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An Epistemology of TensionZrinka Stahuljaka

a Boston University, USAPublished online: 21 Feb 2014.

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The Translator. Volume 10, Number 1 (2004),33-57

An Epistemology of Tension Translation and Multiculturalism

ZRINKA STAHULJAK Boston University, USA

Abstract. 'Epistemology of Tension 'is a comparative study of the use of the metaphor of 'translation' in the Middle Ages and in contemporary culture. Due to its metaphorical application, the contemporary term 'translation' has become a wide-ranging and central term extending well beyond its meaning of linguistic trans­lation. However, I argue that, while the metaphors of translation connote translatability of historical, cultural, and political con­tents and contexts, at the same time they obscure the relations of power that take place in cultural and political translation. I draw a parallel with the medieval translation topos, where, although similar to contemporary translation in its range and centrality of position, translation addresses the issue of metaphor quite differ­ently. An analysis of the medieval term 'translatio' in its meaning of metaphor reveals that translation occurs as an epistemology of tension between power and knowledge. By contrast, the metaphor­ization of translation in contemporary global culture creates a dominant, global language which presents itself as neutral be­cause all-inclusive. Subsequently, I argue that because it is presumably all-inclusive, this global language of 'translation' threatens to become a homogenous and, ultimately, a hegemonic, undemocratic global discourse. J

In 'The Task of the Translator', Walter Benjamin says that translation "serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages" (Benjamin 1969:72) and "of integrating many tongues into one true language" (ibid.:77) - the "pure language" (ibid.).2 Translation, then, "intends language as a whole" (ibid. :76), that is language itself. While translation "cannot possibly reveal or establish this hidden relationship [of languages] itself ... it can represent it by realizing it in .... intensive form"

I I am profoundly grateful to the anonymous reader who encouraged me to develop the connections between Benjamin's intention and the medieval uses of tendere, as well as between 'pure language' and multiculturalism. 2 See Steven Rendall (2000) for an update of Harry Zohn's translation.

ISSN 1355-6509 © St Jerome Publishing, Manchester

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34 An Epistemology of Tension

(ibid.:72). In other words, translation does not attain the (hidden) pure lan­guage, but it "release[s]" it (ibid.:80) in the language of translation when it finds the "intended effect [Intention] upon the language" (ibid. :76). To be precise, when it finds intention, translation makes "both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments ofa greater language" (ibid.:78).3 In­tention, however, does not refer to "the intended object" (das Gemeinte; vouloir dire), that is, what is meant, but to "the mode of intention" (Art des Meinens; dire), that is, the way in which the intended object is meant. The reason for this is that, of the two, the mode of intention bears upon language itself, "language as a whole", and pure language can emerge only "from the harmony of all the various modes o/intention" (ibid. :74; my emphasis). Pure language is a language in which "languages themselves, supplemented and reconciled in their mode 0/ signification, harmonize" (ibid.:77; my emphasis). 4

Indeed, languages can be harmonized only if meaning, what is meant, is not the intended object of translation; in translation, meaning is continually displaced by the mode of intention which never quite reaches what it intended to mean from the original. 5 Thus, the quest for meaning in translation would place the modes of intention of the original and the translation into "conflict" (ibid. :74) with each other, instead of harmony. Consequently, for Benjamin, the work's meaning becomes "something inessential" (ibid.:69) to language and its "maturing process" (ibid. :73). Furthermore, "likeness", or "similar­ity" (ibid.:73, 74), between the original and its translation is excluded from the "maturing process" because it serves the purpose of copying the origi­nal's meaning. Although the original changes in its meaning, what always changes first, before the meaning can change, is the language of the original (ibid.:73). Therefore, likeness between the original and its translation can neither remain nor be the focus of translation, and translation must "intend ... language" and not meaning. Likewise, Benjamin redefines fidelity to the original, as fidelity to language. Instead of resembling the original, the "task of fidelity" is to emancipate translation from "the sense of what is to be conveyed" (ibid. :80) by "a literal rendering of the syntax which proves words rather than sentences to be the primary element of the translator" (ibid. :79). From that point on, fidelity and freedom in translation are no longer "re-

3 Paul de Man translates this as "to make both recognizable as the broken parts of the greater language" (de Man 1986:91). 4 Different views have been expressed on the second half of Benjamin's essay which seems to aim toward the "pure language" as the messianic. The 'messianic' reference was omitted from Zohn's translation, as Steven Rendall points out. On the side of non­messianic interpretation, see Paul de Man (1986) and Derrida (1982, 1994). See Mehlman (1998) for an excellent debate of that point, in favour of the messianic interpretation of Benjamin. 5 "Meaning is always displaced with regard to the meaning it ideally intended" (de Man 1986:91 ).

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Zrinka Stahuljak 35

garded as conflicting tendencies" (ibid. :79), since the translator is free from meaning and faithful to echoing the mode of intention of words. Once "liter­alness" frees translation from meaning, it becomes clear that translation "marks the ... stage of continued life [of works]" (ibid.:71). Because the "maturing pro-cess of the original language" (ibid. :73), and not the work's meaning, determines the life of the original, translation is only a signpost in the continued life of works; in other words, translation does not continue the life of a work, it just marks its continued life by responding to the call of the maturing original for a new translation. More precisely, since it is the lan­guage that undergoes a change, to which a new translation responds, translation issues "not so much from [the original's] life as from its after­life" (ibid. :71). However, that "ideal oflife and afterlife in works of art should be regarded with an entirely unmetaphoricalobjectivity ... In the final analy­sis, the range of life must be determined by history rather than by nature" (ibid.:71; my emphasis). It is history that determines the length of life and not the biological length of life that determines history. Consequently, be­cause the natural, the organic, no longer defines history, the historical "life" of a work is understood "unmetaphoricaIIy". Pure language, which each trans­lation "intends" as "the totality" and "the harmony of all the various modes of intention" (ibid. :74) cannot be understood, therefore, as a metaphor, nor can it be attained by metaphor, since "likeness" and resemblance are explic­itly outside the intention of translation.

Benjamin's interdiction of "likeness" in translation, his emphasis on the "unmetaphorical" and his redefinition of "fidelity" as literalness of syntax, bring to the fore the fact that the relationship between metaphor and translation is far from unproblematic. Indeed, translation may be confused with metaphor if and when it aims to copy the meaning of the original in the translation by means of resemblance. Yet metaphor should be kept at bay in translation, for "the translation is not the metaphor of the original" (de Man 1986:83). This paradoxical relationship between metaphor and translation has been analyzed by Paul de Man (1986:83):

The German word for translation, ubersetzen, means metaphor. Ubersetzen translates exactly the Greek metaphorein, to move over, ubersetzen, to put across. Ubersetzen, I should say, translates metaphor - which, asserts Benjamin, is not at all the same. They are not metaphors, yet the word means metaphor. The metaphor is not a metaphor.

