the void speaks back
Jul. 24th, 2001 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aslantit is quite a nothing day. i am resisting the stereo, i don't want to listen to anything. i don't want to do anything. i want to sink down and sleep.
i typed up all twenty-one pages of the translation. my wrists ache. here is another favorite part:
If someone had told me that a few scant years before, I had not existed, not even as an idea, it would not have meant anything to me. Not even the phrase that my aunt gave out as a response to the odd indiscrete question: "she was not yet born when her father died." This would not have put into question my eternity; there was no passage of time; past and future did not exist; they had to do with adult conversations that were for aduls precisely because they did not interest me. Later, when I understood that, okay, there was a time when I hadn't been here, it still meant nothing to me. I noted instead the ability of my uncle to veil the truth with a few lies. I was living and did not know that I lived, I was living with the unremembering simplicity of a thing eternal. The starry sky held no wonder for me, nor the fade of twilight, nor the flowering trees, nor the sight of myself alongside others much bigger than I. As if for eternity I had existed in my newness. I feared only thunderstorms.
this doesn't quite translate accurately. thunderstorms are temporali, which is associated with tempo, meaning time. avevo paura solo dei temporali. there's a tenuous connection here, thunderstorms as unknown agents of time. this fascinates me, but i cannot think how to convey it in english. intemperate weather just isn't the same.
must muscle up a reserve of pep for poor brian, who watches me moping around today. i don't want him to know the truth of this job, its utter and complete void-like waste of time. got to keep those paychecks rolling in. i got to got to
got to keep it all going.
i typed up all twenty-one pages of the translation. my wrists ache. here is another favorite part:
If someone had told me that a few scant years before, I had not existed, not even as an idea, it would not have meant anything to me. Not even the phrase that my aunt gave out as a response to the odd indiscrete question: "she was not yet born when her father died." This would not have put into question my eternity; there was no passage of time; past and future did not exist; they had to do with adult conversations that were for aduls precisely because they did not interest me. Later, when I understood that, okay, there was a time when I hadn't been here, it still meant nothing to me. I noted instead the ability of my uncle to veil the truth with a few lies. I was living and did not know that I lived, I was living with the unremembering simplicity of a thing eternal. The starry sky held no wonder for me, nor the fade of twilight, nor the flowering trees, nor the sight of myself alongside others much bigger than I. As if for eternity I had existed in my newness. I feared only thunderstorms.
this doesn't quite translate accurately. thunderstorms are temporali, which is associated with tempo, meaning time. avevo paura solo dei temporali. there's a tenuous connection here, thunderstorms as unknown agents of time. this fascinates me, but i cannot think how to convey it in english. intemperate weather just isn't the same.
must muscle up a reserve of pep for poor brian, who watches me moping around today. i don't want him to know the truth of this job, its utter and complete void-like waste of time. got to keep those paychecks rolling in. i got to got to
got to keep it all going.
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...
Date: 2001-07-25 03:27 am (UTC)Re: ...
Date: 2001-07-25 07:06 am (UTC)well, when she wrote it she was quite old, so on the one hand i hear an old italian woman speaking. or i hear the scratch of her pen. or maybe the noise of her typewriter.
on the other hand her writing style imitates the cadence of a child speaking, so i hear a very young voice.
a young/old voice. with a lot of fear, and a lot of, what's the word for it...like she's very distant when she wrote all this. her childhood was so empty and lonely, and she's very distant even from her own life.
Re: ...
Date: 2001-07-25 07:10 am (UTC)it kind of reminds me of the way the guy speaks at the very beginning of "war of the worlds" too. when he says "who would have thought, that for millions of years, we were being studied as if under a micrososcope" or something like that.
so, you are translating it? does that mean that everything you translate comes across in your writing style?
Re: ...
Date: 2001-07-25 07:18 am (UTC)not really. well, i don't know. maybe it does. this particular book influences me because she's big on description. endless pages on how a single room looked. but i've always had an eye for details, for observing, so i don't know if she's influenced me that way.
or do you mean this: that since i'm translating it, it sounds more like me?
maybe i'm not sure what you mean. ask it a different way?
Re: ...
Date: 2001-07-25 08:35 am (UTC)Re: ...
Date: 2001-07-25 08:45 am (UTC)it's difficult to judge, though. italian is much more formal, has a much smaller vocabulary than english, so i have to decide if she would have said something in a more informal manner. also some words just don't translate. there was a word the other day which meant a particular kind of anguish, which we don't have a word for.
a friend of mine, who's greek, once told me about a word in greek that meant something like the color of the sky when you're happy. language differences like that fascinate me.
by the way, i'm working on writing a lengthier response to your email. might not get to it until later.
Re: ...
Date: 2001-07-25 08:52 am (UTC)it must be amazing to know words, that there aren't english words for. which language do you think in? I speak french, and my mother says that she thinks in a mixture of english and french. she speaks lots of other languages too.
like, eskimos have two hundred words for snow.
I'm looking forward to reading your reply - but I might not be able to reply back :/ I'll try though. promise.
languages
Date: 2001-07-25 09:09 am (UTC)i knew i loved this book the first time i read a selection for it. while in italy i took a class on autobiography (which doens't normally interest me) and we read just this first part of her work. i was hooked. i knew i wanted to write my honors thesis on the use of space and memory, and she talks about all of her memories in a way that distinctly relates them to the space/place she was in at the time. her memory is amazing.
i can send you the first 10 or so pages that i've done so far, if you'd like. i'll attach it to my email later on. altogether, it's not quite as fascinating as the little selections i post on lj, but it's still interesting.
that's so interesting that your mother thinks in a mixture of languages. she sounds very exotic, french and egyptian. she must be beautiful.
i speak a bit of french, but not a lot. and i think in english, although when i was in italy i thought almost entirely in italian. while translating i mostly think in italian, visualizing the stuff she talks about. but also in english since i'm translating the whole time.
sometimes in the middle of translating i'll get up and forget which language to use. for the first month after i got home i would panic when i answered the phone because i would forget what to say. in italy they say, 'pronto' and here of course we say 'hello'. but i'd forget, all the same.
Re: languages
Date: 2001-07-25 09:26 am (UTC)yes, please do send them. I started writing a book once, but it was very silly (although quite funny) and I never finished it. I would like to one day...
my mother is pretty - she's quite a big lady though. she's not beautiful, unless you mean to me.
that's weird, to forget what language you should be speaking! but a blessing too. you're very talented.
Re: languages
Date: 2001-07-25 09:48 am (UTC)you should keep writing your book. what was it about?
bah--languages are not much of a talent. making websites, now that's a talent. programming languages are by far more complex than spoken languages. any person can study how to speak a language, or pick up some of it here and there. but you have to have an orderly mind to work in programming languages. you have to have logic on the brain.
not something i'm good at. mathematics eludes me, as does logic.
Re: languages
Date: 2001-07-26 01:08 am (UTC)making websites is easy. honestly - but I have difficulty with spoken languages. maybe because I need to be more interested?
you sound very logical though.