Writing: Something to Consider
I'm not quite certain I agree, but as usual, Vladimir Nabokov gives in this passage of Bend Sinister us something to think about with respect to translation, particularly of great literature:
It was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree (further called Individual
T) growing in a certain land and casting its own unique shadow on the green
and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate
piece of machinery which in itself was as unlike that or any other tree
as the translator's inspiration and language were unlike those of the original
author, but which, by means of ingenious combinations of parts, light effects,
breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a shadow exactly
similar to that of Individual T - the same outline, changing in the same
manner, with the same double and single spots of suns rippling in the same
position, at the same hour of the day. From a a practical point of view,
such a waste of time and material (those headaches, those midnight triumphs
that turn out to be disasters in the sober light of morning!) was almost
criminally absurd, the the greatest masterpiece of imitation presupposed
a voluntary limitation of thought, in submission to another man's genius.
Could this suicidal limitation and submission be compensated by the miracle
of adaptive tactics, by the thousand devices of shadography, be the keen
pleasure that the weaver of words and their witness experienced at every
wile in the warp, or was it, taken all in all, but an exaggerated and spiritualized
replica of Paduk's writing machine?
(The "writing machine" being a complicated "pantograph" that features earlier in the novel.)
It was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree (further called Individual
T) growing in a certain land and casting its own unique shadow on the green
and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate
piece of machinery which in itself was as unlike that or any other tree
as the translator's inspiration and language were unlike those of the original
author, but which, by means of ingenious combinations of parts, light effects,
breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a shadow exactly
similar to that of Individual T - the same outline, changing in the same
manner, with the same double and single spots of suns rippling in the same
position, at the same hour of the day. From a a practical point of view,
such a waste of time and material (those headaches, those midnight triumphs
that turn out to be disasters in the sober light of morning!) was almost
criminally absurd, the the greatest masterpiece of imitation presupposed
a voluntary limitation of thought, in submission to another man's genius.
Could this suicidal limitation and submission be compensated by the miracle
of adaptive tactics, by the thousand devices of shadography, be the keen
pleasure that the weaver of words and their witness experienced at every
wile in the warp, or was it, taken all in all, but an exaggerated and spiritualized
replica of Paduk's writing machine?
(The "writing machine" being a complicated "pantograph" that features earlier in the novel.)