If translation is not a metaphor, it is interesting, then, that in contemporary culture and theory the term translation has been used metaphorically. Translation in its literal meaning refers to the act of linguistic translation. But linguistic translation is today also commonly used as a metaphor to signify various kinds of transfers in which the linguistic participates: in phrases

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36 An Epistemology of Tension

such as "this filmlbookllecture translates an eventla moodla philosophy", or in expressions such as "translating sexuality/gender/ethnicity".6 Due to its metaphorical application, translation has become a wide-ranging and central term extending well beyond its meaning of linguistic translation. Its meta­phorization has come to connote translatability of historical, cultural, and political contents and contexts, their meanings. There, translatability is understood, first, as the ability of contents and contexts to be translated (they lend themselves to translation); secondly, as a necessity of translation (it is essential that they be translated); and, finally, as transparency of translation. 7

Since they lend themselves to translation, which results in a certain trans­parency of translation, translatability is here used to mean that meaning does not put the various modes of intention into conflict. This kind of translatability entails at the same time the idea that the multicultural world we live in, defined by translatability, could be an equivalent to pure language: clear and harmonious, because all-inclusive, and therefore perhaps even neutral.

The aim of this article is to draw a parallel with the translation topos of the pre-modem medieval times, where, although similar to contemporary translation in its range and centrality of position, the translation topos does not deal with its own metaphorization in quite the same way. What allows this parallelism with our own global culture is precisely the foreignness and multiculturalism of the Middle Ages, which were in a constant process of translation and whose transformations and interactions to this day have not been fully charted: Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Celtic, Saxon, Frankish, a variety of vernacular languages and patois (Warren 2000, Marx 1965). While the scope of this article is far too limited for such a project, its aim is, first, to interpret and understand the way in which the Middle Ages conceptualize translation, including metaphors of translation. I concentrate in particular on the French Middle Ages, geographically situated in northern France and Anglo-Norman England, where the translatio topos was densely concen­trated. 8 I study the anonymous Roman de Thebes (written c. 1150) as a

6 For a discussion of the metaphorical use of the term translation in trauma theory and contemporary translation theory, see Stahuljak (2000b). 7 These definitions of translatability are derived from Benjamin's essay. Benjamin ar­gues that even if translatability means that the work lends itself to translation, this does not mean that the work calls for a translation: This "is not to say that it is essential that they be translated" (Benjamin 1969:71), since translations "do not so much serve the work as owe their existence to it" (ibid. :72). Furthermore, translatability, that is the quality of certain works to lend themselves to translation, does not mean that they can be trans­lated. If meaning is interrupted by the mode of intention, transparency is not the result of translation. S As Etienne Gilson has shown in La Philosophie au Moyen Age, Latin culture came to France at the time of Charlemagne only via the intermediary of Anglo-Saxon culture, at whose origin was Latin literary culture: "[1]1 faut donc rattacher la culture medievale a celle de Rome par l'intermediaire des Anglo-Saxons" (1976: 194).

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Zrinka Stahuljak 37

translation of Statius' Thebaid, Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie (written in 1165) as a translation of a pseudo-Greek and a pseudo-Trojan work of the siege of Troy, Wace's two works, Roman de Brut (composed in 1155), a translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae (c. 1135-1138), which narrates a history of the Britons, starting with the Trojan Brutus, and Roman de Rou (1160-1174) which is a chronicle of the dukes of Normandy, Chretien de Troyes' Byzantine romance C/iges (c. 1175), Marie de France's Lais of the Britons (c. 1170-1178), and Geoffrey of Vainsaufs manual of composition Poetria Nova (c. 1210). Secondly, this article proposes some ways in which medieval translation may work towards an explanation of contemporary metaphors of 'translation', whose participa­tion in the political discourse of globalism may have gone unquestioned. Informed by the medieval perspective, I argue that the metaphorical use of the term translation may obscure the relations of power that take place in cultural and political translation.

1. Translation in the Middle Ages

The medieval Latin term for translation, translatio, is derived from the Latin verb transferre (past participle translatus), meaning 'to carry across', 'to bring across'. Translatio appears consistently for the first time in the second half of the 9th century, after Charlemagne's death in 814 and the dissolution of Charlemagne's Empire in 843, but it gains strength principally in the 12th century.9 Medieval translation is conceptualized very broadly, as a geographi­cal, institutional, cultural and historical process of 'carrying across'. This is due to the fact that, in the 11th and the 12th century, the Middle Ages are essentially a multicultural and a postcolonial society, in a state of flux be­tween Roman and Germanic conquests (Frankish, Saxon, Visigothic), Arabic influences (at the time of the Crusades) and Hebrew influences, and the Celtic substratum. 10 In the later Middle Ages, translatio is used in conjunction with

9 Curtius has traced the conceptualization of the translalia topos to Virgil and Horace: "Graecia ... artes I intulit agresti Latio" (qtd. from Horace in Curtius 1973:29, note 28). "The conviction of the Middle Ages that it was the continuer of Rome had yet another source - in Augustine's philosophy of history" (Curtius 1973:28). The Bible would have supplied more material: "Regnum a gente in gentem transfertur propter injustitias et injurias et contumelias et diversos dolos" (qtd. from Ecclesiasticus 10:8 in Curti us 1973:28). Although elements of the topos have been traced in the period between the 1st and the 9th century, the topos comes together for the first time after the end of Charle­magne's rule. An argument can be made that the topos is formed as the monastic and cathedral schools begin to spread across the continent in the 9th century and serve as the bastion of education and intellectual life until the birth of the University in the 13th century; see Gilson (1976). 10 "All of these identifications are 'post-colonial' in the sense that they take place after the Norman conquest of 1066 and are born of the cultural realignments it forced across Europe" (Warren 2000:245).

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38 An Epistemology of Tension

the words imperium, studium and reliquiae; translatio imperii signifies a transfer of power or dominion (from empire to empire, dynasty to dynasty), translatio studii, a transfer of learning or knowledge (from one geographic place to another), and translatio reliquiarum, a transfer of relics of saints (geographically and between different religions or churches belonging to the same religion).ll In addition, translatus, in its vernacular version translate, is used to refer to the act of translation of texts into Old French. 12 As if to minimize the fluctuation of these transfers and influences, these four mean­ings of trans/atio are usually represented as one movement from the East to the West, from Greece and Troy to Rome to France. There is, finally, one more important meaning of translation developed in the medieval arts of rhetoric: translatio means metaphor. Translatio as metaphor does not ap­pear to operate on the same level as the transfers of power, learning, relics and text, which involve a material action of carrying over from one location to another.13 Rather, metaphor seems to pose a question of transmission, from the literal to the figural, within language itself. Nevertheless, the topos of translatio combines these different transfers without any kind of opposi­tion between the literal and the figural meanings that these terms carry, and, moreover, it does not imply that the transfer of the imperium, studium, and reliquiae is metaphorical. I argue that, in combining these - on the surface -opposite, ifnot incommensurable, meanings of translation into one, the topos of translatio articulates a medieval theory of transmission. The topos ad­dresses two fundamental issues in translation, which are at stake in any transmission: first, how to transmit the object of the transfer (power, knowl­edge, relics), and, second, how to transmit a knowledge gathered in and about the transmission of these objects. As we shall see, in both cases, the linguis­tic is the key to the transfer: transfers of power, learning, relics and text are shown to be operated by means of language, while translatio as metaphor addresses the very means of operation of that language which performs the transfer of objects.

