On Monday morning I had a thought that could only be borne out of boredom, and realised that I hadn’t looked at all the things that were in the storage cupboard in my flat, so I climbed the ladder and rooted about.
The hoover and my suitcase I was already familiar with, but behind them was a bag that I discovered was full of towels and blankets. To its right was an empty shoebox and to its right a pile of books. I pulled them towards me and went through them one by one. There were three monographs, on Klee, Miro and Mondrian respectively; a 19th century guide to decorating your house with plants; some books on Japan; and a drastically aged paperback with brown and roughly cut pages. This, it turned out, was a collection of American short stories printed in 1953. Although it wasn’t the title that first caught my eye, but my surname.
Instantly I knew it had to be Erskine Caldwell, a southern gothic writer active in the early to mid-20th century. I only know who he is because last year I put my surname into Wikipedia and found him there. Following this discovery I ended up writing a short story of my own, in which I get in touch with the Northern Irish writer, Lucy Caldwell, and the two of us fly to America and visit various sites related to him, like his grave and the places he lived, taking a scoop of soil from each and putting them into a bag we start to call Erskine.
At one point he was the world’s best selling American author, with successful stage and film adaptations of his books. But now you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the English speaking world who’s heard of him, unless they’re a scholar of southern gothic literature.
He was also, according to his story’s introduction in the book I found, revered in France; and esteemed as a great voice of American literature, not just as a popular and scandalising writer, as he was in the States.
Nor was this my first encounter with him here. Not long after moving to Paris I found one of his books in a bouquiniste’s box along the Seine; but instead of buying it I just took a photo and carried on with my day. Every now and then, when I’m browsing the thousands of second hand books that line the river, I see it again, smile and leave it be. To be honest I’m not interested in reading him in French; but as I sat at my desk with one of his stories in front of me, I found myself wanting to backtranslate the French version and compare it to his own.
From the start I committed a cardinal sin of translation and didn’t read the story, discovering it instead as I brought it back into English. I’ve already read a few of his books so I know what his voice is like, and there was something exciting about approaching it this way, each sentence extending my lamp further into the darkness and lighting the way.
Backtranslating is a strange exercise I haven’t done much of, because there’s really not much point. It’s like telling someone a story about themself that you heard from someone else. What happens will be similar, but the way it’s told will be drastically different, having been filtered through two channels. Plus, I had no idea how liberal Georges Belmont, the French translator, had been;1 and then in turn, how liberal was I going to be with his translation as I translated it back? In translation you always end up imparting your own style onto the text as you try to maintain the voice or mood of the original. Except here it’s different, here you’re trying to capture the voice of the original without reading it; and while I do know Caldwell’s voice, and the mood of his work, I knew that our versions would be worlds apart. No matter how familiar I am with his style, all I can do is mimic it, and I was constantly having to second guess myself. Whose voice was I actually using? The line between Caldwells blurred at times, but I found that when I felt part of my brain challenge me based on my own tastes, that I was probably getting closer to Erskine’s voice than my own. His prose is sparse, measured and so simple that at times I find it rhythmically jarring. It flows, but it’s not always flowy. In many ways his prose mimics the poverty of his characters; and his dialogue is both hilarious and brimming with humanity.
On Tuesday night I couldn’t sleep so I gave up trying and worked on the story instead, finishing the first draft at half three in the morning. I was shocked at how bleak it was. In the other stuff of his I’ve read there’s always been some slapstick or absurdism to offset the devastation; but here, in all of eight pages, he made a pit form in my stomach with each line as I figured out what was happening. The simplicity of the plot and economy of the narrative were as impressive as they were affecting.
I’m writing this coda on a train to Luxembourg. I’m visiting my parents for the weekend, having spent the week with another Caldwell, whose original version of the story I’ve just finished reading. For the most part I got what I expected: similarity and difference. The biggest shock was discovering that the French translator had scrapped the last three paragraphs; and you know what, I think he made the right call. The story ends much better with the implication of guilt and shame expressed through the actions of the narrator, as opposed to his outright admission in Erskine’s version.
