This is actual week 7, versus my previous post that was actual week 6. I had got myself into a complete muddle about which week we were on, not helped by the fact that my other slow read is on week 9. So there I was, trapped in a time labyrinth but I found my way through (ooh, see what I did there?)
Starting with Barthes, I am not at all convinced that this lecture series about labyrinths actually happened. Maybe this whole lecture is a metaphor for the labyrinth: it doesn’t really have a beginning as Barthes refuses to introduce it, saying ‘Take note: I have no theory and scarcely any “idea” of the labyrinth of my own…’ It doesn’t have an end either: ‘There won’t be a conclusion’, because a labyrinth can’t be summarised. Like a haiku, then, nothing remains to be said.
I immediately grabbed my LSJ to look up labyrinthos in Greek: ‘a large building consisting of numerous halls connected by intricate and tortuous passages’. That certainly sounds like the building Daedalus constructed for the Minotaur, and not at all like the friendly garden maze that goes with Earl Grey tea and cucumber sandwiches on mid-summer afternoons. Mazes are conflated with labyrinths but I don’t think they are quite the same thing.
We get the highlights of Theseus and the Minotaur (surely once the women of Greek myth have been exhausted authors will be on to the monsters next?), a story which itself bifurcates because although Ariadne is always abandoned, sometimes she is rescued by Dionysus. This is the western canon’s ur-myth of the labyrinth, but it’s the building which becomes instantly metaphorical when stripped of the story.
A labyrinth means dead ends and choices, so it’s not fate but choice that creates the obstacles in our path. That is absolutely not consistent with the Theseus story, given that there’s no escaping fate in Greek myth and Theseus didn’t have to make his own choices. Plus, of course, a labyrinth only gives the illusion of choice, whereas in fact to reach the middle you have to believe that what is at the centre is worth the effort and then fall in line with the creator’s plan. Or cheat. Which I’m sure is what we all did with ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books but which I have not yet done with Robert Shearman’s literary labyrinth, We All Hear Stories in the Dark.
I love the idea of Barthes with a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book.
Briggs relates Bussy’s relationship with Gide as evidence for the asymmetric relationship between translator and author or work. Bussy used translation as a proxy for intimacy with him, which he did not reciprocate. That’s an extreme example, but translation is a pretty thankless task. The money is rubbish, the translator’s name is buried, the author may not care and the reader doesn’t want to be aware that they’re reading a translation. It’s unsurprising that the history of translation is that of individuals choosing what they’d like to work on.
Barthes wasn’t interested even in the translations of his own works and he disliked poetry in translation. Which makes it the more surprising that he translated many of the haiku he used in the lecture series. His objection to translations otherwise was that he couldn't connect with them and they didn’t feel human; no connectedness and no sense of being included in something bigger. His impetus in translating haiku was ‘so that his audience could read and understand them, too’. Barthes is seeking connectedness by inviting his audience to respond to what does feel human.
This shared experience of translation is another point of connectivity between Briggs and Barthes. Both of them translators, working on what they like.