Since the continuum of the material culture of antiquity was broken several times throughout the late antiquity (the fall of the Roman Empire) and the medieval period (the fall of Charlemagne's empire, the Saxon conquest, the

II Translatia is also used with a number of alternative terms such as sapientia, sacerdatium and religia to form the terms translatia sapientiae, correlative to translatia studii, and translatio sacerdotii or translatio religion is, in its meaning of the transfer of religion from East to West. 12 Translater is in fact more rare than other expressions, such as traire en raumanz, metre en romanz. 13 Their difference is underlined with the distinction made between compound names such as translatio imperii, studii, reliquiarum, that is transfer af something (genitive case), and translatio which is used as a single noun in its meaning of metaphor (no object of transfer is identified).

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Zrinka Stahuljak 39

Norman conquest), and since the tension of the multilinguistic, postcolonial condition continued to interrupt the languages of translation - especially on the edges, as Michelle Warren (2000) has argued -, interruptions of trans­fers often took place precisely on the borders between languages as well as between the language and the object of translation. Thus the later Middle Ages are faced over and over again with the problems that the transmission of objects poses. 14 In trans/atio imperii, each transfer of power is seen to be initiated through a linguistic failure, a betrayal ofvassalic oath. In the Roman de Thebes, the vassals betray their two lords, ffidipus' sons Eteocles and Polynices, leading to the transfer of power to Troy. In the Roman de Troie, the vassals Antenor and Eneas betray their lord, the Trojan king Priam, lead­ing to the transfer of power to Rome. The epilogue to ms. P of the Roman de Thebes describes the chronology and the geographical passage of power:

[E]t fu bien ains .xx. ans assise Que Troie fust arse ne prise N'encore n'estoit Rome Ii grans Ne ne fu puis en mout grans tans. (Roman de Thebes 1890, 13289-92; henceforth abbreviated as RTh) [And (Thebes) was besieged a good 20 years before Troy was burnt or taken, and Rome the great was not yet in existence nor would it be for a very long time.]15

In each of the romances, including the Roman de Brut and the Roman de Rou, the transfer of power causes breaks in dynastic lineages, annihilation of the cities, as well as a near genocide of their inhabitants. Moreover, the medieval clerics do not ignore the fact that the transfer of the imperium from Rome to France was also predicated on the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire. Translation of relics, as Caroline Walker-Bynum has shown, was equally a sensitive issue already in the early 12th century: "Fragmentation was, to Guibert [de Nogent], the ultimate insult and scandal; aiding and abetting it by translating and mutilating holy cadavers struck him as obscene" (1992:11). In trans/atio studii, defined mostly in the prologues to the romances, the survival of knowledge is also at stake. Many books have been lost to the literal obscurity of libraries:

14 Due to constraints of space, I limit my discussion primarily to translatia studii, with references to translatia imperii and translatia reliquiarum. Translatia studii addresses two of our translatia idioms, the transfer oflearning and linguistic translation. Translatia imperii and translatia reliquiarum both constitute, in their own right, a large body of texts to cover. For translatia imperii, see Kramer (1996). For translatia studii, see Blumenfeld-Kosinski (1980, 1985), Freeman (1979, 1981-83, 1984), Kelly (1978), Uitti (1995). For translatia reliquiarum, see Riant (1877). 15 All translations from Old French into English are mine.

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40

Ceste estoire trovons escrite, Que conter vos vuel et retraire, En .1. des livres de l'aumaire Mon seigneor saint Pere a Beauvez. De la fu cist contes estrez. (Cliges 18-22; henceforth abbreviated as C)

An Epistemology of Tension

[We find this story, which I want to tell and recount to you, in one of the books from the storage of the Saint Peter library in Beauvais. From that book was this story extracted.]

Un jor quereit en un aumaire Por traire livres de gramaire; Tant i a quis e reverse Qu'entre les autres a trove L' estoire que Daire ot escrite. (Roman de Troie 87-91; henceforth abbreviated as RTr) [One day he [Cornelius] searched in the storage closet to extract from it grammar books; he searched and turned over for so long that among others he found the story that Daire wrote.]

Similarly, knowledge of tens ancianur ('ancient times'; Roman de Rou 1 :14; henceforth abbreviated as RR) is threatened by forgetting: "E si refussent ublie, / s'il escrit n'eussent este" ("They would have been forgotten again, if they had not been written"; RR 1 :63-64), "[ q]uar science que est teiie / est tost obliee e perdue" ("[b]ecause knowledge which has been concealed is soon forgotten and lost"; RTr 19-20). But knowledge is also seen to be languishing in the obscurity of meaning:

[Li ancien] [a]ssez oscurement diseient Pur ceus ki a venir esteient E ki aprendre les deveient, K'i peiissent gloser la lettre E de lur sen Ie surplus mettre. (Lais, "Prologue" 12-16) [The ancients said rather obscurely for those who were to come and who were to learn them, that there they could gloss the letter and there they could place the surplus of their understanding.]

The obscurity which threatens to fragment the work's meaning is polysemy. So the meaning of words is said to have been turned over, "tresturnees de ces nuns" (RR 3:81), or to have passed away, "trespasser" (Lais, "Prologue" 22; RR 3:10). Indeed, Marie de France's statement that the Ancients "assez oscurement diseient" can be read as the Ancients saying, in an obscure man­ner, that those who will come later will be able to "place [there] the surplus of their understanding". But making matters more obscure, "oscurement"

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Zrinka Stahuljak 41

can equally be read as: those who will come later will be able to "place the surplus of their understanding" into the obscurity of what the Ancients are saying obscurely. It is up to future generations, "ceus ki a venir esteient", to "extract", "traire" (Lais, "Prologue" 30), to "re-extract", "retraire" (RTr 42, 112, 131; C19; RR 2:8), and gloss, "gloser", the "sen" which the Ancients "assez oscurement diseient".

