Playing catchup again and something I’ve realised is that I can’t read a few pages a day. That approach means I’m no sooner drawn in than it’s time to stop and the experience is too bitty to be satisfactory. So this time round I read everything in one sitting, which was much better for me.
Barthes is in defence of short form works. The haiku can’t be extended, it’s not an abbreviation. He’s said before that haiku are complete in themselves.
He moves on to thinking practically about how to be prepared for the moments of truth, so that they can be captured. His approach must preserve the element of contingency, but that requires practice, which in turn requires times. Armed with a notebook and pen at all times, Barthes must be mentally ready to identify the right moments as he conducts this form of reportage on his own life. It is an activity that must take him outside.
But he’ll transfer any Notatio captured in the field from his notebook to Nota on pieces of paper. So that will be an initial editing process.
The Notatio, like a haiku, cannot be summarised. The pleasure of crafting a Notatio is akin so that of crafting sentence. This bit reminded me that I have Brian Dillon’s Suppose a Sentence, in which he breaks down sentences that he particularly admires. This links me back to Briggs discussing if there is something in a work that particularly calls to us. A response to that may be to play it, or translate it, to adopt it to ourselves and make it our own, like a form of co-creation. I loved Briggs’ story of Barthes playing a Bach piece he really liked, but slowly, and not liking that same piece when heard on the radio at the right tempo. I’m sure we’ve all heard a cover version of a favourite song and it is not at all the piece to which we a connection. Dillon’s response is to get underneath the skin of the sentences he likes and explore why they generate the response they do. Which is partly what Barthes has been doing with haiku.
Barthes situates his Nota alongside Joyce’s Epiphanies and Proust’s truth of affect. All three systems are catching at the same intent, pinning down a recognised moment into a written form, which for Proust entailed writing that ‘after which there is nothing more to say’. A haiku is complete and not extensible. Joyce’s Epiphanies needed to stand in their own right, to be read as a sequence of completed capturings but not necessarily inter-connected. (I briefly thought I might attempt Ulysses again bearing that in mind, but no. I’m content with my failure.)
Barthes’ novel would interweave the truths of his Notation, via his Nota, with what is not true. What is not true is Falsehood. If a novel is compounded of truth + Lies or Falsehood, then an objection to writing a novel is morally based. As Barthes has no objection to writing a novel, therefore indulging in falsehood, has he been playing straight throughout this entire course? The Barthes who is going to sit in cafes or restaurants or stroll along the river, mentally prepared to flourish notebook and pen at all times seems like a character he’s already created.
Why is translation work so poorly paid? A per-word rate is indicative that a skill is not valued or costed for the time needed to do the work well. Briggs has been lucky to get the work of translating Barthes, work she likes. Translators must translate, which may be a text they don’t like, enjoy or understand. It’s all very well doing it for the money but it’s infuriating even editing a text that you don’t agree with. The amount of time and the incredibly close reading needed for translation must be disheartening when it’s a job, not a labour of love.
Thank goodness there’s code to be cracked to provide some payback:
‘it is a word problem, an ingenious complicated word problem that requires not only a good deal of craft but some art or artfulness in its solution. And yet the problem, however complicated, always retains some of the same appeal as those problems posed by much simpler or more intellectually limited word puzzles - a crossword, a Jumble, a code…’ (p. 144)
That’s what I say about Greek: it’s a logic problem, if you follow the rules of the language you can crack it but then you’ll still only know what the individual words mean. That’s where the ‘art or artfulness’ comes in.
To the translator who enjoys the work and is translating good writing, it’s an opportunity to study that writing. In the same way that a mechanic used to strip an engine to put it back together, a translator dismantles the text to rebuild it in another language. She has to choose the ‘right’ words, the vocabulary that achieves a harmonious balance between languages.
A couple of weeks ago we were reading about whether translations improve over time or are merely different. What is ‘right’ at any given point will be right in that context for that person, so ‘right’ will inevitably shift over time. I’m seeing that in Plutarch, in his Latinate Greek written for an educated Roman audience at a time when Greece was part of the Roman Empire. The words don’t mean the same in Greek as they did some 400 years earlier, in independent Athens.
With all its disadvantages, Briggs wants to make the point that she likes the work she does. That liking it matters, as with Helen Lowe-Porter’s translation of Mann. Is liking it the difference between art and work? Clearly a good translation can be delivered by a translator who doesn’t particularly like the work. Does liking it matter to anyone other than the translator?
I just wrote a comment over at the Briggs newsletter about her discussion of how Barthes's lecture courses were translated out of order, and I liked Briggs's acknowledgement that this had to have an effect on at least some readers, those who wanted to read the lectures before they were all out and so couldn't read in the order they wanted to but had to read out of order and/or wait. I suppose I don't really know what that would have felt like, but I said in my comment that I'd rather Briggs and the other translators translate out of order if it means that they are translating the work they are most excited about. I'd rather read a translation the translator was really into than one dutifully done. Could I tell the different between those two books? Maybe not! But I can't help but feel that the personal interest and passion of the translator would make a difference. Maybe this is my moment of feeling sentimental, though. Anyway, some thoughts inspired by your closing questions.