Stuff like this fascinates me, because it really puts into question what the role of the translator is. Are you serving the author, or the story? I think most would argue in favour of serving the author, but I do think a good argument can be made for serving the story. That being that you treat it as its own thing, something to be passed along to other people, something detached from its originator, something that, as with the oral tradition, will change as it’s told and retold. A translator is always writing their own version of a story, and there’s no arguing with that. Anyone who does doesn’t understand how language works. It simply isn’t possible to remake things exactly as they were. But changing the ending? And not only changing it but making it better? In terms of the ethics of translation and one’s responsibility to the author, I can’t say I support his choice; but in regards to arrogance that led to improving the story, I can only tip my hat to Belmont here.
Last year I got obsessed by Barthes’ idea that every time a text is re-read it’s re-written. I was reading his book S/Z and an essay by Howard Giskin about Borges’ story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, alongside that story itself. In the story, a friend of the (fictional) writer, Pierre Menard, recounts how his friend sought to write Don Quixote, despite the book already existing, and despite not having read it since he was a child, and even then, only in translation, not in the original Spanish, a language he had to learn, in its 17th Century form, to write the book. Note here that he wasn’t seeking to rewrite the book, but to reconstruct it. His goal was to write it word for word, exactly as the so-called original was written. Though he never finished his project, he did succeed in writing a few chapters. All of which, the narrator tells us, were identical to the original. But they weren’t just identical, they were, in his opinion, better. Where a line from the ‘original’ was cliché, here it was profound. Where Cervantes was employing common ideas from his time, Menard had somehow conjured them using the correct language 400 years later. The passage of time made the reconstruction all the more impressive than the original. It now had a whole new meaning, despite being identical.
While mine and Menard’s projects are not entirely the same, they do share one similarity, that of reconstruction. Seeking to capture not just the essence of the original but doing so in the same language without consulting it. Menard was vastly more successful than I was, in his consistent reproduction of word for word sentences, but to my great surprise I still managed to achieve some verbatim reconstructions from French sentences that differed greatly to their originals. In both trying to access a dead man’s voice, we were able to conjure his words.
Unlike the narrator of Borges’ story, I don’t think mine is the superior version. There are parts that read a little too modern, and perhaps too English; while other parts read like mimicry, as opposed to someone genuinely using a certain turn of phrase or manner of speaking. I wasn’t raised in Georgia, I don’t know anyone from the southern states; all I know of their use of English is from what I’ve read and seen, Erskine’s books among those. Nonetheless, this has been a fascinating exercise, and I’m as shocked as I am pleased with any similarities to the original. Above all, though, I’m most impressed by Belmont’s alteration and improvement to the ending; which has raised some serious questions about the art of translation that I won’t soon forget.
If you want you can read the full translation of the story below; if not, here’s a few sentences to show you just how different they are despite their similarities.
EC: She walked past me, behind. I could hear the gritty sand and dust grind under her shoes. It made a sound like the sandpapering of an iron pipe.
DC: I heard her pass behind me, the dust and grit rasping beneath her feet like an iron pipe against sandpaper.
EC: Dust is in the air of every big city and some people wash their hands fix or six times a day to keep them clean.
DC: Every big town has dust in its air and certain folk wash their hands five or six times a day to keep them clean.
EC: He asked the man in the garage about me. They talked inside the office a while and then he came out and told me he would take me up with him. He was leaving right away.
DC: He asked the mechanic if he could vouch for me and he said he would. The man told me he’d take me and that he was leaving immediately.
Dorothy
By Erskine Caldwell, Dan Caldwell and Georges Belmont
She had a far off gaze when I first saw her. She was stopped on the other side of the street, near the corner, and holding a newspaper. It was folded in such a way that only the classifieds’s job listings remained visible—like a newspaper without headlines.
Suddenly she blinked several times and looked at the newspaper she held in her hands. Her knees and legs were rigid, but her body swayed back and forth like someone weakened by hunger; her shoulders sinking lower and lower until it no longer seemed that they were the upper part of her arms.
She glanced several times at the job listings, then searched, as if with regret, for a number on one of the doors behind her. Presently she opened her bag and read something written on the back of an envelope. There were numbers on the majority of the doors, but she either couldn’t read them, or couldn’t find the one she was looking for—I couldn’t see what the problem was; I couldn’t see her face, her head had dropped and her chin rested on the collar of her blouse.
Sometimes she raised her eyes an instant and then, briskly, her head gave up again and remained drooped until she had the strength to bring it back up. She looked like a young mother crying over the body of her child.