What is at issue, then, in translatia imperii, translatia reliquiarum and translatia studii, is the relation of the object to fragmentation in the transfer. More precisely, at issue is the relation offragmentation and wholeness: Will power, body and knowledge be reconstituted in their previous completeness after the act of transmission, which is shown to fragment its object, took place? In an apparent gesture of compensation, the topos of translatia pro­poses a parallel reading along with that of fragmentation: that of completion. In translatia imperii, the destruction which initiates the transfer of power, from the East to the West, is minimized through the establishment of a con­tinuous genealogical structure. Instead of a variety of transfers and influences - Latin and Germanic conquests, Hebrew and Arabic influences, and the Celtic substratum -, the movement is streamlined so as to proceed from Troy to Rome to France. One continuous, uninterrupted blood-line is invented in order to stabilize the ruptures and the dispersion of the imperium in the trans­fer. The final segment of the Thebes-Troy-Rome sequence, the Raman d'Eneas, portrays Eneas, the founder ofthe Roman Empire, as a legitimate, blood-line heir to the Trojan imperium and studium. 16 Eneas' grandson, Brutus, is the founder of Britain in Wace's Raman de Brut. This literary blood-line is extended to historical France, in the 13th century, when the French Capetian kings begin to support their present dominion by their Tro­jan, albeit fictitious, lineage. France has become a biological, natural heir to the imperium and the studium of Troy, through the intermediary of Rome. In translatia reliquiarum, the scandal of fragmentation of bodies is overcome, in the 13th and 14th century, through the use of synecdoche: "[T]he saint is fully present in his or her every part" (Walker-Bynum 1992:285). The figure of the part for the whole is to be recuperated at Last Judgment - Redemption is "the triumph of the whole over part: the gathering together of bones, the rec10thing of skeletons, the restoring of exactly those bits of matter scattered at death to the four winds" (ibid.:284). And in translatia studii, translation becomes a kind of work that ultimately transforms its object into a "great good", "granz biens" (Lais, "Prologue" 25), while the knowledge, "escience" (Lais, "Prologue" 1) flourishes and bears fruit through the revelation of the previously obscure "sen", "meaning" (Lais, "Prologue" 16):

16 For a full explanation of the illegitimacy against which Eneas has to defend himself, see Stahuljak (2000a).

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42

Quant uns granz biens est mult OlZ

Dunc a primes est il fluriz, Equant loez est de plusurs, Dunc ad espandues ses flurs. (Lais, "Prologue" 5-8)

An Epistemology of Tension

[When a great good is heard a lot, then at first it has flourished, and when it has been commended by many, then it has spread its flowers.]

E science qu'est bien ole Germe e florist et frutefie. (RTr 23-24) [And knowledge which has been well heard germinates, flourishes and fructifies.]

Trans/atio studii flourishes in a metaphor of plant growth: it is a topos of plenitude, growth, and continuity.

In addressing the principles of transmission of objects, the trans/atio topos suggests, then, that the work of translation occurs between fragmentation and completion: between destruction or genocide and genealogical fulfillment, between fragmentation and redemption, between obscurity and flourishing. But should we understand translation as fragmentation which is recuperated subsequently, as genealogical, organic, or indeed redemptive, completion, or are fragmentation and completion instead simultaneous with each other? In other words, is translation the original's "ever-renewed latest and most abundant flowering" (Benjamin 1969:72)? Or, are translations "fragments" which "are the broken parts of the vessel" (de Man 1986:91), in other words fragments which remain fragmentary?17

2. An Epistemology of Tension: Between Fragmentation and Completion

In the Roman de Brut and the Roman de Rou, Wace endeavours to provide the etymology for every name of the city, adding the French version of the names to the list of name changes, in an attempt to complete Geoffrey of Monmouth's original. He provides different versions of names in Gallic, English, French, and occasionally Latin: 18

Jesqu'a sun tens longes avant A veit nun Lundres Trinovant Mais pur Lud, qui mult I' enora

17 This is de Man's retranslation ofZohn, who translated "fragments are part ofa vessel" (Benjamin 1969:78). Cf. note 3. 18 "Urb est latins, citez romanz, / cestre est engleis, kaer bretanz" (Roman de Brut 1231-32).

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Zrinka Stahuljak

E mult i fu e surjorna, Fud apelee Kaerlud; Puis sunt estrange home venud Ki Ie language ne saveient, Mais Londoln pur Lud diseient; Puis vindrent Engleis et Saisson Ki recorumpurent Ie nun, Londoln Lundene nomerent E Londene longes userent. Norman vindrent puis et Franceis Ki ne sourent parler Engleis, Ne Londene nomer ne sourent, ainz distrent, si com dire pourent, Londene unt Londres nomee Si unt lur parole garduee. (Roman de Brut 3757-3774; henceforth abbreviated as RB) [Until his time, and long before, Lundres [London] was named Trinovant, but it was renamed Kaerlud, for Lud who honoured it greatly and spent a lot of time there. Then foreign people came who did not speak the language and called it Londoin for Lud. Then the Angles and the Saxons, who recorrupted the name, called Londoin Lundene and they used Londene for a long time. The Normans and the French then came, who did not know how to speak English and did not know how to pronounce Londene, so they pronounced it as best they could and called Londene Londres. And they kept thus their pronunciation. ]

43

In this process Wace shows how subject to the "corruptiun" (RB 1229) the name is through the transfers of the imperium:

Par plusurs granz destruiemenz Que unt fait alienes gens Ki la terre unt sovent eiie, Sovent prise, sovent perdue, Sunt les viles, sunt les contrees Tutes or altrement nomees Que Ii anceisor nes nomerent Ki premierement les fonderent. (RB 1239-46)19 [Through many great acts of destruction which foreigners committed, who often held, often conquered and often lost the land, the names of cities and regions are completely different from the names given to them by the ancestors who first founded them.]

19 This is later repeated in 11. 3775-3784; also in the Roman de Rou 1:77-80.

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44 An Epistemology of Tension

If the name is now completely other, "tutes altrement nomees", what has turned it into something alien? Wace finds the answer to the mutations of the name in its composition: "Que bien pert par corruptiun / faite la compositiun" (RB 1229-30). This can be translated as: "The construction" ("faite") of the composition appears, becomes visible through corruption. In other words, corruption opens the word at the seams of its construction: "Trinovant" is a "Troie Nove". Since the corruption of "Trinovant" shows that its original name was "Troie Nove", translation is, then, understood as corruption: "The construction of the composition appears clearly by corrup­tion", that is, in translation. W ace is suggesting that it is translation that makes the original composition visible, but this moment of visibility of the original composition is at the same time the moment of corruption. It is worth noting that even in Wace's own translation of the name, the spelling of London shifts from "Lundene", in 1. 3767, to "Londene" in the next line. Translation is the name's decomposition; translation is indeed a corruption. The corrup­tion of the proper name would then be inherent to translation and this would be the moment of the fundamental tension of translation, the moment of its double bind: in making visible, it corrupts. While it extracts from obscurity, translation at the same time decomposes and prevents a return to the origin, it places that which it extracted back into obscurity. Such is the double bind of translation: in unveiling, it veils. Translation is the name's decomposi­tion; hence, translation is corruption.

