跨越疆界：論魯西迪《摩爾人的最後嘆息》中翻譯的借喻 - 政大學術集成

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(1)Crossing the Frontier: A Study of Tropes of Translation in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh. A Master Thesis Presented to Department of English,. 立. 政治大. National Chengchi University. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. by Huang Shao-wei June, 2010.

(2) To my dear parents 獻給我的父母. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iii. i n U. v.

(3) Acknowledgement I remember that years ago when I invited Dr. Chiu to be my advisor, I told him that “I want to write a thesis not only in order to graduate.” Thesis writing is a precious opportunity to concentrate on how to solve a problem. To me such opportunity was hard to obtain in the first two years of the MA program because of the limited time during the paper-laden semesters. The long process of thesis writing is thus an invaluable opportunity to examine my own attitude toward reading, writing, and problem solving. This process of examination became an enlightening dialogue with my inner self, a dialogue in which I groped mentally for a conscientious attitude of how to solve the problem proposed in the thesis and for an understanding of the limitation of my ability. This dialogue also provided a link to my daily life because the theme for both thesis writing and daily life is to solve problems, and to solve the problem the first thing is, like writing a thesis, to find the nucleus of the problem, which is the most significant and difficult lesson I came to learn all this way. This was the great challenge to me because for too long a time (especially in the first two years of MA program), I was too inadvertent to distinguish between simply writing down the notes to hand in term papers for grades and concentrating on the nucleus of the problem. In the previous case, it is just like barking up the wrong tree. It is the latter that I aim to learn from thesis writing. By this distinguishing, however, I am not. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. saying that all of the content of my thesis has completely solved the problem, but I did. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. realize the significance of sincerely facing the problem when writing an academic essay, and then articulate myself. Because of this realization, all of the frustration and joys of the research have consequently formulated an enlightening process for me, and I’m deeply appreciated that I had such a precious opportunity to be enlightened with this concentration and at this age. Upon the completion of this thesis, I owe the highest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Chiu, who has kindly provided me with continuing guidance and showed exceptional tolerance to my sluggish and poor writing style. I would also like to thank Dr. Chen Yin-I and Dr. Su Jung for their kind suggestions with respect to the application of theory to my thesis. I would also like to express the appreciation to my former classmates Yang Tsung-hua, Chou Ting-jia, Wu Pao-han, Huang Ling-yu, and Chang Yao-sheng, who provided me with considerable research materials and helpful advice. 最後，我想對我的父親及家人獻上最誠摯的感謝，感謝他們在我這條漫長的寫作路程上對我的絕對支持及信任。沒有他們的包容和體諒，我無法完成眼前的任何一切。最後的最後，我要對我的女友妡宇說聲謝謝，感謝她寬容我這六年來. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 任性、緩慢的生活步調與個性。她一直以來默默的支持是我在這條孤獨的路上極大的鼓舞。另外，也感謝妡宇的家人不時為我打氣，讓我出門在外也能感受到如家人般的溫馨關懷。 iv.

(4) Table of Contents. Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………………….iv List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………….....vi Chinese Abstract…………………………………………………………………..…vii English Abstract……………………………………………………………………....ix. 政治大 Chapter 1. Reflection and Translation………………………………………………..12 立 Introduction................................................................................................................... 1. 1.1Regression of the language of man............................................................. 12. ‧ 國. 學. 1.2 Reflection as translation............................................................................. 17. ‧. 1.3 Contemplation as translation...................................................................... 24. sit. y. Nat. 1.4 Ursprung as the language of God………………………………………...27. io. er. 1.5 Repetition with difference……………………………………………...…34 Chapter 2. Beyond Binary Oppositions and Towards the Realm of the Immanent….41. al. n. v i n Ch 2.1The Illusory borderline.................................................................................43 engchi U. 2.2 Liminality as the key to the immanent.........................................................50 2.3 Windowless monad and the manifestation of immanence………………...60 2.4 Beyond Subject-Object terminology……………………………………...70 Chapter 3. These and Faeces: Relationship between One and Many...........................87 3.1 Politics of Replacement and Windowless Monad………………………...89 3.2 Flâneur as the trope of translation………………………………………....96 Conclusion……………………………………………..……………………………105 Works Cited................................................................................................................108 v.

(5) List of Abbreviations. 學. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. ‧. Nat. y. OGTD. “The Task of the Translator”. io. sit. TOT. n. al. er. MLS. 政治大 The Moor’s Last Sigh 立 Imaginary Homelands. ‧ 國. IH. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v.

(6) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要. 論文名稱：跨越疆界：論魯西迪《摩爾人最後的嘆息》中翻譯的借喻指導教授：邱漢平博士. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. 研究生：黃紹維. ‧. 論文提要內容：. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. 在《摩爾人的最後嘆息》中，魯西迪藉由虛實交錯的敘事呈現繁複混雜的羊皮紙式的歷史書寫：層層俱現也層層剝除，在不斷越界的同時一方面也暗示代表答案的核心永遠到不了的事實，也描繪出印度多元種族並存的歷史地景。本論文擬以華特〃班雅明的翻譯理論之觀點逐章剖析小說中不同的翻譯借喻(tropes of. Ch. i n U. v. translation)。班雅明的翻譯理論不同於傳統重視意義的翻譯理論，其立論中心在於以直譯的思維來否定二元對立、相互取代的尋常認知模式以彰顯翻譯事實上不屬於原文亦不屬於譯文。換言之，其立論精神在於強調語言不只是訊息的傳遞，因為過度強調意義的地位時，就有過度為譯入方或譯出方服務的傾向出現。置放於後殖民情境中時，以翻譯的門檻位置檢視殖民者與被殖民者的關係於是有擺脫符號的固有組合方式，展現原屬被大寫歷史壓抑、無法言傳的部份之功用在。第一章以魯西迪的寫作脈落背景與班雅明的翻譯理論結合作出發點來闡釋班雅明翻譯理論的中心思想如何與魯西迪的寫作主題切合。此外並介紹班雅明的翻譯理論的多種理論性面向，探討其理論如何以實現屬於先驗(transcendental)層次的純粹語言為目標來彰顯其於下層的啟迪並以此為目標帶來新意、跨越人世間的扭曲疆界。. engchi. 第二章以剖析魯西迪在其作品中亟欲破除的疆界迷思為出發點來與翻譯理論的中介性(liminality)與內在性(immanence)作連結並進一步以此連結觀照小說中各個翻譯借喻。第一部份將以中介性為主題，論述魯西迪在敘事過程中以嘲諷 vii.

(7) 二元對立的虛假不實來表達反詮釋、工具化的訴求。他巧妙地運用史實與神話並置的敘事來嘲諷以接續、回溯為目的之傳統史觀的虛妄不實。本部份將配合萊布尼茲的無窗單子概念將翻譯理論應用於閱讀女主角歐蘿拉的童年啟迪經驗及其畫作。第二部份進一步申論隱藏在此敘事之下的則是一個反詮釋、反工具化的超人類經驗概念，此部分將以內在性為主題，以班雅明理體架構中對先驗層次的討論來進一步探討跨越二元對立的界限後，追求主客體經驗怯除的可能境界及連結。第三章將進一步擴大以無窗單子閱讀翻譯理論，以探討翻譯理論中一與多的本質為主題來檢視小說中一與多的關係。一般咸認為「多」是讚揚多文化混雜主義的不二法門。多數與少數、明與暗、純與雜以至於不同族群間的關係在先驗上並非處於相互對立的靜止認知架構，而是一場不斷進行流動的分與合的過程。因此最適合觀照此過程的是一種動態式的概念。班雅明在其翻譯理論中以「切線輕觸圓周」的明喻強調語言親屬架構中分屬不同表意模式的語言在如切線般輕觸代表純粹語言的圓周後，一瞬間參透奧秘而繼續往前發展正是表達了無窗單子中一與多的思維體系。. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. viii. i n U. v.

