Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (42 page)

At times instead of paraphrase there is allusion, the echo of a larger passage. For example, the words “Marie is behind the door, but I don’t open it” echo a passage from Franz Kafka’s letters to Milena Jenenska: “Sometimes I have the feeling that we’re in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind the door, and now the first one has but to utter a word and immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He is sure to open the door again, for it is a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would slowly set the room in order as though the room were like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door. Sometimes even both are behind the door and the beautiful room is empty.” Other examples of allusion include the expression “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur,” which evokes Winckelmann’s well-known definition of classic Greek sculpture, “
edle Einfalt und stille Gröβe
.” Or the phrase “Sing the sword, wield the sword,” which recalls the Scandinavian poet Snorri Sturluson, who wrote the
Edda Snorra
or
Edda Minore
, a kind of epic-mythological study of Scandinavian mythology; though he celebrated courage in war, he was said to be a coward, able to sing but not wield the sword.

This is also a work in which we hear two different voices. As Magris himself puts it, “It is a book in which two types of writing alternate, what the great Argentine writer Ernesto Sábato has called ‘diurnal’ and ‘nocturnal.’” In the diurnal mode, the author, while freely inventing characters and situations and allowing the characters to
speak in conformance with their own logic, in some way expresses a sense of a world that he shares, articulating his own feelings and values, and fighting the good fight for the things in which he believes and against those he considers evil. The diurnal writing strives to make sense of things, to place each and every experience, no matter how painful, in a totality that embraces it and frames it in a broader context. It is a voice that attempts to bring order and clarity where there is chaos and darkness. By contrast, the second type of writing, the nocturnal mode, is the voice of chaos, and confronts the most unsettling truths, which dare not be confessed openly, and which the author himself rejects as loathsome and despicable. Magris likens it to coming face to face with one’s double or an unknown part of oneself, a self that speaks with another voice. This nocturnal voice is also the author’s, of course, despite the fact that it may betray his strong moral convictions and values. “It is a voice that expresses not what we have consciously become, but what we might have become, and what we could erupt into at times; what we could be and hope or fear we can be, like during certain sleepless nights.”

It is the nocturnal voice we hear when the narrative erupts into a river of words, a flood, a sea—a stream of consciousness and flow of associations that becomes a torrent; when that torrent seems like a delirious, seething monologue, shouted from the bottom of a deep pit that may or may not yield up its mysteries. At other times, when the diurnal voice prevails, the prose is lyrical, lit with subtle nuances and human tenderness. At all times there is a choral narration, group therapy or tavern rant, whose multiplicity of voices may be multiple personalities, the pseudonyms of those who cannot openly attest to the truth, virtual avatars or even clones. Our perceptions flounder in this oceanic maelstrom, this veritable vortex of voices that is almost impenetrable, and we are diverted, derailed. When
that happens the recurring themes and images become a kind of lifesaver, something to hold on to, like beads on a rosary, as we grope our way along.

All in all there were Menardian choices to make. In my translation I strove to reflect the strategies of the original work by respecting the author’s intentional stylistic choices. Specifically I strove to avoid explanation and clarification of the text, any embellishment or notes to “correct” ambiguity, the introduction of any new metaphors or images, any expansion of the text that would interrupt its flow, and obscuring connections between passages by altering the author’s word choice. It was plain that inserting any clarifying text would undermine the intended ambiguity. And since “ambiguity is richness,” as the narrator of Borges’s story about Pierre Menard tells us, I resisted the urge to explicate, spell out, explain or interpret. As for syntax, I felt that maintaining the shape of the sentence was essential to the rhythm of the prose and therefore refrained from splitting or otherwise altering a sentence to make it more conforming to English usage. Semantically I was aware that the very act of substituting one word for another can affect and even alter an understanding of the original. Naturally, as the fictional translator Menard comes to realize, there are no perfect solutions for the translator, but rather a spectrum of possible choices, with compromise always part of the process. Indeed the impossibility of Menard’s task, deliberately attempting to recreate what in Cervantes was a spontaneous process, is clear from the outset.

SOME HISTORICAL NOTES
. The time frame of the novel spans nearly two centuries, from the founding of Hobart Town by Jorgen Jorgensen in 1803 to the fictional Tore’s confinement in a mental
health centre in 1992. Events in between range from Jorgensen’s return to Tasmania as a convict, his brief reign as protector of Iceland and his many other adventures, to Tore’s birth in Tasmania, his family’s repatriation to Italy and subsequent return to Australia (because his father couldn’t live in a Fascist state), his later expulsion from Australia and experiences in Madrid, his emigration to Yugoslavia with the Monfalconesi sent there to construct socialism, his deportation to Goli Otok and his emigration to Australia. Though a reconstruction of the timeline would appear linear, the narrative mode is divergent or digressive, ambiguous. The historic facts come to light gradually, tangentially, obscurely, but they are present nevertheless as underpinning to the story The “rising sun,” for example, found on the Communist flag, symbolizes the socialist ideal in which the protagonist has believed for his entire life. The “
Internationale
’s future humanity,” a recurring motif, repeats a line from the famous Communist and socialist anthem. The battle call
No pasarán
, “They shall not pass,” was the cry of the anti-Francoists. The song
Adonde vayas, Marmont
was the so-called “Salamanca Song” that Spanish guitarists sang to deride the French army during Napoleon’s war in Spain. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the famous alliance between Stalin and Hitler in 1939 that came as a shock to many Communists. The
Nelly
and the
Woodman
are the ships that transported Tore and Jorgen respectively to Australia, the
Nelly
in 1951 and the
Woodman
in 1825. The Drusi (an Italianization of the word
drug
, plural
druga
, meaning comrade) were Titoist partisans; the term is also the title of a novel by Croatian writer Milan Rakovac,
Riva i Drusi
, literally “The Comrades Are Coming,” which describes events in Istria, with the arrival of the partisans, at the end of the Second World War, using a mixture of languages—Croatian, Croatian-Italian, Istrian-Croatian—typical of a border
region. The Domobranci were armed Slovenian divisions allied with the Nazi occupiers during the Second World War, anti-Communist formations that wanted an independent national Slovenia of the right, free of Communists. The slogans “
Trst je nas
” and “
Zivot damo Trst ne damo,
” written on the walls, mean “Trieste is ours” and “We’ll give up our lives but we won’t give up Trieste.” And so on.

