3 Musical Realizations: a Performance-based Translation of Rhythm in Koltès’ Dans la solitude des champs de coton Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso Introduction This essay provides an account and analysis of an experimental method focusing on the performance of rhythm and sonorities to produce a new translation into English of Dans la solitude des champs de coton (1985) by Bernard-Marie Koltès (1948–89). Koltès’ works have continued to grow in popularity in Europe since his death in 1989 and he is now considered one of the most original and influential French playwrights of recent decades. Dans la solitude des champs de coton (hereafter Solitude) is an encounter between two characters, a Dealer and a Client, in an ill-defined nocturnal space. On his way from A to B, from one lit window at the top of a building to another, the Client enters the territory of the Dealer. They circle around each other for the duration of the play, but the Client will not reveal what he desires and the Dealer will not reveal what he has to offer to satisfy the Client’s desires; the play unfolds until it ends in a moment of inconclusive potential violence. The reception of Koltès’ work on the English-language stage has been identified as problematic. According to Maria Delgado and David Fancy (2001, pp.149–50), this may in part be due to the emphasis in English-language theatre on psychologically driven characters and action-centred narrative; but we believe that it may also be because existing translations do not completely engage with the fundamentally important rhythmic qualities of Koltès’ writing; certainly we feel that this aspect of his work in translation deserves more attention. 49 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 49 11/25/2010 9:17:25 PM 50 Staging and Performing Translation Koltès (1999, p.27) writes in his collection of autobiographical interviews Une part de ma vie: The French language, like French culture in general, only interests me when it is distorted. A French culture, revised and updated, colonized by a foreign culture, would have a new dimension and its expressive riches would be increased, like an ancient statue with no head or arms which draws its beauty from this very absence.1 Solitude is a particular text because of the way in which the playwright uses and distorts complex syntactical structures and seemingly fixed rhythmic patterns specific to the French language, but also because of the way in which Koltès deploys sonorities and rhythm to make such a multi-layered text performable. The following analysis is the product of a reading of the text which is, crucially, influenced by performance. Our approach to stage translation emphasizes the adaptation of the rhythm of the source text to the target language thus allowing the original rhythm to be retained. Rhythm, however, is not dealt with as inert and inflexible but as malleable and adaptable so that the original rhythm is allowed to survive the translation process. The idea is to create a musical variation of the original text. For example, we did not try to either recreate the deviations from formal structures or to repair cohesion or meaning. We sought a text in translation that had a similar trajectory to the original, a momentum provided by the complex structures and the minimal use of full stops. As stated above, importantly, our method of achieving this was the development of a translation in conjunction with a performer who is expert in performing and designing complex texts for speech, and can locate appropriate rhythms and sonorities in the English text via speech, rhythmic vocalization and drumming. We thus set ourselves the problematic of whether we could successfully establish rhythm in sound, and tempo through alliteration and assonance, and whether the choices of syntactic structures and lexis go hand in hand with the physical and vocal rhythms of the performer. Consequently, our method is one which transfers the text from one performance to another and experiments with a reading of a play which is informed by translation practice. The rhythm of Koltès’ writing in Dans la solitude des champs de coton A dictionary definition of rhythm gives us ‘an effect of ordered movement in a work of art, literature, drama, etc. attained through patterns in 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 50 11/25/2010 9:17:25 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 51 the timing, spacing, repetition, accenting, etc. of the elements’ (Websters, 2009). In opposition to this common conception of rhythm as a regularity of similar intervals or recurrences, based on repetition, periodicity and measure, French linguist and translator Henri Meschonnic defines rhythm as a disposition or configuration without any fixedness, one which results from an arrangement which is always subject to change (Meschonnic, 1982). So, how is rhythm achieved in Koltès’ texts? How does he enable his complicated texts to flow in performance, giving the actor ‘rails’ on which to run? As mentioned above, what is distinctive in Koltès’ writing in this play is its apparent linguistic formality. This is achieved in part through the use of a text which, to an extent, subverts classic French alexandrine structures. It is also achieved through the use of complex syntax with minimal punctuation, described by a critic of Patrice Chéreau’s 1995 surtitled Edinburgh production as ‘mind-numbing sentences that zigzagged through ranks of subordinate clauses’ (Delgado and Fancy, 2001, p.155). This description of one translation of the text gives an idea of some of the challenges that it poses to translators. The following, more detailed, analysis of the particular features of Koltès’ text which are especially relevant to our translation process will enable us to present an assessment of the issues on which we elected to focus our experimental translation strategy. This strategy will then be discussed and illustrated. The apparent formality of the text is periodically punctured when stanzas based on an elusive twelve syllable alexandrine are interrupted or distorted, when highly complex syntax is stretched to extremes. The syntax accommodates the stanzaic pattern but also erects obstacles in the flow of the text. As the text is spoken, an irregular dodecasyllabic metric system evoking the alexandrine appears and disappears throughout the text but imprints a durable rhythm. The Dealer sets the rules for the ensuing verbal jousting, as if he is laying down a rhythm which needs navigating back and forth from, and the Client follows the same cadence, the same rules, as though in a competition. If communication is present, it is enacted through rhythm, the two protagonists jousting with language to attempt to unseat the opponent, and this is indeed one of the images the Dealer uses. Like the Dealer who reins in his tongue so as not to unleash his stallion, the characters seem to be chasing rhythm through the text. The elusive alexandrine can be identified as the basic unit of organization and the frame within which acoustic designs are composed.2 The music of a sequence of lines is to be found in the rhythmic movements back and forth from the haunting alexandrine cadence. The alexandrine verse is the most deeply ingrained melodic structure in the French language, it is the most suited to the 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 51 11/25/2010 9:17:25 PM 52 Staging and Performing Translation melodic movements of the language.3 Given the length and complexity of the sentences in Solitude, the