Translator as a Messenger God
Translator Disguised as the Writer Recreating the Text
There are many perspectives from which one can read stories like “Two in One” by Flann O’Brien and “Death and the Compass” by Jorge Luis Borges. Especially Borges’ short story which is one of many puzzling ones can be given many meanings by the reader. One of the best-known readings of the text is based on the metaphor of the labyrinth-like mansion, with the detective and the criminal as the text, the reader, and the author. This metaphor is examined by Rosemary Arrojo in her essay “Writing, Interpreting, and the Power Struggle for the Control of Meaning: Scenes from Kafka, Borges, and Kosztolányi”. This type of interpretation can be broadened to include the translator with the help of some elements that can be considered a reference to the existence of a translator such as the double-faced statue of Hermes, and “Two in One” can be added to the equation to analyze it further and better through the symbolism of skin and taxidermy. Before going further in the essay, it will be useful to state that Hermes is a messenger of gods in Ancient Greek myths, and there is one myth that depicts him while stealing one of Apollo’s cattle. A translator has the important role of transferring a text to a broader audience, just as Hermes; however, he cannot complete his mission without losing or renouncing some aspects of the primary source because of the active nature of language as well as the matter of “perspective”, which cannot be ignored.
Furthermore, a translator is a rewriter of a text, and this is where our second story “Two in One” comes forward. The issue of “wearing someone else’s skin”, even though it has never been examined in this context, can be a metaphor for the way the translator imitates the author while the metaphor of “the detective and the criminal”, and the statue of Hermes in “Death and the Compass” can be interpreted as an innuendo for the lost/abandoned or altered elements of a text based on the Greek myth. To make it clearer, it can be stated that, as a reinterpretation and synthesis of the two short stories “Two in One” and “Death and the Compass”, the translator is Hermes the Messenger God with his aspect of conveying a text to a specific audience and can be accused of theft of identity and property because of his quality of “shapeshifting” and the losses of a translated text.
To start with the issue of identity fraud, taking “Two in One” into consideration will be the best to establish the desired metaphor. According to this text, it can be interpreted that the translator is a prisoner in a cell made of the author’s “skin”. At the beginning of the story, the narrator states “I do not expect to be disturbed in my literary labors, for I am writing this in the condemned cell” (O’Brien, 171). This quote makes it clear that the narrator sees the skin he is in as a cell for himself. He is stuck in somebody else’s life and must look through the eyes of the original owner. A similar logic applies to the situation of the translator. Here, the narrator, Murphy, is a representative of the translator while the skin he is wearing - Kelly's skin - is the illustration of the skin of a writer. Just as Murphy is bound to see through the eyes of Kelly and act as Kelly not to be stigmatized as a murderer and identity thief in his own identity, the translator has no choice but to stay devoted to what the author gives him. To translate a text and present it to the reader, the translator takes the shape of the writer. He cannot go out of the borders set by the skin to remain respectable and innocent; however, the person behind the skin still has his perspective which gives him the power of altering the narrative.
Thanks to the fluid nature of language, the translator can interpret a text from his perspective, which causes inevitable changes to occur in the translation process, which creates enough room to call a translator a thief of meaning. Even though language is considered the best way of communication, it is not enough to convey fully what one means. Arrojo comments on this depending on Nietzsche's ideas about the philosophy of language by stating that “[t] he is perfectly compatible with the philosopher’s view of language as being fundamentally rhetorical and, therefore, incapable of revealing essences on intrinsic meanings (see, for example, Schrift 1990:192)” (63). In the process of translation, the translator is occasionally forced to rewrite certain parts, or he prefers to rewrite. While doing it, however, he loses some elements of the original text and the culture that helped it to be born. At this point, the translator becomes Hermes. “[…] [D]ouble steps of stairs opened into a double balustrade. A two-faced Hermes cast a monstrous shadow” (Borges, 6). In the given quote, it is understood that the presence of the messenger casts a shadow over the place. Since, as Arrojo states, the mansion, the place is the text, it can be stated that there is a subtle intervention of the messenger with the text. Apart from the myth about Hermes’ theft and status as a messenger, the two faces on his statue have made it enough to set up the metaphor of Hermes as the translator. As it was discussed above, the translator willingly or unwillingly carries two identities under his sleeves, and the two faces of Hermes are a reference to them. Moreover, the location of the statue is where the double stairways are. Double perspectives naturally bring double meanings while reading and discussing a text. In this example, the stairways are what we call meaning in a text. So, the statue of Hermes is connected to the stairways just as the translator’s perspective and the product are connected to different meanings which are the results of his and the stolen identity of the author. The existence of the translator multiplies the meanings of a text.
To conclude and sum everything up, when Borges’ “Death and the Compass” and O’Brian’s “Two in One” are taken as the starting point, a metaphor indicates that a translator is a messenger who is responsible to narrate a text to new audiences and steals from both the text and the writer in the process like Hermes the messenger who stole from a god whose messages he was accountable to carry can be established. Apart from the obvious connection between Hermes and the translator's status as messengers, the fact that the translator must see a text from the author’s perspective and, to accomplish that, must take the shape of the author creates an analogy between this matter and the issue of killing someone and wearing his skin to protect the respectability of his name in “Two in One”. Also, the two faces of the statue of Hermes in “Death and the Compass” help support this argument. Furthermore, the twoness mentioned in the part the statue appears shows that the presence of it is what increases the option of paths. Just like the statue, the presence of the translator causes multiple meanings to occur since “[…] there is no text in itself apart from the activity of interpretation” (Arrojo, 65), and the way the translator interprets a text from his own and the author’s perspective are different and tend to create different texts with different meanings.