Then there are the historical figures. Carlos Contreras, real name Vittorio Vidali, also known as the Mexicanjaguar, is one such figure, a notable leader of the international revolutionary movement, founder of the Fifth Regiment in Spain, and a Stalin supporter. Another example is Wilhelm Oberdank (Guglielmo Oberdan, 1858–1882), an Italian irredentist of Slovenian origin who was willing to die for Italy and symbolized Trieste’s return to Italy Gilas and Kardelj were prominent figures in Yugoslavian communism: Gilas, Tito’s ideologist and later a dissident intellectual, was the author of the well-known book
The New Class
, and Kardelj, one of Tito’s lieutenants, was one of the theoreticians who created the theory of workers’ self-management. Struensee, the spirit evoked in the séance, is Count Johann Friedrich von Struensee (1737–1772), a German doctor who became royal physician to the schizophrenic King Christian VII of Denmark and a minister in the Danish government, rising in power to a position of de facto regent. His affair with Queen Caroline Matilda caused a scandal, and was the catalyst for the intrigues and power play that caused his downfall and execution.

Other historic notes include the dates of July 25 and September 8, which refer to notable events in 1943: the fall of Fascism and the arrest of Mussolini on July 25, followed by an armistice signed in Sicily between Italy and the Allies on September 3; later, on September 8, often cited as the date of the official birth of the Italian resistance, the king fled toward southern Italy, leaving the
population in the hands of the Germans. The reference to the Chetniks describes the historical confusion that reigned during the Second World War. At one time the term Chetniks applied to Balkan partisan groups that opposed Ottoman rule at the end of the nineteenth century and later fought over Macedonia. After the creation of Yugoslavia in 1918, the term was applied to Serbian nationalists, lawfully recognized by the government of Belgrade and militarily organized, whose role was to assure the pre-eminence of the Serbian element in Yugoslavia. During the Second World War and the German occupation of Yugoslavia, there were anti-Communist Chetnik formations that collaborated with the German occupiers and their Italian allies, as well as those that fought against the Germans, out of loyalty to Yugoslavia, even if they were monarchist, anti-Communist partisans and therefore opposed to the Communist partisans. Initially Chetnik partisans were aided by the Anglo-Americans, who later supported Tito instead. The leader of the Chetniks was General Mihajlovi
, who was later put to death by Tito. The Ustashi, on the other hand, were Croat Fascists who supported the regime led by Paveli
and who committed gruesome atrocities against the Serbian population. As we see in the novel, there was a great deal of confusion, since overlying the so-called official war between Germany and Italy on the one hand (until 1943) and Yugoslavia on the other was the struggle between Serbs and Croats, violent among ultranationalist Ustashi Croats and Chetnik Serbs, as well as the conflict between Communists and anti-Communists. After 1943, things became even more complicated, because Italy went from being Germany’s ally to being its enemy.

A FEW WORDS
of acknowledgment regarding source materials. Citations or quasi-citations from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts
that re-echo throughout the book are taken from the
Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodios
(c. 250 BC) and the later
Orphic Argonautics
(fifth century AD). The specific edition of the former that was used is Apollonius Rhodius,
Argonautica
, translated by R.C. Seaton, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1912). Citations from the
Orphic Argonautics
were translated by the present translator; though there is a French translation of this work by Georges Dottin (1930), to my knowledge there is no English version as yet.

The description of the 1794 fire at the Royal Palace of Christiansburg in Copenhagen is the author’s invention, except for a passage intentionally paraphrased from that given by the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger, who was an eyewitness to the event, and a subsequent passage cited from Jorgensen’s autobiography (
The Convict King. Being the life and adventures of Jorgen Jorgenson
, retold by James Francis Hogan, London: Ward & Downey, 1891, p. 42ff.). The description of the hot air balloon ride and the optical illusion by which the passengers see themselves as enormous shapes reflected on a cloud is entirely the author’s, though there are occasional echoes from an account by Prince Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pückler-Muskau. Reverend Blunt’s sermons, invented by the author, draw their rhetoric and metaphors principally from the volume
Ecclesiologia
by Hugo Rahner (original title:
Symbole der Kirche. Die Eklesiologie der Väter
). For the Tasmanian expressions found in the novel, the author consulted Wilhelm Schmidt’s
Tasmanische Sprachen
(Utrecht-Anvers, 1952), as well as the writings of Jorgensen himself—for example,
A Narrative of the Habits, Manners, and Customs of the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land
, which contains a chapter on the languages of the Tasmanians.