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
はじめ、それは名を持たなかった。それはそれそのものであり、生き生きとしたものだった。それは彼の友人だった。風の日には、荒々しく腕を波打たせながら踊り狂い、あるいは、夕暮れの静寂の中で、青や黄金色の空気に包まれて揺らめきながら、ぼんやり夢想する。それは、夜になってもどこかへ行くことはなかった。脚輪の付いた低いベッドの中にくるまって、彼は長い夜の間ずっと、外の闇の中で密やかにうごめくそれを聞くことができた。もっと近くにそれよりずっと鮮明なものたちが他にいて、お喋りしながら行ったり来たりしていたけれど、こちらはすっかり馴染みになっていて、ほとんど彼の一部になっていた。一方、それは揺るぎなく、超然として、謎めいた外の世界に、風と天気と黄金色に煌めく青い空気に、属していた。それは世界の一部であり、でも彼の友人なのだった。
見てよ、ニコラス、見てってば！この大きな木を見てよ！
木。それが名であった。またの名は、シナノキ。いずれも素敵な言葉だ。彼はその言葉を、それが意味するところを理解するよりずっと前から知っていた。それらはそれら自体を意味するものではなく、それら自体においてはなにものでもなく、外で歌い踊るものを意味した。風の中で、静寂の中で、夜の中で、変わりゆく空気の中で、それは変化したけれども、しかし変わることなく木で、シナノキの木だった。それは奇妙だった。
あらゆるものは名を持つ。しかし、全ての名は名付けられたものがなければなにものでもないにもかかわらず、もののほうは名を気にすることもなければ、名を持つ必要性もなく、ただものそのものとして存在するだけだった。それから、シナノキと木が闇の踊り子を意味するように、実体的でないものを意味する名があった。彼の母親は、誰を一番愛しているか彼に尋ねた。愛は踊らないし、夢中になってその指で窓を叩かないし、揺らすことのできる葉の茂った腕を持たない。だが、彼女が何も指さないその名を告げた時、何か触れられないながらも彼の中に確かに存在するものが、呼び出されたかのように、その名が口にされるのを聞いたかのように、答えたのだ。それはとても奇妙だった。
彼はそのうちにこれらの不可解な事柄について忘れて、他の人たちがそうであるように、確信に満ち、疑問を抱くことなく、話すことを学んだ。
空は青色、太陽は黄金色、シナノキの木は緑色。日は明るく、それが終わると、夜になり、暗くなる。眠り、朝に再び起きる。でも、起きない日がやってくるだろう。それは死だ。死は悲しい。悲しみとは、幸せでないものだ。等々。結局、みんな何と単純なのだろう！考える必要さえなかった。彼はただこうしていれば良くて、あとは人生のほうが過ぎ去る日がなくなるその日まで続きゆく日を送ってくれて、それから、彼は天へと昇り、天使となることだろう。地獄は地下にあった。
マタイ、マルコ、ルカ、そしてヨハネよ
わたくしが横たわるベッドを祝福してください
起きる前に死んでいたならば
聖なる神にわたくしの魂を連れて行くようにと頼んでください
蝋燭の明かりの中自分のそばで跪く母親を、彼は合わせた手の後ろからじっと見つめた。巻き毛の艶髪の下で、彼女の顔は青白く、動きがなかった。それはまるで、絵画の中の聖母の顔のようだった。彼女の瞳は閉じられ、唇は動き、彼が暗唱した祈りの詩句を声を出さずに唱えていた。彼が難しい言葉に出くわすと、彼女は驚くほど穏やかな声で彼を優しく元気づけた。彼は、母を一番愛していると言った。彼女は自分の腕の中で彼を揺らして、歌を歌った。
ぎっこんばったん マージェリー・ドー
ちっちゃなヒヨコが 迷子だよ
麦わらの中で 迷子だよ
Some of John Banville’s works have already been translated into Japanese officially (e.g. Birchwood, Kepler, The Sea, The Infinities, and Ancient Light), and Doctor Copernicus is one of such novels. The translator is Yoshifumi Saito, and the Japanese translation was published in 1992. He is an expert of English literature who has published many translations of English literary works. I thus had to make this project meaningful by translating the passage from my own perspective. I paid particular attention to how to translate the word “it” in the first paragraph.
The passage which I translated is the incipit, and the personal pronoun “it” appears from the very beginning. The first sentence of the novel is “it had no name” though there is no preceding noun which indicates what “it” is. It is because the protagonist Nicholas, who becomes “Doctor Copernicus” (but there is no such description in the part of my translation), is a mere child and he does not know names. Instead of distinguishing “it” by giving it names the “tree” or the “linden” as people usually do, he recognizes “it” as itself instinctively without names. Therefore, it is important to translate “it” with some care.
In my translation, I made sure that readers will understand that the sentences including “it (それ)” are talking about the tree or the linden without showing such names, and in order to do so, I paid attention to some different characteristics between English and Japanese. For example, unlike English, people often compose sentences without specifying their subjects in Japanese. If I repeat “それ” too much, the sentences will become unnatural, so I should keep balance between using and omitting the word. Moreover, I must clearly distinguish “it (それ)” and “they (それら)” in the first paragraph. Although they have similar sounds and forms in Japanese, they refer to different things (i.e. the linden tree and people in Nicholas’ household). Therefore, although “they” is usually translated as “それら,” I used the word “こちら” in order to distinguish it from “それ.” As a result, the translated sentences retain the rhythm of the original while they are natural and understandable as Japanese.
John Banville