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Translation: Literature and Letters: Translated Irene Del Corral
Translation: Literature and Letters: Translated Irene Del Corral
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154 0CTAVIOPAZ TRANSLATION: LITERATURE AND LETI'ERS 155
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arnples of the insurmountable differences between individuals, so- according to Roman Jalcobson, all literary procedures are reduced:
cieties, and eras. The greatest schism, scarcely less profound than metonym and metaphor. The original text never reappears in the
that between narure and culrure, separates primitives from the civ- new language (this would be impossible); yet it is ever present be-
ilized; further divisions arise from the variety and diversity of civi- cause the. translation, without saying it, expresses it constantly, or
lizations. Within each civilization, more differences emerge: the· else convens it into a verbal object that, although different, repro-
language that enables us to communicate with one another also duces it: metonym or metaphor. Both, unlike explicative transla-
encloses us in an invisible web of sounds and meanings, so that tions and paraphrase, are rigorous forms that are in no way incon-
ea~~_:>.a~Qiljs in;lp_risoned by its language, a langu~gef~rrt:ll~r frag- sistent with accuracy. The metonym is an indirect description, and
'inented by historical eras, by social classes, by ge11"ratiggs. As for the metaphor a verbal equation.
the intercourse among individuals belonging to the same commu- The greatest pes.simism about the feas. ibility of tran.slation has
nity, each one is hemmed in by his own self-concern. een concentrated on poetry, a remarkable posrure since many of
With all this, one would have expected translators to accept e best poems in every Western language are translations, and
defeat, but this has not been the case; instead, there has been a any of those translations were written by great poets. Some years ·
contradictory and complementary trend to translate even more. ago the critic and linguist Georges Mounin wrote a book about
This is paradoxical because, while translation overcomes the differ- translation .. He pointed our that it is generally, albeit reluctantly,
ences between one language and another, it also reveals them more conceded that it is possible to translate the denotative meanings of
fully. Tjl,anks__:o translaficm, we become aware that o."': 11e_igl_ll:x>_rs a text but that the consensus is almost unanimous that the transla-
do not speak anatliink as we do. On the one lianif, the world is tion of connotative meanings is impossible. Woven of echoes, re- .
presented to rui'as'a collection of similarities; on the other, as a flections, and the interaction of soURd with meaning, poetry is a
growing heap of texts, each slightly different from the one that fabric of connotations and, consequently, untranslatable. I must
carne before it: translations of translations of translations. Each text confess that I find this idea offensive, not only because it conflicts
is unique, yet at the same time it is the translation of allOaler text. with my personal conviction that poetry is universal, but also J:>e-
No text can be completely original because 1an:g;;.;g.; ~~if, i;, its cause it is based on an erroneous conception of what translation is.
V~t:L~Ssence, is already a translation-first from the nonverbal Not everyone shares my view, and many modem poets insist that
a
world, anci' then,because each sign and each phrase iS translation poetry is untranslatable. Perhaps their opinion comes from their
of another sign, another phrase. However, the inverse of this rea- inordinate attachment ·to verbal matter, or perhaps they have be- :
soning is also entirely valid. All texts are· orlgln.als becall'se-each come ensnared in the trap of subjectivity. A morral trap, as Que,
translation has its own distinctive character. Up to a point, each vedo warns: "the waters of the abyss I where I carne to love myself!'
translation is a creation and thus constirutes a uniq_ue text. Unarnuno, in one of his lyric-patriotic outbursts, provides an ex-
The discoveries of anthropology and lingUistics do not im- ample of this kind of verbal infaruation:
peach translation itself, but a cenain ingenuous notion of transla-
tion, the word-for-word translation suggestively called scrvil (ser- Avila, Malaga, Ciceres,
vile)' in Spanish. I do not mean to imply that literal translation is Jitiva, Merida, C6rdoba,
impossible; what I am saying is that it is not translation. It is a Cuidad Rodrigo, SepUlveda,
mechanism, a string of words that helps us read the text· in its orig- Ubeda, Arevalo, Fr6misca,
Zumirraga, Salamanca,
inallanguage. It is a glossary ratherthm_a !I::lllS!<l.!iop_, ..'\'Nc!t.is
Turengarto, Zaragoza,
always a literary activi.ty. Without exception, even when the trans-
Urida, Zamarramala,
lator's sole intention is to convey meaning, as in the case of scien- you are the nam~ that stand tall,
tific texts, translation implies a transformation of the ohginal. That free, untarnished, an honor roll,
transformation is not-nor can it be-anything but literary, be- the untranslatable marrow
cause all translations utilize the two modes of expression to which, of our Spanish tongue.
