51社区黑料

White Space, Loneliness, and Moving with the Stars

Abstract

Inspired by a Q&A published in The Capilano Review, this creative essay investigates translation, Glissant鈥檚 Relation and movement as a connecting force.

Keywords: white space, translation, Relation, language, Glissant.

Language is an imperfect conduit. Translators understand this; there is always something left, hanging behind in the author鈥檚 intention.

In a 2013 conversation for The Capilano Review, two Canadian writers (Susan Holbrook and Nicole Brossard) called this gap 鈥渨hite space.鈥�

鈥淪omething happens in the white space between the versions, something alive that surmounts both languages,鈥� Holbrook said, referring to the English and French versions of Brossard鈥檚 feminist novels.¹

Holbrook saw this white space鈥攂etween the original idea and its transformation to the next language鈥攁s alive and productive. It鈥檚 like crossing a bridge holding one item to unexpectedly arrive on the other side with a different item. The bridge鈥檚 apex (the point of transformation) is that thrilling moment where we locate 鈥渟omething alive that surmounts both languages.鈥�²

In a similar vein, in the introduction to 脡douard Glissant鈥檚 Poetics of Relation, Betsy Wing writes, 鈥渢he stumbling blocks of a translation frequently exist at its most productive points鈥�³ (1990, xi). Wing notes that where a translation falls down is a useful identifier: it reveals an area where two languages (cultures, ways of seeing the world) have yet to meet and forms a new connection. When two readers try to comprehend the same text in their own, unconnected languages, is a moment that Glissant would call Relation.

(Pause to consider: Are translators the original cultural ambassadors?)

But Holbrook and Brossard鈥檚 white space exists elsewhere, too鈥攊n the Relations inside oneself.

鈥淲hat happens in the white space between a work and its translation,鈥� Brossard says, 鈥渁pplies as well to what happens in the blank space between the narrative of the real in one鈥檚 mind and its transformation into written words.鈥�⁴

Her comment reveals a profundity I always suspected but never fully understood. As I write, something metaphysical (what Brossard calls 鈥渇loating semantic material鈥�) takes shape, yet the process of physically writing changes it. The split-second act of fixing the idea on the page leaves something behind. She goes on to argue that even a 鈥渇ixed鈥� text on the page is in a temporary state until the translator or reader picks it up to make their own meaning.

Across all these stages of fumbling鈥攖he brain attempting to convey electrical signals that make up ideas鈥攚hat is left behind? Perhaps, Brossard suggests, a piece of your truest self.

鈥淚n between a work and its translation, meaning is floating among all the fragments which make an identity of yourself,鈥� she says.⁵

So, standing at the apex of that bridge, will I find meaning? Or will I find myself?

*

The imperfection of language is the listless fumbling of one human to another.

...like hands carrying sand...

The inadequacy of language is the anxiety of loneliness. Though we share this journey under the stars, I am alone in my experience. No one in the cosmos knows what it is to resonate at my particular frequency of cellular existence.

Artists are imperfect conduits. The urge to communicate is so strong it drives me into all kinds of energetic nonsense. I want to create work that gestures to something essentially, cosmically true: something that reveals a sweep of logic to the bend of the planets in orbit and the pull of water in the ocean. But the result is often on a less grand scale, revealing only the interior order of my own experience.

When words fail us, we groan, we tremble, and we move. When the electrical signals of thought are insufficient, we translate metabolism into motion and continue living. And when we move, we connect to the poetry of movement that guides constellations, forms volcanoes and creates frothy chaos at the sea鈥檚 edge.

Glissant writes that the world鈥檚 poetic force 鈥渇astens itself by fleeting, delicate shivers, onto the rambling prescience of poetry in the depths of our being.鈥� He suggests that this energy or force will never run dry because it 鈥渋s its own turbulence.鈥�⁶

Deep inside us, cells vibrate, touch, and trade materials in a mysterious economy of exchange that fuels life itself鈥攖he quiet yet essential language of osmosis and diffusion. The quietest of all translations. If I close my eyes, I can feel their resonance.

*

An Invitation to Alignment

Stop for a moment to stand just so on the edge of the planet.

Listen for tectonic plates.

Feel the weight shifting across the small bones in your feet.

Breathe at the pace of the living things around you.

Find pleasure in aligning to the rhythm of the world 鈥渨ithout being able to measure or control its course.鈥�⁷

Sense the space between the crown of your head and a nearby star.

Pause on a bridge between thoughts, like a dandelion seed in the breeze, ready to take flight.

Bibliography

Glissant, 脡douard. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Holbrook, Susan. 2013. 鈥淒elirious Coherence: An Interview with Nicole Brossard.鈥� The Capilano Review 3.19 (Winter) Narrative: 5鈥�14.

Wing, Betsy. 1997. Translator鈥檚 Introduction to Poetics of Relation, by Edouard Glissant, xi鈥搙x Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Notes

1. Nicole Brassard, quoted by Susan Holbrook, "鈥楧elirious Coherence鈥�: An Interview with Nicole Brassard," The Capilano Review, no. 3.19 (Winter 2013): 5.

2. Ibid.

3. Betsy Wing, "Translator鈥檚 Introduction" to Poetics of Relation, by 脡douard Glissant (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), xi.

4. Brassard, quoted in Holbrook, "鈥楧elirious Coherence鈥�," 5.

5. Ibid.

6. 脡douard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 159.

7. Ibid., 124.

51社区黑料 the Author

Rachel Silver Maddock is an independent dance artist and writer based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, and MA Candidate at SFU鈥檚 School for Contemporary Arts. Her movement practice is nourished by the somatic and improvisational techniques of many brilliant artists including Peter Bingham, Helen Walkley, Natalie and James Gnam, Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject and Olivia Shaffer. She sees the body as a site of investigation, tool of expression and mysterious archive.

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