Your book is called La sirène et le pendule : Attirance et esthétique en traduction littéraire. Could you explain the title?

The siren, for me, represents attraction: the object of an attraction that is unattainable, and is attractive for that very reason. In the introduction of the book I discuss this Romantic notion of the beautiful as ultimately unattainable.

The pendulum is another image that represents the back-and-forth we’ve seen through history, between very literal translations and very free ones. It’s a pendulum that never stops swinging.

And where would you say we are today? Have we found a happy balance somewhere in the middle?

I’d say there have been times, recently, when we’ve reacted and swung too far toward literal translations. You can still find remnants of that movement. I’ve seen translations where, under the pretext of respect, we end up with texts so literal they can be almost incomprehensible.

Is there an element of convenience in this? Yes, it may be respectful, but it’s also the easiest, least time-consuming way to translate.

Most people who have espoused this approach have done so after long and serious reflection. I don’t think they’re just trying to save time. It’s really out of respect for the original text. There was a true movement of extremely literal literary translation that went way too far in my view, a highly cerebral approach that ignores the effect of the final translation. These translators followed an intellectual principle, but they weren’t very concerned with the effect the final product has on the reader, whether it’s readable or not.

La sirène et le pendule was published twenty years ago now. Have your ideas changed?

No, on the fundamental questions – the effect, attraction, and the author – my ideas haven’t really changed. I’ve noticed in various forums that people can be resistant to the notion of “translating the author.” It’s not fashionable these days, especially in literary studies where since thinkers like Barthes, Ricoeur, Derrida, and Foucault, we like to think that the author is dead, and the text is sovereign. As a translator I find that idea absurd. It may serve us well in theory, but as translators we are practitioners, even if we’re informed by theory. And as a translator I translate an author, first of all.

“Translating an author” for me means much more than just knowing the author’s life. Where is the author from? An Argentine author is not a Chilean author, and that means the language is different, the historical references, the political reality… I need to know exactly where the author is from: what country, what city. When they lived. Because the same text written by someone else is not the same text.

When I translated three books by Juan Carlos Onetti, which was formative for me, I had to keep in mind that Onetti was a friend of Sabato, Borges, Arlt – important Southern Cone writers. Knowing this helps us better understand the type of metaphors he uses, references, irony, his games, the way he plays with language; you understand that he read French writers, especially Camus and Sartre. All this is indispensable.

Is it a question of putting yourself into the author’s head?

You need to understand all the author’s influences, because that’s the only way the effect of the author’s text can be understood.

Above all, and I learned this from Onetti, you have to understand the work at a structural level. If you have an unreliable narrator you make connections between the examples where the narrator proves unreliable, and above all you don’t reveal things that aren’t meant to be revealed. That would destroy the author’s games, and makes the novel completely uninteresting. But to do that you have to know who Onetti is, know that he likes to play games, know where he’s coming from. He’s not the only rioplatense writer of the time playing with us in this way; they were all doing it.

And in the book you are clear that you don’t mean getting to know the author personally. You say this is at best pointless, at worst dangerous.

If there are ambiguities in the book, my role is to preserve, not elucidate them… There are times when it may be useful to ask the author about small details. But on principle I feel it’s best not to. With Onetti this was true. When I met him he was a seriously unpleasant. We’re talking about a man who spent the last five years of his life in bed, though he wasn’t disabled. He just didn’t see the point in getting up.

I went to meet him, in Madrid, to ask him some questions. “Señor Onetti, on this page in your book there’s a Señor Bidar, and then later there’s a Señor Billar; Bidar, Billar. Is that intentional?” “None of my characters play pool,” (billar) he said. “Not play, I said, the character is named Sr. Billar.” “There’s no character with that name,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

So I called Christian Bourgois, the publisher in Paris, and asked them to fix the error. And when I got to Paris to collect my payment for the translation I went to the publishing house and Christian Bourgois said he had a four page letter from Onetti, in Spanish, could you translate it for me. I started reading it to him, this four-page letter. “Dear Mr. Bourgois, Your young Canadian translator, whose strange last name I have unfortunately forgotten, murdered one of my characters…” The letter was a classic Onettian reverie: “Let us hope that as long as this translator lives he is haunted by the ghost of my character…”

I translated the letter for Mr. Bourgois, and explained how I had been to see the author, asked him the question, and more.

