🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

1923

Nowhere does consideration for the recipient prove fruitful for the recognition of a work of art or an art form. Not only does any orientation toward a specific audience or its representatives lead astray, but even the concept of an “ideal” recipient is detrimental in all theoretical discussions about art, as these discussions merely need to presuppose the existence and nature of humanity in general. Art itself, too, presupposes the physical and intellectual nature of humanity—but never its attention in any of its works. For no poem is intended for the reader, no painting for the viewer, no symphony for the audience.

Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original? That would seem sufficient to explain the difference in rank within the realm of art between the two. Moreover, this appears to be the only possible reason for repeating “the same” thing. But what does a poem “say”? What does it communicate? Very little to those who understand it. Its essence is neither communication nor statement. Nevertheless, a translation that seeks to mediate could only mediate the communication—that is, the inessential. This is, in fact, a hallmark of bad translations. But what lies beyond communication in a poem—and even the bad translator concedes that this is the essential aspect—is it not commonly regarded as the ineffable, mysterious, “poetic” element? The element that a translator can only reproduce by also creating poetry? Hence arises, indeed, a second characteristic of bad translations, which can thus be defined as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. And this remains the case as long as the translation purports to serve the reader. However, if it were intended for the reader, the same would have to be true of the original. If the original does not exist for the sake of the reader, how then could the translation be understood in this relationship?

Translation is a form. To grasp it as such, one must return to the original. For its law lies within the original, as determined by the original’s translatability. The question of a work’s translatability is ambiguous. It can mean: will it ever find an adequate translator among all its readers? Or, more fundamentally: does its nature permit translation and, accordingly—given the significance of this form—does it also demand it? Fundamentally, the first question is only problematic, while the second is apodictic. Only superficial thinking, denying the independent meaning of the latter, would declare both to be synonymous. Against such a view, it must be pointed out that certain relational concepts retain their valid, perhaps even their best sense, when they are not exclusively related to humanity from the outset. Thus, one might speak of an unforgettable life or moment, even if all humans were to forget them. For if their essence demanded not to be forgotten, then such a predicate would express not falsehood, but merely a demand that humans fail to meet, while also potentially referring to a realm in which this demand is fulfilled: the remembrance of God. Similarly, the translatability of linguistic creations remains to be considered, even if they were untranslatable for humanity. And would they not, given a strict concept of translation, necessarily be untranslatable to some degree?

In this detachment, the question arises whether the translation of specific linguistic creations should be demanded. For the principle holds: if translation is a form, then translatability must be essential to certain works.

Translatability is essential to certain works—not in the sense that their translation is essential to their very existence, but rather to indicate that a particular meaning inherent in the originals is expressed in their translatability. It is self-evident that no translation, no matter how good, can ever hold significance for the original itself. Nevertheless, translation is closely connected to the original by virtue of its translatability. Indeed, this connection is all the more intimate because it holds no additional meaning for the original itself. It may be called a natural connection, more specifically, a connection of life. Just as the manifestations of life are most intimately connected to the living without bearing any significance for it, translation arises from the original—not so much from its life as from its “afterlife.” For translation always follows the original and, in the case of significant works that never find their chosen translators during the period of their creation, it marks the stage of their continued existence.

This idea of the life and afterlife of works of art must be understood in entirely non-metaphorical terms. It has been suggested, even in the most constrained times of thought, that life should not be ascribed solely to organic physicality. But this is not about extending the reign of the soul under its weak scepter, as Fechner attempted, nor about defining life based on even less decisive aspects of the animalistic, such as sensation, which can only occasionally characterize it. Rather, life can only be acknowledged for everything that has history—not merely as a stage for history but as an active participant in it. The concept of life thus finds its rightful scope only when defined from the perspective of history, not nature, and certainly not from such unstable categories as sensation and soul. Consequently, the philosopher is tasked with understanding all natural life as part of the broader framework of history. And is not the afterlife of works of art incomparably easier to recognize than that of living creatures? The history of great works of art is familiar with their descent from their sources, their formation during the artist’s era, and the period of their fundamentally eternal afterlife among subsequent generations. This final phase, where it becomes apparent, is called fame. Translations that are more than mere mediations arise when a work, in its afterlife, reaches the era of its fame. Thus, they do not primarily serve this fame, as bad translators often claim for their work, but instead owe their very existence to it. In such translations, the life of the original achieves its ever-renewed, most comprehensive, and ultimate unfolding.

