Speaking Volumes

by Bradford Morrow

  To know the ice, then—tabula rasa, the unwritten—is to know silence, complete and absolute. Says Scott: “We will make unto ourselves a truly seductive home, within the walls of which peace, quiet, and comfort reign supreme. The word ‘life’ is struck out and ‘window’ written in.” Perhaps we might call it eternal death. Yet it is to be empty of desire in perfect repose, the profane spectacle of eternal bliss and the machinations of extinction abandoned.

  NOTE. Appropriated text in section IV from The Mysterious Stranger, by Mark Twain, and Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.

  Ravished

  Chris Tysh

  NOTE. Ravished is the closing section of a three-book project, entitled Hotel des Archives, consisting of verse recastings from the French novels of Beckett, Genet, and Duras. It is a deterritorialized type of literary translation I’ve been calling “transcreation.” Taking the French prose of Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein, Marguerite Duras’s 1964 novel about female voyeurism, as a point of departure, I operate a double shift: one of language and genre. Consonant with postmodernism’s practice of appropriation and détournement, this tactical move away from ground and origin directs me to writing as a site, passage, or arcade, where the lyric opens up to the endless traffic of signs. Ultimately, transcreation signals to both the first text and its afterlife, the graft that lives on under a new set of linguistic and formal conditions. This regeneration is a participatory, dialogic communication beyond continents, languages, and temporalities. Duras’s admittedly always-already poetic narrative is carried into prosody as a mode of expression, that, without entirely losing the novel’s diegetic arc, travels along its border ever so nimbly, and yet always retains the libidinal shadow that haunts her lines.

  V. AS IF STITCHING A SHEET

  As soon as she sees him

  come out of the theater

  Lol recognizes the man

  in the dark valley of her mind

  something incendiary no doubt

  rapacious leaps out from the eye

  the way he looks at women

  wanting more with each gaze

  enough to recall

  the one she’d known

  before the ball?

  Maybe she’s wrong

  What heat and fatigue!

  She’d gladly slide

  this heavy brooding

  right here in the street

  I see the following:

  The man has a few

  minutes to kill

  before his rendezvous

  scanning the boulevard

  a vague hope Lol finds

  divine

  of meeting yet another girl

  than the one she spied

  in the garden

  in tune with his step

  she tails him at a distance

  intent on placing her feet

  in the same black prints

  as if stitching a sheet

  with big hasty needles

  She must be wearing

  those flat ballet shoes

  I imagine or invent

  a gray coat maybe a hat

  that can be taken off

  any minute to pass

  out of sight indiscernible

  like a blade under the tongue

  Roving eyes he ferrets

  the teeming square

  mourning every woman

  in advance of the one

  who doesn’t exist yet

  for whom he could

  at the last minute ditch

  the very lover they both await

  Given the black and vaporous

  mass of hair that

  small triangular face and

  immense eyes outlined

  by the ineffable guilt

  of this adulterous body

  given unlimited funds

  of soft round hips

  as she steps down from a bus

  against the crowd

  golden combs to the side

  of a dark voilette

  he will be the only one to free

  in a single gesture that goes

  snap around the shoulders

  inside a minuscule cry

  They are together—trains winds

  heartbeats a summer solstice

  come to as if pushed

  by the same high tide

  on the surface of an inlet

  sensation of thirst misread again

  Lol will have easily guessed

  the name that trails there

  spell or apparition

  had known it for weeks now

  the round vowel sounds

  dance on pursed lips:

  Tatiana Karl’s migratory

  beauty approaches the Forest

  Hotel past waving alder trees

  and a large naked field of rye

  Sheets of ice one could say

  where she’d gone in her youth

  with Richardson forgotten

  about crystal cup

  she spins under her footsteps

  No use to shadow them too close

  since she knows where

  they’re headed

  How she lowers herself flat

  out barely visible dark stain

  In milky-green shadow

  a few feet from the light

  that just went up

  on the third floor

  At this distance she can’t hear them

  and only catches a glimpse

  if one of them crosses the room

  up and down a bluish shape

  holding a cigarette

  elbows on the sill

  smooth as a stone

  Tatiana reappears in the frame

  Night has come mixed with lies

  about a greenhouse on the edge

  of town accounting for Lola’s

  return at such a late hour

  Husband and children pity

  her numb hands—can’t help

  believing her tall tale

  almost lost the thread

  VII. TOSSED FROM SELF TO OTHER

  What happens next

  at the Bedford house

  is hard to explain even less

  form a contiguous shape

  that curves around the guests

  wavy and restive

  balls on a pool table

  about to break

  It’s a question of who sees

  whom outside the fan

  of windows skirting the grounds

  The women are poised

  by French doors voices

  loop together like an étude à quatre mains

  In truth, it’s the husband’s violin

  we hear bursting from the upper floors

  Jean has a concert tomorrow

  Lol explains stroking Tatiana’s hair

  Something strange a sudden proximity

  of opposites begins adrift

  an arc that cuts flower beds

  tears apart what’s left of truth

  I hide bent over to better hear

  oh sweet venom

  “Not sure I can visit as often

  I have lovers, you know”

