translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

magic, of legend and myth, the story seems to be the reenactment of an
ancient myth: Ulysses’s voyage and quest of the self or Theseus who enters
the Cretan labyrinth.
The labyrinth that Nicholas refers to many times is a recurrent motif
in The Magus and may stand for the labyrinth of the text itself which is in
the making, which is created before us. “My heart was beating faster than it
should. It was partly at the thought of meeting Julie, partly at something far
more mysterious, the sense that I was now deep in the strangest maze in
Europe.” (313)
John Mepham (in ‘Narratives of Postmodernism’) states that poststructuralism
considers that the labyrinth is the best image for the
postmodernist text:
The text as a reified locus of determinacy is replaced by textuality,
often figured by the metaphor of the labyrinth. As it incorporates
decentring, difference, differance and other grammatological moves,
the labyrinth (image of the text) places writing before us as the setting
of the abyss. (1996: par. 6)
Conchis is in fact a thinly disguised surrogate for the author himself
and the use of such an author surrogate is also a sign of self-reflexivity (not
to mention that Robert Foulkes shares with John Robert Fowles one of his
two Christian names – Robert – and Foulkes seems to be a mispronounced
Fowles, which is again an element that tie the real ‘author’ to his fictional
work). There is little doubt that Conchis is a mask for his creator, a
camouflage, an alter-ego, a voice for his deepest beliefs. Conchis is a
persona that expresses Fowles’s ideas and views on subjects ranging from
music and art to literary realism, from good and evil to truth and beauty,
from freedom of choice and existential authenticity to human selfishness
and ‘collector-consciousness’. Conchis’s discussions with Nicholas become
true essays on philosophical and literary issues. The status of the novel
itself as a genre with its own conventions is brought to the fore. In
Conchis’s reply – “The novel is dead” (96) – one can easily discern an echo
of the postmodernist debate on the novel and its conventions.
‘What do you read?’ […]
‘Oh…novels mainly. Poetry. And criticism.’
‘I have not a single novel here.’
‘No?’
‘The novel is no longer an art form.’
I grinned.
‘Why do you smile?’
‘It was a sort of joke when I was at Oxford. If you didn’t know what to
say at a party, you used to ask a question like that.’
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