translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

The novel exploits the carnivalesque meaning of the world, it
valorizes plurality, variety and difference, the fluidity of forms and content,
all of these being reflected in the style and mixed genres of the novel. Facts,
events presented in the novel are ambiguous, interpretable; hence, the
different meanings which can be built on them: “History is always
ambiguous, and facts are hard to establish.” (Rushdie, 1991: 34) History is
the place of uncertainties and doubts.
Rushdie underlines, in addition, the changing character of history:
events are questioned, deconstructed; proclaiming events as being
unchanging, already given would mean being paralyzed, dominated by
them. Reality is made up of our prejudices, our ignorance, our knowledge
and capacity of reception. From the perspective of the immigrant, reality
and history are artifacts; they do not exist until they are constructed and,
due to their artificial nature, they can be deconstructed. Saleem Sinai’s
India stands under the sign of multiplicity, pluralism, hybridity,
eclecticism, difference and heterogeneity.
Like reality, truth is relative and dialogic, not absolute and
monologic, the role of the artist being to highlight truths. Rushdie mentions
“the truth I can remember, the truth of memory.” (1991: 34) Although
history is not logical and objective, it can have a meaning; in fact, it can
have more meanings and it is the role of the artist to uncover them.
Reality/history exists in a latent form, the creator/writer making manifest
only one history, one particular reality. From this perspective, history
represents the conservation and combination of an infinite number of
ingredients from an almost infinite range of choices: “Art consists in
modifying the flavor in intensity and not in essence and, above all, it
consists in giving the flavor a shape, which means giving it a meaning.”
(Rushdie, 2000: 425 – our translation)
2. How can history be known?
The recreation and the reproduction of the past both spatially and
temporally imply an imaginary reconstruction depending on the way in
which the subject perceives them: “Imagination is the process by means of
which we build intensified images of the world, having a transformative
capacity, able to determine both a falsification, distorting of the world and
a clarifying of events, a discovery and intensifying of them.” (Rushdie,
1991: 134) Our attitude to the world is essentially imaginative; we create
images about reality, then we try to equalise the image with the world, yet
we have to be aware that there are different images.
The memory which registers the events is distorted and distorting,
liable to error; hence, the fragmentation of the rebuilt past, the partiality of
71