reveals pitilessly: it turns the work inside out, unpicks its lining, exposes its stitching. Translation is the severest test to which a book can be submitted. In discursive prose, nothing that has a meaning is untranslatable; the corollary being that untranslatable passages generally are found to be meaningless. Translation is an implacable detective of pretentious nonsense, a sonar for measuring false depths. A work may have pleased us on a first read, but if its seduction is not wholesome, it will not withstand the test of translation. To translate a book means living in intimacy with it for months and years, and this when frequenting books can turn out to be much like frequenting people: intimacy is capable of increasing love and respect, just as it is capable of producing disaffection and contempt.

  TRANSLATABLE AND UNTRANSLATABLE

  Some writers are easy to translate: Simenon, Graham Greene, and in general all novelists whose plots can be disentangled from their language. Some are hard to translate: Chardonne, Evelyn Waugh, and in general any novelist whose narrative is indissociable from its language. It so happens that I read Simenon in English and Greene in French. Some of their novels stay with me after even twenty-five or thirty years, and yet I am curiously unable to tell which I read in the original and which in translation. In the first case, language is a mere instrument of creation; in the second, it constitutes the very stuff of the work. The closer a work approaches the poetic mode, the less it is translatable. The “idea” of a poem is present only as it takes form in words; a poem doesn’t exist outside its verbal incarnation, any more than an individual exists outside his skin. Degas said to Mallarmé that he had heaps of ideas for poems and was dismayed not to be able to write them. Mallarmé responded: “But Degas, it’s not with ideas that we make poetry, it’s with words.” While it isn’t entirely absurd to recount a Tolstoy novel, it would be inconceivable to recount a Baudelaire poem. Hence poetry is by definition untranslatable (whence derives Goethe’s recommendation that verse be translated in prose, to forestall any readerly illusions). However, it does happen that a poem in one language can inspire another poem in another language. Such miracles do happen! But the existence of miracles does not cancel the existence of natural laws; rather it confirms it.

  TRANSLATIONS WHICH ARE SUPERIOR TO THEIR ORIGINALS

  I believe it was Gide who remarked of a writer he did not care for, “He is much improved by translation.” This happy gibe raises the curious issue of translators who improve on their originals. Examples abound here. Gabriel García Márquez has said that Gregory Rabassa’s translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude is much superior to its original Spanish version. I have spoken above of Lin Shu; not only does La Dame aux camélias gain from being read in Chinese, but—if Arthur Waley is to be believed—the same might be said of Dickens’s novels. But the most noteworthy case is probably that of Baudelaire as translator of Edgar Allan Poe. Anglo-Saxon connoisseurs who read French are practically unanimous in preferring Baudelaire’s translations to Poe’s originals, generally judging Poe to be “boring, vulgar and lacking a good ear”; while the way in which, following Baudelaire, great French poets such as Mallarmé, Claudel and Valéry could worship him and take seriously his indigestible mishmash of pseudoscience and metaphysical fantasy remains for English and American critics a source of infinite perplexity. The fact is that it is often mediocre writers who lend themselves best to the glorious misunderstandings of translation and exportation, whereas writers of genius resist the efforts of translators. Du Fu, the greatest and most perfect of all the Chinese classic poets, becomes grey and arid in translation, whereas his contemporary Hanshan, whose work is flat and vulgar and was, quite rightly, largely ignored in China, enjoyed a huge success in colourful poetic reincarnations in Japan, in America and in France . . . Translation may serve as a perverse screen serving to occlude instances of true beauty, while conferring a sudden freshness upon worn-out clichés. The poetry of Mao Zedong, for example, owed its fortune not only to the pounding of propaganda and the political myths of a certain era, but also to the fact that it clearly belongs to that category of works which are “improved by translation,” the translation succeeding in concealing their original vulgarity. In that ferociously funny novel Pictures from an Institution, Randall Jarrell says of one of his characters: “He would not like German half so well if he should learn it. There is no such happiness as not to know an idiom from a masterstroke.” And in The Catcher in the Rye the young hero completely muddles up the meaning of a line of Robert Burns (which gives Salinger the title of his novel): this marvellous mistake becoming the source for him of a much purer and deeper poetic delight than would have been drawn from a correct reading of the poem in question . . . A “homage to the mistake” remains to be written.

  ON READERS’ REWARDS AND WRITERS’ AWARDS*

  AS YOU may perhaps remember, some time ago the English actor Hugh Grant was arrested by the police in Los Angeles: he was performing a rather private activity in a public place with a lady of the night. For less famous mortals, such a mishap would have been merely embarrassing; but for such a famous film star, the incident proved quite shattering. For a while, it looked as if his professional career might sink—not to mention the damage inflicted upon his personal life. In this distressing circumstance, he was interviewed by an American journalist, who asked him a very American question: “Are you receiving any therapy or counselling?” Grant replied, “No. In England, we read novels.”