This unfolding is characterized by a peculiar and elevated vitality, determined by a peculiar and elevated purposefulness. Life and purposefulness—their seemingly tangible yet elusive connection can only be grasped where the purpose toward which all individual purposefulness of life is directed is not to be found within life itself but rather in a higher sphere. All purposeful manifestations of life, as well as their overall purposefulness, are ultimately not purposeful for life itself but for the expression of its essence and the representation of its meaning. Thus, translation is ultimately purposeful for the expression of the innermost relationship between languages. While it is impossible for translation to fully reveal or establish this hidden relationship, it can represent it by germinally or intensively realizing it. This representation of something meaningful through an attempt to germinate its creation is a unique mode of representation, one that may scarcely be encountered in the realm of non-linguistic life. For non-linguistic life employs analogies and symbols that point in different ways, rather than intensive, i.e., anticipatory, indicative realization.

The innermost relationship between languages, as conceived, is one of a peculiar convergence. It consists in the fact that languages are not foreign to each other but are, a priori and independently of all historical connections, related to each other in what they intend to express.

With this attempt at explanation, however, the discussion seems to veer off on futile detours back into the conventional theory of translation. If the kinship of languages is to prove itself in translations, how could it do so other than by conveying the form and meaning of the original as accurately as possible? Yet that theory would scarcely grasp the concept of this accuracy and could, in the end, provide no account of what is essential to translations. In truth, however, the kinship of languages is testified to in a translation far more profoundly and definitively than in the superficial and indefinable similarity between two poetic works.

To comprehend the genuine relationship between original and translation, a consideration must be undertaken, the purpose of which is fully analogous to the reasoning employed in epistemological critique to demonstrate the impossibility of a theory of imitation. Just as it is shown in epistemology that knowledge could neither have nor even claim objectivity if it consisted of mere representations of reality, it is demonstrable here that no translation would be possible if it aimed, in its ultimate essence, at resemblance to the original. For in its afterlife—which would not deserve that name if it were not a transformation and renewal of the living—the original changes. There is a maturation even of fixed words. What may have been a tendency in the poetic language of an author’s time might later become obsolete; latent tendencies can arise anew from the formed work. What once seemed fresh may later feel worn; what was once customary may later sound archaic.

To seek the essence of such transformations, as well as the constant shifts in meaning that arise in the subjectivity of later generations rather than in the inherent life of language and its works, would mean—granting even the crudest psychologism—to confuse the foundation and essence of a thing. More precisely, it would mean denying one of the most significant and fertile historical processes out of intellectual impotence. Even if one were to treat the author’s final stroke of the pen as the coup de grâce of the work, it would not save that lifeless theory of translation. For just as the tone and meaning of great literary works undergo complete transformation over centuries, so too does the mother tongue of the translator evolve. Indeed, while the poet’s word endures in its original language, even the greatest translation is destined to perish within the growth of its own language, only to be subsumed and replaced by new forms within the renewed language.

Thus far is it from being the deaf equation of two dead languages that, among all forms, translation uniquely bears the task of noticing the maturation of the foreign word and the labor of its own.

If the kinship of languages is manifested in translation, it occurs in a manner distinct from the vague similarity between reproduction and original. Indeed, it is evident that similarity is not a necessary consequence of kinship. In this respect, the concept of the latter aligns with its narrower use in this context, as it cannot be adequately defined merely by a common origin, though the notion of origin remains indispensable for defining that narrower usage.

Where, apart from a historical connection, can the kinship of two languages be sought? Certainly not in the similarity of their poetic works, nor in that of their words. Rather, all supra-historical kinship of languages rests on the fact that, in each language as a whole, one and the same thing is meant, though it is accessible not to any single language, but only to the totality of their mutually complementary intentions: pure language. For while all individual elements—words, sentences, structures—of foreign languages exclude one another, these languages complement each other in their intentions. To grasp this law, which is one of the foundational principles of the philosophy of language, it is essential to distinguish between what is meant and the way of meaning it.

In “Brot” and “pain,” what is meant is indeed the same, but the way of meaning it is different. It is in the way of meaning that these words signify something distinct to the German and French speaker, making them non-interchangeable and, ultimately, mutually exclusive. However, what is meant, in absolute terms, is the same and identical. Thus, while the ways of meaning in these two words oppose each other, they complement each other in the two languages to which they belong. In these languages, the way of meaning complements what is meant.