(8) Abstract In The Moor’s Last Sigh, Rushdie presents a narrative of juxtaposition of history, myth and family saga in a palimpsest fashion, in which layers of vision imbricate upon each other. Reiterating the permeability of the borderline, the vision of palimpsest in fact emphasizes the crossing of the border and also intimates the impossibility of obtaining a final answer. In this thesis, I use Walter Benjamin’s translation theory to probe into the tropes of translation of the novel in the sense of border crossing. The first chapter begins with the concept of human defectiveness shared by Rushdie and Benjamin, focusing on the theme of digression of Rushdie’s narrative style and that of Benjamin’s theoretical methodology, which is also the axis among his broad theoretical framework. Benjamin’s translation theory is different from the traditional ones in its emphasis on literal translation rather than on free translation.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. Free translation in the service of meaning could not communicate essence through translation, for the meaning communicated between tool languages is void in its nature. The conception of the use of languages as substitution between signs are inessential, because such activity of substitution remains within the barrier of the multiplied tool languages, which generally forms the problematic of regression in Benjamin’s translation theory. Tropes of translation, in the light of Benjamin, manifest the act of border crossing from a lower level of human to a higher level of high purposiveness. Chapter two centers on the theme of binary oppositions of the novel. By the discussion of binary oppositions epitomized as theses and faeces as borderline, I aim to elaborate on the aspect of anti-utilitarianism of Rushdie’s narrative. I argue that under that theme of binary opposition and a deferring narrative, which points to an ultimate answer but always turns out to be disillusion, Rushdie intimates something beyond the limit of human experience. I will view this aspect of novel in the vein of Benjamin’s essay “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy.” What Benjamin anticipates in the essay is thus a new philosophy stripped of the episteme of. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. subject-object. Rushdie does portrait few of such superhuman scenes in the novel like the deracination fantasies, the unconscious act resulted from his non-communalism background and the world of fancy. Through these descriptions, what Rushdie ix.

(9) pursues is apparent the indefinable and the provisional that is stripped of the confinement of binary opposition and utilitarianist idea because binary oppositions and utilitarianist are two significant factors forming the authenticity myth that he consistently criticizes. Furthermore, if Benjamin regards the idea of using the reason freely as falsehood, the concept of freedom also accordingly becomes another problematic, just as he repudiates the function of free translation in his translation theory because its emphasis on the exchange of meaning is confined in the human-fabricated and distorted barrier. Rushdie also shows a strong disbelief in the self-claimed and definitive authentic myth, which he implies as theses. In other words, it is the artificiality that they both criticize. Thus I argue that the concept of Rushdie’s literary critique of the idea of authenticity formulates very similarly to Benjamin’s philosophical critique of freedom. The issue of the definitive theses and the provisional possibility of the faeces thus lead to the last part of discussion in my thesis – the relationship between One and Many. The last chapter probes into the relationship between One and Many to conclude the dynamic image of Benjamin’s translation theory. The One as pure language does not produce or subsume the particular modes of intention as Many. It does not keep a causal relationship with them because it belongs to the high purposiveness, which can only be manifested through the intentions of all single functions. And unlike the. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. definitive theses which seek to marginalize or replace the others, the One as an absent presence harmonizes Many simply by its absent presence. Because of such special relationship, the retaining of the presence of the One seems to be rendered redundant. Nonethelss, it must be emphasized that the particular modes of intentions as Many cannot be examined without the term of the One, because, speaking in the context of translation, every time of the act of translation recalls to the One as pure language, which is also the presence that makes this very act necessary and possible. Through the delineation of the relationship between One and Many, what is to be mapped out is the presence of essence in the special relation. In the novel Rushdie does the same thing with the play of the idea of binary opposition and an experimental narrative that seeks to subvert the status of traditional history, leaving the problem of genuineness for the reader to decide, and sometimes beyond the matrix of human experience. The absent present One that is not fully describe symbolizes the simultaneous superimposition and effacement of the palimpsest vision. What the reader can do is to choose their own idea among the multiplicity that Rushdie throws in the face of their interpreting desire. It is also this multiplicity which lets in the provisional truth that. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. the reader seeks and expands the frontier of possibility that is not to be institutionalized by any institutionalizing ideology. x.

(10) Introduction. ―To cross into another language, another way of being, is to take a step toward beatitude, the worldly blessedness to which all dharma bums aspire.‖ -- Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line. Ⅰ. Overture Among Salman Rushdie‘s encyclopedic, magic realistic and digressive writing. 政治大 theme of border crossing is inclusive of variegated significance behind the two words. 立 features, broder crossing has been a consistent theme through his writing career. The. ‧ 國. 學. To cross the border means to break the now existent and recognized rules of system. It is a challenge to demarcate once again, whether physical or intangible, what is. ‧. feasible and what is untenable, what is normal and what is abnormal, or what is moral. sit. y. Nat. and what is base. Fabricated or demolished in the aftermath of wars or conflicts,. n. al. er. io. borders are sometimes to be found to be elusive or arbitrary, but are always dangerous. v. to cross. To cross the border can be shock because at the parting with the hackneyed,. Ch. engchi. i n U. newness and truth can sometimes be hard to tolerate when the façade of reality is stripped away. Therefore, the border to cross is sometimes not space but time. The new needs friends just as the truth may not be received smoothly when revealed. However, a point more significant is that how to cross these borders and thus let the newness and truth erupt. In The Moor’s Last Sigh, the novel to be discussed in the thesis, Rushdie pay less attention to the issue of nation or colonialism, rather he concentrates more on the problematic of representation which includes cinema, paintings, and visual cultures. By these representations, Rushdie delineates how the normality is constructed and how to subvert these definitions and cross the borders. 1.

(11) 2. The protagonist Moraes Zogoiby nicknamed Moor, who epitomizes the minority groups of India, experiences how it is to be the embodiment of diverse cultural and religious values. Moraes‘s narrative method of paralleling fictions alongside historical events not only destabilizes the conventional status of history but also invites the reader to once again consider the definitive borderlines of our reality. The reliability of official history are being challenged, and the play of opposite words, people, religious belief, and cultures recurs throughout the novel as if reflecting and satirizing the conventional value of dichotomizing things to opposite poles. Readers thus find. 政治大 ostensible story to the other, but always find them return to the intersection from 立 themselves placed amid the permeable layers of narration, straying from one. ‧ 國. 學. which they depart and have to contemplate things all over again. The purpose of multiple juxtapositions of story-history and digressive mode of narration is to let the. ‧. newness erupt according to Rushdie as he explained in an interview. ―I wanted a. sit. y. Nat. different community. Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses looked at the. n. al. er. io. bourgeois Muslim community, and I wanted to shift gear. It wasn‘t about fear or. v. censorship, but freshening up. There was a slight distancing in choosing a different. Ch. engchi. i n U. minority group because I didn‘t want to write an angry book, or try to get even‖ (―The last laugh‖ 20). Rushdie attempts to keep the things moving forward instead of being stagnant and definitive. However, the force that drives behind border crossing could be manifested in various ways. In this thesis, I‘m going to read The Moor’s Last Sigh in the light of Walter Benjamin‘s translation theory. The thesis will be unfolded with the examination of the tropes of translation in the novel and I will further going on to expound that how these tropes can be viewed as the manifestation of illumination according to Benjamin‘s theory. The synopsis of the thesis and method of correlating Benjamin to Rushdie go as.