performer might indeed fall back upon the natural rhythm of the alexandrines for his delivery and somehow force them upon the text. The way in which Koltès’ text evokes the alexandrine has parallels with Schoenberg’s conception of atonal music as a free, twelve-tone chromatic field where any configuration of pitches could act as a ‘norm’, a flexible way of providing a foundation with any number of variations on that foundation. Like the alexandrines, the syntax in the play is overarching but it often carries so many interpolated clauses governed by the same main verb (which, in some cases, is so distant that the interpolation is isolated) that it appears to lose grammatical coherence. In fact the text is so well crafted that, although the syntax is stretched to the limit, there is nonetheless grammatical coherence. As with the alexandrine structure, the syntactic cohesion is omnipresent but not always foregrounded. The following is an example of a highly formal structure which sets up a complex syntactical shape that is stretched to the limit: A Le Dealer Alors ne me refusez pas de me dire l’objet, je vous en prie, de votre fièvre, de votre regard sur moi, la raison, de me la dire; et s’il s’agit de ne point blesser votre dignité, eh bien, dites-là comme on la dit à un arbre, ou face au mur d’une prison, ou dans la solitude d’un champ de coton dans lequel on se promène, nu, la nuit; de me la dire sans même me regarder. (2004, p.31) So do not refuse to share the object, pray, of your fever, of your eyes on me, the reason, share it; and if that compromises your dignity, well then, say it like you would say it to a tree, or to a prison wall, or in the solitude of a cotton field where you would wander in the nude, at night; share without even a glance. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) Here, there is an elliptic construction [‘de me la dire’] which is used chiastically as the referent for the final phrase of the sentence. In the end, the Dealer would be satisfied with any response from the Client. The request in the sentence becomes increasingly abstract: first the Dealer asks for the object of the Client’s desire, then more abstractly the reason for this desire, and then he reiterates his question resorting to the pronoun ‘la’ in place of ‘la raison’, but pronoun and noun are so distant in the sentence that the object of the question is almost forgotten. 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 52 11/25/2010 9:17:25 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 53 All that remains is the prompt to speak, ‘de me la dire’. The text seems here to exhaust both syntax and meaning. Next, a different example of complex syntax which, although generally more typical of French than English, is nonetheless here pushed to extremes: B Le Client Et si je suis ici, en parcours, en attente, en suspension, en déplacement, hors-jeu, hors vie, provisoire, pratiquement absent, pour ainsi dire pas là – car dit-on d’un homme qui traverse l’Atlantique en avion qu’il est à tel moment au Groenland, et l’est-il vraiment? Ou au cœur tumultueux de l’océan? – et si j’ai fait un écart, bien que ma ligne droite, du point d’où je viens au point où je vais n’ait pas de raison, aucune, d’être tordue tout à coup, c’est que vous me barrez le chemin, plein d’intentions illicites et de présomptions à mon égard d’intentions illicites. (2004, p.19) And if I am here, on the way, on the move, paused, postponed, out of sync, out of joint, provisional, practically absent, say, not here – would you locate a man flying across the Atlantic at such and such a moment in Greenland, is he there? Or right in the tumult of the ocean? Say I did step aside, although my straight line, from point of departure to arrival has no reason, none, for a sudden curve, well, you are blocking my path, full of illicit intentions and misplaced assumptions of my illicit intentions. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) The bare bones of the sentence are ‘si je suis ici [ . . . ] et si j’ai fait un écart [ . . . ] c’est que vous me barrez le chemin [ . . . ]’ (if I am here [ . . . ] say I did step aside [ . . . ] well you are blocking my path), yet there are as many as seventeen diversions from this simple premise in the one sentence. Foregrounded in the structure of the complex sentence in the example above is ‘the isolation of the man in the plane lost in the ocean’, a metaphor for the construction of a text which isolates clauses – in this case the very clause which is the metaphor – in the tumult of the syntax, and this is a distinctive feature of a text which has performative features, a text which often ‘does what it says’. The performativity of the language used in the text works on a number of levels, it provides metaphors for the situation of the characters and isolated sounds which perform actions and interrupt the flow of the text. 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 53 11/25/2010 9:17:25 PM 54 Staging and Performing Translation The nature of the syntax, and indeed the architecture of the play as a whole, enable it to be read as a work which moves towards distillation, then towards a void, and it is this interpretation which led us to elaborate a particular translation method with its focus on rhythmic qualities, on sound and melody. Such is the strength of the rhythmic structure that it imposes itself on the audience and creates an expectation. In many ways, this strong structure enables Koltès to write more freely, akin to a traditional jazz piece, where more risks are taken melodically in the music at certain stages within a structure. This is an important metaphor which we will return to later. The performative metaphor in the example above also functions as a metaphor for the situation of the characters in the play who are lost on a trajectory between two points of light. The Dealer’s speech has what could be called ‘motionless movement’ because he always returns to the same point, the same question: ‘what is your desire?’ The Client, in contrast, wants to pass through: et la ligne droite, censée me mener d’un point lumineux à un autre point lumineux, à cause de vous devient crochue et labyrinthe obscur dans l’obscur territoire où je me suis perdu. (2004, p.20) and the straight line, there to lead me from one point of light to another point of light, because of you, becomes crooked and a dark labyrinth in the dark territory where I have strayed. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) He is more straightforward but he stumbles on the Dealer and from then on their speeches are mutually imbricated. In their own speech they single out fragments from each other’s speech and use them in their own speech. In turn this repetition provides a kind of coherence and rhythm within the whole text because they always return ‘à cette heure et en ce lieu’ (2004, p.9), at the same hour to the same place, to each other’s phrases. The rhythm of the text is both created and distorted on a macro level by the to-and-fro motion of the alexandrines and the use of highly sophisticated syntax. On a micro level, rhythm is both created and distorted by the use of sound, which furnishes another aspect to the performative character of the text. Isolated sound clusters appear, what one might call sound buttresses, which contribute to and support the overall rhythmic structure but also go against the flow, operating as counterpoints. The heavy use of the relative pronouns ‘que’, ‘qui’, ‘quiconque’ in the opening lines are examples of isolated sounds which contribute to the foundation of the rhythm, the repetition of the sound 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 54 11/25/2010 9:17:26 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 55 [k] (an obstruent voiceless velar stop, or a sound formed by obstructing outward airflow) functions like a thumping drum beat. This sound also evokes that of an animal restrained by a lead and foresees the action, performed by the text, of an animal savagely baring its teeth. The final sound of the Dealer’s speech ‘les dents’ is isolated and goes against the flow of the rhythm of the sentence but it also provides an anti-cadence, a sound which stands alone at the end of the sentence and, as such, performs. C Si vous marchez dehors, à cette heure et en ce lieu, c’est que vous désirez quelque chose que vous n’avez pas et cette chose, moi je peux vous la fournir; car si je suis à cette place depuis plus longtemps que vous et pour plus longtemps que vous, et que même cette heure qui est celle des rapports sauvages entre les hommes et les animaux ne m’en chasse pas, c’est que j’ai ce qu’il faut pour satisfaire le désir qui passe devant moi, et c’est comme un poids dont il faut que je me débarrasse sur quiconque, homme ou animal, qui passe devant moi. C’est pourquoi je m’approche de vous, malgré l’heure qui est celle où d’ordinaire l’homme et l’animal se jettent sauvagement l’un sur l’autre, je m’approche, moi, de vous, les mains ouvertes et les paumes tournées vers vous, avec l’humilité de celui qui propose face à celui qui achète, avec l’humilité de celui qui possède face à celui qui désire; et je vois votre désir comme on voit une lumière qui s’allume, à une fenêtre tout en haut d’un immeuble, dans le crépuscule; je m’approche de vous comme le crépuscule approche cette première lumière, doucement, respectueusement, presque affectueusement, laissant tout en bas dans la rue l’animal et l’homme tirer sur leurs laisses et se montrer sauvagement les dents. (2004, pp.9–10) If you are out walking, in this neighbourhood, at this hour, you must desire something you’re missing, that something I can supply; the reason I’ve been here for longer than you and will stay longer than you, and the reason, this very hour, the coarse intercourse of men and animals does not cause me to run, is that I have the wherewithal to satisfy the desire which passes by me, a weight of which I need to relieve myself upon anyone, man or animal, who passes by me. This is why I bring myself closer to you, despite the hour which normally sees man and animal in a savage rush at each other’s throats, I bring myself closer to you, with my hands open, palms towards you, with the humility of he who has something to offer 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 55 11/25/2010 9:17:26 PM 56 Staging and Performing Translation up against he who has a need to buy, with the humility of he who owns, up against he who desires; and I can see your desire as you see a light go on, at the highest window, right at the top, at sundown; I bring myself closer to you like the sundown comes close to that first light, soft, respectful, almost with affection, and leave the street down below to animal and man to pull on their leads and savagely bare their teeth. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) Other examples of the original text being performative abound and we will return to this aspect shortly, but first the text has a final characteristic which enables Koltès to facilitate the delivery of the distorted alexandrines and complex syntax and thus to provide smooth ‘rails’ for a performer to run on, and these are what could be called sound patterns. Such sound patterns facilitate the performative function of certain lines and also provide the performer with indications of where to breathe. In the characters’ cat-and-mouse play, alliterations are either free to run or stopped short. The following is a perfect illustration of the correlation between action and language in the play: D mais ne me demandez pas de deviner votre désir [ . . . ] (2004, p.12) but do not demand of me to divine your desire. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) The Dealer is constantly trying to stop the Client from leaving and his only weapon is language, so the delivery in French of ‘mais ne me demandez pas de deviner votre désir’ is that of a man in such a hurry to get his words out that he produces the sound of someone stuttering in haste. A more complex illustration of the use of sounds comes in the following sentence from the Client: E Mon désir, s’il en est un, si je vous l’exprimais, brûlerait votre visage, vous ferait retirer les mains avec un cri, et vous vous enfuiriez dans l’obscurité comme un chien qui court si vite qu’on n’en aperçoit pas la queue. (2004, p.15) My desire, were there one, were I to divulge it, would burn your face, have you retract your hands with a scream and you would flee into 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 56 11/25/2010 9:17:26 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 57 the dark like a dog who runs so fast his tail fades away. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) This sentence accelerates like the dog which is used as a simile at the end. All of ‘il en est un’, ‘si je vous l’exprimais’, ‘brûlerait votre visage’ and ‘les mains’ provide a series of closed, muffled sounds; they are then followed by the much more incisive ‘avec’ and the acute and open sound of ‘cri’ which opens the mouth, ready to accelerate the tempo in a series of brief sharp sounds, ‘en-fuir-iez’, ‘obscurité’, ‘chi-en’, ‘qui court’, ’si vite’, which quicken the pace considerably. The sentence then slows down: ‘qu’on n’en aperçoit pas’ before spitting out the final two syllables, ‘la queue’. This example is a very pertinent one as far as our translation strategy is concerned. The final sound, ‘la queue’ is again separated out (like ‘les dents’) which draws attention to the disappearing tail, but it also provides us with a significant metaphor for the way in which the syntax operates throughout the play. All the sentences point towards a disappearance into the dark, just like the dog’s tail. The syntax functions as an allegory of the story (two people meet and exhaust all they have to say and then leave or kill each other and what remains is silence). The play begins to distil, to boil down from the point in the text when the Client briefly shows some vulnerability, comparing his situation when the Dealer came across him at the start of the play to that of himself like a child in bed who cries out when his light goes out (‘comme un enfant dans son lit dont la veilleuse s’éteint’ [2004, p.34]). The Client starts to lose his breath out of fear and the speeches become progressively shorter. It is the apex, the summit of the play which accelerates its distillation from then on. The necessary syncopated respirations, which ensured successful negotiation of the complex syntax, become interspersed silences. The play, which follows the classical rules of unity of space, time and action, resorts to another classical verse drama device: stichomythia as the dialogue becomes tighter and tighter and alternates more rapidly from here on. This is the final element of the performative nature of this text, the way in which the micro and macro rhythms detailed above contribute to the text’s dissolution, its acceleration towards the void, towards the one word penultimate speech of the play where the exhaustion of meaning and syntax evident in the ‘de me la dire’ example above reach their natural conclusion in the Dealer’s ‘Ri-en’(nothing) (2004, p.61) which could evoke the snarling of animals at the very point when all human discourses have been exhausted. 