In individual, uncomplemented languages, what is meant is never found in a state of relative independence, as it is with individual words or sentences. Instead, it remains in constant flux until it emerges from the harmony of all those ways of meaning as pure language. Until then, it remains hidden within the languages. Yet as languages grow toward the messianic end of their history, it is translation that ignites the eternal afterlife of works and the infinite revival of languages, continuously testing this sacred growth of languages. It asks how far their hidden essence remains from revelation and how present this distance becomes in the knowledge of its measure.

This, however, concedes that all translation is, in some sense, a provisional way of grappling with the foreignness of languages. Any other resolution of this foreignness, one that is immediate and definitive rather than temporal and provisional, is denied to humanity or is, at any rate, not to be directly sought. Indirectly, however, it is the growth of religions that matures within languages the concealed seed of something higher. Translation, therefore, though it cannot claim permanence for its creations and is thus unlike art in this regard, does not disavow its orientation toward a final, ultimate, and decisive stage of all linguistic formation. In translation, the original ascends into a higher and purer sphere of language, in which it cannot permanently dwell and which it does not fully reach in all parts of its form but to which it nonetheless points, in a wonderfully penetrating manner, as the predestined yet unattainable domain of reconciliation and fulfillment for languages.

The original does not reach this domain entirely, yet within it lies that aspect of translation which is more than mere communication. This essential core can be more precisely defined as that which, within translation itself, cannot in turn be translated. For although one may extract as much communicable content as possible from a translation and translate it further, what remains untouched is the very element toward which the true translator’s work is directed. This element is not transferable, as is the poetic word of the original, because the relationship between content and language differs completely in the original and the translation. While in the original, these two form a certain unity, like fruit and its skin, the language of the translation surrounds its content like a royal robe with ample folds. The translation signifies a higher language than it is and thus remains disproportionate, grand, and foreign to its own content. This disjointedness prevents any further transferability while simultaneously rendering it unnecessary. For every translation of a work from a particular moment in the history of language represents, with respect to a specific aspect of its content, all other languages in that regard. Translation, therefore, transplants the original into a—ironically—more definitive linguistic domain insofar as it can no longer be transferred out of this domain through any further translation, but can only be elevated anew within it, in different aspects.

The word “ironically” here may well evoke the ideas of the Romantics, who had unparalleled insight into the life of works, of which translation is one of the highest testimonies. Admittedly, they scarcely recognized translation as such and instead directed their full attention to critique, which represents a lesser but still significant element in the afterlife of works. However, while their theory may not have focused on translation, their great achievements in translation itself were accompanied by a sense of the nature and dignity of this form. All indications point to the conclusion that this sense does not necessarily reside most strongly in the poet; indeed, as a poet, the translator may have the least capacity for it. History, too, offers no basis for the conventional prejudice that great poets make great translators while lesser poets make poor ones. A number of the most significant translators—such as Luther, Voß, and Schlegel—are far more remarkable as translators than as poets, while others among the greatest—like Hölderlin and George—cannot be adequately understood solely under the concept of the poet, especially not as translators.

For just as translation is its own form, so too can the task of the translator be conceived as distinct and clearly separable from that of the poet.

It consists in finding the specific intention directed toward the language into which the translation is made, from which the echo of the original is awakened within it. This marks a distinguishing feature of translation, setting it entirely apart from poetic creation. The intention of a poetic work is never directed toward language as such, toward its totality, but solely and directly toward specific connections of linguistic content. Translation, however, does not find itself, as poetry does, in the very forested depths of language itself. Instead, standing outside it, facing it without entering, translation calls the original into that single place where the echo within its own language can resonate with the work of the foreign tongue.

The intention of translation differs not only in its focus but also in its nature: the poet’s intention is naïve, primary, and intuitive, while the translator’s is derived, ultimate, and conceptual. For the grand motive of integrating the many languages into one true language permeates the translator’s work. This is the realm in which individual sentences, poems, and judgments can never fully align—remaining forever reliant on translation—yet where the languages themselves, through complementing and reconciling their ways of meaning, come to agreement.

If, however, there exists a language of truth, in which the final mysteries that all thought strives to uncover are preserved without tension and even in silence, then this language of truth—the true language—is intensely concealed within translations. This true language, whose anticipation and description constitute the only perfection the philosopher can hope for, lies hidden in translation. There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there a muse of translation. Yet they are far from the vulgar or sentimental artistry that some might suggest. For there exists a philosophical genius, whose most intrinsic longing is for that language which reveals itself in translation.

