The Hermes Complex , livre ebook

Table of Contents Cover Title page Copyright page Epigraph Translator’s Foreword Introduction The Hermes Complex Epilogue


Charles Le Blanc
The Hermes Complex
Philosophical Reflections on Translation
Translated by Barbara Folkart

University of Ottawa Press
Ottawa



© University of Ottawa Press, 2012
All rights reserved.
The University of Ottawa Press acknowledges with gratitude the support extended to its publishing list by Heritage Canada through the Canada Book Fund, by the Canada Council for the Arts, by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and by the University of Ottawa.
We also acknowledge with gratitude the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, for our translation activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Le Blanc, Charles, 1965-
The Hermes complex [electronic resource] : philosophical reflections on translation / Charles Le Blanc ; translated by Barbara Folkart.
(Perspectives on translation)
Translation of: Le complexe d'Hermes : regards philosophiques sur la traduction.
Includes bibliographical references.
Electronic monograph issued in multiple formats.
Also issued in print format.
ISBN 978-0-7766-2029-9 (HTML) .-- ISBN 978-0-7766-2028-2 (PDF)
1. Translating and interpreting--Philosophy. I. Folkart, Barbara
II. Title. III. Series: Perspectives on translation (Online) P306.L4213 2012 418'.02 C2012-905591-3



“A donkey, for me, is a horse translated into Dutch.”
Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher , H 166
“Modern civilization—and this I consider one of its most disastrous failings—has sacrificed the uniquely individual on the altar of objectivity. All that seems to count is the object to be communicated, and no one nowadays takes the time to reflect on the implications of communicating .
Kierkegaard, Pap. VIII 2 B 78-79


Translator’s Foreword

In this remarkable book, Charles Le Blanc subjects the received wisdom of academic translation studies to the scrutiny made possible by a formidable philosophical culture. Engaging with his elegant, rigorous and unflinchingly polemical argumentation has been for me, as I hope it will for the reader of this translation, an immensely stimulating experience. It has also provided validation of a position I have long been defending in my own writings: if the translator is unable to make the original hers, she will fail to bring it to life in the target-language. At every turn of the phrase, then, I have imagined myself speaking as Charles Le Blanc, giving a second voice—a voice in English—to the author I sensed woven into the textures of the original. In a word, I have internalized, appropriated, made mine both the text and its creator. The result is what the self-decreed guardians of “translation ethics” would consider an “interventionist” translation: I have not hesitated to correct inconsistencies, to rearrange groups of sentences when I felt this would improve the flow of the English text, or to extend citations, e.g., from Swift, Dante or Leopardi, when I felt it would better serve the point Le Blanc was making.
Yet, for all my appropriative moves, I would not for one instant—contrary to the received nonsense circulating in “foreignizing” circles—consider myself to be the author of this English version. The central metaphor of the text and its overall architecture, the pattern of argumentation, the recourse to philosophers with whom I would otherwise have remained unfamiliar—all these remain Le Blanc’s.
Had I been the author of this text, I would not have adopted some of the positions expressed therein. I do not, for example, agree with Le Blanc’s understanding of Antoine Berman’s lettre and traduction littérale (which, I feel, far from being antithetical to Le Blanc’s view of literary translation, converge perfectly with it). I have expressed my reservations in a few “Translator’s remarks” appended as footnotes to the relevant passages. And wherever the text deals explictly with Berman’s concepts, I have opted to retain the French terms, while reverting to the English “letter” and “literal translation” in contexts invoking the old (and sterile) opposition “letter” vs. “spirit”. On the other hand, I fully recognize that Le Blanc’s reading of Berman reflects the view prevalent in most academic writings on translation.
Ultimately, whatever my interventions or reservations, this fine essay is Charles Le Blanc’s creation, not mine: I have no desire to find myself cheek by jowl with Hermes on the windy heights of Mount Olympus. I have simply aspired to re-voice Le Blanc’s writing in English as effectively and as convincingly as possible.