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 57 11/25/2010 9:17:26 PM 58 Staging and Performing Translation Elements of Richard A. Rogers’ 1994 essay on rhythm as a form of discourse that is central to social organization, are useful to our analysis. He discusses the power of entrainment – the locking up, or synchronization, of different rhythmic patterns when they are placed in close proximity – in channelling and coordinating human energies. He uses the Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart’s accounts of drumming activities for children at a summer camp to further illustrate this entrainment (Hart, in Rogers, 1994, p.238): It’s interesting how long it takes people to entrain. These kids locked up after about twenty minutes. They found the groove, and they all knew it. You could see it in their faces as they began playing louder and harder, the groove drawing them in and hardening. These things have life cycles – they begin, build in intensity, maintain, and then dissipate and dissolve. The description of a rhythmic intensity that then dissipates and dissolves is very similar to processes we have shown are in operation in Koltès’ text, while the focus on the use of music and of drums to create rhythm bears similarities with the creative processes involved in our own translation. Rogers (1994, p.362) goes on to establish the vast differences between Western and West African polyrhythms via an analysis of the speed and time-cycles of the latter’s musical rhythms and makes the point that ‘African rhythms are not only multiple but incomplete’. He also uses John Miller Chernoff’s analysis of African rhythm and African sensibility in which Chernoff (1980, pp.113–14) makes the point that: The music is perhaps best considered as an arrangement of gaps where one may add rhythm, rather than as a dense pattern of sound. In the conflict of the rhythms, it is the space between the notes from which the dynamic tension comes. The reducing trajectory of Koltès’ text takes this spacing further as it leads in the end to a conflictual silence between the characters. However, like the syncopated rhythms of reggae music, for example, where it is the gaps between the beats which provide the rhythm, it is also the overarching rhythmic structure of stretched syntax and distorted alexandrines in Koltès’ text which makes space for the unsaid to be heard. The audience is compelled to fill these gaps and silences. Absence, disappearance and silence generate meaning: ‘like an ancient statue with 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 58 11/25/2010 9:17:26 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 59 no head or arms which draws its beauty from this very absence’ (Koltès, 1999, p.27). The distillation of the text of Solitude towards the final call to arms: ‘So which weapon?’ dissolves meaning into pure violence. That passages of Koltès’ texts perform actions and have their emphasis on sound, indeed on the display of meaning in sound, is a theme which runs through his work and further inspires our own creative work on sound and our attempt to replicate the distillatory trajectory of the text in our overall translation strategy. Translation is a way of managing spaces to enable exchange. By giving space to the text, the translator makes audible what is unsaid in the original, audible because translating plays is also conveying what is unsaid, what is not text. If you add to the text, through expansion for example, then there is simply no space for what is between the words to be heard. ‘Ri-en’ (‘none’), uttered at the end of Solitude, could evoke the snarling of animals at the very point when all human discourses have been exhausted. In the process and product of the translation we wanted to be sensitive, as far as possible in English, to what we identified as the function of the complex syntax, the flow of the text and the use of particular isolated sounds or silences to provide counterpoints to and syncopate this flow, the use of sound patterns more generally and, in conjunction with this use of sound, the performative nature of lines. The very strong distillation, and indeed acceleration, provided by the text’s rhythmic architecture led us to decide that our translation strategy needed, above all, to be one which retained the spaces between the text, between the metaphorical notes. The musical metaphor can be taken further if we consider the text to be a score whose musicality we emphasize in translation. The complex syntax is carefully constructed and functions like a musical score which returns to a central key, the main clause in each sentence, while the various parentheses and relative clauses explore the different notes of the scale. The complex syntax functions like a theme in jazz which the various improvized solos are connected to, adding sound patterns similar to those illustrated above which stretch the theme to its limits but always follow the rhythm. The arrangement of the whole piece is left to the conductor/translators. In translation, we sought to create new realizations of the piece, musical interpretations of the original. Translation Our concern to retain as much as possible the complex syntax, the virtuosity of the piece, meant that the word order and minimal punctuation 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 59 11/25/2010 9:17:26 PM 60 Staging and Performing Translation of the original were adhered to as much as possible. The source text’s complex structures keep potential strands of meaning as open as possible and retaining these structures in translation enabled us to better sustain the complexity of syntax in a performable way by maintaining a system of stratified clauses as seen in example C. Consequently both texts demanded to be looked at in other terms, in terms of rhythmic qualities and in terms of sonority, other ways of evoking meaning. In translation, we sought a balance between regular metrics and an aleatory rhythm. It is only by reworking the rhythm first and refraining from making assumptions about meaning (and thus closing down possibilities of meaning) that words will be allowed to constantly re-arrange themselves for the audience. This essay does not deal with translation and music per se. However, if we consider Franzon’s proposal (2008, p.376) of a spectrum of five choices in song translation which runs from ‘translating the lyrics but not taking the music into account’ to ‘adapting the translation to the original music’, our method is closest to the latter. As mentioned above, we did not try to either recreate the deviations from formal structures or to repair cohesion or meaning. We sought a text in translation that had a similar trajectory to the original, a momentum provided by the complex structures and the minimal use of full stops. Care was taken to render these complex sentences more performable by paying attention to both the flow of the text, via the strategy applied to the translation of explicative conjunctions, and the avoidance of spelling anything out in the interests of cohesion, but also via the choice of sounds, trying to establish rhythm in sound above all, retaining the tempo mainly via alliteration and assonance. Given our overarching concern with mirroring the distillation of the text, with retaining the gaps between the metaphorical ‘notes’, the one translation strategy that we could not allow ourselves to employ was that of addition and explanation, what, in Antoine Berman’s list of the deforming tendencies of translation (2004, p.282), would come under the headings of ‘clarification’ and its consequence, ‘expansion’ which he describes both as ‘addition which adds nothing’ and as ‘a stretching, a slackening, which impairs the rhythmic flow of the work’.4 For example: F comme, au restaurant, lorsqu’un garçon vous fait la note et énumère, à vos oreilles écoeurées, tous les plats que vous digérez déjà depuis longtemps. (2004, p.14) 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 60 11/25/2010 9:17:26 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 61 as in the restaurant, when the waiter draws up the bill and enumerates, for your queasy ear, all the dishes you have long since digested. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) Or if we take example E quoted above: Mon désir, s’il en est un, si je vous l’exprimais, brûlerait votre visage, vous ferait retirer les mains avec un cri, et vous vous enfuiriez dans l’obscurité comme un chien qui court si vite qu’on n’en aperçoit pas la queue. (2004, p.15) My desire, were there one, were I to divulge it, would burn your face, have you retract your hands with a scream and you would flee into the dark like a dog who runs so fast his tail fades away. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) As already described above, this sentence accelerates like the dog which is used as a simile at the end, and we were careful to retain this gradually accelerating tempo in our translation. Particular work on sound and ‘musical arrangement’ is in evidence here as well, and we will examine this presently, but this extract is also an example of our translation retaining this kind of accelerating movement in the text which is necessary to replicate the accelerating movement of distillation towards what then becomes a void at the end of the play. This strategy of avoiding additions as far as possible is also relevant to the way in which we approached the complex syntactical structures and is most evident in our approach to rhetorical explicative conjunctions such as ‘c’est que’ (it is that) or ‘c’est pourquoi’ (this is why) and the ensuing interpolated clauses. Anyone who translates between French and English will know that French can sustain cohesion over much longer stretches of language than English can; a translator is often required to deal with the complex syntax of French by splitting sentences and repeating the subject, or by adding in explanatory phrases or additional relative clauses that provide the necessary cohesion in English. However, here, such explanatory additions destroy rhythm and thus make the text much harder to perform. More fluid ways of constructing such complexity needed to be found, as an analysis of the opening speech of the play shows: If you are out walking, in this neighbourhood, at this hour, you must desire something you’re missing, that something I can supply; the 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 61 11/25/2010 9:17:26 PM 62 Staging and Performing Translation reason I’ve been here for longer than you and will stay longer than you, and the reason, this very hour, the coarse intercourse of men and animals does not cause me to run, is that I have the wherewithal to satisfy the desire which passes by me, a weight of which I need to relieve myself upon anyone, man or animal, who passes by me. This is why I bring myself closer to you, despite the hour which normally sees man and animal in a savage rush at each other’s throats, I bring myself closer to you, with my hands open, palms towards you, with the humility of he who has something to offer up against he who has a need to buy, with the humility of he who owns, up against he who desires; and I can see your desire as you see a light go on, at the highest window, right at the top, at sundown; I bring myself closer to you like the sundown comes close to that first light, soft, respectful, almost with affection, and leave the street down below to animal and man to pull on their leads and savagely bare their teeth. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) The initial conjunction, ‘c’est que’ has been elided. For the next ‘c’est que’, starting the clause with a noun (‘the reason is’) enables us to launch the ensuing clause with a simple noun (‘the reason’) rather than the rhythmically destructive ‘because’. The conjunctions ‘parce que’ (because), ‘c’est pourquoi’ (this is why), ‘c’est que’ (it is that), ‘non pas que’ (not that), ‘si’ (if/while) or ‘car’ (as) throughout the text invite the expectation that meaning is about to be laid bare, that clarification is imminent. There is a tension in the text between the high number of these pronouns and the few occurrences in comparison of hypothetical structures such as ‘[ . . . ] si par hypothèse je vous disais [ . . . ]’ (‘[ . . . ] if, just a hypothesis, I were to say [ . . . ]’) (2004, p.42). The attempt by the characters to make sense of the situation and establish cause and effect is cancelled out by the very abundance of these conjunctions. The interpolated clauses betray incoherence by excess and thus increase possible interpretations. Reproducing the abundance of explicative conjunctions in English would lead to over explication and narrow down the pathways of meaning and so was avoided. A significant additional benefit is that not resorting to too many explicative conjunctions enabled us to avoid using the harshest sounding options in English and thus avoid interrupting rhythm. Our strategy is the inverse of Koltès’ as we juxtaposed clauses diluting the use of the explicative conjunctions; but we linked the juxtaposed clauses through sound and rhythm, thus creating an apparent unity of discourse which also points to the lack of correlation between clauses and thus the inability of the characters to 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 62 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 63 make sense of their situation. Throughout the translation process, we were constantly rejecting ‘because’ as a translation of ‘c’est que’, ‘c’est pourquoi’ or ‘car’, or even ‘which’ for ‘que’ because of the way in which, in English, for us in this context, they also interrupted the rhythm we were endeavouring to create. A similar strategy was applied to adverbial phrases, the ‘–ly’ endings of ‘slowly’, respectfully’ and ‘affectionately’, and the ‘ing’ endings of present participles (see ‘I’m approaching you’ versus ‘I bring myself closer to you’ above) because both the adverbs and the present participles bring in an idea of duration, in meaning as well as literally taking longer to say in sound, and thus tended to entangle, or even strangle, the rhythm to which we were trying to give a voice. Thus, we developed a strategy of constructing phrases that enabled us to retain the complexity of the original without the accumulation of the harsh sounding and rhythmically destructive English hinges of ‘because’ or ‘which’ and the endings of adverbs and present participles. The higher propensity of English to use intransitive verbs which require prepositions posed a similar problem because using them meant that both meaning and rhythm would be interrupted and deferred. For example, the use of the verb ‘to help’ in the following phrase from Wainwright’s translation ‘that something I’m sure I may help you with’ (2004, p.91) compared with our translation of ‘that something I can supply’. The analysis above explains how we approached the translation