“Les langues imparfaites en cela que plusieurs, manque la suprême: penser étant écrire sans accessoires, ni chuchotement mais tacite encore l’immortelle parole, la diversité, sur terre, des idiomes empêche personne de proférer les mots qui, sinon se trouveraient, par une frappe unique, elle-même matériellement la vérité.”

[Languages are imperfect in that they are many; the supreme one is missing: to think is to write without accessories, without whispers, but silently embodying the immortal word. The diversity of idioms on earth prevents anyone from uttering the words that, otherwise, would be found by a single stroke, words that would themselves materially constitute the truth.]

If what Mallarmé contemplates in these words is measurable with philosophical rigor, then translation stands with the seeds of this language, situated between poetry and teaching. Its work may lag behind these in prominence, yet it leaves an impression no less profound in history.

If the translator’s task appears in such a light, the paths to its solution threaten to darken all the more impenetrably. Indeed, this task—bringing the seed of pure language to maturity through translation—seems impossible to solve, incapable of definition in any resolution. For does not the ground for such a solution vanish if the reproduction of meaning ceases to be decisive? And nothing else—expressed negatively—is the conclusion of all that has been stated thus far. Fidelity and freedom—freedom in rendering the meaning and, in its service, fidelity to the word—are the age-old concepts in every discussion of translations. To a theory that seeks something other than the reproduction of meaning in translation, these concepts seem no longer applicable.

Admittedly, their conventional use always views these concepts as irreconcilably opposed. For what can fidelity to the reproduction of meaning actually accomplish? Fidelity in the translation of individual words can almost never fully reproduce the meaning they possess in the original. This is because their poetic significance for the original does not exhaust itself in what is meant but gains this meaning precisely through how what is meant is bound to the way of meaning in the specific word. This is often expressed in the formula that words carry an emotional tone. Literalness in syntax, moreover, entirely disrupts the reproduction of meaning and threatens to lead directly into the incomprehensible. In the 19th century, Hölderlin’s translations of Sophocles were seen as monstrous examples of such literalness. Finally, how much fidelity in reproducing form impedes the reproduction of meaning is self-evident. Accordingly, the demand for literalness cannot be derived from the interest in preserving meaning. This interest is far better served—and indeed to the detriment of both poetry and language—by the undisciplined freedom of poor translators.

Thus, the demand for literalness, whose justification is evident but whose foundation is deeply hidden, must necessarily be understood from more compelling relationships. Just as shards of a vessel must precisely follow each other in the smallest details to fit together but not resemble each other in such a way, so too must the translation, rather than resemble the meaning of the original, lovingly imitate the way of meaning in the original within its own language, down to the smallest details. In doing so, both are revealed, like shards, as fragments of a larger vessel, fragments of a greater language. For this reason, translation must, to a great extent, disregard the intention to communicate meaning. The original is essential to the translator only insofar as it has already relieved the translator and their work of the effort and order of what is to be communicated. Even in the realm of translation, the dictum applies: ἐν ἀρχῆ ᾖν ὁ λόγος (“In the beginning was the Word”). Conversely, the translator’s language can—and indeed must—abandon itself in relation to meaning so as to let its own way of meaning resonate, not as reproduction but as harmony, as a complement to the language in which the original communicates itself.

Therefore, particularly in the era of its creation, the highest praise for a translation is not that it reads like an original in its language. Rather, the significance of fidelity, which is guaranteed by literalness, lies precisely in allowing the great longing for linguistic complementarity to speak through the work. True translation is transparent; it does not obscure the original or cast light on itself but allows the pure language, as if intensified through its own medium, to fall all the more fully upon the original. This is accomplished above all by literalness in the rendering of syntax, which above all reveals the word, not the sentence, as the primal element of the translator. For the sentence is the wall before the language of the original, whereas literalness is the arcade.

If fidelity and freedom in translation have always been considered opposing tendencies, this deeper interpretation seems not to reconcile them but rather to reject all the rights of the latter. For what does freedom pertain to, if not to the reproduction of meaning, which is no longer to be regarded as normative? And yet, even if the meaning of a linguistic structure is identified with its communicative content, there remains something close to it and yet infinitely distant, hidden beneath it or made clearer by it, fractured through it or more powerful beyond all communication—a final, decisive essence. In all language and its constructs, beyond the communicable, there remains an incommunicable, which depending on the context in which it is encountered, is either symbolic or symbolized.