“C’est pas mal quand même, comme histoire,” he answered. “It could be a short story.”

Onetti was trying to tell me to figure out what he was up to and leave him alone. And since then that’s been my policy with the writers I translate.

When others translate my own [fiction] writing, I try to do the same. If there’s a glaring mistake I’ll fix it. But I’m always a little worried that by fixing one thing I may break something else.

As an author you have to be careful to avoid destroying the work. The work belongs to the translator. As an author, by intervening I take the chance of damaging something structural, and the structure belongs to the translator.

You distinguish clearly between the author as creator of the work, and the person who wrote the work.

I realize that my idea – on the one hand the author is central, but on the other it’s best not to ask questions – isn’t widespread in Canada. When I’ve spent time at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre it went against what everyone else believed – but I continue to believe this, wholeheartedly.

The translator has greater autonomy in this view, it seems.

Yes. Translations belong to the translator. No one else can understand the work they are creating, as a whole.

Does that mean sometimes accepting a translation that may be further from the original?

Yes. In my Onetti text there may be 15 examples demonstrating that the narrator is not credible. We don’t have to reproduce all 15 exactly. What counts is that the reader understands what’s going on.

All that matters in the end is that the overall degree of humour, or irony, or what have you, is reproduced.

Which is why you talk about the “effect” of the translation.

Yes. When I’m teaching and we do a side-by-side comparison of a few pages of an original and its translation, I warn my students that it’s a totally artificial exercise. It’s easy to find problems, infelicities. We have to remember that we may find the solutions further on. It’s the work as a whole that counts.

So in a jury situation, for example, I like to start by reading 25 pages of the translation, and then 25 pages of the original, to give me the time to see what the translator is doing. Too many people are too eager to point out mistakes, to say “didn’t you see this here, this is wrong.” That’s not what interests me. The overall feeling is much more important.

Let’s talk about the idea of attraction. Could you explain the concept as it applies to translation, as you use it in your book?

I was struck by this idea. It’s not one we hear every day: instead we seem very focused on the idea of skill, competence – perhaps we don’t think enough about the idea of attraction, of loving the book. It sounds almost amateurish, in the best sense of the word.

In the academic world it can be a tough idea to defend. But whenever I talk about it people are interested. We can’t ignore the practical side of things, we have to keep two feet on the ground. But in an ideal world we can strive for this 19^th Century, Romantic ideal of attraction.

There are examples of translators who are so totally attracted they’ll dedicate their lives to a single author. Like Richard Zenith, with Pessoa.

Antonio Tabucchi also, with Pessoa. He didn’t only translate: he also said that his own original writing is an attempt to reproduce Pessoa.

You can see that there is a metaphor at play here that is almost erotic. But there are lots of ways to reproduce a work: you could write a play, retell the story to your neighbour, write a new work inspired by the original.

It’s a modest profession. You aren’t in it for glory. You are working so that others can experience the same attraction you felt. And that’s why attraction drives translation, reaches beyond debates about literal versus literary translation.

The logical, Cartesian side of your personality doesn’t balk at this this notion of attraction?

I’ve been teaching translation for twenty years and I haven’t changed my mind. I still believe in the centrality of attraction. My students are surprised sometimes, but I do my best to explain, how attraction can drive you to want to reproduce the effect of the original. I believe it works.

If you set out to reproduce an effect that truly marked you, that hit you hard, that seduced you (to use a metaphor), there is a good chance that your translation will be better. You can still do a fine job translating a text you like less, approaching it as a technical task. But when you are attracted there’s another layer.

Your book contains a fascinating discussion of the relationship between enigma, doubt, and beauty.