, __ _:_..:....:....-__
"The untranslatable marrow I of our Spanish tongue" is an outra- A seeming of the Spaniard, a style of life,
geous metaphor (marrow and tongue?), but a perfectly translatable The invention of a. nation in a phrase . ...
one since its image is universal. Many poets have utilized Unamu·
no's srylistic device in other languages: the lists of words differ, but Here language has become a landscape, and that landscape, in
the context, the emotion, and the meaning are comparable. It is turn, is a creation, the metaphor of a nation or of an individual-
j remarkable that the untranslatable essence of Spain should consist
of a succession of Roman, Arabic, Celtiberian and Basque names.
a verbal topography that communicates fully, that translates fully.
Phrases form a chain of mountains, and the mountains are the char-
It is equally remarkable that Unamuno should have translated the acters, the ideograms of a civilization. But not only is the interac-
name of the Catalonian city Lleida into Castilian (Lerida). And tion between echoes and words overwhelming; it holds an inescap-
what is perhaps most surprising of all is that he quoted the follow- able threat. The moment comes when, surrounded by words on all
ing lines by Victor Hugo as an epigraph to his poem, apparently sides, we feel intimidated by the distressing bewilderment of living
not realizing that by doing so he was contradicting his own asser- among names and not among things, the bewilderment of even
tion that the names were untranslatable: having a name:
Et tout tremble, Irun, Coiinbre,
Santander, Almodovar, Amid the reeds and the late afternoon,
sitOt qu'on entend le timbre how strange that I am named Federico!
des cymbals de Bivar.
And everytbing trembles, !run, Cofmbra, In this case, too, the experience is universal: Garcia Lorca
Santander, Almod6var, would have felt the same uneasiness if he had been called Tom,
once we hear the timbre Jean, or Chuang Tzu. To l95e our name is like losing our shadow;
of the cymbals of Bivar. to be only our name is to be reduced to a shadow. The absence of
any correlation between things and their names is doubly intoler-
In both Spanish and French, the meanings and the emotions able: either the meanings evaporate or the things vanish. A world
are the same. Since, strictly ·speaking, the proper nouns cannot be of pure- meanings is as inhospitable as a world of things without
translated, Hugo merely recites them in Spanish, making no at- meaning-without names. It is language that mai(es the world
tempt to gallicize them. The recitation is effective because the · habitable. The instant of perplexity at the oddness of being called
words, stripped of precise meaning and converted into verbal cas- Federico or So Ji is immediately followed by the invention of an-
tanets, true mantras, echo through the French text even more ex- other name, a name that is, in a way, a translation of the first: the
otically than in the Spanish.... Translation is very difficult-no metaphor or metonyrn that, without saying ir, says it.
less difficult than writing so-called original texts-but it is not im- In recent years, perhaps because of the increasing primacy of
possible. The poems of Hugo and Unamuno illustrate that con- linguistics, there has been a tendency to deemphasize the decideclly
notative. meanings can be preserved if the poet-translator success- literary nature of translation. There is no such thing-nor can there
fully reproduces the verbal situation, the poetic context, into which be-as a science of translation, although translation can and should
they are mounted. Wallace Stevens has given us a sort of model be studied scientifically. Just as literature is a specialized function of
image of that situation in a fine passage: language, so translation is a specialized function of literature. And
what, we might ask, of the machines that translate? If they ever
... the hard hidalgo really translate, they roo will perform a literary operation, and they
Lives in the mountainous character of his speech; roo will produce what translators now do: literature. Translation is
And in that mountainous mirror Spain acquires an exercise in which what is decisive, given the necessary.liiigwstic-
The knowledge of Spain and of the hidalgo's hat- proficieni:y, is the translator's initiative, whether that translator be
~j:
)
.. ' )
160 0CTAVIOPAZ TRANSLATION: LITERATURE AND LETIERS 161
the original poem in another poem that is, as I have previously ments, following neither conductor nor score, are in the process of
mentioned, less a copy than a transmutation. The ideal of poetic collectively composing a symphony in which improvisation is in-
· translation, as Valery once superbly defined it, consists ot'produc- separable from translation and creation is indistinguishable from
' irig .afiaiogous-effects with (!]jfi:rent implements. imitation. At times, one of the musicians will break out into an
' - TgQ~ati.on.ari.d creation are twin. processes. On one hand, as inspired solo; soon the others pick it up, each introducing his own
the works of Baudelaire and Pound have proveu, translation is variations that make the original motif unrecognizable. At the end
ofteu indistinguishable from creation; on the other, there is con- of the last cenrury, French poetry amazed and ·scandalized Europe
srant interaction between the two, a continuous, mutual enrich- with the solo begun by Baudelaire and brought to a close by Mal-
ment. The greatest creative periods of Western poetry, from its ori- larme. Hispano-American "modernist" poets were among the first
gins in Provence to our own day, have been preceded or to develop an ear for this new music; in imirating it, they made it
accompanied by intercrossings between different poetic traditions. their own, they changed it, and they serit it on to Spain where it
At times these intercrossings have taken the form of imiration, and was once again re-created. A little later the.English-language poets
at others they have taken the form of translation. In this respect, performed somerhing similar but on different instruments in a dif-
the history of European poetry might be viewed as a chronicle of ferent key and tempo: a more sober and critical version in which
the convergences of the various traditions that compose what is Laforgue, not Verlaine, occupied the central position. Laforgue's
known as Western literature, not to mention the presence of the special stat\)S helps explain the character of Anglo-American mod-
Arabic tradition in Proven~al poetry, or the presence of haiku, and ernism, a movement that was simulraneously symbolist and anti~
the Chinese tradition in modem poetry. Critics study "influences," symbolist. Pound and Eliot, following Laforgue's lead, introduced
but the term is not exact. It would be more sensible to consider criticism of symbolism into symbolism itself, in ridicule of what
Western literature as an integral whole in which the ~ntral protag- Pound termed the "funny symbolist trappings." This critical per-
onists are not national traditions-English, French, Portuguese, ception set the framework for their writing, and a little later they
German poetry-but styles and trends. No trend, no style has ever produced poetry that was not modernist but modem, and thus they
been national, not even the so-called artistic nationalism. Styles initiated, together with Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams,
have invariably been translinguistic: Donne is closer to Quevedo and others, a new solo-the solo of contemporary Anglo-
than to Wordsworth; there is an evident affinity between Gongora American poetry.
