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270 The Translator’s Invisibilitycome to perform again the ceremonies of a secret passion,protected by a world of dry leaves and furtive paths through theforest. The dagger warmed itself against his chest, and underneathliberty pounded, hidden close. A lustful, panting dialogueraced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it hadall been decided from eternity.(Cortázar 1967:64)On the one hand, Blackburn increases the verisimilitude of thetranslation by adding more precise detail, like the phrase “through theforest,” which is absent from the Spanish text (in another passage, hesimilarly adds the phrase “leading in the opposite direction” to “Onthe path” (ibid.:65)). On the other hand, Blackburn exaggerates themelodramatic aspects of the scene: he uses “lustful, panting” to renderone Spanish word, anhelante (“craving,” “yearning,” “panting”), andchooses “raced” for corría (instead of the flatter “ran”). Two otheradditions to the Spanish text produce the same exaggerated effect:“unforeseen,” in the sentence, “Nothing had been forgotten: alibis,unforeseen hazards, possible mistakes”/“Nada había sido olvidado:cortadas, azares, posibles errores” (Cortázar 1967:65; and 1964:10));and “flying,” in the sentence, “he turned for a moment to watch herrunning, her hair loosened and flying”/“él se volvió un instante paraverla correr con pelo suelto” (Cortázar 1967:66; and 1964:10).Blackburn’s melodramatic lexicon reinforces the realist illusion,making the narrative more suspenseful, suturing the reader moretightly in the lovers’ position; yet it also classes the narrative in apopular fictional genre, the steamy romance, encouraging the readerto interrogate the realist illusionism that dominates English-languagefiction—most obviously in bestselling novels. Cortázar’s textchallenges individualistic cultural forms like realism by suggestingthat human subjectivity is not self-originating or self-determining, butconstructed in narrative, including popular genres. This and the factthat it is a businessman who turns out to be living a fiction dovetailwith the critique of bourgeois values, economic and cultural, thatrecurs in Blackburn’s other writing.Blackburn’s work as a translator spanned various languages andperiods, and he published several other translation projects,including The Cid, a selection of Lorca’s poetry, and Picasso’s prosepoems, Hunk of Skin. Still, enough has been said to sketch the maincontours of his career—and to judge it a powerful response to hiscultural situation. Blackburn followed the modernist innovations