post-colonial_translation

80 André Lefevere
incidentally, reads very much like Haafner’s: ‘This city, with its lethal
and poisonous emissions – built in a foolish way, after the custom
dominant in Holland, with canals that, dried out by the heat of the sun,
have become puddles of mud, yield a terrible stench every day, and
produce devastating fevers’ (p. 105). De Marre adds in his defence:
‘that accidents do not obliterate the essence of things, and I walked the
city in its splendour’ (p. 5). In other words, if reality does not fit the
textual grid, change reality until it fits the grid. Similarly, de Marre ‘took
the liberty, where needed, to write the names of Indian places as they
are pronounced according to custom, and are best known, so as not to
cause any ambiguity, and because they all, according to the nature of
the Indian language, did not flow well in verse’ (p. 8). De Marre’s second
apology concerns the use of notes, which are needed ‘to expand on some
things that would not have flown well in verse, or would have made
same too boring’ (p. 6). In other words, if reality refuses to fit the textual
grid, supplement that textual grid by another, though in moderation.
A very revealing example is the description of ‘Onrust’ [Unrest] on p.
223. First the text:
There lies our Onrust, that with so many delights
Spreads the morning’s shadows on the level of the waters.
Behold how glorious it shines in power,
As it guards our shore with a hundred Argus eyes,
Forestalls the cunning of an evil neighbour,
Or in war’s frenzy, thundering from its wall,
Protects the land’s carpentry wharf, the keels inviolate.
Then the note: ‘“Onrust”, a small island and fortress, two miles to the
West of Batavia, where the Maatschappij has its big carpentry wharf
and many warehouses’.
The East Indies Company (henceforth the ‘Maatschappij’) is the
central character in the epic. In the best tradition, she is mentioned in
the second line of Book I, so that there can be no doubt as to the subject
matter of the epic, and then invoked again a few lines later, on p. 2 of
the text: ‘Oh Maatschappij, in spite of the enemy’s jealous eyes / Seated
so firmly on the pinnacle of happiness’. Half-way through the epic, the
Maatschappij returns as the muse: ‘Oh Maatschappij! who has heard
us so graciously! / Let me lift my tones in a new mood / To depict your
city true to life in my painting’ (p. 155). Since de Marre’s text is an epic,
mythological references are not lacking (the god Bacchus is mentioned