This reminded me of a chapter in Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar that I like to think of now and then. I just went and read it, and I was pleasantly surprised at just how close a line of it comes to that line. But the chapter is a debate between both sides. I wish I could reproduce all of it, it makes me so happy to read it. I'll see if I can get about half of it in. Mr. Palomar is at a Toltec pyramid in Mexico, and his Mexican friend is telling him stories about the layers of allegorical meaning in the bas-relief sculptures. Meanwhile a group of schoolchildren is going around, and every now and then Mr. Palomar hears their teacher listing off some features of and facts about the carvings, and concluding each time, "We don't know what it means." And now let's see how much I can fit in here:
Though Mr. Palomar continues to follow the explanation of his friend acting as guide, he always ends up crossing the path of the schoolboys and overhearing the teacher's words. He is fascinated by his friend's wealth of mythological references: the play of interpretation and allegorical reading has always seemed to him a supreme exercise of mind. But he feels attracted also by the opposite attitude of the schoolteacher: what had at first seemed only a brisk lack of interest is being revealed to him as a scholarly and pedagogical position, a methodological choice by this serious and conscientious young man, a rule from which he will not swerve. A stone, a figure, a sign, a word reaching us isolated from its context is only that stone, figure, sign, or word: we can try to define them, to describe them as they are, and no more than that; whether, beside the face they show us, they also have a hidden face, is not for us to know. The refusal to comprehend more than what the stones show us is perhaps the only way to evince respect for their secret; trying to guess is a presumption, a betrayal of that true, lost meaning
Behind the pyramid is a passage or communication trench between two walls, one of packed earth, the other of carved stone: the Wall of the Serpents. It is perhaps the most beautiful piece in Tula; in the relief-frieze there is a sequence of serpents, each holding a human skull in its open jaws, as if it were about to devour it.
The boys go by. The teacher says: "This is the Wall of the Serpents. Each serpent has a skull in its mouth. We don't know what they mean."
Mr. Palomar's friend cannot contain himself: "Yes, we do! It's the continuity of life and death; the serpents are life, the skulls are death. Life is life because it bears death with it, and death is death because there is no life without death...."
The boys listen, mouths agape, black eyes dazed. Mr. Palomar thinks that every translation requires another translation, and so on. He asks himself: "What did death, life, continuity, passage mean for the ancient Toltecs? And what can they mean today for these boys? And for me?" Yet he knows he could never suppress in himself the need to translate, to move from one language to another, from concrete figures to abstract words, to weave and reweave a network of analogies. Not to interpret is impossible, as refraining from thinking is impossible.
Once the school group has disappeared around a corner, the stubborn voice of the little teacher resumes: "No es veridad, it is not true, what that senor said. We don't know what they mean."
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zvi
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Date: 2008-05-16 05:43 am (UTC)This reminded me of a chapter in Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar that I like to think of now and then. I just went and read it, and I was pleasantly surprised at just how close a line of it comes to that line. But the chapter is a debate between both sides. I wish I could reproduce all of it, it makes me so happy to read it. I'll see if I can get about half of it in. Mr. Palomar is at a Toltec pyramid in Mexico, and his Mexican friend is telling him stories about the layers of allegorical meaning in the bas-relief sculptures. Meanwhile a group of schoolchildren is going around, and every now and then Mr. Palomar hears their teacher listing off some features of and facts about the carvings, and concluding each time, "We don't know what it means." And now let's see how much I can fit in here:
Though Mr. Palomar continues to follow the explanation of his friend acting as guide, he always ends up crossing the path of the schoolboys and overhearing the teacher's words. He is fascinated by his friend's wealth of mythological references: the play of interpretation and allegorical reading has always seemed to him a supreme exercise of mind. But he feels attracted also by the opposite attitude of the schoolteacher: what had at first seemed only a brisk lack of interest is being revealed to him as a scholarly and pedagogical position, a methodological choice by this serious and conscientious young man, a rule from which he will not swerve. A stone, a figure, a sign, a word reaching us isolated from its context is only that stone, figure, sign, or word: we can try to define them, to describe them as they are, and no more than that; whether, beside the face they show us, they also have a hidden face, is not for us to know. The refusal to comprehend more than what the stones show us is perhaps the only way to evince respect for their secret; trying to guess is a presumption, a betrayal of that true, lost meaning
Behind the pyramid is a passage or communication trench between two walls, one of packed earth, the other of carved stone: the Wall of the Serpents. It is perhaps the most beautiful piece in Tula; in the relief-frieze there is a sequence of serpents, each holding a human skull in its open jaws, as if it were about to devour it.
The boys go by. The teacher says: "This is the Wall of the Serpents. Each serpent has a skull in its mouth. We don't know what they mean."
Mr. Palomar's friend cannot contain himself: "Yes, we do! It's the continuity of life and death; the serpents are life, the skulls are death. Life is life because it bears death with it, and death is death because there is no life without death...."
The boys listen, mouths agape, black eyes dazed. Mr. Palomar thinks that every translation requires another translation, and so on. He asks himself: "What did death, life, continuity, passage mean for the ancient Toltecs? And what can they mean today for these boys? And for me?" Yet he knows he could never suppress in himself the need to translate, to move from one language to another, from concrete figures to abstract words, to weave and reweave a network of analogies. Not to interpret is impossible, as refraining from thinking is impossible.
Once the school group has disappeared around a corner, the stubborn voice of the little teacher resumes: "No es veridad, it is not true, what that senor said. We don't know what they mean."