* A clarification about my modus operandi: even when I resist the temptation of censorship or when I don’t dilate the original prose as I please, I am an indelicate transporter, a clumsy mover, a seedy trafficker. I dispatch fragile and labeled objects from one edge of the ocean to the other, and although I certainly do my best, I bang them and drop them, I damage and dent them, scuff them and scrape them, I destroy them despite myself …
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nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013.
Vengeance du Traducteur Copyright © P.O.L Editeur, 2009
English translation copyright © Emma Ramadan, 2018
ISBN
978-1-941920-70-1 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936731
Quoted material on p. vii is from Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka, translated by Philip Boehm. Copyright © 1990. Used by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Penguin Random House. All rights reserved.
Quoted material on p. 10 is from The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley, illustrated by Peter Sis. Copyright © 2005. Used by permission of Penguin Random House. All rights reserved.
The quote on p. 23 is a reworking of the opening lines to The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, by Vladimir Nabokov. Copyright © 1941. Used by permission of New Directions. All rights reserved.
This work received the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation. French Voices is a program created and funded by the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).
Cover design by Anna Zylicz · annazylicz.com
Typesetting by Kirby Gann · kirbygann.net
Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.
… I, who am not even the pawn of a pawn in the great chess game, far from it, now want to take the place of the queen … —I, the pawn of a pawn, a piece which doesn’t even exist, which isn’t even in the game—and next I may want to take the king’s place as well or even the whole board …
—Franz Kafka Letter to Milena Jesenská, about the Letter to His Father
The machine works with words.
—Jean Suquet
for Maeva A.
Contents
Chapter 1: The Translator Takes the Stage
Chapter 2: The Translator Trims the Fat
Chapter 3: The Translator Adds Some Back In
Chapter 4: The Translator Prepares for War
Chapter 6: Prote’s Secret Passage
Chapter 7: David and Doris Meet at Abel’s Place
Chapter 8: The Hidden, Stolen, and Finally Revealed Letter
Chapter 9: David’s Secret Passage
Chapter 10: The Secret Passage Revisited
Chapter 11: Asterisk Pasta, Cuttlefish in Ink Sauce, and Mille-Feuille
Chapter 13: The French Translator
Chapter 15: Trad’s Secret Passage
Chapter 16: Prote Receives a Final Visit
THE TRANSLATOR TAKES THE STAGE
*
* I reside here below this thin black bar. This is my place, my living room, my den. The walls are painted white and covered with several lines of thin black characters, like an uneven frieze, a changing wallpaper. Welcome to you, dear reader, who has crossed the threshold of my lair. It’s not as spacious as that of my upstairs neighbor, but in his absence I welcome his visitors who have been rerouted by his inexplicable desertion. I know it’s him that you came to see, and you’ve stumbled upon me instead. You will have to make do. I rub elbows in this modest space. I pile up these lines to keep my cave from becoming a coffin, my bunker from becoming a tomb.
Make yourself at home, relax, and, please, check at the door your flattery and formulaic smiles typical of visitors to the proprietor, the seigneur and master, who lives and receives guests on the floor above. I hope that you will not feel too out of place, even if I have a few surprises in store for you. Just be careful not to hit your head on the ceiling. As you’ll see, the height changes from one room to the next. Know also that in my home all the spaces are adjoined, like the maids’ rooms that are sometimes lumped in a row alongside each other on the top floor of a building: each leads into the next and you must cross all of them to reach the last. It’s not very practical, but there’s no way around it.
Normally, I don’t