It is symbolic only in the finite constructs of languages, yet it becomes symbolized in the very development of languages themselves. And what strives to represent and even to create itself in the development of languages is the core of pure language itself. If this core, whether hidden and fragmentary, is nevertheless present in life as the symbolized itself, it dwells only symbolically in linguistic constructs. If the ultimate essence, which is pure language itself, is bound in languages solely to the linguistic and its transformations, in the constructs it is burdened with heavy and alien meaning. To release it from this burden, to transform the symbolic into the symbolized, to retrieve pure language from the linguistic movement, is the immense and singular power of translation.

In this pure language, which no longer signifies or expresses anything, but as an expressionless and creative word is what is meant in all languages, all communication, meaning, and intention finally converge on a plane where they are destined to vanish. And from this plane, the freedom of translation asserts itself with a new and higher legitimacy. It does not derive its existence from the communicative meaning, from which fidelity seeks to emancipate itself. Rather, freedom proves itself for the sake of pure language within its own language. This pure language, which is confined in the foreign language, must be redeemed in one’s own; the language imprisoned in the work must be liberated through transcreation. This is the translator’s task. For this reason, the translator breaks the decayed boundaries of their own language: Luther, Voß, Hölderlin, and George have expanded the limits of German.

What meaning remains for the relationship between translation and original can be illustrated through a comparison. Just as the tangent touches the circle fleetingly and only at one point, and while this contact determines the tangent’s direction, it is not the point itself but the contact that prescribes the law by which the tangent extends its straight path into infinity, so translation touches the original fleetingly and only at the infinitely small point of meaning. Yet according to the law of fidelity, it follows its own path in the freedom of linguistic movement.

The true significance of this freedom, though not explicitly named or grounded, was characterized by Rudolf Pannwitz in his remarks found in The Crisis of European Culture, which, alongside Goethe’s notes in the Divan, may well be among the finest contributions to the theory of translation published in Germany. There he writes:

“Our translations, even the best, proceed from a false premise: they aim to Germanize the Indian, Greek, or English instead of allowing the German to become Indianized, Hellenized, or Anglicized. They show far greater reverence for the conventions of their own language than for the spirit of the foreign work. The fundamental error of the translator is that he clings to the incidental state of his own language instead of allowing it to be profoundly moved by the foreign tongue. Especially when translating from a very distant language, he must penetrate to the very elements of language itself, where word, image, and tone converge into one. He must expand and deepen his own language through the foreign one. One has no idea to what extent this is possible—how far each language can be transformed. Languages differ from each other almost as dialects differ from each other, not when they are treated too lightly, but precisely when they are taken with the utmost seriousness.”

How far a translation is capable of corresponding to the essence of this form is objectively determined by the translatability of the original. The less value and dignity its language possesses, the more it is mere communication, and the less there is to be gained in the translation. When the dominance of meaning becomes absolute, it not only fails to act as the lever for a fully realized translation but actively thwarts it. The higher a work is in nature, the more it remains translatable, even in the most fleeting contact with its meaning. This, of course, applies only to originals. Translations, on the other hand, prove to be untranslatable not due to the weight of their meaning but because of the excessive ephemerality with which meaning clings to them.

In this regard, as in every other essential aspect, Hölderlin’s translations—especially those of the two Sophoclean tragedies—stand as affirming examples. In them, the harmony of languages is so profound that meaning is touched only as if by the wind on an Aeolian harp. Hölderlin’s translations are archetypes of their form; they relate to even the most perfect renditions of their texts as an archetype relates to a model, as demonstrated by a comparison of Hölderlin’s and Borchardt’s translations of Pindar’s Third Pythian Ode. Precisely for this reason, they contain, more than others, the immense and primal danger of all translation: that the gates of a language so expanded and permeated might close, trapping the translator in silence.

The Sophocles translations were Hölderlin’s final work. In them, meaning plunges from abyss to abyss until it threatens to be lost in bottomless linguistic depths. But there is a point of stability. However, this stability is granted by no text other than the sacred one, in which meaning has ceased to be the watershed dividing flowing language and flowing revelation. Where the text belongs directly, without mediating meaning, in its literalness, to the true language, to truth or teaching, it is translatable in the absolute sense—not for its own sake but solely for the sake of languages.

Such a text demands boundless trust from translation, so much so that, just as in that text language and revelation are tensionlessly united, so in the translation, literalness and freedom must be united in the form of the interlinear version. For to some degree, all great writings—and most of all the sacred ones—contain their virtual translation between the lines. The interlinear version of the sacred text is the archetype or ideal of all translation.