This text was part of an address delivered at the Creative Writing Program of the University of Philadelphia, September 2005.
Fiction and the Dream John Banville
A man wakes in the morning, feeling light-headed, even somewhat dazed. Standing in the curtained gloom in his pyjamas, blinking, he feels that somehow he is not his real, vital, fully conscious self. It is as if that other, alert version of him is still in bed, and that what has got up is a sort of shadow-self, tremulous, two-dimensional. What is the matter? Is he “coming down with something”? He does seem a little feverish. But no, he decides, what is afflicting him is no physical malady. There is, rather, something the matter with his mind. His brain feels heavy, and as if it were a size too large for his skull. Then, suddenly, in a rush, he remembers the dream.
It was one of those dreams that seem to take the entire night to be dreamt. All of him was involved in it, his unconscious, his subconscious, his memory, his imagination; even his physical self seemed thrown into the effort. The details of the dream flood back, uncanny, absurd, terrifying, and all freighted with a mysterious weight—such a weight, it seems, as is carried by only the most profound experiences of life, of waking life, that is. And indeed, all of his life, all of the essentials of his life, were somehow there, in the dream, folded tight, like the petals of a rosebud. Some great truth has been revealed to him, in a code he knows he will not be able to crack. But cracking the code is not important, is not necessary; in fact, as in a work of art, the code itself is the meaning.
He puts on his dressing gown and his slippers and goes downstairs. Everything around him looks strange. Has his wife’s eyes developed overnight that slight imbalance, the right one a fraction lower than the left, or is it something he has never noticed before? The cat in its corner watches him out of an eerie stillness. Sounds enter from the street, familiar and at the same time mysterious. The dream is infecting his waking world.
He begins to tell his wife about the dream, feeling a little bashful, for he knows how silly the dreamed events will sound. His wife listens, nodding distractedly. He tries to give his words something of the weight that there was in the dream. He is coming to the crux of the thing, the moment when his dreaming self woke in the midst of the dark wood, among the murmuring voices. Suddenly his wife opens her mouth wide—is she going to beg him to stop, is she going to cry out that she finds what he is telling her too terrifying?—is she going to scream? No: she yawns, mightily, with little inward gasps, the hinges of her jaws cracking, and finishes with a long, shivery sigh, and asks if he would like to finish what is left of the scrambled egg.
The dreamer droops, dejected. He has offered something precious and it has been spurned. How can she not feel the significance of the things he has been describing to her? How can she not see the bare trees and the darkened air, the memory of which is darkening the very air around them now—how can she not hear the murmurous voices, as he heard them? He trudges back upstairs to get himself ready for another, ordinary, day. The momentous revelations of the night begin to recede. It was just a dream, after all.
But what if, instead of accepting the simple fact that our most chaotic, our most exciting, our most significant dreams are nothing but boring to others, even our significant others—what if he said to his wife, All right, I’ll show you! I’ll sit down and write out the dream in such an intense and compelling formulation that when you read it you, too, will have the dream; you, too, will find yourself wandering in the wild wood at nightfall; you, too, will hear the dream voices telling you your own most secret secrets.
I can think of no better analogy than this for the process of writing a novel. The novelist’s aim is to make the reader have the dream—not just to read about it, but actually to experience it: to have the dream; to write the novel.
Now, these are dangerous assertions. In this post-religious age—and the fundamentalists, Christian, Muslim and other, only attest to the fact that ours is an age after religion—people are looking about in some desperation for a new priesthood. And there is something about the artist in general and the writer in particular which seems priest-like: the unceasing commitment to an etherial faith, the mixture of arrogance and humility, the daily devotions, the confessional readiness to attend the foibles and fears of the laity. The writer goes into a room, the inviolable domestic holy of holies—the study—and remains there alone for hour after hour in eerie silence. With what deities does he commune, in there, what rituals does he enact? Surely he knows something that others, the uninitiates, do not; surely he is privy to a wisdom far beyond theirs.
These are delusions, of course. The artist, the writer, knows no more about the great matters of life and the spirit than anyone else—indeed, he probably knows less. This is the paradox. As Henry James has it, we work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, the rest is the madness of art. And Kafka, with a sad laugh, adds: The artist is the man who has nothing to say.