(12) 3. the following. First I will introduce Rushdie‘s exiled circumstances and his attitude towards the writing experience in such predicament and investigate the relationship between his exiled experience and delineation of the novel. Then I will correlate Rushdie‘s concept of writing and translation with Benjamin‘s translation theory to justify my approach of reading in the light of Benjamin by probing into the affinity of Rushdie‘s personal experience and background of the novel with Benjamin‘s conception of translation. Translation, for both Rushdie and Benjamin, is not simply the conveying of meaning and information. Rushdie considers himself a translated. 政治大 of ―the minority of minority‖ in The Moor’s Last Sigh. Rushdie anticipates that 立 man as he epitomizes such a figure in the narrator Moraes, who is the representative. ‧ 國. 學. something new could appear in a figure like Moraes who straddles between different ethnicities and experiences the process of translation as he goes through various. ‧. milieux. According to Benjamin‘s renowned essay ―The Task of the Translator,‖. sit. y. Nat. translation is a process of probing into the existence of essence. Benjamin contends. n. al. er. io. that in translation the original and the translation resemble pieces of fragments, which. v. do not necessarily look similar but when they are placed together, the afterlife of the. Ch. engchi. i n U. original and essence will erupt. The task of translator, Benjamin elaborates, is to secure a liminal position between the original and the translation where the translator can find the intention of the original in the language which s/he will translate into. Through this liminal position, the translator is thus able to innovate beyond the immediate reality. Adopting the approach of Benjamin‘s translation theory, the thesis aims to investigate diverse tropes of translation in the novel. However, to further elucidate Benjamin‘s translation theory and to correlate it closer with the texts to be discussed, the introduction of Monadology by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz will be necessary. The idea of monad plays a central role in Benjamin‘s theoretical contexts in.

(13) 4. that it provides Benjamin with a detailed framework for his discourses, and, most significant of all, also a framework that is not limited to the capacity of human beings. Together with the idea of monad, I aim to use Benjamin‘s translation theory to probe into the nonhuman fantasy that constantly appears throughout the novel. The fantasy often appears when the character, especially Moraes, face crises. The fantasy may appear to be just illusionary solution but what is more significant is that Rushdie, through the introduction of these fantasies which is beyond human limit, raises the level of the possible strategies that readers may adopt to read deeper into the content. 政治大 ones like ethnicity, religions, and fundamentalism, which are conundrums fabricated 立 of the novel. When they found that the dilemma the characters face are constantly. ‧ 國. 學. by human being themselves, Rushdie offers a possible solution which urges us to stand outside the frame of the humanistic, and leave the secular world behind in order. ‧. not to be restrained by its decrees and definitions. How the essence is manifested and. sit. y. Nat. conflicts reconciled in such a new level or what are muted in the previous history are. n. al. er. io. tasks to be done with Benjamin‘s translation theory and the idea of monad. Rushdie‘s. v. narrative method resembles the idea of Benjamin‘s translation theory in that it does. Ch. engchi. i n U. not let the readers to go through the story smoothly. He indicates the unreliability of the narrator and thus renders the readers‘ sense of reading. They have to pause and contemplate whenever there is a digression and the process of narration thus looks like a roundabout way of hide-and-seek. Although it seems to be digressive, but it‘s actually interactive with readers that demands their participation to construct the story they want to believe in. Reading the novel in the light of Benjamin, I aim at applying the idea of ―multiplicity in the unity‖ and ―repetition with difference,‖ which derives from the formulation of monad, to Rushdie‘s attempt to cross the borders of cultures. In the novel, various characters have shown a strong will to cross the borderline of the.

(14) 5. secular. The desire to jump out of the worldly confinement intimates the challenge to the endless frontier. To Rushdie and Benjamin the idea of ―definition‖ and ―correctness‖ are provisional and fluid. Although Moraes cannot witness the coming of harmony even at the end of his life, it is undeniable that Rushdie‘s repetitive tropes of translation do show us the will and the way to the aurora of redemption and harmony, as Moraes‘ comment for Vasco Miranda the racist may be a good footnote for the will: ―The best, and worst, were in us, and fought in us, as they fought in the land at large. In some of us, the worst triumphed,; but still we could say – and say. 政治大 Translation does not only mean the movement between languages, as the 立. truthfully – that we had loved the best‖ (MLS 376).. ‧ 國. 學. conventional concept of translation does. Benjamin‘s translation theory aims at the manifestation of the vast culture crystallized in the words and the immanent truth. ‧. beyond the barrier of languages. Thus in the following chapters diverse representation. sit. y. Nat. in the novel will be examined as the tropes of translation. In this introduction the. n. al. er. io. motivation of reading the novel with Benjamin‘s translation theory will be first. v. elaborated. In chapter one the basic framework of Benjamin‘s translation theory,. Ch. engchi. i n U. Leibniz‘s concept of monad, and Benjamin‘s idea of reflection will be introduced to further understand the nature of his translation theory and analyze the Aurora the painter. In chapter two I will use Andrew Benjamin‘s study on translatability and his secularized elaboration of Benjamin‘s translation to provide on alternative view on the theory and the analysis of the essence that both Rushdie and Benjamin pursue. In chapter three, I will look into the figure of Moor as ragpicker and flâneur as tropes of translation together with Charles Baudelaire‘s idea to illustrate the ragpicker and flâneur‘s ability to convert the unnoticeable into the source of illumination..

(15) 6. Ⅱ. Translation as border crossing Holding border crossing as the theme in his writings, Rushdie always stresses the creative aspect of his being a migrant, the part of the commingling cultures. When Rushdie talks about the complicated origins and identities of the Indian writers in England, he comes to assert that because of their diverse backgrounds which form their identities, it is hardly possible to apply the categories for ethnic groups to the Indo-British community. He admits that in a society where diasporic experience becomes much more common than before being an Indo-British writer means to face. 政治大 the English language, which Rushdie contends an option they cannot reject because 立. problems of definition. What these writers share among their diverse backgrounds is. ‧. ‧ 國. language.. 學. the task of the Indo-British writers is to make their own purposes in the use of English. Languages, as the basic prerequisite for the understanding of translation to be. sit. y. Nat. discussed here, should never be regarded merely as a tool to acquire information or a. n. al. er. io. borderline that marks self and other. Languages are treated by man no more than a. v. tool because they are usually being used to communicate and understand something. Ch. engchi. i n U. people already knew. It thus becomes communicating some already known information in a different way or as if playing a same song with another musical instrument. The problem among languages as a result becomes reduced to technical problems, which are the study objective of linguistics. When the language becomes a role fixated like that, it is definitively nothing no more than a tool. Nonetheless, what Rushdie and Benjamin look for is something not fixated by the words, something unlimited by what is already known, or something transformed during the experience among languages, as Benjamin argues ―[f]or language is in every case not only communication of the communicable but also, at the same time, a symbol of the.