What the corruption of the proper name names, then, is untranslatability, a resistance to translation. The name is untranslatable because the original meaning of the name, which Wace is trying to convey, is displaced by the various modes of intention in the languages of translation, putting them in conflict. Translation may make the original visible, but when the mode of intention in the translation upsets the intended object, this intention corrupts the original. In other words, when the language of the translation upsets se­mantics - as it does most tellingly in the one-letter variation of Londene and Lundene - the mode of intention destabilizes the meaning. The modes of intention in different languages render the name alien, "tutes altrement nomees". Although ostensibly translatable, by allowing itself to be trans­lated (lending itself to translation), the original does not become transparent because meaning cannot be rendered by the mode of intention of the lan­guage of translation. Thus, translatability here means untranslatability, instead of transparency. The original name is untranslatable, since translation leads to the name's corruption, instead of to its complete translation.20 That this is

20 The resistance of the name is untranslatable. Nevertheless, although not translated, the resistance gets transferred: "The transfer can never be total, but what reaches this region is that element in a translation which goes beyond transmittal of subject matter. This nucleus is best defined as the element that does not lend itself to translation" (Benjamin 1969:75).

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Zrinka Stahuljak 45

the case not only for the translation of proper names, but also for translation of common nouns was already suggested by the fact that the proper name for Wace has a meaning and it acts as a common noun.21 But the range of this problem in common nouns is best shown with the frequently used word retraire. Retraire means both 'to recount' and 'to withdraw, to retreat', even 'to refrain':

La verte dire et retraire. (RTr 112) [To speak and recount truth.]

E qui plus set, e plus deit faire: De ~o ne se deit nus retraire. (RTr 31-32) [And he who knows more must do more; no one should retreat from that task.]

The double meaning suggests that that which will be said will also withdraw itself. Indeed, the word sen, which constitutes the object of retraire in the translation of texts, has multiple meanings: it can mean 'meaning', 'under­standing', 'intelligence', 'interpretation' ,22 even 'direction'. Ifwe understand 'meaning' or 'interpretation' as 'direction', then sen is a choice of one direc­tion, while withdrawing from another. In its choice of one direction, translation produces a remainder of translation which has withdrawn from being told. In its withdrawal, the remainder is without a referent; it is indi­cated only as 'it', "l[e]": "Maistre Wace l'ad translate" ('Master Wace has translated it'; RB 7). But we never find out what the 'it' of translation is. Marie de France's "oscurement" can also be read as a remainder, a 'sur­plus': "Assez oscurement diseient / pur ceus ki a venir esteient / ... / k'i peiissent gloser la lettre / e de lur sen Ie surplus mettre" ('The ancients said rather obscurely for those who were to come ... that there they could gloss the letter and there they could place the surplus of their understanding'; Lais, "Prologue" 12, 15-16). Within the obscurity, "i" is where the topic of pro­duction, invention lies: 'there they could place the surplus of their understanding' (my emphasis). The remainder, the obscurity, is the source of an abundant translation into plenitude of sen, into 'completion', 'perfec­tion', and 'accumulation' (terms used by Freeman 1979, Kelly 1978, Uitti

21 I am thankful to Matilda Tomaryn-Bruckner for her comments on this point. 22 Uitti (1973: 135-37). While it is true that these meanings of sen do not have a common etymology - sens as 'meaning' comes from the Latin word sensus, whereas sens as 'di­rection' comes from the Germanic word senna - they do acquire their common form in the 12th century.

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46 An Epistemology of Ten sian

1995). But the recuperation of the remainder from obscurity happens only at the cost of veiling the surplus of sen into obscurity: 'there', that is into the obscurity, 'they could place the surplus of their understanding'. The trans­lation will veil itself, it will withdraw into the "i" of obscurity. The absence of a clear referent for "i" represents precisely the retreat and the inaccessi­bility of the remainder. In other words, translation produces its surplus, its remainder, while it extracts from the initial obscurity. While completing the remainder, translation appears only in fragments. 23

The double bind of untranslatability at the same time completes and frag­ments the translation in the target language. Moreover, if the translation into the target language is based on this double gesture, then the articulation of the very theory of translation is also compromised. In other words, when these texts address their own methodology of translation, usually in the pro­logues to the works, they create their own obscurity, their own remainder of translation. The untranslatability of these texts, then, poses a continued prob­lem in their translation, which has been the case in medieval studies. The medieval theory of translation fails to fully translate itself without producing the remainder, the obscurity, over which the scholars have contended.24 The prologues to the works thus announce that translation may not be able to translate that which is its object. And they announce that it may be impossi­ble to translate the knowledge, the theory of that transmission.

But the double bind of unveiling and veiling does not take place only within the target language, it also occurs between languages. Translators realize that untranslatability is not a product only of the target language which acts to withdraw a part of the intended meaning, sen, of the word into obscurity, but that untranslatability is embedded in a multicultural, plurilinguistic society. In the case of the Roman de Brut and the Roman de Rou, what obscures sen are historical conquests and "corruptions" (the competition of Briton, Saxon, and Anglo-Norman cultures). In the case of the Roman de Troie, multiculturalism is represented in a fictive Latin translation of an apocryphal Greek 'original'. Translators understand that they are in a privileged position to tell us that to which we have no access. And because no one has access to 'it', the end result of translation is coun­terfeiting: "Ceste estoire n'est pas usee, / n'en guaires lieus nen est trovee: / ja retraite ne fust encore" (,This story has not been used up and nowhere can

23 My discussion of the remainder, as that which becomes inaccessible by virtue of the choice made in translation, differs from the use of the term "remainder" by Lawrence Venuti (1998; 2000). For Venuti, drawing on the work of Jean-Jacques Lecercle, "re­mainders" are minor variables in language which destabilize the dominance of major forms. Contrary to my "remainder", Venuti's "remainder" can be released by a transla­tion resisting canonization. 24 Marie de France's "Prologue" to the Lais is an excellent example of the kind of debate that untranslatability can provoke. See Freeman (1984), Dragonetti (1986).

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Zrinka Stahuljak 47

it be found; it has never been recounted'; RTr 129-31).25 In postcolonial times, translation may become an exercise of power of counterfeiting and manipulation: an unveiling that veils.