Beauty is at the origin of attraction – we’re attracted to that which we find beautiful – and we often find beautiful that which is enigmatic and inaccessible. By possessing the thing you find beautiful, you compromise its beauty, in a sense. It loses something. For the beautiful to remain as beautiful, you can’t have it. Because once you have it, there’s nothing left to desire.

I’m also interested in the enigmatic side. Because as I said earlier, we shouldn’t elucidate the text’s ambiguities when we translate, but rather reproduce them.

Do you think these notions can apply to non-literary translation as well?

It’s not exactly the same thing, but even in non-literary translation there’s always an author somewhere. If you have a press release you still have to take into account who wrote it, who its intended audience is, etc. There are different definitions of literary texts; one way to look at is that any text that has multiple layers of meaning can be approached as a literary text.

You’ve been teaching translation for a long time. How does theory connect to practice in your teaching?

I think theory is useful. You have people who translate with no theoretical scaffolding. And you have the other extreme, theorists who never translate. I am always surprised, at international conferences say, when I ask a colleague who has made an interesting presentation: “What is it you translate?” And the answer is “I don’t.” How can you have a theory of translation when you’ve never done it?

I believe my theory applies to most types of texts. A legal text, for example, will often be purposely written to leave the widest possible room for interpretation, with intentional ambiguity. And medical writing is very rich in metaphor – sometimes to soften the facts of the matter, sometimes just to make it more pleasant, make the writing richer.

I think attraction can be the base, even if it’s less strong in a non-literary text. It remains the starting point for everything – the enigma, the mystery, reproducing the author’s text – it all grows out of attraction. ≈

 

The Discreet Charm of François Blais

an essay by Anne-Marie Genest *

 

I don’t want to go shouting it from the rooftops but it has to be said: Mitia and I are going off the rails a bit. It was hard to be sure at first. We were just taking baby steps in the wrong direction, like when you would set out walking on a crust of snow and then, by the time you figure out you’ve gone far enough and you’re coming to the point of no return, you’d turn around and run right back. We were getting further away, sure, but we never actually lost sight of the track. And then one day it was like, fuck, we can’t even hear the train any more. We started off telling ourselves the emperor wasn’t really naked, his toga was just kind of moth-eaten. Then it was more like, ok, the emperor may have no toga on, but at least he’s wearing clean underwear, common decency prevails and what have you. In the end we had to face facts: that bastard was running around with his dick hanging out! Since then we pretend to look away, like everyone else, but it’s all kind of a joke. We devise ever more elaborate compliments for the emperor’s outfit, lay it on real thick. The emperor has no sense of humour so he accepts our compliments as his due, and we’re all nudge-nudge, wink-wink. It’s pretty fun, actually. This is serious, by the way. Our entire life is built around this joke, and it’s all an exercise in futility. Our entire life is an exercise in futility.

The above excerpt from François Blais’ Nous autres ça compte pas is as representative a slice of his fictional world as you’re liable to find. His humour, style, love of literary references, and typical protagonists – an asocial couple who seem to act more like siblings than lovers – all are there, rendered in Blais’ signature style, a disarmingly casual voice that rarely fails to addresses the reader directly.

And I’m going to ask you, dear reader, to permit me a small aside before we cut to the heart of the matter. Know that I too plan to address you frankly, without a trace of formality. We may not have grown up playing tag together but trust me, there’s no better way to get to the bottom of our subject today. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it soon enough, and we’ll soon be better acquainted. It’s the only way I have to handle the stress of painting a portrait of an author I so dearly admire. Believe me, it’s intimidating. When you’ve read every one of his books and loved them all with all your heart, loved them to the point where you want to take out a pen and dot every “i” with a little heart, it is hard to shake the unnerving impression that the author is reading over your shoulder. It can be paralyzing. But, if you are lucky, and the author is François Blais – a man who didn’t balk at starting one of his novels with the opening sentence of À la recherche du temps perdu – you can be forgiven for taking a few liberties, borrowing a few tricks.

Now, gentle reader, let me introduce you to our author, François Blais. He hails from Grand-Mère, Quebec, a town in the Mauricie that merged with Shawinigan in 2002, and the setting of most of his novels. By the author’s own admission this felicitous fact derives more from his intimate knowledge of the locale than from any particular dramatic potential. (Look it up; you’ll see he’s not lying.)

