Читать книгу Revenge of the Translator - Brice Matthieussent - Страница 28

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* 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 and en route I lose the most important crates, furniture, carpets, paintings, etchings, designs, photographs, books, magazines and knickknacks, plates and silverware, bodies and body parts, clothes, tools and machines, stuffed or living animals, china, glasses and crystal, accessories and utensils that are however duly indexed, hidden nooks and love nests, boudoirs and canopies, cabinets and bathrooms, studios and apartments, houses, villas, buildings, entire neighborhoods, arrondissements, towers, towns, suburbs, cities, rivers, ponds, lakes and streams, provinces, states, continents and oceans, planets, stars, constellations, galaxies, nebulas and black holes, that were entrusted to my seemingly nice face, and violently I throw a large part of my cargo to the roadside and it crashes there with a roar, in order to transport to safe harbor a few paltry residues, scraps, trash, mismatched specimens, delivering them haphazardly to the mercy of my readers who are frustrated or naïve, in any event duped, tricked, for they are unaware of all the perils of the voyage and the risks of the trade.

I preserve only the first half of the phrase import-export and in my tribulations I lose the majority of my fragile merchandise; at the first gust of wind they’re thrown overboard, for they are poorly tied up on the deck of my freighter, crushed during transfers by the distracted or clumsy longshoremen, smashed by life’s obstacles, ignobly swapped for food, weapons, a caravan of camels, a state-of-the-art car, a schooner, or a plane, pillaged by pirates and a thousand more or less shameful duplicities, or else simply forgotten, wasting away at the bottom of a shuttered warehouse. Thus, finally reaching the port, I arrive at the quay and deliver an inferior substitute to my employers, deaf and blind but normally satisfied, a derisory residue of original treasure, meager dregs that I piece together somehow, a balloon that I reinflate using only the force of my nicotined lungs. Disappointment, disarray, general desolation. There remains the empty husk, the sheath deprived of life, the mold without the bronze. In short, I am depressed, I am not the first of the text, but the eternal Poulidor, the second by vocation or by decree of destiny, the eternal afterthought: I always arrive too late and in rough shape. (Transporter’s Negligence)