a dual function—on the one hand, that of forcing the linguistic and conceptual system of which it is a dependent, and on the other hand, of directing a critical thrust back toward the text that it translates and in relation to which it becomes a kind of unsettling aftermath (it is as if the translation sought to occupy the original’s already unsettled home, and thereby, far from ‘domesticating’ it, to turn it into a place still more foreign to itself).
Lewis seems to regard abusive fidelity as a strategic choice, at least partly within the translator’s control (“partly” because the choices are contingent, varying from one source-language text to another, from one target-language culture to another). Yet the foregoing treatment of Tarchetti’s translation requires a revision of Lewis’s concept to include translation choices that remain unarticulated and unconscious, and that therefore can support an effect exceeding the translator’s intention. Any of the translator’s moves, in other words, may both reproduce and supplement the source-language text.
Tarchetti’s translation, with its formal techniques of marvelous and mimetic amplification, reproduces the key abuse in Shelley’s feminist fictional project, her use of the fantastic to dislocate patriarchal gender representations; and because his translation is a plagiarism written in the standard Italian dialect, it deterritorializes the dominant realist discourse in Italy, where it conducts an ideological cultural practice which is radically democratic, which combats class (aristocratic and bourgeois), gender (patriarchal), and racial (Orientalist) ideologies. Tarchetti’s translation moves are such that they exhibit this political agenda even in instances (e.g. the removal of Shelley’s Orientalism) where they seem to be uncalculated, or at least to lack a political calculation.
The abusiveness of Tarchetti’s translation does not stop with the target-language culture, for it also enacts an “unsettling” ideological critique of Shelley’s tale, exposing the political limitations of her {183} feminism, its failure to recognize the gender hierarchy in the bourgeois marriage and its concealment of working-class oppression and European racism. The paradox of Tarchetti’s translation strategy is that its abuses issue mostly from its manifold fidelities—to the standard Italian dialect, but not the dominant realism; to the syntactical and lexical features, fantastic discourse, and feminist ideology of the English text, but not its bourgeois values and Orientalism. These lacks in Tarchetti’s translation are supplied by another fidelity, to a democratic cultural politics.
More specifically, the attention to class in Tarchetti’s translation provides one example of how his use of the fantastic was designed to confront class divisions that were altered but nonetheless maintained after the Italian Unification. This social transformation was ultimately liberalizing, not democratizing: it freed markets from regional restrictions and encouraged the development of professional, manufacturing, and mercantile interests, particularly in the north, yet without markedly improving the lives of the agrarian and industrial workers who composed the largest segment of the population. On the contrary, the economic reorganization, instead of weakening workers’ dependence on landowners and employers, added the uncertainties of market conditions, of higher prices and taxes. And the institution of a national government with a standing army faced workers with conscription, while their widespread illiteracy hindered their participation in the political process (Smith 1969). Tarchetti’s translation, like his other fantastic tales, intervenes into these social contradictions, not only by criticizing aristocratic and bourgeois domination of the working classes, but by adopting a fictional discourse that overturns the bourgeois assumptions of realism. He made this intervention, moreover, in the highly politicized cultural formation of the 1860s, publishing his tales in Milanese periodicals that were closely allied to the most progressive, democratic groups and thus reaching the northern bourgeoisie who stood to benefit most from the economic and political changes in post-Unification Italy (Portinari 1989:232–240; Castronovo et al. 1979).
Yet Tarchetti’s reliance on plagiarism to forward his political agenda, as well as his deletion of a literary allusion he probably did not understand, gives a final twist to Lewis’s concept of abusive fidelity in translation. Both moves show that the source-language text can cause “a kind of unsettling aftermath” in the target-language text, indicating points where the latter is “foreign” to its {184} own project or where it conflicts with the translator’s intention. As soon as Tarchetti’s theft is known and his deletion located, Shelley’s tale enacts an ideological critique of his translation which reveals that he imported her feminist fiction into Italy with some violence, suppressing her authorship and her construction of a feminist literary tradition. The antifeminist effects of Tarchetti’s text constitute an egregious reminder that translation, like every cultural practice, functions under conditions that may to some extent be unacknowledged, but that nonetheless complicate and perhaps compromise the translator’s activity—even when it aims to make a strategic political intervention.
For the contemporary English-language translator who seeks forms of resistance against the regime of fluent domestication, Tarchetti exemplifies a foreignizing translation practice that operates on two levels, that of the signified as well as the signifier. His discursive strategy deviated from the dominant realism by releasing the play of the signifier: he amplified the discursive registers of Shelley’s fantastic narrative, both mimetic and marvelous, and thus forced an uncertainty over the metaphysical status of the representation (is the elixir “real” or not?), preempting the illusion of transparency. Yet Tarchetti’s plagiarism also produced the illusion of his authorship: he effaced the second-order status of his translation by presenting it as the first Gothic tale written in the Italian of the dominant realist discourse, establishing his identity as an oppositional writer, fixing the meaning of his text as dissident. Like the contemporary writer of fluent English-language translations, Tarchetti was invisible to his readers as a translator. Yet this very invisibility enabled him to conduct a foreignizing translation practice in his Italian situation because he was visible as an author.
Tarchetti’s translation practices cannot be imitated today without significant revision. Plagiarism, for example, is largely excluded by copyright laws that bind translators as well as authors, resulting in contracts designed to insure that the translation is in fact a translation, and that it does not involve the unlicensed use of any copyrighted material. Here is a sampling of standard clauses from recent translation contracts,[5] including those wherein the translator is termed the “author” of the translation:
You warrant that your work will be original and that it does not infringe upon the copyright or violate the right of any person or {185} party whatsoever, and you agree to indemnify and hold us and any licensee or seller of the Work harmless against any damages sustained in any claim, action, proceeding or recovery based on an alleged violation of any of the foregoing warranties.
The Author warrants that he has full power to make this agreement; that the Work has not previously been published in book form in the English language; that all rights conveyed to the Publisher hereunder are free of encumbrances or prior agreements; that the Work does not violate any copyright in any way. The Author will hold harmless and defend the Publisher and its licensees against all claims, demands or suits related to these warranties. The Author will compensate the Publisher […]
[5]
These clauses are taken from my contracts with American publishers for translations of several Italian-language books: Barbara Alberti, Delirium, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 29 May 1979, p. 1; Restless Nights: Selected Stories of Dino Buzzati, North Point Press, 15 September 1982, p. 2; and I.U.Tarchetti, Fantastic Tales, Mercury House, 3 July 1991, p. 5.