(16) 7. noncommunicable,‖ (―On the Language as Such and on the Language of Man‖ 331) or, as Rushdie refers his linguistic experience in his identity of being a migrant: ―Born into one language, Urdu, I‘ve made my life and work in another. Anyone who has crossed a language frontier will readily understand that such a journey involves a form of shape-shifting or self-translation. The change of language changes us. All languages permit slightly varying forms of though, imagination, and play.‖ (Step across This Line 373) The process of making a writer‘s own purpose in the use of English language, then,. 政治大 realm where diasporic writers leave their trace of cultural struggling and where their 立 brings the experience of cultural commingling. English, therefore, becomes a peculiar. ‧ 國. 學. identity is gradually formed. Rushdie further argues his idea of translation when he ―embraces English:‖ ―The word ‗translation‘ comes, etymologically, from the Latin. ‧. for ‗bearing across.‖ Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is. sit. y. Nat. normally supposed that something always lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to. n. al. er. io. the notion that something can also be gained.‖ (IH 17) Rushdie‘s belief of the gain. v. originated from the interlingual experience provides a link to Benjamin‘s translation. Ch. engchi. i n U. theory. The fundamental point that we can correlate Benjamin‘s translation theory to Rushdie‘s personal experience is an approval of literal translation inferred in both of their writings. The binary view of loss and gain in the process of translation has been the debate when we come to terms with free translation and literal translation. The methodology of free translation is to translate a work of foreign language into the translation language as if the work is originally written in the translation language. This process of domesticating the foreign language aims to give the readers comfortable reading experience even when they encounter works of foreign languages. Free translation.

(17) 8. fabricates an illusion of transparency which makes the foreign languages unnoticed to convey the information smoothly as if the structure of different languages is parallel and interchangeable. Nevertheless, such domestication of foreign languages ignores the discrepancies between languages and consequently leaves behind the cultural diversity in the process of translation. The loss of discrepancies and diversities of culture is what Rushdie refers to something lost in translation. Moreover, this loss caused by the ignorance is methodologically at odds with Rushdie‘s idea of embracing a foreign language but needing to adjust it to the writer‘s own purpose, because he. 政治大 foreign language that they might find ―reflection of other struggles taking place in the 立. emphasizes it is in the process of adjusting and struggling their ambiguity towards the. ‧ 國. 學. real world,‖ and to ―[c]onquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free.‖ (IH 17, my emphasis) Rushdie‘s concern of Indo-British writers like. ‧. him is their attitude towards the use of English. He insists that they should make it for. sit. y. Nat. their own purpose and ―can‘t simply use the language in the way British did,‖ (IH 17). n. al. er. io. because to do so the multi-faceted cultural features would be muted by the method of. v. domestication and value of the various languages would be ignored as if any idea of. Ch. engchi. i n U. any language is interchangeable by any single language. In other words, the writers‘ idea should not be subdued by the intending way of ―English English‖ in order to gain something new in the process of translating their ideas into the language. In ―The Task of the Translator‖ Benjamin holds a basic belief in literal translation. He contends that literal translation is the method of raising the level of the languages instead of treating them as tools which convey information only. He states that there is no precise equivalent between any two languages, just like there is no exact objective alikeness of the image of reality. Therefore, in translation it is not possible, according to Benjamin, that the original and the translation are exactly the.

(18) 9. same. He describes the original and their translation by a metaphor of fragments of a vessel. Not resembling each other though, they can be recognized as a part of the same vessel1. In addition, Benjamin defines the relationship between the original and the translation with a biological metaphor which he argues that translation issued from the original as the ―afterlife‖ of it. Being the afterlife of the original, translation infers to have experienced a period of growth and even death. Benjamin quotes Rudolf Pannwitz‘s observation of translation, which he admires as ―the best comment on the theory of translation that has been published in Germany (TOT 80),‖ to illustrate the. 政治大. relationship between the original and the translation in an alternative and practical. 立. way:. ‧ 國. 學. ―…The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be. ‧. powerfully affected by the foreign tongue. Particularly when translating. sit. y. Nat. from a language very remote from his own he must go back to the primal. n. al. er. io. elements of language itself and penetrate to the point where work, image,. v. and tone converge. He must expand and deepen his language by means of. Ch. engchi. i n U. the foreign language.‖ (81, my emphasis). The expansion and depth, which translation, as the afterlife of the original, goes through during the growth, are regarded by both Pannwitz and Benjamin as the purpose of translation. In addition, it must be stated that Benjamin pursues a much higher level of truth than Rushdie‘s idea of translation. The goal of Benjamin‘s translation theory is as profound as ideas in his other theoretical works. Take the 1. The vessel is a metaphor of the pure language, the ultimate intended object which cannot be intended by any single one language but has to be intended by all languages through the process of translation. For Benjamin, the presence of pure language is an absolute force that drives the need of translation. The idea of pure language will be discussed later in a detailed and broader sense. What is emphasized here is the relationship between the original and the translation, and the correlation of Rushdie and Benjamin‘s translation theory..

(19) 10. passage quoted above as an example. ―The point where work, image, and tone converge‖ is not to be manifested in any single work or language but solely in the difference between the original and translation encountered in the process of translation. The point is an instant that crystallizes the whole difference of the culture and formation belonging respectively to the original and translation. The instant is what Benjamin calls the moment of illumination, which emanates from the infinitude of languages. Translation is the manifestation of ephemerally recalling into the infinite essence and Truth. Thus to look for the tropes of translation which manifests the Truth. 政治大 provides the theoretical ground for Rushdie‘s incessant intention of pushing out the 立. in a higher level is the thematic core this thesis aims at. The infinitude of languages. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. frontier and permeability of the borderlines.. Ⅲ. Tell the truth in other ways. sit. y. Nat. It should be now clear that translation is not limited to the barrier of languages. n. al. er. io. and it is to cross the fixated border in the pursuit of more dynamics and infinite. v. possibilities. Illustrating with his experience of embracing English, Rushdie pushes. Ch. engchi. i n U. the frontier to writing style. The Moor’s Last Sigh, he contends, is written in the motivation to reclaim his hometown which is replaced and thus seems to be lost to him. As his first post-fatwa novel, The Moor’s Last Sigh was forced to complete without any access to his hometown. Under such circumstances, memory and imagination are thus significant to reclaim the hometown. Fragmented as they are, the shards of memory are for Rushdie as the unflawed memories, to which he relates as ―the broken pots of antiquity, from which the past can sometimes, but always provisionally, be reconstructed.‖ (IH 12) To him, official history and reality are never the ultimate proof to rely on, and writers often have to re-invent the past as a fiction.

(20) 11. for their own purposes. It is not any more inferior to those made by the official or public, and at the same time offers an opportunity to reflect on the word ―reality:‖ [T]hat the fiction is telling the truth at a time in which the people who claimed to be telling the truth were making things up. You have politicians or the media or whoever, the people who form opinion, who are, in fact, making the fictions. And it becomes the duty of the writer of fiction to start telling the truth. (―Fictions are lies that tell the truth‖ 73) Together with the use of imagination and a digressive writing style, Rushdie‘s. 政治大 describes as ―the kind of writing that stood … at the frontier between both the 立. commitment is to tell a kind of truth that one couldn‘t tell in other ways, which he. ‧ 國. 學. cultures.‖ (76) To sum up, it is to tell the story in a new other way, other than the fabricated reality. However, it must also be noted here again that this telling in a new. ‧. other way is essentially different from the concept of conventional translation, which. sit. y. Nat. is to tell a thing in the other language, and means to tell something in an already. n. al. er. io. known way. On the contrary, what Rushdie perseveres in his idea is to innovate for a. v. realm always unknown and beyond the reach of now, which is also the task of any. Ch. engchi. i n U. literary people and a paradigm of the pursuit of Truth..