Operating on two levels - within language and between languages - the double bind of translation is the modus operandi of trans/atio. Trans/atio is predicated on the tension of this double bind of untranslatability, and the works, indeed, tells us that this is the case, when they have recourse to the derivatives of the Latin word tendere ('to stretch out, to make tense, to ex­tend'), such as tem;on, contenron, entendre. The transfer of the imperium is particularly well illustrated in the Roman de Thebes. By provoking a tenran with his Theban lord, the Theban vassal Daire can initiate the transfer of power, by handing over one of the Theban towers to the Greeks: "[T]en<;ot oue lui tant comme Ii plot" ('He disputed with him as he wished'; RTh 1995:9795). In trans/atia studii, knowledge is also subject to tendere. When Homer finished his book of Troy, "e a Athenes 1'0t retrait, / si ot estrange conten<;on" ('and in Athens he recounted it, then there was a strange conten­tion'; RTr 58-59). Knowledge of the Trojan War is subject to 'contention'. This tension is even more remarkable in the use of the word entendre:

E science qu' est bien ole Genne e florist et frutefie. Qui vueut saveir e qui entent, Sachiez de mieuz I' en est sovent. De bien ne puet nus trop olr Ne trop saveir ne retenir ... E qui plus set, e plus deit faire; De 90 ne se deit nus retraire. (RTr 23-28,31-32; my emphasis) [The knowledge which has been well heard genninates, flourishes and fructifies. Who wants to know and who understands/hears, often the better it is for him. One cannot hear too much, know too much, or retain too much of good .... And he who knows more, must do more, no one should retreat from this.]

Ki de vice se voelt defendre Estudler deit e entendre A grevose ovre comencier. (Lais, "Prologue" 23-25; my emphasis) [He who wants to protect himself from vice has to study with the understanding [intention] that he is to begin a difficult work.]

25 "To control a language or an alphabet unknown to the majority is to inhabit a cogni­tive hinterland in which truth and falsehood escape the judgment of others; it is to regulate not only what is known, but also what is not" (Rollo 1995: 195).

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48 An Epistemology of Tension

Entent, entendre, means 'to hear', 'to understand'. But entendre can also be understood as 'tending to, towards', perhaps even as 'intend'. Thus in the Roman de Troie, one tends toward, instead of withdrawing or refraining, and in the Lais, one has to intend to begin a difficult work, "grevose ovre". Entendre is the act of 'intending' in the effort to transmit. This task of in­tending, tending toward, and tensing is what no one should retreat, refrain from: "De 90 ne se deit nus retraire". As we saw, in medieval translation translatability connotes untranslatability, instead of the transparency con­noted by contemporary metaphors of translation. What tenr;on reveals is that even if the original is untranslatable, that is why it needs to be translated. But it must be translated with the knowledge, which the medieval theory is attempting to transmit, that it will be untranslatable. One should inhabit pre­cisely the tension of "dire et retraire" (RTr 112), to recount and to withdraw. In other words, trans/atio studii posits an epistemology through tenr;on. Tenr;on is the condition of possibility of translation .

. Although in attempting to articulate a theory of translation medieval trans­lation intends language, it is nevertheless attached to a transmission of meaning. It therefore creates conflict and tension among various modes of intention. It now becomes clear that translation "cannot possibly reveal or establish this hidden relationship [of languages] itself .... it can represent it by realizing it in ... intensive form" (Benjamin 1969:72). Translation indeed does and does not strive toward pure language. Since translation cannot be pure language, it can only represent it in fragments; translation will never be tensionless. Only pure language will be tensionless, when all the modes of intention are harmonized.

This has several implications for the topos of translatio. First, if trans/alio studii bridges the gap of historical difference (for instance, between the an­tique texts and the medieval context), it does so by transmitting knowledge as a tenr;on. It also means that the transfer of the studium can happen only by creating a tenr;on between 'the original' - be that classical antiquity, the Celtic substratum or Briton culture - and its 'translation', that is the colonizers. Secondly, because translatio studii is transmitting the tenr;on of translatio imperii, translation becomes a locus of tension between the imperium and the studium, the place of conflict between power and knowledge. A certain knowledge about power and the issue of power over this knowledge reveal themselves to be in conflict.

Finally, as we saw, tension is inherent to multiculturalism, the conflict of languages and cultures in the postcolonial period. Difference in languages embodies historical difference.26 Moreover, this tension of historical differ-

26 Rita Copeland has shown in her book Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages, that vernacular translation "exposes the myth of historical continuity by embodying the inevitability of historical difference" (1991: 106). In other words, the ver­nacular is a linguistic disjunction in the assumed historical continuity from the ancients to the medieval clerks.

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Zrinka Stahuljak 49

ence is inscribed already within language itself. Tenr;on ruptures language, the means of transfer of the object, thereby affecting the transfer of the ob­ject, so that the object fragments in the course of its translation. But tenr;on also ruptures language as the means of transfer when it prevents a transmis­sion of the theory of translation in the prologues. To translate an imperium or a studium, then, is to make tense the prologues, the locus of their transla­tion. And it is this epistemology oftension, vacillating between completion and fragmentation, that the topos of translatio, however fragmentarily, trans­mits as a knowledge of and about translation, formulating an epistemology through tension.

3. Translation as metaphor in the Middle Ages

How, then, does metaphor, the figural language, figure in this epistemology of tension? In particular, how does metaphor get articulated in the topos of translatio which posits the conflict between knowledge and power? How and why does the medieval topos inscribe it without tension?

Untranslatability, which, as we saw, operates within language and be­tween languages and which ruptures the translation of objects as well as the transmission of the knowledge of that rupture, is repeated in the very struc­ture of translatio as metaphor. Metaphor, as described in Geoffrey of Vainsaufs Poetria Nova, is an "improprius status" ('changed meaning of words'; Poetria Nova 968; henceforth abbreviated as PN) and the "peregrina sumptio" ('wandering application'; PN 969).27 Both indicate that words, used as translatio, that is as metaphors, do not have a proper place: their position is 'improper' and 'peregrinating'. This reflects Vainsaufs discussion of the general method of figuration which is to "not always allow a word to reside in its usual place; such residence does not suit it; let it avoid its proper place and wander elsewhere, to find a pleasing seat in another's ground" ("Noli semper concedere verbo / in proprio residere loco; residentia talis / dedecus est ipsi verbo; loca propria vitet / et peregrinetur alibi sedemque placentem / fundet in aIterius fundo"; PN 763-67). Metaphor, and figural meaning in general, do not have a proper place in which to reside. Metaphor is always in peregrination, in transfer. Its meaning is always transferred from one 'alien'

27 Although written around 1210, a date considerably later than the dates of the composi­tion of the romances that have been under discussion, Copeland has shown that Vainsauf s work, just like the earlier Ars versificandi (1175) of Matthew ofVend6me, is a synthesis of a "Ciceronian precept on invention and arrangement, Horatian doctrine on decorum, and instructions on style (figures and tropes) derived from early and late medieval gram­marians" (1991: 162). While it covers the same material as the other medieval arts of rhetoric, unlike Matthew ofVend6me, Vainsauf gives the first and longest place of promi­nence to the discussion of metaphor. All translations are Ernest Gallo's.