  Tatiana’s pink mouth pouts

  velvety phonemes

  In this blind man’s bluff

  it is Lola Stein who is “it”—we think—

  and maybes

  infinitely translatable

  language temporal and deictic

  as “here” and “there”

  When I look up again

  from behind the bay window

  Lol’s eyes seek mine

  belying a certain gaze theory

  the consoling fiction men wear

  like an armband

  Here I am again stepping

&n
bsp; into a bayou deep mossy folds

  where love changes hands and color,

  over black and blue skies

  On the periphery of her lie

  I shall howl and be quartered

  in the wide sense of the word

  she utters to prove she’s back among us:

  “I’ve met someone recently”

  Having just smelt a burning house

  Tatiana feels like shouting, “Watch out, Lola”

  instead she turns toward Jacques Hold

  “Shall we go?” He says, “No,”

  like a convalescent stretching his long legs

  IX. THE LONG SPOON OF FEAR

  That Lol is not yet “cured”

  shows up in the way guests

  hang on her words

  when she laughs

  too much or stops

  midsentence

  They pass the long spoon

  of fear ever so polite

  not to spill a single drop

  of the old belief

  that women rarely come back

  intact from such passion

  All want to know more

  about this act of translation

  where one language

  picks up someone

  staggering

  in an empty street

  only to precipitate her further

  into a gorge of substitutes

  in the other—faint thumbprint

  of alarm about her temples

  Now radiant amid the seated

  company she draws

  a pattern on the tablecloth

  as if plants and meaning

  shared a common plot

  I look down at my shoes

  any minute now the ship

  will break into pieces

  and I’ll be swallowed

  by the whale of a lie

  But the moment passes

  and Lol’s husband drops

  the stylus on a record

  that sounds like rustling

  skirts or footsteps

  on dry leaves

  I whirl Lola away

  in a zigzag dance

  toward the bay windows

  “You went to the shore”

  I say like a detective

  coaxing a confession

  Almost pitching

  against my shoulders

  —a cargo I’ve stolen before—

  we’ll go together, she says

  tomorrow very early

  meet me at the train station

  Like a border guard

  Tatiana takes up her post

  but the noise of the phonograph

  blurs our words—a fence

  she squeezes through

  on the edge of tears

  She begins to understand

  an intimation of things past

  that a sudden explosion

  has altered the grammar

  that is to say binding agreement

  between I and me she and her

  When Pierre Beugner appears

  at her side I know for a fact

  that should Tatiana cry even once

  I’d be out of a job on the spot

  Superb in her new dress of pain

  she almost faints at the idea

  as if death were a sheet

  come to cover our nakedness

  I invite Tatiana Karl to dance

  “What does Lol mean when she claims

  to have found happiness?”

  Her hair cascades so close

  to my lips I should start

  running

  Instead like every rake

  I simply say, “Je t’aime.”

  On Translation’s Inadequacies

  A Personal Essay in Two Languages

  with Interpretive Translation

  Minna Proctor

  PIO

  —Cosa fa un pulcino di 40 kg?

  —Non so. Cosa fa un pulcino di 40 kg?

  —Fa PIO PIO PIO.

  Anche se gli uccellini parlano la lingua di fede, non vuol dire che è una lingua semplice. L’uomo Pio che conobbi, non lo era. Pio non fu pio. Tutt’altro. Noi ragazze lo chiamammo Il Lupo. Cose così:

  —Com’è andato con Il Lupo ’sto weekend?

  —Bene. Andato veloce senza freni.

  Freni … Non frenare. Parlavo cosi perché ero principiante e Pio me l’aveva insegnato. Ero giovane, semplice, piena di fede nel domani. Una gallina, piccola, tenera, preda di notte agli avanzi del lupo.

  —What does an eighty-pound chickadee say?

  —TWEET. TWEET. TWEET.

  Birds speak systematically. The bigger the bird, the louder the voice. The louder your voice, the more love you find. The more love you find, the more love you give. Whence love whence faith. With faith, you leap. With faith, little bird, you fly.

  Birds, I learned as a young woman, speak differently in Italian. As do dogs. Dogs say “bau bau.” Roosters say “circhirichu.” And birds, chicks to be precise, say “pio” to mean “chirp” or “tweet.” Pio also means pious. And Pio is a proper name—as in Padre Pio, the beloved saint who came from Campania, a region in southern Italy. I knew a man from Naples named Pio—not a saint. Not even a little. We called him The Wolf. Wolves ululano. Pio was a wolf—all Drakkar Noir and a fussily groomed five o’clock shadow.