The writer is not a priest, not a shaman, not a holy dreamer. Yet his work is dragged up out of that darksome well where the essential self cowers, in fear of the light.
I have no grand psychological theory of creativity. I do not pretend to know how the mind, consciously or otherwise, processes the base metal of quotidian life into the gold of art. Even if I could find out, I would not want to. Certain things should not be investigated.
The dream world is a strange place. Everything there is at once real and unreal. The most trivial or ridiculous things can seem to carry a tremendous significance, a significance which—and here I agree with Freud—the waking mind would never dare to suggest or acknowledge. In dreams the mind speaks its truths through the medium of a fabulous nonsense. So, I think, does the novel.
The writing of fiction is far more than the telling of stories. It is an ancient, an elemental, urge which springs, like the dream, from a desperate imperative to encode and preserve things that are buried in us deep beyond words. This is its significance, its danger and its glory.
end
الخيال و الحلم
يستيقظ الرجل من النوم ينتابه شعور بالصداع و بعض الدوار ,تغلفه كآبة و ترتعش عيناه، لا زال بملابس النوم باشمئزاز، يشعر بطريقة ما أنه ليس على حقيقته، حيويته، وكامل وعيه، و كأن النسخة الآخرى منه لا تزال في الفراش، و تلك التي استيقظت هي ظله المرتجف، ثنائي البعد، ما الخطب؟ هل " أصابه شيء؟" يبدو أنه محموم قليلاً، لٰكن لا، يقرران ما يعتريه ليس بمرض جسدي، بل بالأحرى شيء ما متعلق بذهنه. يشعر ان عقله مثقلا و كأنه أكبر من جمجمته، ثم فجأةً و بسرعة يتذكر الحلم.
كان واحد من تلك الأحلام التي تبدو و كأنها تأخذ الليلة بأكملها، كان منغمسا في الأمر بأكمله، و وعيه الغير مباشر، ذاكرته، خياله و حتى ذاته الجسدية بدت منهكة بالمجهود، تفاصيل الحلم فاضت من جديد غامضة، سخيفة، مرعبة، و جميعها مثقلة بحمل غامض وياله من حملا لا يأتي الا مع اعمق تجارب الحياة، حياة الوعي, تلك هي, و بالتأكيد, كل حياته, و كل أساسيات حياته كانوا هناك بطريقة ما, في حلمه, مطويين بضيق، كبتلات البراعم، بعض الحقائق العظيمة كشفت له، بفشرة معينة يعلم من أنه لن يقدر على شقها، لٰكن اختراق الشفرة ليس مهمًا، ليس ضروريًا، في الواقع، و كما في العمل الفني، الشفرة نفسها هي المعنى.
يرتدي ملابسه و نعليه و يذهب للطابق السفلي, كل شيء حوله يبدو غريبًا، هل تغيرت عيني زوجته في ليلة و ضحاها ليصبح فيها هذا الفرق الطفيف بين عينها اليمنى لتصبح منخفضة قليلا عن اليسرى، أم أنه لم يلاحظ هذا من قبل؟ القط في زاويته يشاهده بهدوء مربك، يدخل صوت من الشارع، مألوف و غامض في نفس الوقت، الحلم يؤثر على عالمه الواقعي.
يبدأ بإخبار زوجته عن الحلم شاعرًا بقليل من الخجل، لمعرفته ان الحلم ساذج، زوجته تستمع و تهز رأسها بلا تركيز، يحاول أن يعطي كلماته شيئًا من الأهمية الذي كانت في الحلم، انه آت إلى صلب الموضوع، في اللحظة التي استيقظت فيها نفسه الحالمة في منتصف الغابة المظلمة ما بين الأصوات المدمدمة، فجأة، فتحت زوجته فمها باتساع، هل ستتوسل إليه ليتوقف، هل ستصيح بأنها تجد ما يقوله لها شديد الرعب؟ هل ستصرخ؟ لا: تتثاءب بقوة مع القليل من الهمهمات الداخلية، مفاصل فكها تتضارب، و تنتهي بتنهيدة طويلة مرتعشة، و تسأل إذا كان يريد إنهاء ما تبقى من البيضة المخفوقة.