(21) Chapter Ⅰ Reflection and Translation. 1.1 Regression of the language of man This chapter will begin by introducing Rushdie‘s concept of human beings‘ defectiveness and that of Benjamin‘s to elaborate the details of Benjamin‘s translation theory. The defectiveness at issue is to Rushdie the reason to always tell the truth in a new, often digressive, way, and to Benjamin the main problematic in his whole theoretical framework including the translation theory. The elaboration of the concept. 政治大 but also correlate the theory closer to Rushdie‘s writing. By the correlation I aim at, 立. of defectiveness can not only understand more about Benjamin‘s translation theory. ‧ 國. 學. first, Rushdie‘s incentive of endlessly crossing the border and, second, the meaning of the thing beyond the border that he pursues. The thing beyond the border, to speak. ‧. more precisely, is what we call the truth or correctness in comparison with the. sit. y. Nat. objective reality or history. Since Benjamin‘s translation theory is concerned not only. al. er. io. with the two essays that discusses the problem of language, ―On Language as Such. v. n. and on the Language of Man‖ and ―The Task of the Translator,‖ but also with his. Ch. engchi. i n U. other theoretical works, I will also elaborate his idea of reflection, which forms his basic philosophical framework, to further investigate the nature of his linguistic philosophy. In relating his fragmentary memories as ―the broken pots of antiquity, from which the past can sometimes, but always provisionally, be reconstructed,‖ Rushdie shares a notion of human regression with Benjamin‘s linguistic philosophy (IH 12). Mentioning the fragmentary memories he employs on account of his diasporic background, Rushdie states his idea of the incompleteness of human beings: ―We are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. 12.

(22) 13. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase‖ (IH 12). Partial and fractured, human beings‘ assertion of claiming the truth or knowledge are severely doubted and criticized by Rushdie that he does not rely on the conventional narrative in his novel but using the fragmentary memories to construct his stories to shake the very ground of what is commonly known as ―history,‖ leaving the problem of reliability and correctness for the reader to decide. Roaming in the divergent ways of Rushdie‘s narrative, the reader is left the task of deciding what they choose to believe and if what they believe is correct, which Rushdie considers more significant than what is. 政治大 Similarly considering human nature as defective, Benjamin focuses on the 立. defined as ―history‖ or ―correct.‖. ‧ 國. 學. problem of language of man to discuss the fall of human beings. In the essay ―On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,‖ Benjamin alludes to Genesis of the. ‧. Bible to contend that the language is never mere signs essentially. God‘s language. sit. y. Nat. gives birth to things in the world. God uses language to simultaneously name things. n. al. er. io. and create them. God‘s word is assimilated into things created and is cognizant in. v. things because God‘s word is the name. God‘s language is both creative and the pure. Ch. engchi. i n U. medium of knowledge. Afterwards, God bestows the creative language on man when he creates him. Although the language is not divinely creative in man anymore, it remains as the pure medium of knowledge. Thus man is able to summon things before him and name them according to the knowledge because man is the knower in the language. However, after the Fall of man, when man starts to have the knowledge of good and evil, the naming language is replaced by human word where contemplation is substituted by abstract judgment. The languages man uses no longer possess the immanence and are not the pure medium of language; the name no longer points to the thing itself and enters into the knowledge of good and evil which is nameless:.

(23) 14. Name steps outside itself in this knowledge: the Fall marks the birth of the human word, in which name no longer lives intact, and which has stepped out of name language, the language of knowledge, from what we may call its own immanent magic, in order to become expressly, as it were externally, magic. The word must communicate something (other than itself). This is really the Fall of language-mind. (―On Language as such and On the Language of Man‖ 327, his emphasis) The loss of the immanence of the language causes the confusion of meaning and. 政治大 thing itself, but means something else. Therefore, human language is regressive and 立. multiplication of languages. The word of the language not only doesn‘t point to the. ‧ 國. 學. broken in the sense that the transcendental immanence is deprived of it. It is, in Benjamin‘s words, only a step to linguistic confusion (328).. ‧. Thus in ―The Task of the Translator‖ Benjamin limns the broken and dispersed. sit. y. Nat. human languages as fragments of a broken vessel. The task of the translator is to. n. al. er. io. restore the linguistic fragments to its original shape. The broken vessel is a metaphor. v. for the pure language, the language which God uses and bestows on man before the. Ch. engchi. i n U. Fall. After the Fall, pure language is dispersed and hidden among the mutually exclusive human languages which, however, possess kinship to each other. Each of these languages has its peculiar intention and through the supplementation of these intentions pure language could be manifested: … all suprahistorical kinship of languages rests in the intention underlying each language as a whole – an intention, however, which no single language can attain by itself but which is realized only by the totality of their intentions supplementing each other: pure language. (TOT 74) As mentioned in the introduction, what is discussed here is not the alikeness between.

(24) 15. languages but rather supplementation of modes of intention of languages. The loss of the immanence of human language, Benjamin contends, can be restored through the pursuit of pure language. The belief in the regression of human beings shared by Rushdie and Benjamin is apparent, but what Benjamin delineates in his translation theory is remarkably out of the reach of human experience and cognizance. What Benjamin attempts to construct is a non-anthropocentric theory. Pure language exists out of the human world because it is not a tangible language and thus out of any semantic intention. It implies the existence of God, the representation of the absolute. 政治大 of the human cannot be sought in their own realm of world but a higher one. 立. Truth. It is the medium between God and the human. Benjamin insists that redemption. ‧ 國. 學. Translations do not exist and serve for the sake of the human. They should be the flowering of the original governed by a high purposiveness:. ‧. Being a special and high form of life, this flowering is governed by a The. relationship. between. life. and. sit. purposiveness.. y. high. Nat. special,. n. al. er. io. purposefulness, seemingly obvious yet almost beyond the grasp of the. v. intellect, reveals itself only if the ultimate purpose toward which all single. Ch. engchi. i n U. functions tend is sought not in its own sphere but in a higher one. (72) The purpose is not present and controlled by mankind, just as they cannot grasp fully the realm of the immanent and infiniteness of the language. Benjamin emphasizes in this passage that his target is the thing outside of anthropocentric subject-object relationship, or to speak conversely, the experience generated through the experience is limited and unaccountable. The infiniteness and poetic experience outside the linguistic signifying system, to sum up, is not to be achieved by the anthropocentric subject-object relationship which is discernible from the beginning paragraph of ―The Task of the Translator:‖.

(25) 16. In the appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful. Not only is any reference to a certain public or its representatives misleading, but even the concept of an ―ideal‖ receiver is detrimental in the theoretical consideration of art, since all it posits is the existence and nature of man as such. (69) Translation is deemed by Benjamin as afterlife of the original. The language of the original grows with time. The growth and transformation are not caused by the work itself and do not serve it. Therefore, the question of whether if an artistic work is. 政治大 translation as Benjamin maintains: 立. translatable is not necessarily dependent upon the human if it essentially calls for a. ‧ 國. 學. One might, for example, speak of an unforgettable life or moment even if all men had forgotten it. If the nature of such a life or moment required that. ‧. it be unforgotten, that predicate would not imply a falsehood but merely a. sit. y. Nat. claim not fulfilled by men, and probably also a reference to a realm in. n. al. er. io. which it is fulfilled: God‘s remembrance. Analogously, the translatability of. v. linguistic creations ought to be considered even if men should prove unable. Ch. engchi. to translate them. (70 his emphasis). i n U. The level of Benjamin‘s translation should now be very clear that it‘s not the same as the general translation originated from the need of conveying information, which is ultimately a conception of the tool. Benjamin envisions redemptive possibility not by the standard of the human but something absolute as the pure language which provides a possible connection between the human and God. Therefore, philosophers‘ task, in Benjamin‘s diverse discourses, is always to restore something intact from the chaos caused by the human – who has lost the immanent or the original in nature but paradoxically pretends as if everything is still in its integrated form – to a harmonious.

