Translating the Self: A Look through Rousseau, Wordsworth and Borges
The problem with writing the self not only lies in remembering and communicating the details and events of one’s life, but in the understanding and interpretation of one’s own indescribable essence. Writing the self then becomes an act of translation. Of translating the indescribable, illogical and intangible nature that is yourself, and sharing those private memories and experiences with inevitable readers. The problems of translating ephemeral essence into crystallized language is as complicated as translating between different languages itself. What is lost in translation when trying to convey the private, inner workings of your essence, into a common language? What complications are faced by a writer who does not know who his readers are? What limits are held on the reader who has preconceptions of who the writer is?
Where Rousseau and Wordsworth write their prose and poetry with a faith in a narrative thread, Borges makes a theme of deconstructing this concept. He questions memory and acknowledges the power of dreams. In his stories, he suggests that one’s essence doesn’t even belong to oneself. The problem lies in the attempt to translate with one voice the plurality that lies within each sovereign identity. Rousseau, Wordsworth and Borges wrote from different countries and different time periods. The scholarly articles I have included in my study are works in their own right, their own poems, as Harold Bloom would say. Taken all together, I have made a study of the complications of knowing the self, writing the self and reading the self and tried to present it in a cohesive manner to a readership who I hope will in turn, read it to create their own poems.
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