She remained standing on the opposite pavement, right next to one of the street-lamps. She would have been able to lean against it or just as well find somewhere to sit down. I don’t know why she did neither. I don’t believe she herself knew.
I was on the side of the street cast in shadow, waiting for something. I don’t know what I was waiting for; something unimportant in any case. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. I was just there, watching, when I saw her, newspaper in hand. Hundreds of busy people passing by, all going somewhere, while her and I were the only ones standing still.
It was between one and two in the afternoon. Men and women were coming out of the diners on either side of the street, hurrying back to work.
I had a quarter in my pocket, but I hadn’t eaten. I was hungry, but I was scrimping. I wanted to head up to Richmond, where I was sure to find work. Life was slow in New Orleans, I’d tried Atlanta and now I wanted a taste of Richmond. It was July and there wasn’t much work anywhere, but in Richmond I always had some luck.
In front of me the young woman turned her paper around and read one of the columns top to bottom. There were several offices on the street and the rest of the buildings were made up of various shops. The majority of them decorated their windows with women’s goods. It wasn’t easy for a man to find work, and not much easier for a woman, particularly a young woman, if she wasn’t wearing the right sort of clothes.
She put the paper under her arm and crossed the street. I was a few steps away from the corner. She carried on, clutching the paper under her arm, keeping her eyes lowered the whole time; when she reached the pavement, she headed towards me. Without raising her eyes she continued, her head still down, as if she were looking at her shoes.
The July sun was blazing.
I heard her pass behind me, the dust and grit rasping beneath her feet like an iron pipe against sandpaper. Then the sound suddenly stopped. I turned my head and saw her beside me. She was so close I could have reached out and touched her. Her face was pale and her lips whiter than her skin. When she raised her eyes toward me she didn’t move her head. They were wet, her eyes, and very blue. She didn’t want me to know that she’d been crying.
I turned around completely and looked at her. I didn’t know what to do. Until she spoke to me she’d kept her jaw clenched, but she couldn’t stop her lips from trembling.
‘Could you tell me where number 67 is?’ she asked.
I looked at her. She had her hands held in such a way that I could only see the tops of her fingers. They were stained, as though they’d spent all day handling freshly printed newspapers. Not dirty, just stained.
There was a sort of black dust on the back of her hands too. Every big town has dust in its air and certain folk wash their hands five or six times a day to keep them clean. Who knows? Perhaps she hadn’t had the chance to wash her hands in several days. Her face wasn’t dirty, but it looked like she’d tried to wash it with a damp tissue and rag.
When she’d asked me where number 67 was she’d said, ‘I beg your pardon;’ and I knew fine well she’d say ‘Thank you very much,’ when I replied.
It took a great effort to swallow my spit before I could say anything. I knew where number 67 was. I could see it from where I stood, over on the other side of the street, with its big silver numbers on the door that was constantly opening and closing with people coming and going. It was an unemployment office; I’d been there myself two or three times that week. But there wasn’t any work going for no one, it being July.
‘What?’ I said for some reason. When you’re talking to a beautiful young woman you say things different, wrong.
I knew what she’d said to me, but in that moment I couldn’t remember having heard it. I’d looked at her for such a long time that I hadn’t noticed her question.
She opened her bag and plunged her hand down into it, searching for the envelope with the address. Her eyes stayed fixed on me with the same faraway look that they’d had when I’d first seen her, not noticing that the envelope had fallen onto the floor the moment she opened the bag.
I picked up the letter. It had been posted general delivery, from the post office of some little far away town on the Florida border. It was addressed to a Dorothy; I couldn’t read the family name. Perhaps it was from her mother or sister. The writing was a woman’s. She nervously tore it away from me before I could give it to her. Something in the way she snatched it troubled me. Perhaps her father had just died and she was looking for somewhere her mother could live. Who knows. Perhaps her whole family had been killed in some accident and she’d had to leave home to make a living. These sorts of things happen all the time. These sorts of things happen everywhere.
People turned around to look at us, then once they’d passed turned their heads back and stared. Peachtree Street intersected the street we were on; it was a fashionable neighbourhood.
I don’t know what made me do what I did. I knew where number 67 was; I’d been there just half an hour before. It was an unemployment office. They’d told me to ‘Come back tomorrow morning.’ They said the same thing to everyone, man or woman. It was the dead season. It was July.
