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
Al principio no tenía nombre. Era el objeto mismo, el objeto vívido. Era su amigo. En los días de viento bailaba, enajenado, agitaba brazos salvajes, o en el silencio de la tarde dormitaba y soñaba, meciéndose en el cielo, el aire con tintes dorados. Ni siquiera de noche se marchaba. Envuelto en su cama podía escuchar su lóbrego sacudir afuera en la oscuridad, a lo largo de la larga noche. Había otros, más cercanos a él, aún más vivos, iban y venían, hablando, pero le eran completamente familiares, casi una parte de sí mismo, mientras que éste, firme y apartado, pertenecía al misterioso exterior, al viento y al tiempo y al aire azul con tintes dorados. Era parte del mundo, y sin embargo, era su amigo.
¡Mira, Nicolás, mira! ¡Ve qué árbol tan grande!
Árbol. Así se llamaba. Y también: el tilo. Eran lindas palabras. Las había conocido mucho antes de saber su significado. No significaban ellas mismas, no eran nada por sí solas, significaban aquello que bailaba y cantaba allá afuera. En el viento, en el silencio, por la noche, en el aire cambiante, cambiaba y sin embargo permanecía el árbol, el árbol de tilo. Eso era extraño.
Todo tenía un nombre, pero a pesar de que los nombres no eran nada sin el objeto nombrado, al objeto su nombre lo tenía sin cuidado, no tenía necesidad de un nombre, y era tan sólo sí mismo. Y luego estaban los nombres que significaban cosas inmateriales, no como el tilo y el árbol significaban ese bailarín tenebroso. Su madre le preguntó a quién quería más. El amor no bailaba, ni tocaba a la ventana con dedos frenéticos, el amor no tenía brazos frondosos para sacudir, y sin embargo, cuando ella enunciaba el nombre de aquello que no nombrada nada, algo impalpable pero real dentro de él respondía como si hubiera sido convocado, como si hubiera escuchado llamar su nombre. Eso era muy extraño.
Pronto se olvidó de estos asuntos enigmáticos y aprendió a hablar como los otros hablaban, llenos de convicción, sin hacerse cuestionamientos.
El cielo es azul, el sol es dorado, el árbol de tilo es verde. El día es luz, termina, cae la noche, y luego es oscuro. Uno duerme, y por la mañana se despierta de nuevo. No obstante, llegará un día cuando uno no se despierte. Eso es la muerte. La muerte es triste. La tristeza es aquello que la felicidad no es. Y así sucesivamente. ¡Qué sencillo era, después de todo! Ni siquiera había necesidad de pensar al respecto. Él sólo tenía que ser, y la vida haría el resto, mandaría un día para seguir al anterior hasta que ya no le quedaran días, a él, y entonces se iría al cielo y se convertiría en un ángel. El infierno estaba debajo de la tierra.
Mateo Marco Lucas y Juan
bendigan la cama en la que yazco
si muero antes de despertar
pídanle a Dios mi alma llevar
Se asomó detrás de las manos en plegaria de su madre, quien estaba hincada junto a él, a la luz de la vela. Bajo una impecable cofia de cabello recogido, su rostro estaba pálido e inmutable, como aquel de la Virgen en el cuadro. Tenía los ojos cerrados y sus labios se movían, articulando en silencio las oraciones piadosas mientras él las recitaba en voz alta. Al tropezar en las palabras difíciles, ella lo ayudaba con ternura, con una voz maravillosa y gentil. La quería más que a todos, se dijo. Lo acunó en sus brazos y cantó una canción.
Sube y baja Margery Daw
este polluelo
entre la paja se perdió.
John Banville’s prose has a rhythm that is hard to reproduce; his sentences imitate a thought process, which challenges English grammar and punctuation. Some translations focus on the overall meaning of the text and pay little attention to the rhythm. In the translations I have made, I attempt to recreate in Spanish the sentence structure, the punctuation, and the repetition of words in order to convey the author’s rhythm. Another important aspect that is closely linked to the rhythm of the text is Banville’s use of lexicon. His choice of words and their order invite the readers to defamiliarize themselves with the language and question the structure of the sentences in order to create new ideas and discover subtleties of meaning.
Through his choice of words, structure, and rhythm, as well as the emphasis on the senses and the attention to detail of that which surrounds his characters, Banville transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, almost into the numinous. He extrapolates a particular experience to speak about existence itself. In doing so, he questions established systems like language itself. He is well aware of the limitations language poses; nevertheless, he makes use of its devices to expose its artifice.
In terms of the process of translation, a difficulty one comes across is the impossibility to preserve the alliteration, which gives the prose a poetry of its own. Along the same lines, one encounters complications that surface when a phrase such as “breathing brownly” is to be translated. Banville’s use of synesthesia makes his prose appeal to the senses while referring to abstract concepts; therefore, in order to transmit the reader the same feelings the text in English does, it is essential to convey the general idea of the text without neglecting the play of words as well as the appellation to the senses the author employs.
John Banville