再現 / 系統 / 人 : 班雅民論翻譯與複製科技林建光 國立中興大學外文系副教授5 月 12 日於國立中正大學外文系

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) Life Theory

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Translation and Mechanical Reproduction “The Task of the Translator” (1923) “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936) Both essays can be found in Illuminations, trans, Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969).

Literature and human “No poem is intended for the reader,

no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener…. For what does a literary work ‘say’? What does it communicate? It ‘tells’ very little to those who understand it. Its essential quality is not statement or the imparting of information.” (“Task” 69)

“Meaning”/mode of signification (1) “In the same way a translation,

instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original’s mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a grater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel…(next page)

“Meaning”/mode of signification (2) For this very reason translation must in large measure refrain from wanting to communicate something….” (78)

Translation/afterlife/system (1) “… no translation would be possible if

in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness to the original. For in its afterlife—which could be called that if it were not a transformation and a renewal of something living—the original undergoes a change. Even words with fixed meaning can undergo a maturing process…. (next page)

Translation/afterlife/system (2) Translation is so far removed from

being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own.” (73)

Translation and system change “In translation the original rises into a

higher and purer linguistic air, as it were. It … points the way to this region: the predestined, hitherto inaccessible realm of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages. The transfer can never be total, but what reaches this region is that element in a translation which goes beyond transmittal of subject matter.” (75)

Translation/representation/ mechanical reproduction Original/translation Nature/art System change: What kind of change does the reproductive technology bring about for the original system/nature as well as the translated system/art?

Reproduction/reality/change “The equipment-free aspect of reality

here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology.” (“Work of Art” 233)

Reproduction/art/system change “… it [the film] offers, precisely

because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.” (234)

Mechanical reproduction/system change/human “Evidently a different nature opens

itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye—if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man.” (236-37)