of the musical theme, of the complex syntax. The translation of the elusive/hidden alexandrines, of the rhythm section, however, posed a different problem and led to a different solution. We have used the theme of jazz as our metaphor for the rhythmic function of the echoing alexandrine stanza, but, as mentioned above, the way in which Koltès’ text evokes the alexandrine also has parallels with Schoenberg’s conception of atonal music. Counterpoint (simultaneous combination of two or more melodies, one being the counterpoint of the other) is a key part of this atonal system, the structure is over-arching, sometimes prominent, sometimes in recess. The distinctive twelve-timbre rhythmic structure of the alexandrine does not exist in English and so our solution was to draw on different rhythmic structures, those of Hip Hop and slam/jazz performance poetry. Process and performer This musical approach obliged us to continually rehearse the translation as it evolved. Our translation process involved first performing the lines in French to enable us to locate the rhythms and then producing 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 63 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM 64 Staging and Performing Translation an initial version. In English we did not have the rhythms of the French alexandrines and so, rather than a classically trained actor, we needed a physical performer to facilitate and help us to elaborate the delivery of the sound structures we had created. Performance poets produce and perform difficult texts which have their foundation in sound and it is the theatrical nature of performance poetry, especially slam poetry, which is crucial here, the way in which it animates text. We attended a number of the Blackdrop performance poetry events which have been running in Nottingham since 2002 and engaged one of the founder members and regular performers, British Bajan jazz poet and musician David ‘Stickman’ Higgins, to test out our texts, to help us to refine the rhythms we had created in the target text.5 We felt that this was an appropriate choice, given Koltès’ interest in African and Afro-Caribbean culture and music, and the fact that his writing is influenced by the journeys he took which placed him in contact with African culture.6 In attempting to establish a link between the performer and the performance style we used, it is worth clarifying that, although slam poetry in particular has its origins in US black culture, what we used was black British slam/jazz poetry which similarly has its origins in US hip hop culture but also has strong AfroCaribbean influences, as does our performer. We needed someone who had the ability to tap into the rhythms of slam, rap, hip-hop and reggae but also who was accomplished enough to escape these rhythms as well. Stickman’s role was to help us to refine the rhythms and sonorities we had created. Stickman’s first sight of the text was its projection onto a large screen, thus freeing his movement. Dalmasso performed the text in French so that Stickman, who does not speak French, could hear the rhythm without the distraction of meaning. He could hear where the construction of the strata of the text guides the breathing in such a manner that it cannot be performed in a wide variety of ways, especially at full speed, and then Stickman read/performed our translation. The only advice that Koltès ever gave to actors of his work, as reported by Bruno Boeglin (2001, p.46) was that they should perform as if they had an urgent need to urinate. This constraint (not particularly difficult as his natural performance style involves considerable speed) enabled Stickman to find rhythm and melodies in the text. Such a delivery suits this text in particular because the sparring characters are doing all they can to keep the opponent on the back foot, and slam poetry in particular is often a competitive art, performed in the context of slam contests which further suits our choice of performer and performance style. As a musician (his motto is ‘I write, I drum, I drum, I write’), Stickman searched for a rhythm both on his drum and vocally. When he was 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 64 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 65 recreating Dalmasso’s delivery of Koltès’ lines we noticed he employed rhythmic scaffolding derived not only from his individual voice and body but also from vocal melodic and physical patterns which could be identified as those used in hip hop, reggae and slam. By performing, drumming and vocalizing the cadences of the original, we tried to identify a musical variation in English on the rhythmic themes developed by Koltès. We found it especially useful to expose the performer to the source language, to the rhythm of the original text. Stickman could assess whether the musical variation produced worked, rhythmically and musically, like assessing a cover version of a jazz tune. While it is, of course, subjective to assess someone else’s rhythm and transpose it into a musical score, the advantage of identifying a rhythm like this is that it enables us to assess our translation process in a tangible way. It is both Stickman’s vocal performance and physical performance which interest us; both convey a very particular rhythm. This was entirely appropriate because it was a performance feature which echoed the self-imposed frame Koltès uses in his texts with the alexandrines. Koltès’ use of sound patterns helps facilitate the delivery of the complex syntax because they help to structure the performer’s breathing and therefore his rhythm. The text requires high levels of concentration by performers because they need to be alert to each other’s delivery in order to enact the complexity of the rhythmic and syntactic structures. The text provides steps which must be negotiated; it necessitates a delivery which has a rising and falling pitch. The sentence in example B above with seventeen diversions from the main premise is a good case in point, as is the start of the play, example A. Koltès’ text needs measure and breathing which is helped by the sound patterns he creates and the strata of the complex syntax. In order to provide similar measure and breathing in English we also need the repetitions, the structures but, in the absence of the alexandrines, we needed to emphasize the sounds much more in order to give the text more scaffolding against which we could prop the different strata. This is where we, as translators and performers, fit into the musical metaphor: our emphasis on sound, to some extent over meaning as we will discuss below, gave us the role of musical interpreters, instrumentalists, working out a variation on an original. The role of Stickman as the performer in this process was crucial, as was the role of Dalmasso as a performer of the French text, since within the translation process there was effectively a translation from one performance to another. Speed is the essence of the delivery of Koltès’ text in this play; it guarantees a safe navigation between the text’s different levels. The image of silent film star Harold Lloyd walking on a building site and 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 65 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM 66 Staging and Performing Translation inadvertently stepping on steel girders being lifted by cranes but managing to follow an uninterrupted path in mid-air is what performing Koltès feels like. Leaving a sentence fragment hanging in mid-air for too long before reconnecting it to the main