Category Retranslation
Invisibility of the Foreign: The Double Life of Alessandro Baricco’s “Silk” in English Translation
Alessandro Barrico’s “Silk” is a story about the tension between Self and Other. Baricco’s main character Hervé Joncour travels repeatedly to Japan from his small, French town of LaVilleDieu in the 1860, to buy masses of silkworm eggs to replenish those at home struck by a silkworm-killing blight. Leaving his wife Hélène at home, he becomes secretly enamored with a young Japanese girl, whom he distinguishes for her eyes that “did not have an oriental slant” (19), a feature that immediately calls into question her otherness while nonetheless asserting her foreignness.
“Like Grasping Nothing”: Revisiting Alessandro Baricco’s “Silk”
Above all, “Silk” is a novel that dwells in silences and negative spaces, an examination of unfulfilled desire and all that remains unspoken. Joncour’s fixation on the young concubine that captured his imagination remains unrealized, buried beneath clandestine love notes and quick glances. Joncour himself remains evasive throughout the novel, his identity as slippery and difficult to grasp as a swath of silk (back home in France he becomes “the Japanese,” not only a reference to his travels, but also a hint at the other hidden inside the self). It is in these empty spaces that this story of desire and identity begins to unfurl, as lush and heady as a children’s fable.
Workshop Notes Part 2: Translation and Retranslation
Published in Italy in 1996, “Silk” (Seta) was an immediate bestseller. It was translated in English in 1997 by Guido Waldman – a respected translator and editor whose titles include Ludovico Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” and Giovanni Bocaccio’s “The Decameron.” Retranslated by none other than Ann Goldstein in 2006, “Silk” accompanied the film adaptation, an international co-production that didn’t receive much acclaim. Despite the film’s lackluster fate, the retranslation in English of a contemporary literary work by a living author less than 10 years after its first translation, is a notable event.
The Qualities of Silk in Ann Goldstein’s and Guido Waldman’s Translations of Alessandro Baricco’s “Silk”
“Silk” reads differently in each of its two English translations. The style of writing and the quality of the prose is where the two translations diverge. Goldstein has prioritized the “sparseness” of Baricco’s prose in a very literal sense. Her translation is minimal in its embellishments and its interpretation, rendering the novel into English in its most accurate, albeit plain, form. Waldman, on the other hand, has evidently prioritized the text’s beauty and lyricism.