The following 2 blog posts are a part of an unpublished series my grandfather, Tome Momirovski, writer and activist, has written in the past few years.
He rarely writes in the medium of English, and when he does, we do enjoy it. Hence, have decided to share his thoughts with the greater English-speaking community.
In the wake of political turmoil, quaintly labeled post 9/11 sensibilities, almost everywhere we turn to, talking about the vestiges of inter/intra cultural translation, particularly those pertaining to artistic creation, seems oddly out of place. Day in and day out, the diligent reporting of the media brings to our dinner tables countless stories of old, man-inflicted abuses, now with newer faces and western names. We look, we gasp for breath, we sneer (ah, the Americans, we always knew that they were the problem!), and then, almost relieved, we assure ourselves that we are nothing like those men and women. How can we possibly be like them? We are considerate, compassionate, we create. We are Artists. We help establish cultural links, within and without our communities. We translate pages and scripts of great merit. Is, then, this singular ability of ours to ‘read between the lines’ and to ‘recognize various cultural traits’ that which helps liberate our compassion gene and makes us immune to violence and vile acts? Is it all that simple?
I have always believed that before taking the glorified ‘we’ step, and speaking in the name of one’s culture’s life and its ‘translated existence’, the individuals in question need to take a closer look at where they stand, themselves, in the grand scheme of things. In other words, what of my pluralized, writing ‘I’? How ‘culturally liberated’ has is come to be? How compassionate? How well have I ‘translated’ its, meaning ‘mine’, liberated stance?
I suppose older age affords us the liberty of publically voicing such queries, and listening to where they take us. My own quest has always strutted between what I see around me and what I seek within me. Growing older, I turned eighty-two this past April, hasn’t brought me closer to finding that magical solution to my many ebbs and flows, as a man, a husband, a father (and grandfather), a writer, a European minority. Luckily, having spent my entire life in and out of situations, experiences, events, that have required, at their best and their not so famed, a grain of translation, I have learnt that patience and reverence for the other, or others, alongside whom I have worked, debated, plain argued, could prove of good use. However, it seems that my coveted patience and embraced reverence are two old-fashioned (almost old-world) values that do not fit today’s ‘bill’.
People nowadays get rewarded for their claim on the speed of things: as a result, we live in a perpetual world of Olympic proportions, running fast, jumping high, breaking bones while setting records. For what, one might ask? For a better health care system, higher wages, job security, greater tolerance towards those who think, feel, pray differently than we do? Somehow, it all doesn’t seem to add up: while we focus on achieving the speed of the moment, we breathlessly pass by the things we had entered the race for, in the first place. But who needs an olden voice, with former Yugoslavian (pre- and post- World War Two) life memories, to remind us of the traps we set ourselves up for. I keep hearing these newly coined terms: ‘multiculturalism’, ‘transcultural communication’, ‘decolonized spaces’, ‘transnational cultural denizenship’. I give my best to follow up with the debates that surround these postmodern vestiges of cultural understanding; I read, I rejoice at their successes, and I read some more; but then again, I keep having these pensioner’s doubts, if you will, I ask myself, have these pulsating and very much needed and heated debates, truly narrowed the gaped spaces between postindustrial and Third World nations, between those who have had their dinners and those with no such ‘luck’? And if they have, at least made a dent in the widening crevice, how lasting will their impact be, how sustainable their liberating thump?
Gregory Rabassa, the American translator, who over the course of the past forty years has translated into English the literary journeys of the South American cultural giants, believes that his life choice, translation, is a ‘difficult and poorly understood art’. Like good wine, well done translation gains its momentum with time, rather than out of it. More than often it proves to be a financial blunder and if done not to the particular satisfaction of the reading public, the ‘text’ dies a painful death. On the other hand, if done with some understanding and reverence for the ‘original’ material, then the words live on, taking their meaning from the present circumstances of those who choose to open themselves up to them. And, in a sense, liberated ‘cultural denzienship’ might ensue.
I can’t help but wonder, my aged existence meddling again, if at the end of the day, a good job at ‘translation’ is all we can leave behind. Our own cultural existence measured against the life-span of the various cultural ‘translations’ we have provided over the years, in print, or in voice, with our neighbors, through our children, students, fellow human beings.
When man supposedly conquered space, during the 1960s exercise into Cold War politics, the race for broadening the human potential, in all of its cultural versatility, was rapidly approaching its designated end. Today, however, we live out an immediacy, where now more than before, as one largely, dysfunctional human kind, we are on the look-out for something that will get us ‘going again’, with the similar ‘innocent gaze’ of the 1960s quest, for wider frontiers, better possibilities, greater compassion. Is ‘cultural translation’ the key to surviving a terrorizing present, and a not so bright time ahead? Can it lead us into the humanizing appeal of great classic works, such as Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, or Charlie Chaplin films, or the biblical ‘Song of Songs’? I’d like to say a resounding ‘Yes!’, but being a proponent of patience and reverence, I am going to ‘sit this one down’, and work on my pluralized ‘I’ and its cultural contribution, in and out of translated spaces. And see where it takes me.
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