Congedi, fischi, buio, cenni, tosse
e sportelli rinchiusi. È tempo. Forse
son nel giusto i robot. Come si vedono
nei corridoi, reclusi! . . .
– Odi pur tu il severo
sussulto del diretto con quest’orrido.
ossessivo ritorno di un bolero?
– Dona pur tu, su, prova
al litaniar di un rapido l’improvvido
ostinato ritmar di bossa nova . . .
– Do forse alla macumba
che danza questo treno la tremenda
ed ottusa cadenza di una rumba?
– Presti anche tu, chissà,
al litaniar dei rapidi quest’arida
cadenza di un demente cha-cha-cha?
– Non senti forse, a sera,
la litania del rapido nell’orrido
ancheggiare lascivo di habanera?
– Salta magra la gamba,
canta la fratta strada, pazza arranca,
assatanata d’asma l’atra samba?
– Del TEE presente
l’effervescenze fredde, le tremende
demenze meste d’ebete merenghe?
– S , ridi, ridi, insisti:
sibilin di sinistri ispidi brividi
misti ritmi scipiti, tristi twist.
– Colgo sol do-do-so . . .
Fosco locomotor, con moto roco
mormoro l’ostrogoto rock and roll.
– Ruhr, Turku . . . Timbuctù?
Uh, fu sul bus, sul currus d’un Vudù
un murmur (zum, zum, zum) d’un blu zulù.4
My question is the following: if it was possible to respect the real thing by using a crippled Italian, would it not have been possible to do the same with another language? I do not have an answer because I never tried to translate Montale into French or English but I suspect that it is possible. If the translators did not do that it was probably because they were more interested in the semantic side of their job (that is, in rendering the allegedly same linguistic meaning) than in the substantial aspects of the poem.
I think that playing with lipograms is a good way to understand what the ‘real thing’ of a poem is. Let us look at another of Montale’s poems:
Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato:
era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia,
era l’incartocciarsi della foglia
riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato.
Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio
Che schiude la divina Indifferenza:
era la statua nella sonnolenza
del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco, alto levato.
This poem certainly has a semantic content, which can more easily be turned into a paraphrase than that of the previous poem. But the elements that show up in the poem – the rivulet, the leaf, the dead horse – become epiphanies of the ‘evil of living’ also because of the harshness of the adjectives and of the verbs the poet uses, such as strozzato or gorgoglia. Moreover, while the first eight verses are hendecasyllables, the last one has fourteen syllables, and this, with the aerial perspective of the cloud and of that hawk, as symbols of a non-terrestrial happiness, contributes to counteracting the feeling of evil: the last verse flies towards the skies, so to speak.
I tried five lipogrammatic variations of this poem5 by respecting those essential characteristics. Once again I quote only the first variation (lipogram in A) and for the rest I cite only the last two lines:
Spesso il dolor di vivere l’ho intuito:
fosse il rivo insistito che gorgogli,
fosse il secco contorcersi di fogli
combusti, od il corsiero indebolito.
Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio
che schiude un cielo che si mostri inerte:
forse l’idolo immoto su per l’erte
del meriggio, od il corvo che voli, e l’infinito.
dico la statua in una vuota stanza
abbagliata, o la nuvola, o il falco, altro librato.
era la statua nella sonnolenza
dell’estate, o la nube, o un falco lato levato.
Ed hai la statua nella stupescenza
Di quest’alba, e la nube, se l’aquila si libra.
era l’icona nella sonnolenza
del meriggio, ed il cirro, ed il falco, alto levato.
Let us now consider three translations.6
Often I have encountered the evil of living:
it was the strangled stream which gurgles,
it was the crumpling sound of the dried out
leaf, it was the horse sweaty and exhausted.
The good I knew not, other than the miracle
revealed by divine Indifference:
it was the statue in the slumber
of the afternoon, and the cloud, and the high flying falcon.
(Anonymous)
Often the pain of living have I met:
it was the choked stream that gurgles,
it was the curling up of the parched
leaf, it was the horse fallen off its feet.
