Clippings

“You are ready to stab girls to death. You would be ready, no doubt, to mortify and scourge yourself for centuries together. Wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes, ready with all my heart,” I cried in my misery.

“Of course! When it’s a question of anything stupid and pathetic and devoid of humor or wit, you’re the man, you tragedian. Well, I am not. I don’t care a fig for all your romantics of atonement. You wanted to be executed and to have your head chopped off, death ten times over. You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live. The devil, but you shall live! It would serve you right if you were condemned to the severest of penalties.”

Probably the most widely known passivized translation from Japanese is one that has been made from the inscription engraved on the monument in Hiroshima to those who were killed by the atomic bomb. The original inscription, which contains what may be the most broadly inclusive zero pronoun, is a sobering one, with far greater impact in the Japanese original than in its weakened English translation:

安らかに眠って下さい。過ちは繰返しませぬから。
“Rest in peace, for X will not repeat the mistake.”

This has been rendered, “Rest in peace, for the mistake will not be repeated,” which is far less problematical than the original. “Who will not repeat the mistake?” people wanted to know when the monument was unveiled. “And who made the mistake in the first place — the Americans when they dropped the bomb, or the Japanese when they started the war?” The transitive Japanese verb in the active voice calls for a subject — a responsible actor. The passivized translation makes far less stringent demands. With its unnamed subject, the Japanese sentence seems discreetly to avoid placing the blame on anyone, but it is far more thought-provoking than the English translation would suggest …

Before all else I learned that these playthings were not mere idle trifles invented by manufacturers and dealers for the purposes of gain. They were, on the contrary, a little or, rather, a big world, authoritative and beautiful, many sided, containing a multiplicity of things all of which had the one and only aim of serving love, refining the senses, giving life to the dead world around us, endowing it in a magical way with new instruments of love, from powder and scent to the dancing show, from ring to cigarette case, from waist-buckle to handbag. This bag was no bag, this purse no purse, flowers no flowers, the fan no fan. All were the plastic material of love, of magic and delight. Each was a messenger, a smuggler, a weapon, a battle cry.