Since 2006 François Blais has published eight novels in as many years. Eight in eight years, I hear you say, that’s a lot. To which I can only reply that at the beginning of every new publishing season, when you feel like you are going to drown in a sea of masterpieces, must-reads, page-turners, and sensations, the thought of a new Blais is like a rubber duck-shaped buoy promising to keep us afloat, our heads above water, promising us that, once we’ve finished our homework, we will be free, at last, to go out and play.

On paper our author may appear to be wholly without shame (to wit, the preface of Sam where he engages in odious emotional blackmail with the Académie des lettres du Québec, defying them to give him the Prix Ringuet award for the year’s outstanding work of fiction). But in public François Blais is terribly shy. Written interviews invariably note the author’s wish to answer questions by email rather than in person. At talks and bookstore appearances he has shown such aptitude for the monosyllable that he is well on his way to becoming the national champion. One might well succumb to the temptation of drawing connections between Mr. Blais and his characters, but I hear you, reader, crying foul, and you’re right: the text is sovereign, let’s keep the author separate from his work. To the novels.

As we have said, François Blais takes perverse pleasure in creating stories centered on fantastically asocial characters. Iphigénie crawls under the windows to avoid her “friends’” invitations (Iphigénie en Haute-Ville); Mitia and Arsène move to a cabin deep in the woods (Nous autres ça compte pas); Pavel and Molie opt for a nocturnal lifesytle to keep contact with other people to a strict minimum (La nuit des morts-vivants). Blais’ characters may be capable of social interaction with select members of the human race – their families, a few friends and neighbours, bartenders – but they show a marked preference for observation over participation. Though we are rarely told outright it feels as though they are in their late twenties. They bear improbable names from the annals of literature and make their living working shitty jobs or collecting social assistance. Perfectly lucid if a touch pessimistic, they know relationships don’t last, our clothing is sewn by Bangladeshi children, and we all inevitably end up hating our jobs. They choose self-deprecation over cynicism and pass their time reading Schopenhauer, or Joyce, or watching horror movies. Their solitude is occasionally interrupted to take long walks, play video games, and return from fact-finding missions on the internet with impressive and utterly useless stores of knowledge.

Now, reader, you may well be asking just what kind of story such “special” characters are wont to get wrapped up in (and I know you, you’re saying “special” to be polite, like your mom who said your ugly haircut was “interesting”). Well, let me enlighten you with a few plotlines. In Iphigénie en haute ville, a young man on a drunken night out inadvertently memorizes the phone number written in the bathroom stall at the bar and decides, one uneventful night, to dial it to see if anyone answers.  In Vie d’Anne-Sophie Bonenfant, a young author, charmed by one of his readers, decides to write her biography as a means of seducing her with his literary prowess. In Document 1 Tess and Jude decide to stop travelling on the internet and take a real-life trip, and figure getting a grant for their travel narrative is the most likely means of funding it. In Sam, the narrator finds a diary in a box of discarded books and tries to gather clues as to the author’s identity, persuaded she must be the woman of his destiny. For those considering a foray into literary criticism, I can only recommend a closer look at François Blais’ endings. Or his narrators: often more than one in a single book, coming and going for a page or so, just long enough to tell us a story or throw us a little off course. Always Blais is in control, toying with his readers, pulling our strings so gently that we think we’re the ones doing the legwork.

Picture, dear reader, a train: the train of Quebec Literature. There’s Dany Laferrière, Michel Tremblay, and Marie Laberge sitting pretty in first class. In the rear the cars are crammed with unknown writers trying to hold onto their seats. And there’s François Blais. He’s not quite a popular writer, or some kind of freak, but he’s an underdog, and a superhero, with a whole car to himself. It may appear to be going off the rails, but look more closely and you’ll see that he has found another, gleaming track all of his own. ≈

* The original version of this essay appeared, in French, in Cousins de personne. Used by permission. Translated by Pablo Strauss.

   

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