  Half a century earlier, the great psychologist Carl Gustav Jung developed the other side of this same observation. He phrased it in more technical terms: “Man’s estrangement from the mythical realm and the subsequent shrinking of his existence to the mere factual—that is the major cause of mental illness.” In other words, people who do not read fiction or poetry are in permanent danger of crashing against facts and being crushed by reality. And then, in turn, it is left to Dr. Jung and his colleagues to rush to the rescue and attempt to mend the broken pieces.

  Do psychotherapists multiply when novelists and poets become scarce? There may well be a connection between the development of clinical psychology on the one hand and the withering of the inspired imagination on the other—at least, this was the belief of some eminent practitioners. Rainer Maria Rilke once begged Lou Andreas-Salomé to psychoanalyse him. She refused; she explained to him, “If the analysis is successful, you may never write poetry again.” (And just imagine: had a skilful shrink cured Kafka of his existential anxieties, our age—and modern man’s condition—could have been deprived of its most perceptive interpreter.)

  Many strong and well-adjusted people seem to experience little need for the imaginative life. Thus, for instance, saints do not write novels, as Cardinal Newman observed (and he ought to have known, since he came quite close to being a saint, and he wrote a couple of novels†).

  Especially, practical-minded people and men of action are often inclined to disapprove of literary fiction. They consider reading creative literature as a frivolous and debilitating activity. In this respect, it is quite revealing that, for example (as I have already pointed out in an earlier essay), the great polar explorer Mawson—one of our national heroes—gave to his children the stern advice not to waste their time reading novels; instead, he instructed them to read only works of history and biography in order to grow into healthy individuals.

  Allow me to dwell a short moment on this particular advice, for it reflects two very common fallacies. The first fallacy consists in failing to see that, by its very definition, all literature is in fact imaginative literature. Distinctions between genres—novels and history, poetry and prose, fiction and essay, etc.—are essentially artifici
al; these conventional classifications are of practical use mostly for booksellers and librarians who have to compile catalogues or arrange books on crowded shelves; otherwise, above a certain level of literary quality, they present little relevance. For the perceptive reader, indeed, Proust’s great novel is in fact a philosophical essay; Montaigne’s essays are more diverse and surprising than any novel; Gibbon’s and Michelet’s histories remain alive first and foremost as great literature; and, of course it would be ludicrous to reduce a polymorphous giant such as Shakespeare to the absurdly minor and narrow craft of playwrighting. As to the art of fiction, we have already learned that its aim is nothing less than “to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe,”[1] whereas the mission of the historian is to imagine the past—since history is believed only when a talented writer has invented it well. Novelists are the historians of the present; historians are the novelists of the past.§

  The second Mawsonian fallacy results from a mistaken notion of what “health” is. On this subject, I think that Laurence Sterne provided the correct perspective in his description of a visit he made to his doctor:

  —Sir, the doctor told me, your health is perfectly normal.—On hearing this, I began to rejoice, when the doctor pursued:—Such a condition is exceedingly rare: it is a cause for concern and calls for extreme caution.

  Since Mawson just took us to Antarctica, before leaving this particular field I might also add that I have always preferred the example of Shackleton—a much greater man. In the darkest depth of disaster, when all members of his expedition had to discard every piece of superfluous luggage, he refused to abandon his beloved copy of Browning’s collected poems. One day, some scholar should write a doctoral thesis on “The Role of Poetry in Polar Exploration”—but right now, I had better not wander too far away from my subject. My point was simply this: whatever fragile harmony we may have been able to achieve within ourselves is exposed every day to dangerous challenges and to ferocious batterings, and the outcome of our struggle remains forever uncertain. A character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa gave (what seems to me) the best image for this common predicament of ours: “Life is a shitstorm, in which Art is our only umbrella.”

  This observation, in turn, brings us to the very meaning of tonight’s function—the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Any well-ordered state must naturally provide for public education, public health, public transport, public order, the administration of justice, the collection of garbage, etc. Beyond these essential services and responsibilities, a truly civilised state also ensures that, in the pungent squalls of their daily lives, citizens are not left without umbrellas—and therefore it encourages and supports the arts. The Premier’s Literary Awards are one important aspect of this enlightened policy.

  The beauty of all literary awards is that they produce only winners—there can be no losers here. For this is not a competition, and in this respect it resembles more a lottery. When we buy a lottery ticket in support of some charity, we expect nothing in return. Yet, if one day we were to receive a phone call informing us that our number had just won a sports car or a holiday in Tahiti, we would be surprised—and delighted. We would be delighted precisely because of our surprise. Though it may be pleasant to obtain something after a long and hard struggle, to be given it without even having had to ask—this is pure bliss.

  Without doubting the quality of his own work, a writer who receives a literary award is perfectly aware that he is very lucky indeed. Not only does he know that this honour could have gone to any other writer on the short-list, but he also knows that there are many equally deserving writers not on the short-list; and furthermore, it is quite conceivable that the most deserving writer of all did not even succeed in having his manuscript accepted for publication—it was rejected by twelve different publishers, and may have to wait another twenty years before having its true worth duly recognised.

