post-colonial_translation

Chapter 7
Interpretation as
possessive love
Hélène Cixous, Clarice Lispector and the
ambivalence of fidelity
Rosemary Arrojo
I owe a live apple to a woman. A joy-apple. I owe a work of apple
to a woman. I owe: a birth to the nature of a woman: a book of
apples. To Des Femmes. I owe: the loving – the mystery of an
apple. The history of this apple, and of all the other apples.
Young, alive, written, awaited, known. New. Nutritious.
In the translation of the apple (into orange) I try to denounce
myself. A way of owning. My part. Of the fruit. Of the enjoyment.
Of venturing to say that which I am not yet in a position to ensure
by my own care.
Hélène Cixous, Vivre l’orange/To Live the Orange
Tejaswini Niranjana opens her well-known book on translation with
a quote from Charles Trevelyan’s On the Education of the People
of India, originally published in 1838, which is quite efficient in
showing the perverse love story that often underlies the colonial
encounter:
The passion for English knowledge has penetrated the most
obscure, and extended to the most remote parts of India.
The steam boats, passing up and down the Ganges, are
boarded by native boys, begging, not for money, but for
books [. . . ] Some gentlemen coming to Calcutta were
astonished at the eagerness with which they were pressed
for books by a troop of boys, who boarded the steamer from
an obscure place, called Comercolly. A Plato was lying on
the table, and one of the party asked a boy whether that
would serve his purpose. ‘Oh yes,’ he exclaimed, ‘give me
any book; all I want is a book.’ The gentleman at last hit