The task of the translator

Leon Wieseltier wrote the preface to the two volume collection of essays by Walter Benjamin published by Schocken, Illuminations and Reflections.  My entry point into the works of Walter Benjamin was “The Storyteller”, which appears in the Illuminations volume.  The essay just before that one is called, “The Task of the Translator.”

I didn’t make note of when I first read “The Task of the Translator” but my markings and underlinings are all over the essay in my copy of the book.  Just how much do I remember from that earlier reading?  Some of the essential points must have been absorbed into my thinking.

Most of the books I read are translated books; books that have been rewritten in English by writer other than the original.  Not all books worth reading are translated.  For example, most of the oeuvre of Daniel Bensaïd remains untranslated (into English, at least).  I want to read Bensaïd’s book on Walter Benjamin, Walter Benjamin Sentinelle Messianique.  So I’ll have to read the French original.  Reading itself is an act of translation.  Reading in a “foreign” language only exposes this fact in a palpable way.  (A text in French resists my reading it; it pushes back.  Reading becomes an effort which produces fatigue.)

Taking the time to write down a translation of Bensaïd’s book is a whole order of magnitude more effort than just reading the text.  I’m reminded of something that Benjamin wrote in One-Way Street, selections from which are collected in Reflections: “Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it…” [p. 66]  The text that I would produce from Bensaïd’s original is merely a copy with English words substituted for the French words.

Benjamin insists that a “real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original more fully.  This may be achieved, above all, by a literal rendering of the syntax which prove words rather than sentences to be the primary element of the translator.  For if the sentence is the wall before the language of the original, literalness is the arcade.” [“The Task of the Translator, Illuminations, p. 79]  (The metaphor that Benjamin employs here is perhaps a key, or the doorway itself, given that arcades served as a principle organizing idea for his masterwork, The Arcades Project.)

Perhaps there is some utility in my translation exercise, of making a literal rendering of Bensaïd’s French original of Walter Benjamin Sentinelle Messianique into English.  The resulting English is peculiar and foreign-sounding.  As a reader of the text, though, I aim at grasping the meaning which drives me (at certain points) to rework a sentence, to transform the stilted literal form into something that sounds like native English.  In a sense, at that point, I’ve scaled the wall of language.

I mentioned Leon Wieseltier to start off this post.  The reason is that I’ve returned again and again to the words of Matthew Kassel in his short piece in the New York Observer which describe Wieseltier’s essay, “Among the Disrupted”, as “seemingly incomprehensible.”  Of course, I realize that when a person cannot come up with a reasoned response to some written text (in time for their deadline), the easiest way of disposing of the text is by disparaging it, by tossing it aside.  But let’s take Kassel at his word and assume that he made an effort to comprehend Wieseltier’s words, but was unable to translate those words into something that he could understand.  This makes me think that Wieseltier’s essay could benefit from translation.

Reading Benjamin’s essay on translation prompted in me a number of thoughts.  One being that even works in English would benefit from translation into English (again).  What does it mean to translate a work already written in English into English again?  The idea here is that because English is not a static language, it’s changing, the meanings of certain words are shifting — an English text written a generation ago might not work for the present generation.  Translation and adaptation are necessary activities if a text is to remain alive.

Critics and commentators, often maligned by the artist, serve an important function in the Republic of Letters.  A critic is a kind of translator, someone who task it is to look at a text and through careful reading reveal the meaning of the text and to write down what that meaning is.  Of course, getting at the meaning of the original isn’t necessarily the highest aim of the translator, but it’s one aspect.  A commentator is perhaps more faithful to the original text inasmuch as he wishes to expand on the original, to make it intelligible by revealing explicitly the multiple intentions of the original.

So, while it might not make sense to translate James Joyce’s Ulysses into English, it does make perfect sense to comment on it, to carefully read each line, each word, and write down another word, or a whole list of words that make explicit the connotations for that generation of readers.  Certainly, my own reading of Ulysses is enriched and deepened through the reading of commentaries, critiques, and annotations.

The original moment of creation, the act that brings a work into existence, might appear to be singular act, but the published work is merely a snapshot, a flash, an instance preserved in some rigid form.  (The rendering of a living growing thing into a rigid commodity.)  The original becomes encased, bound in a straightjacket.  I am drawn to texts where multiple versions are available, to texts that spill beyond the borders of their published, crystalline forms.  How can we tell where the borders are that separate one work from another?

Near the end of Wieseltier’s essay he writes about the digitization and electronic dissemination of texts.  Assuming that these texts will be available to all (not a guaranteed assumption since the capitalist model doesn’t usually involve giving anything away for free without some promise of future profit at the expense of the user) we will need people who are skilled readers, experienced translators, insightful critics, and hard-working commentators, to keep these texts alive.  Preservation of a text in a certain form doesn’t guarantee the life of a text.  Texts must be written and rewritten in each generation.  This is the work of the humanities that Wieseltier is talking about in “Among the Disrupted.”  Our task as translators of our literary life is to get at the substance of a text, to transform it, to restate it.  And that task is an active one, one that requires ongoing labor, the labor of reading and writing and, most importantly, thinking.  Thinking, as Mallarmé says (quoted in Benjamin’s essay, “The Task of the Translator”), is writing, but without the apparatus.  Our writing machines demand from us but one thing: thought.

