What is the truth?
The truth about Sancho Panza
Talk about reading between (just two) lines! No other parable has been so over-analyzed as Kafka's little take on Don Quixote's loyal sidekick. The lure of the parable is its apparent completeness though I haven't read or listened to a single satisfactory interpretation (except mine of course). So, what is the truth?
posted by Prashanth Pappu @ 11:30 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
So, IM, what is your interpretation?
The short interpretation is that Kafka thinks that Don Quixote is a personification of Sancho's (who himself could be Cervantes) existential angst.
Think of what Kafka does to deal with his angst. Think of what Kafka's characters do to deal with their own angst. Think of Kafka-his pursuits-his characters-their pursuits relationship. It can be argued that Don Quixote is very much a Kafkaesque character (the relentless pursuit of self-wrought albeit futile exploits).
So, perhaps Kafka is just amused to see one of his own characters presented in such a comical way?
The following is a transcription of a passage from Harry Mathews' essay "For Prizewinners":
To show how truly syntactic the operation of this expanded syntax can be, I have prepared a demonstration for you using as material a complete and unabridged work by a modern master: a very short short story by Franz Kafka. My demonstration demands a certain patience, since you must listen to and reflect on three texts: that of the short story itself and, in addition, those of two revisions or rewritings of the story. Here, first of all, is the story. It is entitled "The Truth about Sancho Panza":
(What follows is the version linked to in the blog post, due to the Muirs)
Let me interrupt my argument to say a few words about the matter of the story, not to define ot limit it, only to indicate its general scope and give those of you who have never read it a chance to become aware of the issues involved. As you noticed, the two characters in this very short story are taken from another very long work of fiction. We might suspect from this fact alone that "The Truth about Sancho Panza" involves fiction as its subject in some way or other; and our suspicion is corroborated by what takes place - by the "plot". The narrative, quantitatively minimal, presents us with the original and, in its implications, vast proposition that Sancho Panza, the skeptical, realistic servant of Don Quixote, was his master's creator - that he was, in other words, responsible for the invention of one of the most extravagant characters in the history of literature. Sancho Panza's act of creation is presented, however, as anything but an extravagance, rather as the sober means by which he preserved himself from terrible suffering, by which he actually transformed that suffering into an "edifying entertainment". We can reasonably deduce that Sancho Panza is to be identified with Cervates; more interestingly, we can guess that this story of Kafka's proposes a general view of fiction: that, at least on occasion, fiction can serve to make the most oppressive aspects of reality bearable, even entertaining, not by describing them "realistically", not by denying or running away from them, but by "masking" them - by pretending that one has made them up, or by making something else up to take their place. Kafka makes his point clear by following the precepts implicit in his view in this very story, which is thus transformed into an elegantly economical metaphor illuminating both itself and the practice of the art of which it is an example.
I shall now read you my two rewritings of "The Truth about Sancho Panza", which I shall henceforth refer to as translations. In my first translation, while I have kept the vocabulary and phrasing of the original, I have divided the two sentences of the original - the first long, the second much shorter - into five sentences of less disproportionate length:
"Without making any boast of it, Sancho Panza succeeded in diverting his demon from himself - the demon he later called Don Quixote. What he did was feed him a great number of romances of chivalry and adventure in the evening and night hours. As a result, this demon set out, uninhibited, on the maddest exploits; but since they lacked a preordained object, which should have been Sancho Panza himself, they harmed nobody. Sancho Panza thus became a free man. Perhaps out of a sense of responsibility, he philosophically followed Don Quixote on his crusades and had of them a great and edifying entertainment to the end of his days."
