Perec and Matthews

The reading for the next class was another section from A Void by Georges Perec and the excerpt “The Curse of the Maltese Falcon: Translation and the Oulipo” by Harry Matthews. The excerpt by Matthews really brought to light the affects of translation from one language to another. His example in the excerpt using the line from Racine’s Phedre goes to show that translation can take many forms, whether it is direct translation, translation by omitting a letter or letters, translation by replacing a word with another word with the same number of letters, etc, at the end they are all still considered a form of translation. By doing so the original meaning maybe somewhat buried or skewed. As in the book, A Void, which has been translated, may have also faced the difficulties of keeping the original meaning or plot through the language difference. The excluding of a letter may have proved to be a challenge but as Matthews puts it, “[W]riting under constraint proved to be not a limitation but a liberation” (81).