Well-being I have not known, save the prodigy
that reveals divine Indifference:
it was the statue in the midday
somnolence, and the cloud, and the falcon high lifted. (Mazza)
Souvent j’ai rencontré le malheur de vivre:
c’était le ruisseau étranglé qui bouillonne,
c’était la feuille toute recoquillée
et acornie, c’était le cheval foudroyé.
Le bonheur je ne l’ai pas connu, hormis le prodige
qui dévoile la divine Indifférence:
c’était la statue dans la torpeur
méridienne, et le nuage
et le faucon qui plane haut dans le ciel. (Van Bever)
The three translators have respected Montale’s enjambements and did their best in choosing rough sounds; the two English versions give a deeper breath to the last verse than the previous ones. Nevertheless none of the three has adopted a regular metre so as to be able to ‘break’ it in the last verse. Frankly I do not understand why.
A matter of matter
I would like to deal now with matters of matter or of continuum. As I said in chapter 1, a given language is born through the segmentation of a given expression continuum or matter. Taking the continuum into consideration can help us better to understand the differences between translation proper and the many kinds of so-called intersemiotic translation (or transmutation, in Jakobsonian terms), that I have decided to consider as cases of interpretation but not as cases of translation.
There are cases in which, in order to make the meaning of a word or of a sentence clear, we use an interpretant (in the Peircean sense) expressed in a different semiotic system. Think for instance what happens when I explain the sense of a verbal utterance by ostension, that is, when we use an object to ‘translate’ the meaning of a verbal expression, or the inverse, as when a child points his or her finger towards a car and I say that it is a car. In these cases, in order to explain the meaning or to help to isolate the referent of a term, we show an item belonging to the species named by that term and we teach not the proper name of that individual object but rather the common name of the species to which it belongs. If I ask What is a baobab? and someone shows me a baobab or the image of a baobab, I set up a cognitive scheme which allows me to recognise other baobabs in the future, even though partially different from the individual that has been shown to me.
In all the above cases, certainly, the new expression aims at interpreting a previous expression, but in different circumstances the same device could interpret different expressions. For instance, if I show someone a detergent box I can use it to better interpret a request like Please buy me a box of the detergent so and so, or in order to explain the meaning of the word detergent or even to provide an example of what I mean by parallelepiped.
If we use the term to translate in a metaphorical sense, many interpretations are forms of translation (and in the case of a silent language that reproduces the letters of the alphabet by given gestures it will be a form of transliteration). In passing from certain semiotic systems to others these forms of interpretation act as though they were interpretations by synonymy – with the same limits and strictures that hold for verbal synonymy.
But other cases would hardly be defined as translations, not even in a metaphorical sense. If one wants to explain the verbal expression Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C Minor, one can undergo the effort of showing the ‘real’ musical object (by playing a disc or by taking the interlocutor to a concert hall). But usually one can sol-fa the beginning of that symphony (hoping that the musical memory of the interlocutor will do the rest). Likewise if somebody asks me what composition has just been broadcast on the radio, I can say it is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C Minor. A sufficient interpretation could also be to answer that this is one of Beethoven’s symphonies.
Anyway, what characterises all those interpretations is the fact that the interpretant belongs to a different semiotic system from the interpretandum, and that their difference is due to the fact that their substance is produced by the segmentation of a different continuum or matter. If I recite Hamlet in Italian I change the form and the substance of the expression, but I remain within the boundaries of the same continuum or matter (sounds produced by a human throat). If on the contrary I represent Hamlet killing Polonius in a painting I have changed the expression matter.
Differences in continuum or matter are fundamental in a semiotic theory. Think for instance of the various debates on the presumed omnipotence or effability of verbal language. Lotman said that verbal language is the primary modelling system but it cannot translate everything into its own terms.
Hjelmslev7 distinguished between limited and unlimited languages. For instance, the language of formal logic is limited in comparison to a natural language: given the most elementary logical formula (p ⊃ q) one can not only translate into English (if P then Q) but also variously interpret (if smoke then fire, if fever then illness), or even, counterfactually, If Napoleon were a
