Leaving Something Untranslated

In the forest, the light changes after only a few steps. The canopy closes above me. Beneath it, the green grows darker. The ground smells damp. In one place the air smells of wood; somewhere else there is an earthy smell I cannot name more precisely.

Almost at once, something feels familiar. A smell reminds me of another forest. The light between the leaves reminds me of a path I used to walk often. A certain density in the green reminds me of a place whose name I could not have given straight away. I am here, and at the same time other places surface. It happens so quickly that I usually barely notice it.

Perhaps I always enter a new place carrying memories of other places with me. I compare. I recognise something. It helps me find my bearings. The smell reminds me of another forest. And yet it belongs to this one. The light, too, seems familiar. And yet it is falling here, through these leaves. Perhaps I notice this difference precisely because similarity is so useful. As soon as I can say, “This is like …”, something comes closer. A new place gains a point of reference. Something I do not yet know becomes connected to something familiar. Sometimes that is exactly what I need.

But I could also walk through a forest and find almost nothing but things that remind me of something else. Then I would have recognised a great deal. And perhaps still have seen very little of this place. The memories really are part of my perception. But they belong to me. Perhaps something similar happens in comparisons like these and in translation. Something new is brought close to what I already know.

I notice this especially in conversations. Someone tells me about something that happened to them, and while they are still speaking, a memory of my own may surface. I know what that is like. Something similar happened to me once. That can be a good thing to say. Perhaps what I mean is: I can understand some of it. You are not entirely alone in this. A memory of my own can create a sense of closeness. But it does not mean that I have experienced the same thing. Perhaps two experiences overlap at only one point. Perhaps the very thing that was incidental to me was decisive for the other person. Then “I know what that is like” can claim more than I actually know.

There are experiences I can understand to some extent without having anything comparable in my own life. I can ask and listen. I can recognise that something matters without knowing exactly what it feels like. Then, for the moment, what remains is simply what the other person has told me. Perhaps that is not so little after all.

When translating texts, I encounter this difference in a more literal way. A sentence can be translated correctly and still acquire a different movement. A phrase that sounds casual in German may become more explicit in English. A word almost fits, yet pulls the sentence a little further in one direction than I want. Then it does not always help to follow the original more closely, word by word. Sometimes a sentence has to change so that something of it can remain in the other language. I do not automatically experience that as a loss. The two versions do not have to match exactly. Perhaps it is enough if they still belong together at the points that matter.

In painting, this becomes less literal for me. I do not go into the forest in order to translate it into an image later. I may see something there that stays with me. A density between branches. A movement. A place where the light barely reaches the ground.

Later I stand in front of a sheet of paper. Perhaps nothing of that forest is recognisable anymore.
No tree.
No leaves.
No path.
And yet the experience may have something to do with the work. Perhaps I leave an area alone where I might otherwise have worked on it, or move a tool differently across the paper. Or perhaps only the moment changes at which I decide not to add anything more.

Afterwards, I could try to establish a precise connection. This line comes from that branch. This dark area from the canopy. This white from the light between them. But the connection is often not that clear-cut. Something can change my work without later appearing in it as an element of its own.

If I insisted on turning an observation into a visual equivalent, at some point I would have to decide what was essential to me about it: the form, the movement, or the light. But sometimes I do not even know what I would separate out from it. Perhaps the smell and the light belonged to it just as much as a memory that suddenly surfaced – and something I never named at all. Perhaps it is enough that it shifted my attention for a while. An experience can find its way into a work without later being recognisable in it.

Something does not have to become something else in order to remain. Later, I may no longer know whether a particular movement came from an observation in the forest, from something I had read, or simply from what was happening on the paper at that moment. I could try to reconstruct its origin. Most of the time, that does not help me much. More interesting is that something can remain without retaining its original form. On the paper, it can no longer be traced back unambiguously. Something came with me. Sometimes that is all I know.