---·-··-·-···. -···-·--·· ..---------~~.---------------------- FIFTEEN TRANSlATION: LITERATURE AND LETTERS 153 0CTAVIO p {\Z the vast array of customs and societies, man began to find it difficult Translation: Literature and Letters to recognize himself in other men. Until that time, the heathen had been a deviant to be suppressed through conversion ot extermina­ Translated by Irene del Corral tion, baptism or the sword, but the heathen presented in eighteenth-century salons was· a new creature who, although he might speak his hosts' language to perfection, nevertheless embod­ ied an inexorable foreignness. He was not subjected to conversion but to controversy and ·criticism; the originality of his views, the simplicity of his customs, and even the violence of his passions verified the absurdity and futility, to say nothing of the infamy, of baptism and conversion. A new course was raken: the religious quest for spiritual universality was superseded by an intellectual curiosity intent upon unearthing equally universal differences. For­ When we learn to speak, we are learning to translate; the child who eignness was no longer the e.xception, but the rule. This shift in asks his mother the meaning of a word is really asking her to trans­ - perception is· both paradoxical and revealing. The savage repre­ late the unfamiliar term into the simple words he already knows. sented civilized man's nostalgia, his alter ego, his lost half And In this sense, translation within the same language is not essentially translation reflected this shift: ·no longer was it an effort to illustrate different from translation berween rwo tongues, and the histories the ultimate sameness of men; it became a vehicle to expose their of all peoples parallel the child's experience. Even the most isolated individualities·. Translation had once served to reveal the prepon­ tribe, sooner or later, comes into contact with other people who derance of similarities over differences; from this time forward speak a foreign language. The sounds of a tongue we do not know translation would serve to illustrate the irreconcilability of differ­ may cause us to react with astonislunent, annoyance, indignation, ences, whether these stem from the foreignness of the savage or of or amused perplexity, but these sensations are soon replaced by our neighbor. · . · uncertainties about our own language. We become aware that lan­ During his travels, Dr. Johnson once made an observation that guage is not universal; rather, there is a plurality oflangliages, each expressed the new attitude very aptly: "A blade of grass is always a one alien and unintelligible to the others. In the past, translation blade of grass, whether in one country or another. Men and dispelled the uncertaintieS. Although language is not universal, lan­ women are my subjects of inquiry; let us see how these differ from guages nevertheless form part of a universal society in which, once those we have left behind." Dr. Johnson's words convey rwo some difficulties have been overcome, all people can communicate thoughts, and both foretell the dual road the modern age was to with and understand each other. And they can do so because in any follow. The first refers to the separation of man from nature, a sepa­ language men always say the same things. Universality of the spirit ration that would be transformed into confrontation and conflict: was the response to the confusion of Babel: many languages, one man's mission was no longer his own salvation but the mastery of substance. It was through the plurality of religions that Pascal be­ nature. The second refers to the separation of man from man. The · came convinced of the truth of Christianity; translation responded world is no longer a world, an indivisible whole; there is a split to the diversity of languages with the concept()f universal intelli­ berween nature and ~ivilization, a split compounded by further gibility. Thus, translation was not only a confirmation but also a subdivisions into separate cultures. A plurality of languages and guarantee of the existence of spiritual bonds. societies: each_ language is a view of the world, each civilization is The modern age destroyed that assurance. As he rediscovered a world. ·The sun praised in an Aztec poem is not the_sun of the the infinite variety of temperaments and passions, as he observed Egyptian hymn, although both speak of the same star. For more than rwo centuries, philosophers and historians, and more recently From Octavio Paz, TraduaiOn: Literatura y L(teralidad (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1971 ). anthropologists and linguists as well, have been accumulating ex- 152 154 0CTAVIOPAZ TRANSLATION: LITERATURE AND LETI'ERS 155 I 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 world, anci' then,because each sign and each phrase iS atranslation 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, inallanguage. It is a glossary ratherthm_a !I::lllS!<l.!iop_, ..'\'Nc!t.is Zumirraga, Salamanca, always a literary activi.ty. Without exception, even when the trans­ Turengarto, Zaragoza, 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. , __ _:_..:....:....-__ 156 0CTAVIOPAZ TRANSLATION: LITERATURE AND LETtERS 157 "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.