Przekładaniec, Numer 35 – Słowo i obraz w przekładzie 2, 2017, pp. 7 - 20
https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.17.009.8222Anne Carson's essay „Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” is about untranslatability in the context of literature, history and painting. According to Homer's Oddysey authoress shows untranslability as a imposibility to translate one language into another and in the big picture as a – sacred, inaccessible, remained silent – knowledge of gods contained in word, which can't be translated. Bringing in the idea of cliché, took from French to English without any changes, she uses it as a image of stereotypical thinking and violence of convention (mainly institutional). The inquisitorial process of Joan of Arc is a example of untranslatability of mystical experience. Bacon's paintings, specially series of portraits of the screaming pope, expose another aspect of titular silence (which means also rejection of speaking, cooperation and interpretation): scream painted without any sound. The methods of disturbing the coherence of story on the painting is also very important here: randomness of painter's acts, white arrows, which guide the attention of spectator or splashes of paint. Translation projects of Hölderlin shows the subject of translation in connection with madness. The figure of German poet separated from the world, who is working on translations of Sophocles and trying to find the words „living enough”, is example of impossible (and non-accepted) project of using the language different from conventional. All those figures, which Anne Carson describes in her variations inspired by music and painting, move against violence of language, which is the cacophonous collection of cliché. Untranslatability of their works is about their genius.