clause is impossible. Delivery requires speed, with speed comes risk; but Koltès has orchestrated the partitioning of the text so that it provides a series of hooks on which to hang the delivery in the form of rhetorical conjunctions or relative pronouns or alliterations or assonances. When performing the text in French, what aided Dalmasso in rehearsals was to visualize the different strata of fragments of sentences in front of him and then rewire them before they crashed to the floor, as though juggling with blocks, making sure that the pressure between the blocks was tight but loose enough to throw the blocks up in the air, catch them and rearrange them in a different manner. And while, as we have said, it was Stickman’s vocal performance which interested us, it was also his physical performance – both of these convey a very particular rhythm. Clive Scott (1993, p.23) notes that ‘Plato described “rhythm” as “the name for order in movement”’ and that ‘the kinetic element is crucial’ and the physical, kinetic, element of Stickman’s performances of our translations, in drumming and movement, were indeed a crucial building block in the construction of the rhythms of the final translation. The retention in translation of Koltès’ rhythmic structures, his musical score, enabled us as translators, in conjunction with Stickman as performer, to improvize like a jazz performer picking up on the rhythm of the text. Stickman’s involvement facilitated this creative work on sound in particular. In translation we sought a new realization or variation. What Stickman brought to our translation was, in certain places, an identification of which rhythms were more successful, which rhymes gave him something to get his teeth into, where the text needed speeding up or slowing down, which sounds were most effective to perform. Our focus on retaining the complex syntax, word order, punctuation and avoiding expansion meant that our translation strategy was one which emphasized form over sense. However, this is not formal equivalence in Nida’s sense as it included a distinctly dynamic element. It was a strategy which also emphasized sound over sense, or at least, which provided tones which coloured our interpretation, our musical variation. This strategy of sound over sense was pursued specifically to infuse the translated text with life and rhythm. A ‘clear’ translation with no particular sound features was always rejected in favour of a more opaque one rich in sound, or a straightforward, ‘natural’, translation rejected in favour of an unusual, awkward one, because we felt 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 66 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 67 that what might be lost in meaning would be regained in rhythm. A good example of this is the phrase ‘homme ou animal’ in the French for which the most natural collocation in English is ‘man or beast’ but for which we employed ‘man or animal’; it has assonance and alliteration which is there in the French but which ‘man or beast’ does not have while also providing us with an enforced pause because of the enunciation required in delivery, a pause which contributes to the rhythm of the piece. But this is not all, the deliberate similarity between humans and animals in Koltès’ text is sustained more clearly with ‘men or animals’. Example E is a perfect example of the way Koltès’ text performs: teasing out the metaphor does not make the text more intelligible but recreating a rhythm, a system of sounds which performs the metaphor, does. Sounds provided us with the tones which overarch the whole piece, and soundscapes replaced the elusive alexandrine stanzas in our rhythmic architecture. Sound became our rhythmic scaffolding within which we built the text. The sound rhythm works to a large extent on rhymes, alliteration and assonance and can be seen in most of the examples we have used in this essay. An example of the importance of sound in alliteration, an example which was refined via Stickman’s performance, occurs in example D: mais ne me demandez pas de deviner votre désir [ . . . ] (2004, p.12) but do not demand of me to divine your desire [ . . . ] (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) As noted above, this is also an example of text having a performative function. The Dealer is constantly trying to stop the Client from leaving and his only weapon is language, so the delivery is that of a man in such a hurry to get his words out that he produces the sound of someone stuttering in haste. In order to reproduce this, we needed to ensure that the translation maintained the strong alliteration and pace of the original. We have also discussed above the following example as another illustration of the text performing the actions it describes, and as an example of Koltès’ work with sound patterns. In translation, it works both as an example of the retention of the performative function of text but also as an example of the creative work we have done on maintaining or creating sound patterns: Mon désir, s’il en est un, si je vous l’exprimais, brûlerait votre visage, vous ferait retirer les mains avec un cri, et vous vous enfuiriez dans 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 67 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM 68 Staging and Performing Translation l’obscurité comme un chien qui court si vite qu’on n’en aperçoit pas la queue. (2004, p.15) My desire, were there one, were I to divulge it, would burn your face, have you retract your hands with a scream and you would flee into the dark like a dog who runs so fast his tail fades away. (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) For the gradually accelerating melody of the French (see detailed description above, we have imported a similar shift of gear in the sentence at ‘and you would flee into the dark like a dog which runs so fast his tail fades away’. The use of the inversion of subject and verb in ‘were there’ and ‘were I’ beforehand slow the first half of the sentence down. And while we do not have the tail rhythmically separated off, marked out in sound so as to draw attention to its disappearance as in the French, the sound of the English produces a different but similar effect and enables the tail to slip away. In addition, we have provided some alliteration in ‘dog’ and ‘dark’ and ‘fast’ and ‘flee’ which echoes that of ‘aperçoit’ and ‘pas’ and ‘court’ and ‘queue’. Our creative work on sound enabled us to attenuate the strangeness of the syntax which we had largely retained. This tightening of the syntax with deliberately creative work on sound enables both the performer and the audience to better deal with the stretched cohesion of the complex syntax. The repetition of sounds gives the performer and the audience a thread to follow alongside that of the syntax or alongside that of the meaning or of the plot. It is only in the final collision of the concurrent threads at the end of the play, in the final ‘rien’ (‘none’ in our translation) that the truth is revealed, nothing was said, nothing was heard: G Le Dealer S’il vous plaît, dans le vacarme de la nuit, n’avez-vous rien dit que vous désiriez de moi, et que je n’aurais pas entendu? Le Client Je n’ai rien dit; je n’ai rien dit. Et vous, ne m’avez-vous rien, dans la nuit, dans l’obscurité si profonde qu’elle demande trop de temps pour qu’on s’y habitue, proposé, que je n’aie pas deviné? Le Dealer Rien. Le Client Alors, quelle arme? (2004, p.61) 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 68 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 