I clearly recall the day I first became truly aware of myself, I mean of myself as something that everything else was not. As a boy I liked best those dead intervals of the year when one season had ended and the next had not yet begun, and all was grey and hushed and still, and out of the stillness and the hush something would seem to approach me, some small, soft, tentative thing, and offer itself to my attention. This day of which I speak I was walking along the main street of the town. It was November, or March, not cold, but neutral. From a lowering sky fine rain was falling, so fine as to be hardly felt. It was morning, and the housewives were out, with their shopping bags and headscarves. A questing dog trotted busily past me looking neither to right nor left, following a straight line drawn invisibly on the pavement. There was a smell of smoke and butcher’s meat, and a brackish smell of the sea, and, as always in the town in those days, the faint sweet stench of pig-swill. The open doorway of a hardware shop breathed brownly at me as I went past. Taking in all this, I experienced something to which the only name I could give was happiness, although it was not happiness, it was more and less than happiness. What had occurred? What in that commonplace scene before me, the ordinary sights and sounds and smells of the town, had made this unexpected thing, whatever it was, burgeon suddenly inside me like the possibility of an answer to all the nameless yearnings of my life? Everything was the same now as it had been before, the housewives, that busy dog, the same, and yet in some way transfigured. Along with the happiness went a feeling of anxiety. It was as if I were carrying some frail vessel that it was my task to protect, like the boy in the story told to us in religious class who carried the Host through the licentious streets of ancient Rome hidden inside his tunic; in my case, however, it seemed I was myself the precious vessel. Yes, that was it, it was I that was happening here. I did not know exactly what this meant, but surely, I told myself, surely it must mean something. And so I went on, in happy puzzlement, under the small rain, bearing the mystery of myself in my heart.
Was it that same phial of precious ichor, still inside me, that spilled in the cinema that afternoon, and that I carry in me yet, and that yet will overflow at the slightest movement, the slightest misbeat of my heart?
Ich erinnere mich deutlich an den Tag, an dem ich mir erstmals wirklich meiner selbst bewusst wurde, ich meine, meiner selbst als etwas, das nicht all das andere war. Als Junge mochte ich die toten Zwischenphasen in einem Jahr am liebsten, wo die eine Jahreszeit zu Ende gegangen und die nächste noch nicht begonnen hatte, und alles grau und matt und still war, und aus der Stille und Mattheit sich mir, so schien es, etwas näherte, ein kleines, leises, zaghaftes Etwas, und sich meinem Augenmerk darbot. An jenem Tag, von dem ich spreche, ging ich die Hauptstraße der Stadt entlang. Es war November, oder auch März, nicht kalt, sondern etwas dazwischen. Von einem tief hängenden Himmel fiel dünner Regen, so dünn, dass man ihn kaum wahrnahm. Es war am Morgen, und die Hausfrauen waren draußen, mit ihren Einkaufstaschen und Kopftüchern. Ein herumsuchender Hund trottete geschäftig an mir vorbei und sah weder nach rechts noch links, folgte einer geraden Linie, die unsichtbar auf dem Gehsteig gezogen war. Es roch nach Rauch und nach dem Fleisch des Metzgers, und nach dem brackigen Meer, und, wie immer in der Stadt jener Tage, war da der leichte, süßliche Gestank von Schweinefutter. Der offene Eingang eines Eisenwarenladens blies mich bräunlich an, als ich vorüber ging. Wie ich all dies wahrnahm, erlebte ich etwas, dem ich einzig die Bezeichnung Glück geben kann, obwohl es kein Glücksgefühl war, es war mehr und zugleich weniger als ein Gefühl von Glück. Was war geschehen? Was hatte in dieser Alltagsszenerie vor mir, diesen gewöhnlichen Bildern und Geräuschen und Gerüchen der Stadt dazu geführt, dass diese unerwartete und unbestimmte Sache plötzlich in mir wie eine mögliche Antwort auf all die namenlosen Sehnsüchte meines Lebens aufbrach? Alles war doch jetzt das gleiche wie zuvor, die Hausfrauen, der geschäftige Hund, das gleiche, und doch auf irgendeine Weise umgestaltet. Mit dem Glück ging ein Angstgefühl einher. Es war, als ob ich ein zerbrechliches Gefäß in mir trug, das mir zu beschützen aufgetragen war, wie der Junge in der Geschichte, die man uns im Religionsunterricht erzählt hatte, der Junge, der die Hostie verborgen in seiner Tunika durch die liederlichen Straßen des alten Rom trug; in meinem Fall aber war offenbar ich selbst das kostbare Gefäß. Ja, das war es, es war ich selbst, der hier das Geschehen darstellte. Ich wusste nicht recht, was das bedeutete, aber es musste, so sagte ich mir, es musste sicher etwas bedeuten. Und so ging ich weiter, in glücklicher Verwirrung, im leichten Regen, und trug das Geheimnis meiner selbst im Herzen.
War es die gleiche Phiole von kostbarem Götterblut in mir, das sich an jenem Nachmittag im Kino ergoss, und das ich immer noch in mir habe, und das sich bei der leisesten Bewegung, bei dem leichtesten Stolpern meines Herzschlags ergießt?
Comment on the translation of the word “ichor” in Eclipse, novel by John Banville
Peter Täumer
At the end of the “epiphany scene” the author uses the word ichor:
“Was it that same phial of precious ichor… that spilled in the cinema that afternoon…”
It is worth, or rather, inevitable, to profoundly consider how to translate this term – at least when translating the text into German (as I did). The word ichor in English is surely not part of everyday language, even less so the word Ichor in German. Dictionaries and thesauri tell us that ichor is A watery discharge from a wound or The fluid that flows like blood in the veins of the gods (oxforddictionaries.com). For German Ichor we get Blut der Götter or (Medizin) Wundwasser – apparently roughly the same meaning as in English. Now, why bother about the translation – it can simply be Ichor for ichor, can’t it?
Let us now assume we follow the classical modern rule of proper translation, i.e. produce a translated text in such a way that the effect it has on its reader is equivalent to the effect the original text has on the original reader. Then we have to consider that ichor is not a household word in English but it is not extremely rare. Ichor in German on the other hand is a word not known even to many/most university-trained people. This would make for the decision to avoid Ichor in the German translation. It is clear that the meaning Banville intends here is not the medical but the mythological one. If we drop Ichor, we drop the intended clear-cut reference to the ancient gods. And this reference is not negligible because from the preceding text we know that the protagonist feels elated, turned into a “precious vessel”, he even associates a religious story (the Host carrier in ancient Rome). But: The word ichor may trigger such comprehension with at least some English-speaking readers familiar with the myths. It is very doubtful though that there is a countable number of German readers that would have the same association. So, Ichor would run into a dead-end. Reason enough to drop it finally. We have to content ourselves with the fact that there are different cultural backgrounds. Likewise we can often observe that in English literary (and not only literary) texts references to myths and the Bilble are much more common than in German texts.
What then? Since we have to abandon the precise mythological reference, we should try and produce an expression that can at least give the reader a chance to approach an understanding which is not too far from the original idea. I decided to say Götterblut (blood of the gods). This may still sound elated enough to serve well in the intended “anticlimax” of ichor being shed in the trivial scene of a cinema.
John Banville