Barbara Folkart
Ottawa, January 2012



Hymn to Hermes 1
Sing, O Muse, of Hermes, King of Cyllene and of Arcadia with its abundant flocks, sing of Hermes, the benevolent messenger of the gods, born of the august and comely Maia after Zeus had lain with her.
In a shadowy cave, far from the fortunate gods dwelled Maia. Under cover of darkness, as sleep smoothed the countenance of the majestuous Hera and the eyes of both men and Immortals spilled over with dreams, Zeus lay with the young nymph. The comeliest of the Pleiades gave birth to the eloquent and guileful Hermes, master of dreams, guardian of closed doors, vigilant in the ebony night.
Barely out of his mother’s womb, Hermes shed his sacred swaddling clothes.
It was morning when he came into the world, and by noontime he was already speaking. As evening fell, he left the shadowy cave to seek adventure. A tortoise wending its ponderous way through the flowers of the field caught his eye: he captured it, gutted it with a bronze knife, then skillfully stretched a steer-hide across the shell, and completed his invention with seven strings of sheep-gut. Thus was created the lyre, so entrancing to bread-eating mortals. He played it now, improvising verses; like drunken youths amusing themselves, he sang of amorous conversations, and strummed away to accompany the sweet talk he placed in the mouths of Zeus, his father, and his mother, the comely Maia. On and on he sang, of his own illustrious birth, of the nymph’s grassy meadows and sumptuous abodes, of the tripods and the vessels full of soothing waters in her grotto. O, prodigious child, would that you had stopped then and there, while your voice was still yours alone, and yours alone your words! But hubris, that mad and measureless ambition, is the curse of Immortals as well as men.
Still in his swaddling clothes, before he’d even crossed the threshold of the cave, Hermes had been troubled by a succulent and insidious aroma of roasting meat wafted down from the shady mountains of Pieria, on whose slopes grazed the sacrificial cattle of Apollo. Now, overcome with yearning to taste of this flesh reserved for the gods, he laid down his lyre. Swift as a thought roiling through the mind of a man beset by a thousand worries, Hermes reached a hilltop, his mind seething with the nefarious intentions so familiar to thieves of all sorts. From the sacred herd the son of Maia cut off fifty lowing beasts. To cover their tracks he led them through a maze of sandy paths, then, resorting to another ruse, made them walk backwards. Next, undoing his sandals at the water’s edge, he gathered branches of tamarisk and myrtle which, with unfathomable cunning, he wove together into a leaf-light foot-covering that still bears the greenery gathered on the slopes of Pieria. To this day, he remembers this ruse whenever he carries messages: invisibility has become for him a second nature.
To the banks of the river Alpheus the ingenuous son of Zeus lead the beasts which he had stolen from Apollo, the beasts with the mild eyes and placid brows. By daybreak, fast as a spark leapt out of a fire, he’d reached the heights of Cyllene. Neither men nor gods had noticed him, not a single dog had barked. Only Maia, his mother, understood: “Cunning and audacious child”, she said, “why have you slipped through the darknesses of night to steal from Apollo, risking the wrath of Latona’s powerful son, and the bonds, the encumbering bonds, he could attach to all your limbs?” To these winged words Hermes replied with cunning words of his own: “Mother, why frighten a still-tender child who scarcely knows what fraud is and still trembles at the sound of his mother’s voice? Why should I, of all the Immortals, have neither gifts nor sacrifices? Am I, too, not worthy of the sacrificial honors? Will no one burn offerings in my name? Is it not sweeter to enjoy the wealth and opulence due the immortal gods than to languish inactive and unrecognized in the obscurity of this cave? I crave the same honours as Apollo and will do everything in my power to seize what my father has refused me.”
So spoke the son of aegis-bearer Zeus—ill-omened words, for the gods inevitably bring down those who exceed the bounds of measure. As the tree which towers too high is smitten by lightning, so Hermes, with his ill-conceived ambition to throne among the deathless gods, had entered into hostilities with Apollo—with him against whose arrows there is no defence. And those whom the gods are intent on destroying receive the answers to their prayers. So it was for Hermes, who joined the deathless gods but lost his freedom.
Irritated by the theft of his heifers, Apollo scoured the world and finally reached Cyllene. Seeing him, Hermes promptly took refuge in his sweet-smelling cradle, where he smoldered like a spark under the ashes.