and Marino while nothing, save their common language, unites Lafurgue's legacy to English and Spanish poetry is a prime
Gongora with Juan Ruiz, the archpriest of Rita, who, in tum, is example of the interdependence between creation and imiration,
sometimes reminiscent of Chaucer. Styles are coalescent and pass tr_anslaJion and original work. The French poet's influence on Eliot
from one language to another; the works, each rooted in its own and Pound ts a matter of common knowledge, but what is less
verbal soil, are unique ... unique, but not isolated: each is born often appreciated is his influence on Hispano-American poets. In
and lives in relation to other works composed in different lan- 1905, the Argentinian Leopoldo Lugones, a great poet whose
guages. Thus, the plurality of languages and the singularity of the work has not attracted the critical attention it deserves, published
works produce neither complete diversity nor disorder, but quite a volume of poems, Los crepmcuws del jardin, in which some Lafor-
the opposite: a world of interrelationships made up of contradic- guean features appeared for the first time in Spanish: irony, the
tions and harmonies, unions and digressions. clash of colloquial with literary language, violent images that jux-
Throughout the ages, European poets-and now those of taposed urban absurdity with nature depicted as a grotesque ma-
both halves of the American continent as well-have been writing tron. Some of his poems seem to have been written on one of those
the same poem in different languages. And each version is an orig- dimanches bannis de l'Injini, the fin-de-siecle Sundays of the
inal and distinct poem. True, the synchronization is not perfect, Hispano-American bourgeoisie. In 1909 Lugones published Lu-
but if we take a step backward, we can understand that we are nario sentimental. Although it imitated Laforgue, this volume was
hearing a concert, and that the musicians, playing different instru- one of the most original of its time, and even today can be read
162 OcrAVIOPAZ SIXTEEN
with admiration and delight. Lunari<l sentimental exerted a tremen- PETERSzoNDI
dous influence on Hispano-American poets, but it was patticulatly
beneficial and inspiring to the Mexican poet LOpez Velarde. In The Poetry.ofConstancy: Paul Celan's
1919 LOpez Velarde published Zozobra, the principal voluine of Translation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 105
Hispano-American "postrnodemism," that is, our own antisymbol-
ist symbolism. Two years earlier, Eliot had published Prufrock and Translated by Harvey Mendelsohn
Other Observations. In Boston, a Protestant Laforgue had emerged
from Harvard; in Zacatecas, a Catholic Laforgue had slipped out
of a seminary. Sensuality, blasphemy, humor, what LOpez Velarde
called an "intimate reactionary sadness." The Mexican poet died
not long afrerward in 1921, at the age of thirty-three. His work
ended where Eliot's began ... Boston and Zacatecas: the coupling
of these two names brings a smile as if it were one of those incon-
gruent associations Laforgue so greatly enjoyed. Two poets writing Shakespeare's sonnet 105, a poem about the virtues of the author's
in different languages, neither even suspecting the existence of the young friend and, simultaneously, a poem about the poetic writing
other, almost simultaneously produced different but equally origi- that extols them, ends with the couplet:
nal versions of the poetry written some years earlier by a third poet
in yet another language. Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.
VVhich three till now, never kept seat in one.
Beauty, goodness, and fidelity are the three virtues that the
poet ascribes to his friend in the preceding quatrains, and it is to
their expression that he wishes to confine his writing, indeed, even
its vocabulary. Whereas in these strophes Shakespeare speaks not
only of his friend but also of his own love and of his own songs,
the final couplet is devoted entirely to the three virtues, which are
granted an independent life through the device of personification.
Yet this independent life is accorded to beauty, goodness, and fi-
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