Calvino - English Translation

[CasTroZ]

Hello everybody !

I'm french and not so good at english... I'd like to insert a quote of Italo Calvino's "A King Listens" in "Under the Jaguar Sun" in my website. I have this text in french but not in english. I've tried a personnal approximative translation :

"For whom lives in anxiety, everys ign that breaks the norm appears as a threat. The lesser sound event seems to announce the ascomplishment of your fears. But can't the contrary also be true ? Prisonner of a cage of cyclic repetitions, you prick up your ears with the hope, at each note, that it will trouble this asphixing rhythm , at each announce, that it prepares a surprise, the opening of the bars, the broken chains."

I'm sure all the words are not english and the sentences are "heavy" ... Is anyone kind enough to look into his personal library to see if he can find this book and give me a decent and official translation ?

Thank you very much !

 

[Shade]

I have William Weaver's English translation of this book, Castroz. But the story is 30 pages long and I don't have time to read through it right now... Can you say approximately where in the story this section appears? Start, middle, end? And is it the beginning of a paragraph, middle, or end? Then I'll try to find it and post it up.

 

[Shade]

Castroz: I've found the piece from the information in your PM. Here is Weaver's take on it, together with the ends of the paragraphs above and below, so you can check if I've found the right part:

[...And you were afraid of it, as you are now.]

The palace is a weft of regular sounds, always the same, like the heart's beat, from which other sounds stand out, discordant, unexpected. A door slams. Where? Someone runs down steps, a stifled cry is heard. Long, tense minutes pass. A prolonged, shrill whistle resounds, perhaps from a window in the tower. Another whistle replies, from below. Then silence.

[Does some story link one sound to another? You cannot help looking for a meaning...]

I must admit this doesn't sound much like the passage you quoted. Perhaps the difficulty is that both your French translator and my English translator have taken the original Italian off in different directions, so the translation is not literal. If I've got the wrong part, let me know and I'll look again.

 

[Shade]

On looking at your PM again, Castroz, I see that my English translation has two full paragraphs in between the previous and next sentences that you quoted, so here is the next paragraph too!

Does some story link one sound to another? You cannot help looking for a meaning, concealed perhaps not in single, isolated noises but between them, in the pauses that separate them. And if there is a story, does that story concern you? Will some series of consequences involve you finally? Or is it simply another indifferent episode among the many that make up the daily life of the palace? Every story you seem to divine brings you back to yourself, nothing happens in the palace unless the king has some part in it, active or passive. From the faintest clue you can derive an augury of your fate.

[Perhaps the threat comes more from the silences than from the sounds. How many hours has it been since you heard the changing of the sentries? ...]

 

[CasTroZ]

I'm sorry, It's the first time I'm on a forum, so I've sent messages in private, by mistake... I've just found the little button to answer here...

 

[Shade]

That's OK Castroz. I've read quickly through the whole story, and the paragraph you quote definitely does not appear in that form in the English translation. The closest I can get is this, from the paragraphs before the first one I quoted above.

The palace is a construction of sounds that expands one moment and contracts the next, tightens like a tangle of chains. You can move through it, guided by the echoes, localising creaks, clangs, curses, pursuing breaths, rustles, grumbles, gurgles.

The palace is the body of the king. Your body sends you mysterious messages, which you receive with fear, with anxiety. In an unknown part of this body, a menace is lurking, your death is already stationed there; the signals that reach you warn you perhaps of a danger buried in your own interior. The body seated askew on the throne is no longer yours, you have been deprived of its use ever since the crown encircled your head; now your person is spread out through this dark, alien residence that speaks to you in riddles. But has anything really changed? Even before, you knew little or nothing about what you were. And you were afraid of it, as you are now.

As you can see, this contains some elements of the paragraph you quoted - chains, anxiety - but not in a recognisable order. It looks as though the two translations - French and English - have diverged in different directions from the original Italian, so it's really impossible to find a literal transposition from one to the other.

Sorry I can't be of more help. But blame the translators!

 

[CasTroZ]

Thank you very much for the time and energy you spent, Shade ! It's a posthumous text, it seems that the translators didn't use the same material... Well, the engish-speaking visitors of my webpage (http://www.myspace.com/castroz) will have to learn a latin language. Bye !