Revenge of the Translator
Page 1
* A clarification about my modus operandi: even when I resist the temptation of censorship or when I don’t dilate the original prose as I please, I am an indelicate transporter, a clumsy mover, a seedy trafficker. I dispatch fragile and labeled objects from one edge of the ocean to the other, and although I certainly do my best, I bang them and drop them, I damage and dent them, scuff them and scrape them, I destroy them despite myself …
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Vengeance du Traducteur Copyright © P.O.L Editeur, 2009
English translation copyright © Emma Ramadan, 2018
ISBN
978-1-941920-70-1 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936731
Quoted material on p. vii is from Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka, translated by Philip Boehm. Copyright © 1990. Used by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Penguin Random House. All rights reserved.
Quoted material on p. 10 is from The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley, illustrated by Peter Sis. Copyright © 2005. Used by permission of Penguin Random House. All rights reserved.
The quote on p. 23 is a reworking of the opening lines to The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, by Vladimir Nabokov. Copyright © 1941. Used by permission of New Directions. All rights reserved.
This work received the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation. French Voices is a program created and funded by the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).
Cover design by Anna Zylicz · annazylicz.com
Typesetting by Kirby Gann · kirbygann.net
Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.
… I, who am not even the pawn of a pawn in the great chess game, far from it, now want to take the place of the queen … —I, the pawn of a pawn, a piece which doesn’t even exist, which isn’t even in the game—and next I may want to take the king’s place as well or even the whole board …
—Franz Kafka Letter to Milena Jesenská, about the Letter to His Father
The machine works with words.
—Jean Suquet
for Maeva A.
Contents
Chapter 1: The Translator Takes the Stage
Chapter 2: The Translator Trims the Fat
Chapter 3: The Translator Adds Some Back In
Chapter 4: The Translator Prepares for War
Chapter 5: The Secret Passage
Chapter 6: Prote’s Secret Passage
Chapter 7: David and Doris Meet at Abel’s Place
Chapter 8: The Hidden, Stolen, and Finally Revealed Letter
Chapter 9: David’s Secret Passage
Chapter 10: The Secret Passage Revisited
Chapter 11: Asterisk Pasta, Cuttlefish in Ink Sauce, and Mille-Feuille
Chapter 12: The Flight
Chapter 13: The French Translator
Chapter 14: The Dinner
Chapter 15: Trad’s Secret Passage
Chapter 16: Prote Receives a Final Visit
Epilogue
Chapter 1
THE TRANSLATOR TAKES THE STAGE
*
* I reside here below this thin black bar. This is my place, my living room, my den. The walls are painted white and covered with several lines of thin black characters, like an uneven frieze, a changing wallpaper. Welcome to you, dear reader, who has crossed the threshold of my lair. It’s not as spacious as that of my upstairs neighbor, but in his absence I welcome his visitors who have been rerouted by his inexplicable desertion. I know it’s him that you came to see, and you’ve stumbled upon me instead. You will have to make do. I rub elbows in this modest space. I pile up these lines to keep my cave from becoming a coffin, my bunker from becoming a tomb.
Make yourself at home, relax, and, please, check at the door your flattery and formulaic smiles typical of visitors to the proprietor, the seigneur and master, who lives and receives guests on the floor above. I hope that you will not feel too out of place, even if I have a few surprises in store for you. Just be careful not to hit your head on the ceiling. As you’ll see, the height changes from one room to the next. Know also that in my home all the spaces are adjoined, like the maids’ rooms that are sometimes lumped in a row alongside each other on the top floor of a building: each leads into the next and you must cross all of them to reach the last. It’s not very practical, but there’s no way around it.
Normally, I don’t host anyone, I remain invisible and silent, allocated to my cramped residence, relegated beneath the earth.
There, above, in the open air, above the bar, that airtight, insurmountable lid, I am certainly omnipresent, but in a way that even I don’t really understand, in a bizarre form, ectoplasmic and constrained. I maneuver around incognito, disembodied, an obedient and faithful phantom like a shadow fastened to a body, since the beginning of time existing in the mold of the other, of my noisy neighbor who struts in the spotlight, that tall beanpole you came to visit, but who has suddenly disappeared without leaving a forwarding address.
This is not a life; it’s barely existing. My notes? Apparitions as fleeting as those of a ferret or a mole, of a shooting star or a green flash: the servile explications of the exegete fear-stricken by faith. (Translator’s Night)
*
* Mon père, ce géant au regard si doux. In French in the original English text, as are all the passages in italics followed by an asterisk.
Each time I appear it’s after this little typographical star, the humble asterisk. Here I write like the tail of a black comet, zooming from left to right in the white margin of the page. But I’m tied down, I’m a comet not only relegated to the negative space, but also on a leash, a pet star: far from roaming as I would like through the firmament and doing as I please, I am steered, radio-controlled by the upper asterisk that summons the note, that hails me like a master calls its dog and orders: “Fetch.” Stick in my mouth, gaze full of gratitude and tail wagging to show the measure of my admiration, I present myself before my superior and exist only in relation with him, in relation to him. Held up to his measuring stick, I am but a millimeter tall. Nevertheless, on both sides of the black bar exists a curious symmetry: the two asterisks are the same size, as if the star in the firmament were reflected in the sea of my text. And then, dear reader, all you have to do is pivot the book you’re currently holding in your hands 180º and everything flips: now it’s me who’s up in the sky, level with the horizon and the clouds and the layers of pollution looming on top; my pretty star dominates that of the other, flyspeck floating in an insipid bowl of milk.
