Читать книгу Revenge of the Translator - Brice Matthieussent - Страница 11

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* Mon père, ce géant au regard si doux. In French in the original English text, as are all the passages in italics followed by an asterisk.

Each time I appear it’s after this little typographical star, the humble asterisk. Here I write like the tail of a black comet, zooming from left to right in the white margin of the page. But I’m tied down, I’m a comet not only relegated to the negative space, but also on a leash, a pet star: far from roaming as I would like through the firmament and doing as I please, I am steered, radio-controlled by the upper asterisk that summons the note, that hails me like a master calls its dog and orders: “Fetch.” Stick in my mouth, gaze full of gratitude and tail wagging to show the measure of my admiration, I present myself before my superior and exist only in relation with him, in relation to him. Held up to his measuring stick, I am but a millimeter tall. Nevertheless, on both sides of the black bar exists a curious symmetry: the two asterisks are the same size, as if the star in the firmament were reflected in the sea of my text. And then, dear reader, all you have to do is pivot the book you’re currently holding in your hands 180º and everything flips: now it’s me who’s up in the sky, level with the horizon and the clouds and the layers of pollution looming on top; my pretty star dominates that of the other, flyspeck floating in an insipid bowl of milk.

Enough.

This French quotation in the text is erroneous. June 18, 1850, Victor Hugo actually writes in La Légende des siecles (Après la bataille): “Mon père, ce héros au sourire si doux.” The two errors—géant instead of héros, regard instead of sourire—can potentially be explained by faulty memory.

Regardless, according to the testimonies of his close friends, the author’s father was, in reality, an authoritarian, sometimes brutal, man, subject to sudden and spectacular fits of rage. From the first pages of his novel the author evokes the paternal figure: this is surely not insignificant.

Have I gone too far? Am I being too much of a chatterbox? (Tapir’s Nose)