Disrupted

My friend Johan sent me a copy of Leon Wieseltier’s essay which appeared in the 7 January 2015 New York Times Book Review titled “Among the Disrupted”.  Yesterday morning, I finally got around to opening the attachment.  A ten minute read, it said at the top.  Half-an-hour later I was tempted to fire up the word processor and write an essay of my own.  No, don’t do it, I thought.  Not yet.  Slow down.  Think first, write later.  What’s the hurry?  Why the rush to blog?  I don’t work in a “silent sweatshop” where “words cannot wait for thoughts.”  If I’m going to give my best response to Wieseltier’s essay, then I shouldn’t give my first response.  In the writing life, there is no extra credit for being a first responder.

While I’m sure I’ve seen Leon Wieseltier’s name before — I’ve probably even read some of his work in the past — I’ll admit that his is not a name I carry around in my head, so I had to Google him just to see who it was that I was agreeing with.  Immediately, I discovered that Wieseltier is the former literary editor of The New Republic, a periodical I haven’t thought about in more than ten years.  The “news” was that Wieseltier had recently resigned the editorship he’d held for thirtyish years over “managerial disagreements.”  I suppose I could dig a little deeper and find out what the story is, but I am more interested in the content of Wieseltier’s recent essay, than his recent career moves (though perhaps there is some connection between the two).  Scanning the list of “hits” I saw a link to an article in the New York Observer, a periodical that I used to read regularly, from the 1990s up until about 2005.  It was in the pages of the Observer that I learned about the launch of n+1, which has become my “go-to” journal covering the literary and intellectual scene.  What did the Observer have to say about Wieseltier’s essay?

The piece in the New York Observer is by Matthew Kassel (who?) and bears the provocative title “What was Leon Wieseltier thinking?”.  Kassel describes Wieseltier’s essay as a “seemingly incomprehensible rant against technology.”  Kassel suggests that Wieseltier’s essay is just “the point of view of a bookish old man feeling threatened by the prospect of technological change.”  Scratching my head, I wondered if Kassel and I had read the same essay.

Reading Kassel’s short article I couldn’t help but recall Wieseltier’s words about “journalistic institutions” transformed into “silent sweatshops.”  Perhaps Kassel was writing under a deadline and he just didn’t have time for thought to catch up with his words.  (The poor boy.)

What is valuable about Kassel’s piece is that it reports Mark Grief’s reaction to Wieseltier’s essay — a reaction more nuanced than Kassel’s.  (Mark Grief of a founding and contributing editor at n+1.  Grief’s recently published book, The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973, is briefly mentioned by Wieseltier in his essay.  And I believe that Wieseltier’s reaction to Grief might be worth deeper consideration.  Perhaps I’ll return to this later, in a future post.)  But more importantly, Kassel’s chirping cynicism shook me out of my quiet confidence.  Had I read Wieseltier’s essay carefully enough?  Did I miss something?  Had I imposed my own peculiar reading on a flawed text?  Kassel found Wieseltier’s essay “seemingly incomprehensible.”  How was it possible then, that it seem so comprehensible to me?  An image of a naked emperor came to mind.

If I’d been led down the primrose path by Wieseltier, I certainly wanted to find out how he’d managed the trick.  Time to roll up the sleeves and dig back into the essay.  Get the hands dirty.  Read it again, I said to myself.  Look for the flaws, the inherent incoherence, the wooly thinking.

I’ve spent the whole morning going through Wieseltier’s essay again and reading the various (first) responses I could find online.  (See for example the “Letters” section of the New York Times.)  What I’ve discovered is that it doesn’t seem like anyone has actually read Wieseltier’s essay.  They might have looked at the words, but have then really read them?  To read with a view to understand?  Reading these responses leaves me with the impression that the essay was just an excuse for the first-responder to say whatever they felt like saying whether it had any relevance to Wieseltier’s thesis or not.  The critics appear to have willingly reached for the wrong end of the stick.  Even the people who supported Wieseltier’s words appeared to defend him because his thesis resonated with a pet view of their own.  The exchanges I saw on Twitter were truly incomprehensible.  But perhaps that is because I too am a bookish old man who feels threatened by the prospect of technological change.

Alright.  What have I (we?) learned from this rereading and the wider reading of the first-responders?  I’ve said nothing about the content of Wieseltier’s essay.  If we are going to dig more deeply, then we must engage in a little, old fashioned commentary.  Are you up for that?