Enough.
This French quotation in the text is erroneous. June 18, 1850, Victor Hugo actually writes in La Légende des siecles (Après la bataille): “Mon père, ce héros au sourire si doux.” The two errors—géant instead of héros, regard instead of sourire—can potentially be explained by faulty memory.
Regardless, according to the testimonies of his close friends, the author’s father was, in reality, an authoritarian, sometimes brutal, man, subject to sudden and spectacular fits of rage. From the first pages of his novel the author evokes the paternal figure: this is surely not insignificant.
Have I gone too far? Am I being too much of a chatterbox? (Tapir’s Nose)
*
* This time it’s Racine who is maimed. Instead of express
ing his resentment toward Rome, he writes (in French in the American text): “L’homme, unique objet de mon ressentiment.” I wonder whether this blunder, this lapse that takes us from romanthrophy to misanthropy, from Rome to homme and from pillar to post, whether this violent translation* doesn’t make us reflect on the act of translation itself, this Tarzan’s jump from above into the unfathomable abyss of a dense jungle. (Tarzan’s Nosedive)
* In English in my French text.
*
* The crowbar that here allows the stranger dressed in a large black cape to force his way, by night, into the restored Normandy cottage owned by the French writer Abel Prote, to break into, collect, or erase the data on his computer, this crowbar slipped under Prote’s white door, is running through my mind. This crowbar titillates my birdbrain. For all you need is a solid pull on the handle of this tool so that the lever raises itself at the same time, and that’s all there is to it, the door vanished, the path clear.
Thus, it would perhaps suffice for me to accumulate enough of these lines here at the bottom of the page for the white door, the thin black bar signifying the bottom, to violently swing off its hinges. My inferior remarks, my commentaries and other digressions would act, then, as my crowbar. What would I see next, after the fall of the white panel? What unknown space would we discover together? Is the asterisk the peephole permitting me to scrutinize what lies beyond, the secret passage behind the mirror?
But, until then, a doormat I remain. (Notion’s End)
*
* Antique père océan: this phrase refers to Proteus in the Odyssey. He’s the god of the sea who watches over the grazing of herds of seals and other marine animals that belong to Poseidon. Gifted with the power of metamorphosis, Proteus can become not only an animal, but also an element, such as water or fire, to escape from inquiring minds. He lives on the island of Pharos, not far from the Nile Delta.
In the book that I’m translating, Translator’s Revenge (in French it should be, if the publisher agrees, Vengeance du Traducteur, but the publishers of course consult the managing editors as well as the sales representatives who in their turn consult the booksellers who then …Anyway, the jury is still out on the French title, it could just as easily become Panique à New York or La Séductrice de Saint-Germain-des-Prés, or worse). Where was I? Oh yes, Proteus. This Greek god often reappears in the text under various forms as the tutelary divinity of the young American translator David Grey. (Translator’s Rote)
*
* Hide-behind. In French: le Se-cache-derrière. The author, whom I questioned about this neologism, immediately responded to me by email that he discovered this bizarre term in the The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero, in the chapter entitled “Fauna of the United States.” I quote: “The Hide-behind is always hiding behind something. Whichever way a man turns, it’s always behind him, which is why nobody has ever satisfactorily described one, though it has killed and eaten many a lumberjack.”
That the author is comparing his hero David Grey, American translator of French novels,† to a Hide-behind, a furtive and voracious assassin, serves as proof of the nebulousness of his prose. I, for example, have never killed or devoured even one lumberjack, no character or any author of the numerous American novels that I’ve translated into French. One could nevertheless make the claim that I have masticated their texts, but discreetly, on the sly: not only the delicious flesh, the choice and daring cuts, the tasty tendons and crunchy passages, but also the bones, the cartilage, the tough nerves, the descriptive tunnels, the clogged arteries, the indigestible joints, the nails, the repugnant hairs, the contrived dialogues, the misplaced voices, the twisted prose … All of that cannibalized, digested, absorbed, then vomited back up in my own language. Sometimes you have to have good teeth and a solid stomach.
This Hide-behind, invisible because he is always hidden behind the back of another, makes me think of the Courbet painting La Source. In a pastoral setting, we see, in fact we devour with our eyes, a young nude woman with sumptuous curves, depicted from behind. Nonchalantly resting on a large rock, she is absorbed in the contemplation of a little spring into which she has plunged her hand. Standing before this painting and behind that engrossing beauty in which I, without her knowing, admire her large hips, her fine waist, her shapely back, her languid posture, I am Borges’s Hide-behind. Ready to jump on my prey. Like a good translator. Not seen, not caught, but carnivorous.