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50 An Epistemology of Tension

place to another, it is always attached to a borrowed locus. What this implies is that metaphor cannot represent itself in its proper meaning. Trans/atio is essentially divorced from its own representation, the signifier does not rep­resent the signified; rather metaphor is an alien signifier which always represents a signified foreign to itself, to its proper meaning, which it does not have. In other words, trans/atio cannot signify itself while operating a metaphorical transfer, while operating as trans/atio: its signification is al­ienated from the word.

But what is even more important is that trans/atio, metaphor, is articu­lated as peregrinatio, because 'status', stationing, is judged to be 'improper'. In other words, the metaphor has to travel, has to be in translation in order for there to be a translation. Because metaphor is constitutionally unfix able to one proper place, or else there would be no trans/atio, as such, it can only address itself as a metaphor, as peregrinatio: the metaphor of 'peregrina­tion' metaphorizes the metaphor itself, it allows trans/atio to represent itself through this fiction of travel. Trans/atio shows that metaphor is constitutive of all language which would like to speak about its translation. What I argue, however, is, not that all translation is performed with metaphors, but rather that translation is not a metaphor. Because metaphor cannot signify itself while operating a metaphorical transfer, while performing a translation which at the same time does not translate it, the proper meaning of metaphor is that it is a metaphor. Translation is not a metaphor but it can represent itself only as a metaphor. In other words, because translation can only represent itself as a metaphor, metaphor is the sign of a break-down which occurs in the process of translation - metaphor cannot translate itself. Untranslatability ruptures language as a means of transfer, so that it prevents language from communicating about itself as transfer. This literality oflanguage and, there­fore, of transfer, interrupts translation as well as the articulation ofthe theory of translation. 28 Metaphor locates a literal moment, not a metaphoric one, where the theory of translation is interrupted in the act of translation. Para­doxically, then, the metaphor of peregrination stands for the very literality in and of translation which cannot be said - it stands for the epistemology of tension.

The untranslatability of metaphor, then, is exemplary of all translation. Trans/atio cannot say itself while in translation: neither the metaphor nor the topos can articulate themselves in translation, without metaphorizing themselves. But it is precisely the metaphor of translation which masks the fragmentation and the tension in and of translation. Peregrination, a metaphor for trans/atio, a metaphor for the metaphor, creates the identity and the continuity of translation, precisely that which translation lacks, but

28 For a development on the materiality of the letter, see de Man (1986:88-89).

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Zrinka Stahuljak 51

nevertheless simulates. Translatia studii uses the organic metaphors of flour­ishing and fructification, while translatia reliquiarum reconstructs the body metaphorically into a whole, in a gesture of Redemption at Last Judgment. Most important, translatia imperii also uses an organic metaphor of contin­ued 'life', the metaphor of genealogy. Translatia becomes a concept central to the Middle Ages, not because it is complete, but because it can function as a metaphor of completeness.

4. Metaphors of translation and global language

But what does all of the above have to do with our postcolonial, multicultural times? I suggest that untranslatability of the metaphor of translation poses a great danger since the conflict of power and knowledge will be resolved in favour of power precisely because of the untranslatability, or the lack of transparency, of metaphor.

The three main categories of translation, translatia imperii, translatia studii, translatia reliquiarum at first operated independently: they were par­titioned into studium (learning), sacerdatium (priesthood),29 imperium (power; dominion; empire); learning remained in France, the church was in Rome, but the empire went to Germany (Jongkees 1967:50). But by the mid-13th century through the 15th century, they become unified by the genealogical metaphor under the ruling French dynasty ofCapetians (Curtius 1973:29).30 In 987, after the death of Louis V, the direct lineage of Charlemagne died out and Hugues Capet ascended to the throne. His Capetian dynasty, be­cause it had no blood relations to the lineage of Charlemagne, was viewed as a dynasty of usurpers. But by means of a conjugal union with a woman of Charlemagne's lineage the Capetians could fully legitimize their royal power. As Gabrielle Spiegel writes, "the return of the kingdom of the Franks to Charlemagne's root", and with it, the legitimacy of the Capetians, was ac­complished with the birth and reign of Philip-Augustus (*1165; 1180-1223), the son of Louis VII and Adele of Champagne, a descendant ofCharlemagne.J'

29 Sacerdotium and reliquiae are part of another variant in the topos, translatio religion is. 30 By the third quarter of the 14th century, under Charles V, the transfer of both the imperium and the studium is seen indisputably as the work of Charlemagne (Beaune 1985:408). This culminates in the late 15th and 16th century in a realignment of the topos with the invention of the hero Francus, who unites the Trojan and the Frankish lineage of the Capetians. In 1572, Ronsard produces one of the last developments in that tradition in his unfinished epic poem celebrating the hero Francus, 'La Franciade'. 31 The two blood-lines also converge in Louis VIII (*1187; 1223-1226), a son of "two parents descended from Charlemagne" (Spiegel 1997:126), Philip-Augustus and Eliza­beth of Hainault. As Spiegel shows, the actual narrative of the reditus was a belated thirteenth-century development whose "fundamental aims ... had either been achieved or proven unnecessary, if the practical legitimacy of the Capetian accession dates ...

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52 An Epistemology of Ten sian

Thus, in the early 13th century, power associated with Charlemagne becomes associated with the Capetian dynasty. In the same period, different transfers of trans/atio become centered on the French kingdom and bestowed onto the French Capetian royalty: knowledge is firmly anchored, with the rise of scholasticism in the University of Paris (Beaune 1985:405-09; Gilson 1976: 194), and the precious relics from the Middle East, the oriflamme of Charle­magne,32 as well as the remains of the Capetian kings, all rest at Saint-Denis, where starting in 1274, the Grandes Chroniques, the official history of the kings of France, are also being written.33 The French kingdom is privileged as the "daughter of the Church" and as the first kingdom that had resusci­tated the Holy Roman Empire in 800, when Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. 34 All of these transfers are supported by the historical Carolingian and the fictive Trojan genealogy of the Capetians: "French royal history was, so to speak, a seamless web of legitimate rule" (Spiegel 1997: 112). The homogenous discourse of trans/atio, a product and an agent of royal hegemony, creates an image of the earlier French Middle Ages in which the diversity, discontinuity and its inherent multiculturalism are sup­pressed for the benefit of one, ideological discourse of Capetians performed by the metaphor of trans/atio. This discourse becomes so well rooted that during the longest and the most serious crisis of the French monarchy in the Middle Ages, whose throne was at different points successfully challenged by the English monarchs during the Hundred Years War (1137-1453), French writers such as Jean Froissart and Alain Chartier continue to point unequivo-