‘Head down this street,’ I said, ‘you should find number 67 after the third block, on the other side of the viaduct.’
I pointed her in the right direction, my arm outstretched over her head. Beside me she was so small.
She looked down the street, all the way down to the viaduct. There was about a half dozen seedy hotels that way, hotels of the worst kind. Everyone knows them. A lot of us know what happens there. You can find them in any big town. They’ll charge you 75 cents or less.
I think I was right to do what I did. She had no money in her bag, not a cent, I’d seen everything that was in there. I had 25 cents to my name and would have to trek all the way up to Richmond before I’d find any work. There was nothing going at number 67. It was the dead season. No one was here over the summer. There was no work in July and she was hungry. Who knows where she’d already tried sleeping.
There must have been at least seven or eight hotels on the other side of the viaduct, too. Hotels of the worst kind. I’d seen women running about their corridors wearing nothing but dressing gowns after midnight. They always had money, though; enough to feed themselves when they were hungry. I know what it’s like to be hungry. A man can bear it for a little while—a week or two—but a woman... If ever you’ve seen the body of a woman who died of hunger, you'll know why I think I was right to do what I did.
She hadn’t moved.
‘Right down there,’ I repeated; ‘Just after the third block on the other side of the viaduct.’
She’d understood me the first time.
She didn’t move.
She just stood there, and she knew where she stood with them too. You could read some of their signs from where we were. “Hotel, 75 cents.” She read them. I had my hand in my pocket and I held my quarter between two fingers. I don’t know what she could have done with it. I would have been ashamed to give it to her, it was only a quarter.
‘Alright,’ she said.
Standing there it was like she was making a life or death decision.
She didn’t thank me for telling her where number 67 was. But now she knew it, number 67 was opposite the viaduct.
‘Alright,’ she said.
She turned around and took the road in the direction of the dirty red-brick hotels; the heels of her shoes were worn out on the sides. She tried to keep herself steady as she walked, having to keep her legs stiff to not sprain her ankles. If she’d loosened up for a second this would have surely happened.
She didn’t turn her head back towards me. Her blue flannel skirt was all creased and had lost all form. It looked like she’d slept in it for several nights, maybe a week. It was covered in dust and had loose threads all over it. Her white silk blouse was all faded and creased too. Dust had lodged itself everywhere and the creases formed stains across her shoulders. It was like she’d been left outside in the rain and hung up somewhere to dry.
I couldn’t stay there much longer. I watched her make it as far as the first street in the direction of the hotels, before I crossed the street and ran towards Alabama Avenue.
At the end of the street I saw a sewage drain. I dropped my quarter into it. I didn’t want that money in my pocket no more.
I went to a garage on Alabama Avenue. A mechanic told me I had a good chance of finding a ride to Richmond if I hung around for a while there and waited for a car to pass through. Inside the shop a car was getting its oil changed. The mechanic nodded at me and took me over. It was a big car. I could tell that it would be heading out on its way shortly, so I asked the man at the wheel if he’d be able to take me to Richmond. He asked the mechanic if he could vouch for me and he said he would. The man told me he’d take me and that he was leaving immediately.
I hunted about for all sorts of work in Richmond, but something wasn’t right. I didn’t have the patience to look for work. I was uneasy. I had to keep moving all the time. I couldn’t stand still.
A few days later I was in Baltimore, where I put my claim in at the unemployment office. They had a bunch of work going, but they weren’t in a hurry to give it out. They make you wait a week or two to see if you’ll hang around, if you’re reliable. Most just push on to Philadelphia. That’s how it goes in summer. They head up to Philadelphia, then when it starts to get cold they head back down, stop in Baltimore until the weather catches up with them, and head on out to the next big town.
Everyone ends up in New Orleans.
I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t. I continued on the road up to Philadelphia, like everyone else. From there a lot of folk head upstate to New Jersey; but not me. I was staying in Philadelphia.
This last week saw another coincidence featuring Belmont. On Thursday evening I went to see A Clockwork Orange at the cinema. It had French subtitles and was fascinating to see how they handled the Nadsat and just generally mad use of language employed by Alex and co. When I got home I tried and failed to find out who did the translation for the film, but in doing so discovered that Belmont, alongside co-translator Hortense Chabrier, had translated Burgess’ novel with an insane level of virtuosity.