الحالم يجلس مغتمًا، عرض شيئًا قيمًا و رفضته، كيف يمكنها أن لا تشعر بأهمية الأشياء التي كان يصفها لها؟ كيف يمكنها ألا ترى الأشجار العارية و الهواء المظلم، الذاكرة التي تظلم الهواء الذي حولهم الآن، كيف يمكنها ألا تسمع الأصوات المدمدمة كما سمعهم؟ عاد متاقثلًا إلى الأعلى ليجهز نفسه ليوم عادي آخر، يتراجع تأثير الوحي الباهر الذي شعر به بالأمس، إنه مجرد حلم في النهاية.
لٰكن ماذا لو بدلا من قبول الواقع البسيط من أن أحلامنا الأكثر فوضة و الأكثر متعة، قد تكون مملة للآخرين، و حتى شركاء حياتنا, ماذا لو قال لزوجته، حسنًا، سأريكي، سأجلس و أكتب الحلم بطريقة مفصلة و بطريقة مبهرة بحيث أنه عندما تقرأينها، أنت ستحلمين بذٰلك أيضًا, ستجدين نفسك تتجويل في الغابات الضالة عند حلول الظلام، أنت أيضًا سوف تسمعين أصوات الحلم تخبرك بأكثر أسرارك سريةً.
لا يمكنني التفكير بتشبيه أفضل من هذا لعملية كتابة رواية، هدف الروائي هو أن يحلم القارىء بالحلم بدلا من مجرد قراءته، بل لتجربته، ليحلم الحلم، ليكتب الرواية.
الآن هذه تأكيدات خطيرة، في عصر ما بعد الدين فالمتعصبين، المسيحي، و المسلم و غيرهم، يشهدوا أن عصرنا هو للحقيقة ما بعد الدين، الناس يبحثون اليأس لكهنوت جديد، و هنالك ما يجعل الفنان بشكل عام و الكاتب بالتحديد، يبدو كالكاهن: الإلتزام المستمر للإيمان الراسخ، خلطة من الغطرسة و التواضع، الإخلاص اليومي، الإستعداد للاعتراف لنواقص و مخاوف العلمانية، يذهب الكاتب إلى غرفة، الأكثر تقديسا التي لا يمكن انتهاكها، المكتب، و يبقى هناك وحيدا لساعة تلوى الأخرى بصمت مريب، يناجي آلهة خفية، أي طقوس يسن؟ هو بالتأكيد يعرف شيئًا لا يعرفه الآخرون ممن تنقصهم الخبرة، بالتأكيد هو عليم بحكمة خفية بعيدًا عنهم.
هذه أوهام بالتأكيد، الفنان، الكاتب، بالتأكيد لا يعرف أكثر من الشؤون العظيمة في الحياة و الروح من أي شخص آخر، ربما يعرف أقل، هذا هو التناقض، كما قال هنري جيمز، نحن نعمل في الظلام، نقوم بما يمكننا، نعطي ما لدينا، الباقي هو جنون الفن، و أضاف كافكا بضحكة حزينة: الفنان هو الرجل الذي ليس لديه شيء يقول.
الكاتب ليس بكاهن، ليس بطبيب ساحر، ليس حالمًا مقدسًا، و لكن عمله يذج به خارج البئر المظلم حيث تتقوقع الذات خوفا من النور.
ليس لدي نظرية نفسية كبيرة للابتكار، انا لا أدعي بأنني أعرف كيف يصيغ العقل المعدن الأساسي للحياة اليومية فيحوله بقصد أو بدون إلى الفن الذهبي، حتى إن استطعت معرفته، لن أكون أريده، أشياء معينة لا يجب البحث فيها.
عالم الأحلام مكان غريب، كل شيء هناك مرة حقيقي و غير حقيقي، الأشياء الأكثر تفاهة و سخافة تبدو كأنها تحمل أهمية هائلة، أهمية لن يتجرأ العقل المتيقظ لن يتجرأ على الاقتراح أو التعريف بها أبدا, و هنا أنا أتفق مع فرويد، في الأحلام يخرج العقل حقائقه وسط هراء رائع، كذلك هي الرواية برأيي.