from the end of the reign of Louis VII" with the birth of Philip-Augustus (ibid.: 127). The legitimacy of the reign of Philip-Augustus renders the development of Louis VIII's birth secondary and unnecessary. See also Folz (1964:285-86). 32 The precious relics include the crown of thorns, a nail and a piece of the wood from the Holy Cross. The royal banner, which Charlemagne supposedly carried with him in his military battles, is a forgery. Nevertheless, a copy of it is still today on display at Saint-Denis. Today Saint-Denis is part of the city of Paris and can be reached by sub­way. In the Middle Ages, Saint-Denis was just outside of Paris, the seat of power of the Capetian monarchy. 33 "Acting simultaneously as an instrument ofCapetian propaganda and, in its own right, as the most comprehensive interpreter of French history, the Grandes Chroniques served to shape and transmit to the nation at large a dominant image of Capetian kingship and its role in the destinies of France" (Spiegel 1997:112). 34 That title was later inherited by German emperors. Likewise, the competition between the French and the Germans over the figure and the legacy of Charlemagne will continue in the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century. It is best symbolized in the national sentiment which was behind the canonization of the Chanson de Roland as the epic of the French nation and in the irreconcilable difference of the competing claims over Charlemagne after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871. See Histoire poetique de Charlemagne (Gaston Paris 1865; 2nd ed. 1905) and Joseph Bedier's 'Reponse Ii Gaston Paris'.

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Zrinka Stahuljak 53

cally to France and the nascent French nation as the end-point of translatio imperii, translatio studii and translatio reliquiarum.

As we saw, translation is performed in conflict between knowledge and power. But the very plurality of the topos of translatio was harmonized by the use of the metaphor of genealogy under the Capetians, so that translation of power and translation of knowledge, which are in conflict, are reconciled. To metaphorize translation is to give power over knowledge and precisely over the knowledge which translatio studii transmits as an epistemology of tension. The metaphorical term translation, then, poses a threat of a hegemonic and homogeneous discourse: the metaphor of translation trans­forms the multiplicity and the irreducibility of translation into one, self-evident, transparent process. It presents translatio as complete and non­mediated. To use the metaphor of translation is to suggest that translation can, precisely, be 'translated' as an all-encompassing theory and ideology. But, as the medieval theory of translation demonstrates, translation is coun­ter-hegemonic. Literality of translation dehegemonizes, because it tenses in its intention: translation does not complete the incomplete, it does not make the obscure transparent, and it excludes when choosing one direction over another. Instead of one process of translation, the medieval theory of trans­lation is a discourse on multiple processes of translation which interrupt each other, just as the theory of translation interrupts its own articulationY Multiculturalism can then be defined through medieval multicultural trans­lation: different languages of translation interrupting each other in their modes of intention because of their focus on the transfer of meaning. The medieval multi-cultural translation resonates with what Paul de Man has called "this errancy of language, which is always displaced in relation to what it meant to reach ... this illusion of a life that is only an afterlife" (de Man 1986:92). And it is this errancy of translation, its interruption and discontinuity which always place it in 'afterlife', that constitutes the unmetaphorical 'life' of history. To take the metaphoricity of translation into account, then, is to account for the errancy of translation, its linguistic impossibility to reconcile meaning and the mode of intention. This does not mean that multicultural translation is only a translation of conflict. Rather, it means that in intending the modes of intention of the original, translation is a grevose ovre. This task of intending, tending toward, and tensing is what no one should retreat, re­frain from: "De 90 ne se deit nus retraire". In other words, multicultural translation must occur under the aegis of an epistemology of tension.

35 "Good translation is minoritizing: it releases the remainder by cultivating a heteroge­neous discourse, opening up the standard dialect and literary canons to what is foreign to themselves, to the substandard and the marginal" (Venuti 1998:11). While Venuti insists that only a minoritizing translation is a good translation, because heterogenous, I suggest that translation, when unmetaphorical, is heterogenous by definition.

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54 An Epistemology of Tension

Translation dehegemonizes, in its specificity, as it, in Benjaminian terms, intends the 'pure' language. At the same time, pure language is outside the purvey of translation because translation still intends meaning along with the mode of intention. As we saw earlier, multiculturalism defined by trans­latability as transparency presents itself as a form of pure language: clear and harmonious, because all-inclusive, translatable and understandable to all (with the emphasis on the understanding of meaning). In this kind of multiculturalism, metaphors of translation connote translatability as trans­parency. However, although Benjamin speaks of harmonizing languages in the "pure language", pure language is not by any means metaphorical. In­deed, as we saw, pure language cannot be attained by metaphor. Pure language is "[iJf there is such a thing as a language of truth, the tensionless and even silent depository of the ultimate truth which all thought strives for ... the true language" (Benjamin 1969:77). Pure language is and its pure 'being' (in the sense that it just is without meaning) is the truth (therefore it is the true language); pure language does not need meaning to be attached to the mode of intention. Since this language just is and it means by being, that is its harmony. In all other instances, 'harmony' of modes of intention would be just another metaphor. Pure language which is displaces the need for the metaphor of harmony. Metaphors of translation convey the illusion of har­mony, although they are not harmonious.

The dominant, global language harmonizes by metaphor, because it presents itself as pure language, harmonized and tensionless. The dominant language would be neutral, because multicultural, and harmonious, because all-inclusive. Unlike the pure language, this one dominant, global discourse maintains only one possible discourse of multiculturalism. While it presents itself as a discourse of multiculturalism - free, because diverse and all-in­clusive - it does so hegemonically. By being a dominant discourse, it becomes a discourse of domination. To use the metaphor of translation, then, would be to suggest that a dominant, global, language would be neutral because all­inclusive. But, as we saw, the literality of language is implicated in the translation of objects or concepts: translation is already about culture, learn­ing, power, religion, gender, ethnicity - it is never neutral. 36 Translation may

36 Perhaps, because it is not neutral, translation is often implicated in upheavals. Maria Tymoczko (2000) makes a similar connection between Irish national emancipation and translation. She advocates that in politically engaged translation, such as in the case of Irish cultural nationalism and Irish political independence, "texts must be chosen for translation with political goals in view, and, if need be, there must be a willingness to manipulate the texts in translation" (Tymoczko 2000:41). Her proposal resonates with the French medieval homogenizing of the topos of translatia by genealogical metaphor. It appears, then, that nationalist movements and global language are equally defined by metaphors of translation. It could be argued that metaphors created by national move­ments have been displaced by global metaphors ofmulti-culturalism.

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Zrinka Stahuljak 55

be the most universal and global of concepts, but, for that reason, it may also be the least neutral. To upset the 'harmony' of the metaphors of translation, then, would be to refuse the hegemonic kind of discourse of multiculturalism, even at the risk of appearing to be anti-multicultural. But that would already be inscribed in the epistemology of tension, for no metaphor of 'translation' can overcome the tension of translating multi-cultural ism and make that trans­lation homogeneous.

ZRINKA STAHULJAK Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, Boston University, 718 Com­monwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. zs@bu.edu

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