Intimate Enemies

Leon de Kock: Michiel, every translation has a feel about it. How did this one feel for you? Michiel Heyns: Much of the I was stimulated, and occasionally I had to ask Marlene what she meant. As you know, Marlene's Afrikaans is not just a matter of redoing the old thing, and that was sometimes strenuous, but by and large--I'm generalising now from the experience of seven months--it was stimulating, exciting, and very seldom boring. I round it a great experience, and I think I had a very good working relationship with Marlene. I felt I could always ask her things when really doubt. We lived about 20 km apart, and we'd meet once a week, or once a fortnight, to have an afternoon session, followed by a meal, perhaps. LdK: How would you characterise this translation? The level of co-authorship, the eo-translation here seems to be quite marked, as it was with Triomf. In such a case, I sometimes wonder whether one is beginning to talk about something more than just translation. MH: Yes, it's a collaboration; I suppose you did the same Triomf--we attributed copyright for the translation to both of us, because Marlene had a huge share the translation. Yes, it's not a matter of me sitting alone translating, and then presenting it to Marlene; there was an interaction all the time. I'm looking for a word for this ... Marlene van Niekerk: Co-creativity ... MH: Yes. It gave me perhaps an inkling of something you said yesterday, Leon [at Boekehuis Johannesburg]--that sense of freedom, that I could sometimes exceed the limit because I'd checked with Marlene, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I'd simply been working on my own. LdK: Yes, that's the other side of my notion that you should never translate anyone but a dead author; (1) you have more freedom this way, whereas if you were translating a dead author, you wouldn't dare. MH: No, you would not if you honoured his memory. This is where your word licence comes in, a sense, because the author can give you licence; of course the author can also deny you licence, but this case usually the licentiousness that you also talked about yesterday, was indeed licensed by Marlene, so that gives one a kind of freedom. MvN: I felt that Michiel brought a whole lot of his structures and of erudition to the text, took it into his structures and machinery, and, ja, I felt it was entirely gerymd. It was at some points quite explorative its sentences and quite improvisational its development of certain thoughts, and I thought, well, fine. If you put it into another of and creativity, you'll get something that works, and I was comfortable with it because I felt it was gerymd. What is the word I'm looking for? LdK: Congruent? MvN: Congruence. Concomitant. LdK: I felt that congruence. [To MH:] You got me reading T.S. Eliot this morning, the Four Quartets, and I felt the congruence, knowing Agaat, the strains of time future and time present. MH: Yes, and in my beginning is my ending and my ending is my beginning, which is an accurate description of the structure of the novel.... LdK: ... so, a sense, it was similar to what happened Triomft; the English version is slightly different and it's slightly, an extended version, almost ... MH: I think something potentialised. It was there to be brought out. So it's not as if you're imposing something on the original; you take a hint from the original and expand it; and because you're working a different language and it has a different cultural tradition, you can draw on that. As I said yesterday, I hope I'm not violating the work, but I'm pleased to hear you say you also found it, reading the Four Quartets; it resonates for me with this novel. LdK: I love that phrase machinery of erudition, because that's what writing is about, and it's quite unique to see this level of cooperation between two living South African writers, writing out of different languages and creating this one work, which is now

Art · Literature · Lexicography and Language Studies · linguistics and terminology studies · South African History and Culture

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