كتابة الأدب أكثر من مجرد سرد القصص،فهي حدث قديم أساسي يزدهر كالحلم، من حاجة يائسة لترميز و حفظ أشياء مدفونة داخلنا بعمق يتجاوز الكلمات، هذه هي أهميتها، خطورتها، ومجدها.
النهاية
Interview with Dr. Inas and Abdullah
Abdullah, you translated Banville’s text, and Dr. Inas, you served as editor for the translation. Describe the way the two of you worked together on this project.
Dr. Inas: We were in an intercultural communication class, and our chapter about translation describes it as a bridge between two cultures. We read articles on the role of translators as
mediators, and then Abdullah started drafting the first version of his translation of Banville’s “Fiction and the Dream.” We then edited it several times before we settled on the final version.
What did you learn from this experience?
Abdullah: Literary translation is not easy.
Dr. Inas: Yes—in literature, authors include their thoughts, emotions, and culturally bound terms and expressions. This makes it harder for the translator to mediate precisely, because some terms may not have equivalents in the target language. The translator has to make difficult choices, and that’s where translation becomes a kind of art. What was the biggest challenge you faced in translating this piece?
Inas: The biggest challenge was reaching an agreement on some word choices, because the editor should not dominate the translator.
What are your thoughts and reflections on John Banville’s text, and on what he says about the art of writing fiction?
Abdullah: Banville stamps uniqueness within his lines. He encourages readers to always right their thoughts and feelings to arrange them into fiction, similarly to how a dream is constructed.
How would you describe Banville as a writer, based on the style and themes of this short text?
Abdullah: He is unique and very entertaining. He definitely puts his personal flavor into his views of literature, and conveys that to his readers. That makes his text worth knowing, for readers of other languages.
Was this experience helpful to you in terms of your own teaching or research, or in terms of your ideas about translation and linguistics?
Dr. Inas: This experience reminded me of my first job as a freelance translator and editor back in 1998, when I was a trainee for the Middle East Times newspaper. Seeing Abdullah
working on the text and developing his own translation, and watching it gradually moving from a draft to a finished product, was a very special experience—like a flashback, but this time, I was the trainer.
In terms of teaching and research, especially in linguistics courses, I’ve always been attracted to ways to link hard dry facts with practical projects where students see the rewards of their work.
Would you be willing to supervise other AUK students, if they wanted to contribute translations of other passages to the Banville project?
Dr. Inas: Yes, I would love to do this again, and perhaps next time I will write a paper about the importance of hands-on experience in reinforcing ideas and concepts in students’ minds.
Tell us about your prior experience (if any) translating literary texts.
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Abdullah: I worked on newspapers with Dr. Inas in her Language in The Arab World class, as well as in a media translation class. They were different from the translation of literature, since in translating news, I believe you just need to be equally informational to deliver the right note to an audience. In literature, the richer the text being translated, the more a translator needs to find ways to balance how is the text going to be evenly delivered. The beauty of translation is that it shows the uniqueness of every language.
Would you recommend this experience to other students?
Abdullah: Yes, we have a number of students interested in this field. Dr. Inas is always keen about including the translation aspects of linguistics in her teaching, knowing that majority of AUK students are bilingual Arabic-natives. And translation of literature is to me the most promising translation activity: if I see a good translator of literature, then I know that they can translate anything.
“Fiction and the Dream” is a text that tries to explain why writers write fiction—what they are trying to accomplish, and what they want their readers to think and feel and imagine. So we turned to AUK professor and award-winning fiction writer Taleb Alrefai for his comments on Banville’s text. Specifically, we asked whether he can relate to Banville’s analogy, that the process of creating fiction is like trying to share an incredibly vivid dream with a reader—or, as Banville puts it, to “make the
reader have the dream.”
Dr. Alrefai responded, “To be honest I personally never wrote a scene of fiction based only on a dream… I believe in real life and realism as the main source of writing. So a scene in fiction
is a complicated prose combination of a real life scene and the writer’s imagination and language… When we sleep, our subconscious runs the dream process, whereas the writing process depends on both the conscious and the subconscious. So a dream may affect some of a writer’s works, but a dream itself can’t create a fiction.”
John Banville