  Yet these considerations should not tarnish in the least the happiness of the winners. Ultimately lotteries are designed to benefit not their winners, but handicapped children, or guide dogs for the blind, or whatever good cause is sponsoring them. And it is the same with the literary awards: year after year, they have only one true and permanent winner, always the same—and it is literature itself, our common love, which we have all gathered here tonight to support and celebrate.

  * Address to the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, 2002.

  † I hope this will not now hinder the smooth progress of his canonisation.

  § These notions are developed further in an earlier essay, “Lies That Tell the Truth.”

  WRITERS AND MONEY

  THERE is no sublunary topic on which Samuel Johnson did not, at some time, issue a pithy and definitive statement; this particular subject is no exception, and although the Johnsonian quote is well known, it should still provide an apt starting point for our own little survey: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Boswell faithfully recorded this utterance of the master, but he was shocked. Surely Johnson said this in jest? Did his own noble and tireless activity in the service of literature not give the lie to such a cynical paradox?

  Yes and no. We know, for instance, how Johnson dashed off Rasselas at stupendous speed in order to pay for his mother’s funeral. Under the pressure of financial necessity, he could display a prodigious capacity for work, but his natural inclination towards indolence was no less colossal. Later in life, when his material circumstances finally became more secure, he wrote rather little. To Boswell, who had expressed respectful puzzlement at this relative idleness, he retorted tartly: “No, sir, I am not obliged to do any more. No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life for himself.”

  Yet Johnson’s attitude was not shared by all the great writers of his time. Voltaire, for instance, instead of writing in order to make money, made money in order to write. Through shrewd investments and clever financial operations, he accumulated an enormous wealth (bringing him a yearly income of £140,000) which, in turn, enabled him to acquire a splendid estate located strategically on the border between the kingdom of France and the republic of Geneva. This gave him the liberty to write and to publish as he pleased: whenever he offended censors on the one side of the border, he could find instant refuge on the other side.

  Rousseau, who, for all his personal frailties, had a much nobler soul, also aimed at intellectual freedom but, unlike Voltaire, he never coveted riches. Although his books triumphed throughout Europe, in an age that ignored copyright they brought him fame but earned him hardly any royalties. In the last part of his life, he declined generous offers of patronage from the great and the powerful and opted instead for independent poverty: he made a meagre living by copying musical scores. He carefully calculated how many pages he needed to copy every day to keep his modest household afloat, and once he had done his daily quota, the rest of the time was entirely his own. In this way, he could secure both self-sufficiency and inner peace. He said: “I always considered that the condition of author is not, and cannot be, glorious and honourable, if it were also to become a paid craft. You cannot think lofty thoughts when you think for a living.”

  In the eighteenth century, the livelihood of most writers depended either upon the patronage of the court and the aristocracy or upon the commercial activities of printers and booksellers. Modern publishing with its personal—yet also delicate and sometimes antagonistic—relations between authors and publishers was born in the nineteenth century. In our time, writers’ views on the subject were bitterly summarised by Edmund Wilson: “All publishers are dogs.” (It would be interesting to know what the publishers thought of this notoriously unpleasant customer.)

  Authors’ complaints about publishers have been voiced on many different tunes, but their concert generally amounts to endless variations on the same theme: money. Either they moan piteously, like Henry James writing to his publisher: “The delicious ring of the sovereign is conspicuous in our in
tercourse by its absence.” Or they thunder with foaming fury and throw colourful abuse like L.-F. Céline: “If you were not robbing me, you would not be conforming to my views of human nature.” And, as his publisher had refused to increase an advance on royalties and advised “more patience,” he retorted: “Patience is a virtue for donkeys and cuckolds! If only you could kindly wipe your arse with my contract and let me free to leave your filthy brothel!” Yet screams merely betray powerlessness. Georges Simenon, wanting to rescind an agreement that had proved disadvantageous to him, resorted to different tactics: he achieved his aim by putting to good use his intuitive knowledge of the human heart. The novelist assessed how much it would be worth for him to redeem his original contract; then filled a briefcase with banknotes and won his negotiation simply by emptying the briefcase over the publisher’s desk.

  Yet few writers ever find themselves in a position to perform such coups. Although some of the great and famous—Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Walter Scott, Dickens, Maupassant—made (and sometimes lost) huge fortunes, for most of the others, literary genius amounted to a curse, at least as far as their material well-being was concerned. Literary history abounds with heartbreaking episodes of utter destitution. Dostoevsky, for instance, finding himself stranded abroad, penniless and starving, wrote The Eternal Husband in a last attempt to obtain emergency relief from his publishers. But as he was about to dispatch the manuscript on which his last hope rested, he discovered that he did not even have money for the postage. The despair and despondency experienced by Baudelaire were, in a sense, even more cruel: at the end of his life, the poet undertook to calculate the earnings of his entire literary career; he arrived at a grand total of 15,892 francs and 50 centimes—and the friend who recorded this grim exercise concluded: “Thus, this great poet, this perfect artist, who had worked so hard and without respite for the last twenty-six years, had earned on average one franc and 70 centimes per day.”