(26) 17. state, admittedly provisional but manifests the illumination in the wrecked nature. In other words, Benjamin in his linguistic philosophy emphasizes that compared with the pure language, other languages belonging to mankind is regressive and distorted. The bourgeois concept of language which regards the conveying of information as the only and most significant function of language is for Benjamin a systematizing desire to invent a uniform and linear illusion: … we posit a being of uniform substance and complete reality and call it Humanism …… It is a fundamental principle of human perception and. 政治大 need for systematization, we see in these varied series certain properties, 立 cognition that we can do such a thing only if, as a consequence of our innate. ‧ 國. 學. which appear to be similar or identical, more distinctly, and emphasize these similarities more strongly than the difference. . . . Such kinds of Humanism. ‧. are . . . arbitrary. (OGTD 40). sit. y. Nat. Human beings‘ fabrication of illusion is one of the most significant problematic in. n. al. er. io. Benjamin‘s theoretical framework. So is it in his linguistic philosophy. Translation,. v. therefore, is designated by him a method to simultaneously reveal the fabricated. Ch. engchi. i n U. bourgeois illusion and the presence of the pure language. To illustrate how the human with the deficient nature of their language can reveal the pure language provisionally, it is essential to look into Benjamin‘s idea of ―reflection‖ in his doctoral dissertation ―The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism.‖. 1.2 Reflection as translation Reflection is a style of thinking and a type of thinking most preferred by the German Jena Romantics. In attempting to prove that reflection is not only thinking that does thinking about itself, the Romantics are eager to recover what is thought of.

(27) 18. reflection of its impossibility in the realm of experience in the history of philosophy. They endeavor to recover the concept of reflection as the guarantee of the highest source of knowledge, and to establish it as a theory of knowledge. For them reflection guarantees the knowledge of noumenon, which, for the history of philosophy, is a meaningless unreachable realm for human beings and is outside the conventional subject-object relationship. This traditionally enigmatic realm is regarded by the Romantics the Absolute which is accessible only through reflection. The pursuit of noumenon resonates with Benjamin‘s seeking for the poetic experience in the. 政治大 The Romantics see the nature of reflection ―a warrant for its intuitive character.‖ 立. translation theory.. ‧ 國. 學. (―The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism‖ 121) Moreover, a concept of particular infinity in the process of reflection is also a factor that they base their. ‧. epistemology on the concept of reflection: ―Reflective thinking won its special. sit. y. Nat. systematic importance for Romanticism by virtue of that limitless capacity by which it. n. al. er. io. makes every prior reflection into the object of a subsequent reflection‖ (123).. v. Intuition and infinitude are two keys to illumination of the Absolute. Because of the. Ch. engchi. i n U. feature of making every prior reflection into the object of the subsequent ones, reflection is also defined as ―reflection of a form‖ (122). Benjamin quotes Johann Fichte‘s argument to illustrate the endlessness of this process of reflection: You are conscious of your ―You,‖ you say; accordingly, you necessarily distinguish your thinking ―I‖ from the ―I‖ thought of in that ―I‖‘s thinking. But in order that you can do so, what is thinking in that act of thinking must in turn be the object of a higher thinking, so that it can become the object of consciousness; and at the same time, you obtain a new subject, which is conscious itself of what previously was the state of being self-conscious..

(28) 19. My argument here is as it was before; and after we have once begun to proceed according to this law, you can never show me a place where we must stop. Thus we shall continue, ad infinitum, to require a new consciousness for every consciousness, a new consciousness whose object is the earlier consciousness, and thus we shall never reach the point of being able to assume an actual consciousness. (qtd. in Benjamin 125, his emphasis) The endlessness of the reflection is caused by the always immediately present. 政治大 self-consciousness, and on account of its immediacy, it is called intuition. In the 立. consciousness. This immediate consciousness of thinking can be reckoned as. ‧ 國. 學. endless process of self-consciousness, intuition and thinking, subject and object coincide, and ―reflection is transfixed, arrested, and stripped of its endlessness,. ‧. without being annulled‖ (125). In other words, the ―I‖ that is thinking and the ―I‖ that. sit. y. Nat. spoke and thought of something forms a relationship of subject and object. The ―I‖. n. al. er. io. that spoke and thought is the object of the thinking ―I‖ which is a temporary subject.. v. The subject is temporary because the immediate consciousness is always present, and. Ch. engchi. i n U. a new thinking ―I‖ will be spawned. The object is content while the subject is form, but it should be noted that the subject is soon transformed into the object of another subject in the incessant process of reflection. This process of reflection is endless as long as our consciousness remains inconceivable. Therefore, there are different levels of reflection. Mere thinking with its thought, which is thinking of something, is called the first level of reflection. However, reflection only becomes significant from the second level of reflection, which puts the first level of reflection into thinking. In this level of reflection, the first level of thinking ―returns transformed at a higher level: it has become ‗the form of the form as its content‘ – that is, the second level has.

(29) 20. emerged from the first level, through a genuine reflection, and thus without mediation,‖ and the second level arises as the ―self-knowledge of the first‖ (127). Thus the first level of reflection is, in the second level, matter/content, and the second level of reflection, the thinking of thinking, is form. The form arises immediately from the first level of the mere thinking. From the third level of reflection, something fundamentally new arises. From the third and every successive level of reflection, the second level of reflection, thinking of thinking, disintegrates. It can either be ―the object thought of thinking (of the thinking of thinking), or else the thinking subject. 政治大 reflection is to be unfolded into ―ever more in the infinitude of every successive 立 (thinking of thinking) of thinking‖ (129). The ambiguity of this third level of. ‧ 國. 學. reflection. The disintegration of the second level of reflection means the form that has taken the form as its content again transforms into the object thought, which is content. ‧. compared with another new form. The whole process of reflection is, therefore,. sit. y. Nat. composed of the coincidence of intuition and thinking, subject and object, and the. n. al. er. io. disintegration of them, an infinite process of flow and stop. The coincidence of the. v. subject and object is the fleeting arresting moment among the infinite flow. The. Ch. engchi. i n U. moment is thus the moment of illumination, which fleetingly disintegrates into the infinite flow. To put it in another way, the arresting moment is the moment when the thinking subject escapes from the original context. It is quite similar to the friars‘ abandonment of secularity which Benjamin mentions in ―Theses on the Philosophy of History:‖ ―The themes which monastic discipline assigned to friars for meditation were designed to turn them away from the world and its affairs. The thoughts which we are developing here originate from similar considerations‖ (―Theses on the Philosophy of History‖ 258). Friars are assigned the task of meditation in order to escape from the.

