At first it had no name. It was the thing itself, the vivid thing. It was his friend. On windy days it danced, demented, waving wild arms, or in the silence of evening drowsed and dreamed, swaying in the blue, the goldeny air. Even at night it did not go away. Wrapped in his truckle bed, he could hear it stirring darkly outside in the dark, all the long night long. There were others, nearer to him, more vivid still than this, they came and went, talking, but they were wholly familiar, almost a part of himself, while it, steadfast and aloof, belonged to the mysterious outside, to the wind and the weather and the goldeny blue air. It was part of the world, and yet it was his friend.
Look, Nicolas, look! See the big tree!
Tree. That was its name. And also: the linden. They were nice words. He had known them a long time before he knew what they meant. They did not mean themselves, they were nothing in themselves, they meant the dancing singing thing outside. In wind, in silence, at night, in the changing air, it changed and yet was changelessly the tree, the linden tree. That was strange.
Everything had a name, but although every name was nothing without the thing named, the thing cared nothing for its name, had no need of a name, and was itself only. And then there were the names that signified no substantial thing, as linden and tree signified that dark dancer. His mother asked him who did he love the best. Love did not dance, nor tap the window with frantic fingers, love had no leafy arms to shake, yet when she spoke that name that named nothing, some impalpable but real thing within him responded as if to a summons, as if it had heard its name spoken. That was very strange.
He soon forgot about these enigmatic matters, and learned to talk as others talked, full of conviction, unquestioningly.
The sky is blue, the sun is gold, the linden tree is green. Day is light, it ends, night falls, and then it is dark. You sleep, and in the morning wake again. But a day will come when you will not wake. That is death. Death is sad. Sadness is what happiness is not. And so on. How simple it all was, after all! There was no need even to think about it. He had only to be, and life would do the rest, would send day to follow day until there were no days left, for him, and then he would go to Heaven and be an angel. Hell was under the ground.
Matthew Mark Luke and John
Bless the bed that I lie on
If I die before I wake
Ask holy God my soul to take
He peered from behind clasped hands at his mother kneeling beside him in the candlelight. Under a burnished coif of coiled hair her face was pale and still, like the face of the Madonna in the picture. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moved, mouthing mutely the pious lines as he recited them aloud. When he stumbled on the hard words she bore him up gently, in a wonderfully gentle voice. He loved her the best, he said. She rocked him in her arms and sang a song.
See saw Margery Daw
This little chicken
Got lost in the straw
初めそれには名前がなかった。 それはそれ自身であり、鮮やかな存在だった。それは彼の友達だった。風の日には、それは荒々しく腕を振るって踊り乱れ、夕方の静寂においては、青いそして金色の大気の中で揺れながらウトウトと夢を見た。夜になってもそれがいなくなることはなかった。彼が脚輪付きのベッドで布団にくるまっていると、夜の間じゅう、それが外の暗闇でひっそり動いている音が聞こえた。彼にもっと近いところにはそれよりずっと生き生きとした他のものもあった。おしゃべりしながら行ったり来たり、それらはほとんど彼の一部であるかのように親しげだった。一方、それは泰然としてよそよそしく、神秘的な外の世界、つまりは風や空や金青色の大気に属していた。それは世界の一部であり、それでいて彼の友達でもあったのだ。
ごらん、ニコラス。あの大きな木を見てごらん。
木、というのがそれの名前だった。それからシナノキというのも。いい言葉だ。彼は二つの言葉が何を意味するか理解するずっと前から、これらの言葉の存在を知っていた。二つの言葉は自分自身を示すわけではない、自分自身は何ものでもなく、外で歌い踊っているものを指すのだ。風、静けさ、夜、移ろい変わる大気の中で、それは変化するのに、相変わらず木であった。シナノキのままなのだ。不思議だった。