  Pio and I both worked for a small company that ran LCD subtitles at film festivals and one weekend ended up together alone in a hotel in Pescara, a battered cotton-candy beach city on the eastern coast of Italy. My Italian was crummy. Although I’d lived in Italy for almost two years, I was only just beginning to have the courage to say things. I was eighteen, courage was capricious and often more reckless than it was impressive. For some reason that wasn’t clear to me in the moment but became so later, Pio spent a great deal of our first meal together that weekend trying to teach me the meaning and pronunciation of the word “frenare”—to brake, like the squealing brakes of a car. It is astonishing how long perfectly bright people can discuss the meaning of words with beginning speakers and have it pass as actual conversation. Really, you don’t need small-talk skills if you’re an American abroad. Especially if you’re pretty, blonde, innocent, so young you don’t know the difference between reckless and courageous. Between faith and falling. Between braking and breaking.

  BETWEEN TRANSLATION

  Se c’è fosse solo un modo unico dire una cosa, non ci sarebbe bisogno degli scrittori, ovvero il bisogno ci sarebbe già stato, compiuto, tempo fa nella C’era una volta. Detto. Fatto. Non c’è da dire niente di più. Finché le cose non si cambino da se, senza l’intervento linguistico.

  Invece siamo noi tutti esperti dei varianti, noi traduttori delle esperienze della vita e dalle ombre, di quello che è e quello che viene detto su quello stato. Sia meglio. Sia diverso. Io lo capisco così. Tu lo capisci cosà. E così vanno i verbi. Senza di che ci troviamo in compagnia di uno scrittore di discreto fama in sua casa gentile in un elegante quartiere della città, noi due, volte intense, insieme seduti davanti ad una scrivania d’autore molto ben curata, le pagine scolte dappertutto con degli appunti nelle margini in due anche tre lingue fallite. Chiedo. Ascolto. Che angoscia per lo scrittore, che fatica l’essere preciso ed evocativo. Lunga pausa e lo scrittore e la moglie ballano una bellissima danza stile Portoghese. Il consumato non ha traduzione. E se non questo … Che angoscia l’essere imprigionato dall’idea che ci sia solamente un verbo. Ed è verbo suo. E se ho capito bene, vorrei sapere che cose succeda quando muore?

  My mother and I argued at length about the translation of the word alma, which appeared in a line of poetry she was setting to music. She set poetry to music al
l the time, but it was often instrumental and so she didn’t always use the poetry itself in the final piece. The words themselves were inspiration and incidental. But she always included the poetry in her program notes and often consulted me about the Italian translations. We disagreed about alma, which has several meanings in Italian but in English it’s just a proper name that seems derived from alms. In the end we agreed that all translations were inadequate but settled on the English word sigh, because that’s what the music it had inspired sounded like.

  I worked once with a famous author on a translation of his short stories. People kept asking me if he was an asshole, because that was his reputation locally. I found him instead to be charming, respectful, dedicated to his art and his beautiful wife. We labored over his lush, baroque stories, stacked with literary references that spanned periods and languages, complicated by his impatient, roguish, and ambitious mind. We spent many ten-hour days comparing texts and choices, confirming variations and testing the implications of every English decision I made. We’d break for strong sweet black coffee and one day instead of coffee he and his wife danced. They twirled gorgeously and easily around the living room—as if the word intricacy had never been invented. Piteous Fado on the record player turned up to a deafening volume. All translations are inadequate and just before the book was sent to press he fired me.

  I stopped translating. And more recently he died. There is no trace of the stories I wrote from his stories. My version is gone and so there is one less reading in the world of his immutable words.

  ALMA CHE FAI?

  Da una lingua ad un’altra cambia il cervello, dai ritmi, sensi, colorature. Questo è il perché alma può significare anima spirito nutrice sospiro in Italiano ed in Inglese no. Alma era una parola che discutevo molto con mia mamma prima che morì. “Spirito” dissi. “Sospiro” disse. Ma in verità lei non doveva mai scegliere perché lei si esprimeva in lingua musicale. Spesso componeva musica ad una poesia italiana senza neanche usare le parole della poesia nella musica. La parola ispirava la musica. Un passo oltre traduzione andava la mamma, un passo che esprima tutti i valori di una parola. Eppure io, andando un passo oltre in un’altra direzione faccio conto ora che parlare italiano, scrivere italiano, pensare italiano, è quello che facevo da ragazza. Ed ora non la sono più. Se traduco da italiano attraverso non solamente la lingua ma anche un tempo. Se parlo italiano mi esprimo nella voce di una ragazza, con pensieri, spiriti, sospiri da ragazza. Giovane io sono in italiano. Sciocca pure. E beh. Per lo meno sto qui, a visitare un po’ con la mamma.