(30) 21. worldly affairs and contemplate things with reflection. Before reflection, the first thing to do is to escape from the secular world. In Moor’s Last Sigh the aspiration to escape from the original context is very obvious from the beginning. The first part of the novel, ―A House Divided,‖ depicts the clash of opposite ideas in Moraes‘ maternal household, the da Gama family. It delineates Aurora‘s childhood, adolescence, her entry into adulthood, and marriage with Abraham Zogoiby. The division between the family members represents the struggling forces among a nation about to be independent then. Her grandmother Epifania and uncle Aires da Gama symbolize the. 政治大 Gama and Aurora‘s parents represent the eagerness for innovation and cultural 立. force of conservative and reactionary anglophiles while grandfather Francisco da. ‧ 國. 學. eclecticism. It is in this background that Aurora grows up and stands. Francisco da Gama, ―a patron of the arts,‖ is depicted as ―incapable of living a settled life like. ‧. ordinary folks‖ (MLS 16). His house is filled with experimental modernist artistic. sit. y. Nat. works. He commissions Le Corbusier to build two houses of opposite styles on the. n. al. er. io. Cabral Island, which are satirized venomously by Epifania as ―Corbusier follies‖ (37).. v. When protested by Epifania about the various too innovative and too experimental. Ch. engchi. i n U. artistic works, Francisco replies: ―Old palaces, old behavior, old gods. These days the world is full of questions, and there are new ways to be beautiful‖ (16-7). Francisco is ―destined for questions and quests, as ill-at-ease with domesticity as Quixote‖ (17). The call for change is remarkably strong in Francisco and Aurora‘s father Camoens‘ political activities. Stimulated by the clashing forces, Aurora is probably inspired and develops her revolutionary personality in such surroundings. However, Rushdie describes Aurora‘s talent in a vague and mystic way. Aurora‘s artistic gift shimmers when she is still a young lady. However, the artistic gift is not found or developed by decent artistic education but indirectly caused by the division.

(31) 22. of the family. Because of the fall of a sudden crisis on the family, Camoens and Aires da Gama brothers are imprisoned, and the burden of the whole business falls on Aurora‘s mother Isabella. Aurora‘s artistic gift is said to be found and probably developed during such solitary and secret hours when the whole family is actually in turmoil: While Belle [Isabella] was on the razzle, little Aurora, this solitary child, left to her own devices in her surreally cloven home, turned upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude; and, according to legend, found. 政治大 her admirers like to linger upon the image of the little girl alone in the big 立. her gift. When she had grown up and was enclosed within the cult of herself,. ‧ 國. 學. house, throwing open the windows and allowing the torrential reality of India to awaken her soul . . . What is probably true is that Aurora began her. ‧. life in art during those long motherless hours. . . (45, my emphasis). sit. y. Nat. Solitude is a seminal state in Benjamin‘s whole theoretical framework because. al. er. io. solitude is the key to bring one out of the original context to a new realm. The. v. n. ―inward eye‖ of the young Aurora is best explained with Schlegel‘s idea of ―sense,‖ as. Ch. engchi. i n U. the primal ground where reflection arises. In sense remains the immediacy knowledge, but it does not equal to the intellectual intuition regarded by Fichte as the only source from which immediate knowledge originates. Sense is the medial between Kant‘s and Fichte‘s definition of intellectual intuition which has ―the capacity of Kant‘s intellectus archetypus and the reflecting movement of Fichte‘s intellectual intuition‖ (―The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism‖ 188 his emphasis). Intellectus archetypus is a capacity which is possibly logically or theoretically, and is thus not able to be achieved by mankind. According to Kant, therefore, intellectus archetypus belongs to God while intellectus ectypus belongs to mankind. Drawn from this.

(32) 23. boundary, noumena, thing-in-itself, is thus defined by Kant not able to reach by mankind perception and thus forsaken by him. What is practically feasible is therefore the knowledge categorized by perception and Reason which is the method our mind organizes to produce the object of experience. What Schlegel and other Jena-romantics aim to recover is Kant‘s negation of the impossibility of intuitive knowledge in the realm of experience. Nonetheless, Schlegel holds that sense is an immediate thinking by which reflection works and penetrates into the absolute. Therefore, the inward eye symbolizes the medium of reflection bestows Aurora the. 政治大 in her lockup. The painting is ―the great swarm of being itself‖ (MLS 59). History is 立 supernatural gift at her young age. The illumination is manifested in his first painting. ‧ 國. 學. juxtaposed with fictitious imageries. Her family is also included: ―…amongst the family was the crowd itself, the dense crowd, the crowd without boundaries‖ (60).. ‧. The blueprint of a brand new India is realized: a nation without boundaries and a. sit. y. Nat. primal state where logic judgment is absent and all possibility coexists.. n. al. er. io. The process of reflection, as expounded above, is a digressive process of stop. v. and flow that directs thinking toward the Absolute. In Fichte‘s words, reflection is. Ch. engchi. i n U. composed of infinite positing. The ―I‖ limits itself through endless representation, which is ―not-I,‖ something opposed to the ―I‖ itself. This representation through a ―not-I‖ will only stop ―until it reaches the absolutely indeterminable idea of the highest unity – a unity that would be possible only in accord with a completed infinity, which is itself impossible.‖ (qtd. in ―The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism‖ 124) The impossibility of this representation in reflection forms the endless process of it. Benjamin has a same idea in the discussion of scholastic treatise in the Epistemo-Critical Prologue in The Origin of German Tragic Drama that the treatise, as a form of the representation of truth rather than the acquisition of.

(33) 24. knowledge, should have representation as its essential method: Method is a digression. Representation as digression – such is the methodological nature of the treatise. The absence of an uninterrupted purposeful structure is its primary characteristic. Tirelessly the process of thinking makes new beginnings, returning in a roundabout way to its original object. This continual pausing for breath is the mode most proper to the process of contemplation. (OGTD 28) The nature of contemplation is the same with that of reflection in their digressive. 政治大 reach the infinitude by their deficient finitude because they cannot reach the Absolute 立 process. Both contemplation and reflection plays a liminal role for the mankind to. ‧ 國. 學. Truth once and for all, and the process of contemplation and reflection are thus digressive or an endless process of flow and stop.. ‧. Rushdie, inspired by the approach of Indian traditional storyteller in holding the. sit. y. Nat. attention of the audiences, adopts a digressive writing style, which he describes as ―a. n. al. er. io. kind of Chinese-box system, where you have the story inside the story and then they. v. all come back. It seems formless‖ (Conversations with Salman Rushdie 76). He aims. Ch. engchi. i n U. not only to hold the attention of readers but cross the frontier and draw a line where no one else claims to have drawn. In an era when meta-narrative and an ultimate standard are absent, liminality of Benjamin‘s translation theory provides an alternative angle to approach the reality, which Rushdie seriously challenges in his writings. Contemplation and reflection are roles that unfold fleetingly the infinitude folded in the finitude.. 1.3 Contemplation as translation Contemplation, with its digressive and liminal nature, provides a correlating.

(34) 25. point linking Benjamin‘s idea of reflection to his translation theory. Contemplation plays a key role in Benjamin‘s linguistic philosophy because its role in the act of naming. While human language is regressive compared to that of God, naming is the link between the language of human and that of God, between the finite and infinite, to which Benjamin attributes: ―The deepest images of this divine word and the point where human language participates most intimately in the divine infinity of the pure word, the point at which it cannot become finite word and knowledge, are the human name (―On Language as Such and on the Language of Man‖ 323-24).‖ Benjamin. 政治大 point out the permeability of naming between finite and infinite (pure) language: 立. quotes Friedrich Müller‘s poem ―Adam‘s Awakening and First Blissful Nights‖ to. ‧ 國. 學. ―‗Man of the earth step near, in gazing grow more perfect, more perfect through the word.‘ By this combination of contemplation and naming is implied the. ‧. communicating muteness of things (animals) toward the word language of man,. sit. y. Nat. which receives them in name. (326)‖ Only by contemplation can the mental being of. n. al. er. io. things/animals be converted to mankind‘s linguistic being. Through the conversion. v. the mental being becomes identical with the linguistic being and the language thus. Ch. engchi. i n U. becomes pure medium, not tool which conveys only meaning and is thus knowledge only. In other words, like the intuitive character of reflection, contemplation is not abstract judgment by logic. The intuition of reflection, the thinking of thinking, is triggered by the unconceivable consciousness. The first level of thinking becomes the object of the second level. Thinking of thinking, as stated above, is a form, and intuitive. Thus it‘s not determined by logic judgment, which belongs to mere thinking, the ―material‖ thinking of the first level. The digressive process of reflection consists of stop and flow. By the disintegration of every preceding reflection does the reflection attain a kind of elevation and direct the thinking to the Absolute..

