translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

As Mandelbrot points out, this idea of recursive self-similarity was
originally developed by the philosopher Leibniz, but it can also be related
to Goethe’s organicist view. Another basic principle that substantiates the
fractal perspective is that entropic disorder plays a constructive role in
creating order. A new approach has thus been advanced requiring, as N.
Katherine Hayles puts it, “a shift from the individual unit to recursive
symmetries between scale levels.” (1990: 13) That means that research is
focused on the similarities replicated across the scale levels of a system, be
it existential, social or cultural. The phenomena associated to the scaledependent
symmetries are characteristic of a fractal point of view.
Therefore, the necessary coexistence of the two ways of approaching
fractals in literature brings about the concept of continuity in rupture which
appears to be the only productive critical pattern suiting the purposes of
our approach. Thus, what the mathematics and the science of fractals have
finally revealed can be applied in interpreting literature; to put it otherwise,
the “microcosm” (the literary text) which is smaller or belongs to a lower
level, is essentially similar to the “macrocosm” (the real world) which is
larger and/or pertains to a higher level; the latter is not somehow superior
to the former by virtue of its size or level; the literary text dynamics are
such that the macrocosm springs from and is grounded in the microcosm
(i.e. the fictionalised representation of the real world), not the other way
around. What Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher,
noticed over three centuries ago can now be truly demonstrated:
Nature (n.b. literature) imitates herself. A grain thrown onto good
ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings
forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master –
the root, the branch, the fruits, the principles, the consequences. (in
Hayles, 1990: 226)
In our opinion, literature is a fractal object due because:
(1) it is subject to specific tension-engendering factors such as
unforeseeability, deviation and ambiguity;
(2) its critical interpretation is reader-centred and fortuitous;
(3) being structured like “a fragment made up of fragments”, the
literary work creates a “fluctuating geometrical space” (different
interpretations, open endings, puzzle-like structures, unevenly
constructed, mirroring characters);
(4) the fractal potentiality can be applied in re-interpreting classical
works;
(5) contemporary literature provides a fractal world mediating among
the infinite possible - historical, cultural or artistic – worlds.
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