69 The Dealer Pray tell me, in the tumult of the night, did you not speak of one desire that I may not have heard? The Client I spoke of none; I spoke of none. And you, did you not offer one, in the night, in the obscurity so profound that only time can tame, that I did not divine? The Dealer None. The Client So, which weapon? (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged) Emphasizing the soundscapes instead of the syntax gave us the freedom to ensure that we adhered to our intention to retain the spaces between the text, between the metaphorical notes, to subtract rather than to add, with each sound calling for its corresponding silence, each beat calling a non-beat as in the syncopated rhythms of reggae. Conclusion This essay has provided an analysis of how specific elements in a text which invites one type of performance can be translated across languages into another quite specific type of performance using different elements which fulfil a similar function. The way in which the rhetorical conjunctions and relative pronouns follow the rhythm in the French cannot be recreated if a performable text is sought, that is, a text within which performability is defined as rhythm, so the emphasis had to be placed on sound and ‘musical arrangements’. What we are tempted to call percussive theatre is Koltès’ creation of a rhythmic architecture consisting of a combination of malleable versification which evokes alexandrines, or themes, and overarching complex syntax, or ‘rhythm section’, which build specific strata to construct breathing and pace of delivery, along with sonorities, or ‘interpretations’, in repetition, rhyme, alliteration and assonance. These features are transferred in translation from one performed text to another, with the main difference being the focus on sound and rhythm to compensate for the lack of transferability of the complex syntax. However, the English play text could not have been created in abstract conditions, the practical input of jazz poet and musician Stickman was crucial. We believe that the work we have done is an important step in demonstrating that the relatively rare practice of close collaboration between translator and 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 69 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM 70 Staging and Performing Translation director/actors can be made into a much more direct exchange than it often is. In general we believe a performer can benefit enormously from having to be confronted by the strangeness of the original text and by wrestling with its rhythm. In our practice, we ask the performer to be ‘l’étranger qui ne connait pas la langue, ni les usages, ni ce qui ici est mal ou convenu, l’envers ou l’endroit, et qui agit comme ébloui [ . . . ] (Koltès, 2004, p.33), ‘the stranger who knows neither lingo nor protocol, neither lore nor custom, inside nor out, and who acts as though bedazzled’ (Baines and Dalmasso, unpaged). Notes 1. (Translation by Baines and Dalmasso – all translations in this essay, unless otherwise indicated, are by Baines and Dalmasso.) La langue française, comme la culture française en général, ne m’intéresse que lorsqu’elle est altérée. Une langue française qui serait revue et corrigée, colonisée par une culture étrangère, aurait une dimension nouvelle et gagnerait en richesses expressives à la manière d’une statue antique à laquelle manquent la tête et les bras et qui tire sa beauté précisément de cette absence-là. 2. For example: (6) ‘Si vous marchez dehors, (12) à cette heure et en ce lieu, c’est que (12) vous désirez quelque chose que vous n’avez pas (12) et cette chose, moi je peux vous la fournir’ Strictly speaking this segment has nine syllables. However, it is the first line of the play and serves as an exposition. Since the only spatial and temporal references are ‘cette heure’ and ‘ce lieu’, it is conceivable (and indeed how Dalmasso performed it) that the Dealer would utter them slowly by stressing every syllable. Moreover, the assonance in ‘dehors/heure’ calls for an emphasis on the second word. Thus, the segment could be performed as a twelve syllable unit, with ‘heure’ pronounced as two syllables and with a diaeresis (pronunciation of two adjacent vowels in two separate syllables rather than as a diphthong) on ‘lieu’: ‘à cette heure/ et en ce li-eu, c’est que’. See also extract of the beginning of Dans la solitude des champs de coton as rehearsed by Patrice Chéreau on audio CD with Benhamou (1996). 3. See Jacques Roubaud (2000). 4. See Jeffrey Wainwright (2004) for comparison. 5. Although there is not much evidence of performance or slam poetry influencing theatre, our experiment is not an isolated example of theatre using slam and Hip Hop culture, see in particular the work of the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London in their 2003 Hip Hop version of A Comedy of Errors 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 70 11/25/2010 9:17:27 PM Roger Baines and Fred Dalmasso 71 called Da Boyz, the street dance 2006 production of Pied Piper and 2007’s production of Genet’s The Blacks, for example. 6. Koltès travelled to Africa, specifically Nigeria, Mali, Senegal and the Ivory Coast and set the 1979 play Combat de nègre et de chiens in an African context. He also travelled to New York on a number of occasions and it was here that, according to Patrice Chéreau in the documentary mentioned above, the fleeting exchange with a dealer which is at the origin of Solitude occurred. It was in New York that he came across rap music as early as 1983 in Washington Square and it is his interest in ‘black’ music, in rap and reggae which is relevant here. References Benhamou, A.-F. (1996) Koltès: Combats avec la scène, special issue of Théâtre d’aujourd’hui (5) (includes audio CD of Dans la solitude des champs de coton rehearsed by Patrice Chéreau) Berman, A. (2004) ‘Translation and the Trials of the Foreign’, in Venuti, L. (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader (London: Routledge), pp.284–97 Boeglin, B. (February 2001) ‘Roberto Zucco est une pièce où le sentiment d’urgence est très fort’ Le Magazine Littéraire (395) p.46 Chernoff, J. Miller (1980) African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) Delgado, M., and D. Fancy (May 2001) ‘The Theatre of Bernard-Marie Koltès and the “Other” Spaces of Translation’, New Theatre Quarterly (XVII: 2), pp.141–60 Franzon, J. (2008) ‘Choices in Song Translation’, in S.-S. Sebnem (ed.) Translation and Music, The Translator (14: 2), pp.373–400 Hart, M. (with J. Stevens) (1990) Drumming at the Edge of Magic: a Journey into the Spirit of Percussion (New York: Harper Collins) Koltès, B.-M. (1989) Combat de nègre et de chiens (Paris: Minuit) Koltès, B.-M. (1999) Une part de ma vie (Paris: Minuit) Koltès, B.-M. (2004) Dans la solitude des champs de coton (Paris: Minuit) Meschonnic, H. (1982) Critique du Rythme (Paris: Verdier) Rogers, A. (1994) ‘Rhythm and the Performance of Organization’, in P. Auslander (ed.) (2003) Performance: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (London: Routledge), pp.353–404 Roubaud, J. (2000) La Vieillesse d’Alexandre (Paris: La Découverte) Scott, C. (1993) Reading the Rhythm (Oxford: Clarendon Press) Wainwright, J. (2004) (trans.) ‘In the Solitude of Cotton Fields’, in D. Bradby and M. M. Delgado (eds.) Bernard-Marie Koltès: Plays: 2 (London: Methuen), pp.187–215 Websters Dictionary (2009) (online) Available at: http://www.yourdictionary. com/rhythm (Accessed 20 January 2008) 9780230228191_05_cha03.indd 71 11/25/2010 9:17:28 PM