Subject: Re: waddayamean
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Mon Mar 06 2000 - 07:50:54 EST
In a message dated 3/6/00 2:58:35 AM Eastern Standard Time, rbowman@indigo.ie
writes:
<< The 'meaning' of the Catcher is this young chap
in flight from Pencey High in New York in 1949 (?).
It has no connection with a young chap in flight
from Newtown to Dublin in 1953 - or a young
aristo getting out of Eton for London in 1910,
or a young Bantu escaping the kraal to Jo'burg
in 1934.
Scottie B. >>
No, Scottie, that's the content of the narrative. It's not the "meaning" of
the narrative. The "meaning" of the narrative has to do with
disillusionment, with a certain attitude toward hypocrisy and "phoniness,"
and with coming to some kind of resolution with the world.
I think these attitudes are translatable to at least some other languages.
It's possible, I suppose, that there are langauges and cultures to which
Holden's struggle would be completely foreign. But I doubt that Holden's
struggle would be completely foreign to the German, the English, the
French...who all would be thinking of their own counterparts to Holden, of
course.
You quoted Virgil, Scottie...sure you got it right? Come on, translated
literature is so prominent a landscape in the thought of us English speaking
people that honesty requires we admit Some faith in the possibility of
meaningful translations. Because we do have it, even if we can't work out a
full exposition.
My experience with reading translated literature in English, and then in the
original language, has been the feeling that I was seeing a two dimensional
portrait in black and white vs. a color painting. The lines are all the
same, it's still a picture of the same thing, but not nearly as rich.
Jim
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