of adjectives! Such levity! His prose has become almost good, the bastard. And since he barely speaks French, he won’t suspect a thing. I have complete freedom of action, as long as the Parisian publisher for whom I’m translating Translator’s Revenge isn’t in the habit of going through their texts with a fine-tooth comb. And if I were now to revoke the adverbs? (Typist’s Nuisance)
*
* It’s done: no more adjectives and not a single adverb. The result of these surgical strikes? A gain that is genuinely unheard of, truly serendipitous, undeniably stupefying, frankly stupendous, irrefutably spectacular—with this wearisome accumulation I make up for it and prove the efficacy of my ablations. Now, such concision, such levity! I retranscribe here for your curiosity the list of adverbs and adjectives disappeared since the beginning of the second chapter in which we find Abel Prote, “the virile man with green eyes,” who was born in the middle of the century, working alongside Doris, his idiosyncratic secretary (and maybe more):
charming, light brown, pure, shiny, suddenly, vaporous, hooked, sensually, low-cut, becoming, splendid (2 times), formfitting (3 times), tall, thin (2 times), opulent (2 times), oblong, short (4 times), curvaceous, exactly, penetrating (2 times), virile, green (after these last two deletions, we are left with the striking “the man with eyes”), elegant, suggestive, transparent (3 times), lightly, languorous (3 times), violently, catlike, hot (4 times), imperceptibly, softly, luke-warm, slowly (3 times), silky (3 times), alluring, blue, white, red, pulpy, resolute, stubborn (2 times), fat, built, pinkish, very (7 times), smooth, tumescent (3 times), black and pink (2 times), rounded, bulging, luxuriant, lowered, secret, moist (4 times), isolated, inflated (3 times), strong, massive (4 times), burning, concentric (4 times), slow (2 times), rapid (5 times), more and more, open (4 times), perfumed (2 times), marine, spicy, unfastened, smothered, wild (2 times), contained, aerial, purplish, agile (5 times), wet, hard (4 times), powerfully (3 times), frenetic, again (6 times), supple, defective, brusquely, languid, crumpled (2 times), low, tender, little by little, relaxed, dozing, restorative. (Tamperer’s Nosography)
*
* A clarification about my modus operandi: even when I resist the temptation of censorship or when I don’t dilate the original prose as I please, I am an indelicate transporter, a clumsy mover, a seedy trafficker. I dispatch fragile and labeled objects from one edge of the ocean to the other, and although I certainly do my best, I bang them and drop them, I damage and dent them, scuff them and scrape them, I destroy them despite myself and en route I lose the most important crates, furniture, carpets, paintings, etchings, designs, photographs, books, magazines and knickknacks, plates and silverware, bodies and body parts, clothes, tools and machines, stuffed or living animals, china, glasses and crystal, accessories and utensils that are however duly indexed, hidden nooks and love nests, boudoirs and canopies, cabinets and bathrooms, studios and apartments, houses, villas, buildings, entire neighborhoods, arrondissements, towers, towns, suburbs, cities, rivers, ponds, lakes and streams, provinces, states, continents and oceans, planets, stars, constellations, galaxies, nebulas and black holes, that were entrusted to my seemingly nice face, and violently I throw a large part of my cargo to the roadside and it crashes there with a roar, in order to transport to safe harbor a few paltry residues, scraps, trash, mismatched specimens, delivering them haphazardly to the mercy of my readers who are frustrated or naïve, in any event duped, tricked, for they are unaware of all the perils of the voyage and the risks of the trade.
I preserve only the first half of the phrase import-export and in my tribulations I lose the majority of my fragile merchandise; at the first gust of wind they’re thrown overboard, for they are poorly tied up on the deck of my freighter, crushed during transfers by the distracted or clumsy longshoremen, smashed by life’s obstacles, ignobly swapped for food, weapons, a caravan of camels, a state-of-the-art car, a schooner, or a plane, pillaged by pirates and a thousand more or less shameful duplicities, or else simply forgotten, wasting away at the bottom of a shuttered warehouse. Thus, finally reaching the port, I arrive at the quay and deliver an inferior substitute to my employers, deaf and blind but normally satisfied, a derisory residue of original treasure, meager dregs that I piece together somehow, a balloon that I reinflate using only the force of my nicotined lungs. Disappointment, disarray, general desolation. There remains the empty husk, the sheath deprived of life, the mold without the bronze. In short, I am depressed, I am not the first of the text, but the eternal Poulidor, the second by vocation or by decree of destiny, the eternal afterthought: I always arrive too late and in rough shape. (Transporter’s Negligence)
*
*You will have noticed, my reader, that above I deleted all the “stage directions,” conserving only, for excellent reasons of austerity and internal dynamic, the dialogues between characters. Here, for your curiosity, the list of these deleted directions:
“ !” hurled Doris in a defiant voice as she walked toward him.
“ ,” Grey replied coldly.
“ …”
“ ,” Grey cut her off, drawing right up close to her beautiful face with its slightly hooked nose.
“ ?”
“ ,” he retorted ruthlessly, grabbing her by the collar of her blue terry cloth nightgown.
“ !” Doris whined, undone.
“ …” Grey insinuated without loosening his grip.
“ ,” unleashed that beauty who (etc.).
“ ?”
“ ,” she confessed, batting her eyelashes.
“ ,” he replied dryly.
He pushed Doris violently down onto the crimson sofa, where she collapsed, a wreck, making sure to modestly tug her dressing gown over her legs, which were shapely / slender / thin as matchsticks / very skinny / could take a footbath in a double-barreled shotgun (I still have to choose).
The translator left the room slamming the door behind him.
Here are the stage directions from the next scene:
“ ?” the stranger in the frayed black coat, wearing a fedora of an indefinable color, asks him out of the blue.
“ ,” Grey replies, still thinking of Doris, of how he left her in tears on the crimson sofa.
“ ?” continues the stranger.
“ ?” Grey retorts tit for tat.
“ .”
“ ?” ventures the translator, suddenly wary.
“ !” says the other.
“ ,” Grey concludes.
They go to the nearest bar, where they drink beers until nightfall. (Eraser’s Numerus Clausus)
*
* After the adjectives, the adverbs, and the stage directions,
