The Translator’s Invisibility

the integration that is achieved escapes, in a vital way, from reflection and emerges in an experimental order, an order of discovery, where success is a function not only of the immense paraphrastic and paronomastic capacities of language, but also of trial and error, of chance. The translation will be essayistic, in the strong sense of the word.

(Lewis 1985:45)

Abusive fidelity can be achieved by various strategies of resistancy worked by various formal techniques, but more often than not the techniques surface accidentally as possibilities are tested, their effects evaluated only after the fact, when rationalization occurs.

The abuses in De Angelis’s “II corridoio del treno” (“The Train Corridor”), also from Somiglianze, offer another illustration:

“Ancora questo plagio
di somigliarsi, vuoi questo?” nel treno gelido
che attraversa le risaie e separa tutto
“vuoi questo, pensi che questo
sia amore?” È buoi ormai
e il corridoio deserto si allunga
{297} mentre i gomiti, appoggiati al finestrino
“tu sei ancora lì,
ma è il tempo di cambiare attese” e passa
una stazione, nella nebbia, le sue case opache.
“Ma quale plagio? Se io credo
a qualcosa, poi sarà vero anche per te
più vero del tuo mondo, lo confuto sempre”
un fremere
sotto il paltò, il corpo segue una forza
che vince, appoggia a sé la parola
“qualcosa, ascolta,
qualcosa può cominciare.”

(De Angelis 1976:36)

“Again this plagiary
of resemblance—do you want this?” in the cold train
that crosses the rice fields and separates everything
“you want this—you think this
is love?” It is dark now
and the deserted corridor lengthens
while the elbows, leaning on the compartment window
“you’re still there,
but it’s time to change expectations” and a station
passes, in the fog, its opaque houses.
“But what plagiary? If I believe
in something, then it will be true for you too,
truer than your world, I confute it always”
a trembling
beneath the overcoat, the body follows a force
that conquers, leans the word against itself
“something, listen,
something can begin.”