Little by little, I climb. (Trickster’s Nook)
† There are so many passages, even entire pages, that I have redacted in my translation that I have to give a bit of explanation of the novel’s plot.
*
* The bar, the lid under which I marinate in my gravy, this lifeless slab, reminds me sometimes of the fish sleeping at the bottom of the turbotiere, hermetically sealed before being cooked, cut, and savored. Meanwhile the other man strutting on the floors above plays the charlatan, the street peddler, luring customers in with his stentorian voice and turnstile arms, gathering visitors onto whom he offloads his glass beads and multicolored strings, to swindle them and convince them on top of it all that they have taken part in a grand affair … I’m thrilled to shut him up.
But I am no longer within the confines of my role, I overstep my duties, I forget my place, as they say. Frankly, what’s the point of losing my temper? Am I jealous? Claustrophobic? Probably a bit of both. I must bring myself back to task, curb my delirium, rediscover the lucid, the serious, rigor and sobriety, precision and concision, discreet and efficient erudition, etc., etc., etc. For I am—as we all know—a humble artisan, the man behind the scenes, the coal miner digging in the darkness of his tunnel, his dictionaries serving as his only light, his wisdom his only tool, fidelity and drudgery his only objectives, even though infidelity and laziness are the two mammary glands of the novel!
The mole digs his underground tunnels, the other above parades and struts before his audience of admirers and flatterers.
Enough. (Delirium’s Mainspring)
*
* Dumbwaiter, le serviteur muet. Here, once again, the author misleads his reader with a web of prejudices, all humiliating to my profession. In fact, the dumbwaiter, le serviteur muet, is a goods elevator that, in certain old New York buildings, is at the disposition of its tenants. It’s also a vertical pass-through that you sometimes find in a restaurant. In Great Britain it’s a dessert stand. Comparing a translator to a dumbwaiter, a goods elevator, a serving hatch, or a dessert stand makes my blood boil. For, in the end, without this pass-through, the author wouldn’t have any say in the matter. And if I serve him soup, it’s only this poor substitute that allows him to stay, somehow, above the bar: not the solid, rustic, homemade broth, but the sachets of freeze-dried powder whose exact composition we would rather not know.
Or else, kind reader, my author is a poor stage actor who doesn’t know a single word of his text. And I, hidden from all gazes except his in the prompter’s hole, whisper his lines to him one by one; I read his text in a drone, I feed him beakfuls. From my lips he takes his sonorous nutrients and immediately spits them out for the delighted public who, nine times out of ten, see nothing but fire. Invisible, I brood at the bottom of my obscure opening while in the spotlight he brims with pride.
The following comparison the author makes is even more unpleasant. He equivocates the translator David Grey with a lazy Susan, une Susan parasseuse. A lazy Susan is a rotating tray installed in the middle of the table in certain restaurants, especially Asian establishments! (Toiler’s Nausea)
*
* I notice with stupefaction that I, the humble goods elevator, the pass-through, the rotating tray, etc., have succeeded in sliding, insinuating myself into the bottom of each of the novel’s pages thus far. A bit unusual, isn’t it, a bit audacious, for the translator is ordinarily a discreet, self-effacing being who knows how to behave himself. But why shouldn’t I? In any case, what’s the point of burying my head in the sand? This no
vel is utter nonsense and the author a scoundrel. In my opinion, I should never have agreed to translate this book … I should delete these sentences, the publisher will not allow them. Then again, no, I’ll leave them. Like the driver stretching his legs when he finally reaches the rest stop on the highway, I feel better and better: I no longer have pins and needles in my limbs, my aches are fading, my cramps dispersing. When translating nonstop, one gets stiff, atrophies, fades. And I notice that this escapade is oxygenating my blood, that this improvised stop is doing me a great deal of good.
Where was I? Oh yes, this novel is utter nonsense. Imagine, dear reader, that the hero of Translator’s Revenge, the young and sympathetic David Grey, a professional translator (from French to English), a native New Yorker, whom you don’t know very well yet, sometimes mistakes himself for Zorro, the masked avenger dressed all in black who always appears without warning, where no one expects him. In fact, a bit like me, I’m suddenly realizing … Sometimes, Grey also disguises himself as the enigmatic character you find on the labels of certain bottles of port: a man dressed in a long cape and a big hat that plunges his face into darkness. All of this is of course ridiculous, for as soon as a translator feels even the slightest desire for vengeance, his work suffers for it: his head is elsewhere, he becomes absentminded, or worse, dishonest. As for David Grey’s absorption of the man in black on the bottle of Sandeman port, it’s teeming with perfidious double entendres: is the translator drinking? Is he plotting against the creator of the book? Is he an assassin? A mercenary ready to sell his services to the highest bidder? A saboteur secretly slipping grains of sand into the well-oiled machinery of the novel to make it skid out of control or even flip over, bringing a full halt to the mechanism? Or else a coward, a shameful, timid man who constantly hides his face and shows only his back? And so returns the specter of the Hide-behind …