(35) 26. Contemplation does the same in naming. It turns the untranslatable into the translatable, which, according to Benjamin, is the changing of degrees of the densities of languages: ―By the relation … of languages as between media of varying densities, the translatability of languages into one another is established. Translation is removal from one language into another through a continuum of transformation‖ (325). ―Media of varying densities‖ determine the translatability, and contemplation does the task of transforming. In the process of contemplation, when the mental being completely combines with linguistic being, the untranslatable is turned into the. 政治大 conveys the media of language, rather than the abstract similarity and knowledge of 立 translatable. Because of its intuitive character, as mentioned earlier, contemplation. ‧ 國. 學. the content: ―Translation passes through continua of transformation, not abstract ideas of identity and similarity‖ (325). As a result, soundless language of things/animals. ‧. becomes a sound language. The process is from nameless to a name and is thus an. sit. y. Nat. elevation, which according to Benjamin, is the process of translation.. n. al. er. io. In the bourgeois concept of language, the knowledge of things is lacking. Thus. v. contemplation gives way to logic judgment; naming language gives to way to tool. Ch. engchi. i n U. language. Things lack their name and are overnamed by numerous nameless languages. Similarly in The Moor’s Last Sigh, play of dichotomies seems to be used by Rushdie to satirize the chaos caused by overnaming. In the novel, the protagonist Moraes is clearly suffering from the problem brought by the hairsplitting religious and ethnic discrimination, which is caused by over-defining and overnaming. In the first paragraph of the novel he describes his lover and himself as ―[s]he, a self-professedly godly un-Christian Indian, joked about Luther‘s protest at Wittenberg to tease her determinedly ungodly Indian Christian lover‖ (3 my emphasis). ―Godly,‖ ―un-godly,‖ ―Christian,‖ and ―un-Christian,‖ these words actually foreshadow the problem of.

(36) 27. religion and ethnicity that Moraes faces throughout the novel. Problem of religion and ethnicity causes the division of his house. At a time when the so called normality is harshly demarcated and dominated by religious radicals like Morae‘s great grandmother Epifania, what he anticipates is an antidote to dissolve the boundary: ―I watched Epifania praying and gave thanks that somehow, by some great fluke that seemed at the time the most ordinary thing in the world, my parents had been cured of religion. (Where‘s their medicine, their priest-poison-beating anti-venene? Bottle it, for pity‘s sake, and send it round the world!)‖ (MLS 55). Also in the first paragraph,. 政治大 man, always so full of theses, never a church door to nail them to,‖ upon which his 立. Moraes‘ lover, Uma Sarasvati, whispers to him: ―Oh, you Moor, you strange black. ‧ 國. 學. mother Aurora replies: ―So full, you mean, of faeces‖ (3, my emphasis). Normal, abnormal, real, unreal, correct, and incorrect, what is it that we seek hiding behind the. ‧. word? Rushdie poses this question by a series of play of dichotomy in the novel. The. sit. y. Nat. answer, of course, is never to be found between the dual fixated meanings. When an. n. al. er. io. ultimate standard is lacking, repetitive judgment and decisions seem only to increase. v. another mass of conflicts. Plays of dichotomies are not only satires to the reality but a. Ch. engchi. i n U. question to it. The characterization of Moraes is itself a question mark. He has a crooked right hand which forces him to become a lefthander. His straddling between different ethnicities, of various alleged origins makes him not able to grow like a normal child and is thus defined as a freak, who has to gulp down discrimination and live in the dark side of history. Readers are thus left to choose what to believe among definitions and fictions. Rushdie invites the readers to think over the ambiguity of the dichotomies and jump out of the static frontier and contemplate things again by telling stories that are never distinguishable from the linear and static reality. What hides behind the words and definition, and what is between the dual meanings of dichotomy.

(37) 28. are certainly not stagnant. Readers are asked to re-judge the questions Rushdie poses in the novel not by logic judgment, and to contemplate the legitimacy of the dichotomies that has been set as borders waited to be crossed. Dichotomies are dual definitions that confine our thinking and consists the unreliable reality where all debates originate. Rushdie‘s writing aims at pointing out the unreliability and a re-arrangement of the way the history or reality is composed of. However, what is it when the border is crossed? Why does the border have to be crossed again and again? In the next section, I will focus on the concept of infinitude in Benjamin‘s idea of. 政治大. reflection and translation to provide a possible approach to the questions.. 立. ‧ 國. 學. 1.4 Ursprung as the language of God. What is it when the border is crossed? The answer to this question is, speaking in. ‧. the light of Benjamin‘s translation theory, is pure language of God. However, our. sit. y. Nat. point here is to look into how the pure language is manifested by the act of translation.. n. al. explain how to approach the pure language of God.. Ch. engchi. er. io. Therefore, I will elaborate Benjamin‘s idea of ―Ursprung (origin in German)‖ here to. i n U. v. In ―On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,‖ Benjamin argues that ―every evolved language can be considered as a translation of all the others‖ (325). As discussed in the previous section, various languages of beings possess varying media of densities, which determine their translatability. Translation works by the conversion of diverse degrees of densities. Everything, from the sand to a human being, possesses different degrees of densities. As stated above, translation is the transformation of varying degrees of densities. Languages, in the act of translation, are being transformed with varying density of their media. The denser the degree of the being, the clearer their distinctness is. Translation elevates the lower degrees of media to a.

(38) 29. higher one. Therefore, ―[a]ll higher language is a translation of those lower, until in ultimate clarity the word of God unfolds, which is the unity of this movement made up of languages‖ (332). The being which possesses the highest clarity is God. However, pure language solely belonging to God is not translatable because the pure language which is simultaneously creative and cognizant is never bestowed to the mankind. Pure language thus never enters into the empirical realm of human and is a transcendental subject out of the reach of human knowledge. It is therefore not suitable to approach with a linear concept of time that might understands it as tangibly. 政治大 language can still be manifested through the moment of illumination. Benjamin‘s 立 existent in a peculiar point of time in human history. Nevertheless, the idea of pure. ‧ 國. 學. concept of Ursprung (origin) would be helpful here to understand pure language as the origin of human language:. ‧. Origin [Ursprung], although an entirely historical category, has,. sit. y. Nat. nevertheless, nothing to do with genesis [Entstehung]. The term origin is. n. al. er. io. not intended to describe the process by which the existent came into being,. v. but rather to describe that which emerges from the process of becoming and. Ch. engchi. i n U. disappearance. Origin is an eddy in the stream of becoming, and in its current it swallows the material involved in the process of genesis. That which is original is never revealed in the naked and manifest existence of the factual; its rhythm is apparent only to a dual insight. On the one hand it needs to be recognized as a process of restoration and re-establishment, but, on the other hand, and precisely because of this, as something imperfect and incomplete. (OGTD 45) Origin is not a tangible and complete existence at a peculiar space and time, but is something to be uncovered and restored. The process of restoration is, as Benjamin‘s.