すべてのものは名前を持っていた。どの名前も指し示すものがなければ何ものでもないのだが、当のものは自分の名前について何も気にしていなかった。名前を必要ともしないし、ただ自分自身であるだけなのだ。だが、シナノキが暗闇の踊り手を指すのとは違って、名前が形を持ったものを指さない場合もあった。彼の母親は彼に、一番好きなのはだれ、とたずねた。好きは踊らないし、指で狂ったように窓を叩くこともないし、葉っぱの腕を振るうこともなかった。それでも、母親が何ものをも示さないその名前を発すると、彼の中の触れられずとも確かなものが、まるで呼びかけに応えるように返答した。まるでそれが自分の名前を呼ばれるのを聞いて応答するかのように。とても不思議だった。
彼はやがてこういった不可解な謎のことを忘れてしまい、他の人が話しているように、何の疑問も持たず確信に満ちて話すようになった。
空は青い、太陽は金色、シナノキは緑。昼は明るいが、終わりが来て夜になれば、暗くなる。人々は眠り、朝になるとまた目を覚ます。しかし、いずれ目を覚まさない日がやってくる。それは死だ。死は悲しい。悲しみとは幸せではないものだ。などなど。それにしても、全てはなんと単純明快だったのだろう！考える必要もない。彼はただこうして存在しているだけでいい。後は人生が、一日、そしてそれに続く一日を残りの無くなるまで運んで来てくれる。そして彼は天国へ行って天使になるのだ。地獄は地面の下にある。
マタイ、マルコ、ルカ、ヨハネ
私の寝床をお護りください
目覚める前に死ぬ時は
神の思し召しで天に召されますように
彼は組み合わせた手の後ろで、蝋燭の明かりに照らされながら祈りを捧げる傍らの母親をじっと見つめていた。艶のある巻き毛の下に見える母の顔は、青白く静かで、絵の中の聖母マリアのようだった。目は閉じられ、唇が動いて、彼が声に出した祈りの文句を、声を出さずに唱えていた。彼が難しい言葉に引っかかると、母は素晴らしい穏やかな声で、彼を優しく励ました。彼はお母さんが一番好き、と言った。母は彼を腕の中で揺らしながら、歌を歌った。
ぎっこんばったんマージェリー・ドー
小さなひよこが迷ったよ
麦わらの中で迷ったよ
The beginning of Dr. Copernicus describes how a little child, Nicolas, comes to connect objects and words. At first, he recognizes things as the thing itself and then comes to use words as others do. However, it does not mean he has lost the first impressions. His memories with the linden tree and his mother are deeply rooted in his mind; his vocabulary is based on those impressions. Considering the importance of his memories, I tried to tell the tree’s movement, the color of air, Nicolas’s surprise and the warmness of his home as vividly as possible. For example, “the goldeny blue air” in the first paragraph is not so easy to describe. The sky becomes blue as it becomes evening, but what is the goldeny air? I think it expresses the bright remains of the sun light. So, the half blue and the half gold air suggests the turning point from day to night. As the adjective “goldeny” is a coinage, I also made a coinage in Japanese connecting two Kanji meaning “gold” and “blue”. Another example, the six paragraph (“He peered […] sang a song”), has a warm atmosphere. In the warmth of candlelight, Nicolas gazes at his mother praying. She embraces him and talks to him in a gentle voice. In this quiet room, his mother is solely his. And this becomes the image of “love” in his mind. So, in translation, I tried to keep this atmosphere by using words that evoke tenderness rather than formal ones.
I also took care to write in simple expressions. First, it was difficult for me to decide where I should put in the demonstrative words like “it” and “that” and where I should omit them. For, in Japanese, when the same subjects appear, they are often omitted, I thought repeating “it” in the first paragraph sounded repetitious. However, consequently, I noticed to emphasize “it” is not so strange because it was not a mere index, but also suggested Nicolas’s perception about the tree. At first, the tree is not defined by words. It is just itself. As for “that”, in “That was its name” or “That was strange”, I omitted them because they only function as indexes.
Second, I sometimes separated one long sentences into two short ones to keep it easy to read in Japanese. For example, in the third paragraph, there is a sentence, starting with “Everything had a name”. I started a new sentence after “for its name”. In the new sentence, there are two verb phrases. Their subjects are both “the thing”, which has already appeared as the subject of “cared nothing for its name”. As I wrote before, in Japanese, the same subjects are often omitted. By using this characteristic, the division of a long sentence is possible without adding the same subject again. And thus, I made each sentence easy to read. However, some exaggerations may occur depending on where to divide the original sentence. So, it was one of the main tasks for me to focus on keeping the tone of original text.
John Banville