In the second translation, I have kept the two sentences of Kafka's story intact; on the other hand, I have replaced all its nouns with other nouns chosen with no consideration for the meanings of the original ones (this choice has been made in a way that I need not explain to you except to say that it leaves virtually nothing either to personal fancy or to chance):
" The Tub about Sancho Panza
Without making any bobbin of it Sancho Panza succeeded, in the courtship of yellowness, by feeding him a great numskull of romantics of chloroform and advertisement in the evil and nil housings, in so diverting from himself his demonstrative, whom he later called Don Quixote, that this demonstrative thereupon set out, unihibited, on the maddest exports, which, however, for lack of a preordained objurgation, which should have been Sancho Panza himself, harmed nobody. A free manager, Sancho Panza philosophically followed Don Quixote on his cruxes, perhaps out of a sensitiveness of restaurants, and had of them a great and edifying enticement to the endlessness of his dead. "
Putting it simply, one can describe what has been done in the two translations by saying that in the first the sense of the original is kept and its structure altered, in the second the sense is altered and the structure kept. If you agree to this description, it may strike you as a waste of time if I ask you which of the two translations best preserves the meaning of the original. Obviously, you have already concluded - who wouldn't? - that the translation that keeps the sense of the original must best preserve the original's meaning. (Let me hasten to add that I have no intention of using the distinction between sense and meaning in any but the most ordinary way.) If, furthermore, the little story is indeed a metaphor, the second translation has without doubt destroyed - in addition to the literal sense of each phrase and sentence - any possibility of engendering the metaphorical content that I found so enlightening. How, you may wonder, can the second translation even begin to be taken seriously?
Let me reread the originals and the two translations - the translations twice each.
Two developments, you will notice (and I observe that you are noticing), have begun taking place. The first translation (unlike the original) is growing steadily more boring; the second translation is making more and more sense - or, at least, we seem more and more to be expecting it to make sense; and much of the sense we are persuading ourselves to discover sounds, while in no way replicating the original, like a kind of commentary on it. "A great numskull of romantics of chloroform and advertisement" can certainly be read as a respectable gloss on the character of Don Quixote; calling one's demon a "demonstrative" fits - our demons, alas, compel us to demonstrate ourselves; exploits are often for export (cf. "advertisements" above); Sancho Panza most definitely becomes the "manager" of the situation. (As for the "sensitiveness of restaurants": imagine what most of us would be thinking about if we were traveling through Spain....)
Little by little, the "meaningless" second translation is accumulating an appearance of meaning. I suggest that this is no accident, and that the meaning of the second translation has its source in the original. I suggest that this meaning can certainly not be found in what the translation has changed - its vocabulary - but in what it has left intact: the structure ad rhythm of Kafka's story. I claim that the essential meaning of the story is produced by the contrast between the long, complex, almost teeteringly clumsy first sentence ( so exquisitely preserved by the Muirs in their translation) and the short, forthright, satisfyingly balanced concluding sentence. That contrast embodies the moment of discovery, the moment in which confusion gives way to clarity, the moment in which Sancho Panza learns how to exorcize his demon, in which whoever is telling this story perceives the usefulness of writing fiction, perhaps the moment in which Franz Kafka sees the possibility of truth in writing a story called "The Truth about Sancho Panza". This movement of discovery and resolution irresistibly survives the travesty of sense perpetrated by the second translation, just as it irresistibly succumbs to the "faithful" rendering of the translation, in five sentences. You should note in conclusion that this embodiment in the contrast between the two sentences, of what I called action empowers the reader to create, using the sense of the words available to him, the experience of discovery that is the substance of the story. Syntax makes the metaphor work; and we may conclude that meaning is to be equated not with content but with what makes content produce its effect. Here, as so often in Kafka, the nominal sense of the words gives only indirect clues as to what is really going on. Syntax and syntax alone delivers the goods.
etc.
(Note: The directness of address owes to the fact that this was originally a talk delivered in May 1982 at Queens College, New York.)
Very interesting read! Where did you find this transcript? Google does't seem to have found it.
I actually typed it in :) It's from a book I own: a collection of essays published in "Review of Contemporary Fiction". I thought it was interesting because rather than just providing another interpretation, it addresses the question of why this parable has generated so many interpretation...
True...
That little piece of transcription could be this blog's best contribution to the web! I'll watch out for hits to the page from google.
Great stuff ! I will only add that this notion of "The joy of discovery" as a fundamental impulse and raisin d'etre for writers and readers applies to a lot of other things as well.
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