4. Non-narrative elements in Tristram Shandy

It was stated earlier that non-narrative elements were chosen as the focus of this study because unlike the smooth processing of the narrative, they lend themselves to scrutiny. I will now further justify my choice by suggesting that such elements are of particular importance in Tristram Shandy.

Tristram Shandy is by any standards an extraordinary book. This oddity is very much due to the jerky quality of the story, the total inability for a reader to sit back and enjoy the book in a leisurely manner. Just when one is settled to a comfortable reading experience, beginning to follow whatever is going on, the story takes a sudden turn in some unexpected direction, or the meaning of words starts to melt, or some visual element in the book distracts one’s attention. It is these frustrating elements in Tristram Shandy that are the focus of my discussion. I prefer to call them non-narrative, as opposed to the narrative sections of the book. They could be seen as the elements which fall outside both narrative proper and dialogue. Others, according to their angle, have called them ‘games and traps’ (Watts 1996: 32), ‘self-conscious and self-reflecting textual comedy’ (Probyn 1987: 135), ‘reflexive techniques’ (Whittaker 1988: 65), or ‘fragmented narration’ (Werner 1999: 162). They are the bumps in the ride of reading, and indeed translating, Tristram Shandy. Unlike the bumps in Leppihalme’s Culture Bumps (1997), these are not due to external differences between cultures but are an integral part of the book, and thus something that needs be translated as such.

The most obvious of these elements are the many insertions, by which I mean all the text that interrupts the narrative. The second feature is ambiguity, all the instances when words seem to mean more than one thing at the same time, and the last group are all the visuals that break up the text.

4.1. The role of non-narrative elements

This study is based on the assumption that Tristram Shandy is a novel and that the narrative forms the main body of the book to which other material is added. It could be argued that the book should be seen the other way round, that Tristram Shandy is not fiction, and indeed Stedmond (1967) states that Sterne’s style owes as much to the tradition of the periodical essay as that of the novel (5). Brissenen (1971) has argued that Sterne did not intend to write fiction to start with, that the characters emerged accidentally in the process of writing and it wasn’t before the end of the first volume that Sterne realised what he was doing. As discussed above, Sterne’s intentions were unclear when he wrote his first letter to Dodsley – and he also took Dodsley’s advice (Ross 2001: 201-204). Kovala (forthcoming) also challenges the idea that Tristram Shandy is a novel. As the completed work stands (if it ever was completed [1] ) it is, nevertheless, more practical to see the narrative as the skeletal element that holds Tristram Shandy together, and stretch the definition of a novel accordingly, as most criticism through the ages has done. Shklovsky (1929) puts it nicely: ‘It is commonly insisted that Tristram Shandy is not a novel; those who say this maintain that only an opera is music and symphony is a disorder’ (89).

Before discussing in detail one by one the various non-narrative elements in the first volume and how they were translated, their effect on the reading experience will be discussed.

4.1.1. Imitation of life’s non-linearity

The non-linear narrative of Tristram Shandy cannot by any means be called realistic in the sense that the word is normally applied in literary history, but there is a certain life-like quality in Sterne’s prose: it could be said that Tristram’s rambling prose imitates life.

Tristram gives us the impression of running after thoughts, or ideas, which are too fast for him. The word ‘ideas’ occurs thirty seven times in the nine volumes, and in more than one third of the cases collocates with something like the ‘succession’, ‘train’, or ‘chain’ of ideas, often stating that these follow each other ‘rapidly’ or ‘fast’. This obviously echoes Locke’s ‘Association of Ideas’ (Locke 1690: II.XXIII). In imitating the way associations break the linearity of human thought, Sterne creates an illusion of a real-life situation.

Several writers have commented on this life-like quality. Hazlitt (1820) remarked: ‘Sterne's was in this respect the best style that ever was written. You fancy that you hear the people talking’. Virginia Woolf (1932) argued that ‘the order of ideas, their suddenness and irrelevancy, is more true to life than literature [...] We are as close to life as we can be.’ (96). Ross (1990) explains that ‘Tristram’s problem is that since his mind is not restricted to a linear awareness of his experience, he perceives any linear account of his life as a falsification of it’ (xvii).

Interestingly, a book that makes sure the reader cannot immerse him/herself into an illusion of a narrative, can at the same time give an impression of a very intimate encounter with the author. Techniques that could be described as alienating have ultimately the opposite effect. This brings us to the role of the reader.

4.1.2. The reader as a partner

A reader who is constantly addressed by the author can hardly forget his/her role. To add to the confusion, sometimes Tristram seems to address the reader who is actually reading the book, and at other times a gallery of imaginary readers, who become characters in the book. The flesh-and-blood actual reader has to decide which, if any, of the various imaginary readers mentioned he/she identifies with; ultimately he/she is forced to take sides, to decide whether he/she is with Tristram or against him (cf. Pegenaute 1996: 136). It is easy to see from the responses through the ages that readers either love or hate Tristram and his book, and it comes as no surprise that it has been voted the most hated set book amongst undergraduates in the U.S.A. (Day 1989: 150). Many readers, on the other hand, feel they have a personal and intimate relationship with Tristram (Sterne) and Simon suggests that by sharing Tristram’s difficulties the reader begins to feel not only sympathy, but empathy also [2] (1985: 504-5). Tristram is uncannily present in his narrative.

The insertions, digressions and foregrounding of narrative techniques also make the reader very aware of his/her own reading experience as Watts (1996:32) among others has pointed out. Visuals such as the blank, black and marbled pages and unexpected diagrams add to this effect. Watts stresses the ‘critical reflexivity’ produced by this. Another aspect of Sterne’s relationship with the reader is cooperation. Writing about allusions in literature Leppihalme (1997) points out that ‘[a]n important aspect of alluding is the capacity of literature to ‘create new literature out of old’ [...] that is, to involve the reader in a re-creation by hinting at half-hidden meanings which the reader is expected to recover and then use for a deeper understanding of the work’ (8). The Sterne scholar Ruth Whittaker argues that at the same time as the illusion of the story fades we feel that we are ‘included in the creative process’ (1988: 64-65). Reading Tristram Shandy can be, to use a modern coinage, a rather interactive experience.

It can be argued that no text is realised before it reaches a reader and so the reader always forms the other half of the communication act. The question arises, how far does this role go? Bassnett claims: ‘Writers create for readers, and the power of the reader to remake the text is fundamental’ (1998: 74) and Barthes famously declares ‘the death of the author’ (1977, cited in ibid: 27). I would say that the reader is, no doubt, necessary, but this does not make the author dispensable. Not all readings make sense. If the most particular reader of them all, a translator, is not loyal to his/her author, loyal to the degree of ‘self-denial’ as mentioned above (Rossetti 1861: 65), the result is not, to my mind, a reading worth writing down. It seems to me that the way Sterne has made new literature out of old materials has resulted in one of the most original narratives in the English language and should be attributed quite firmly to its author. A reader who does not respect the writer’s intention limits his/her reading experience unnecessarily.

4.1.3. Instability of language

Puns and paradoxes were not new in literature in 1759, they had been extensively employed by many seventeenth-century authors (Stedmond 1959: 250); what was new is the fact that Sterne seemed to be as interested in ‘the word as on the idea which he is seeking to express. Language is not merely raw material which he, as artist, must shape; it is also a problem to be analysed and discussed’ (ibid: 250n). Both Watts (1996: 61) and Pergenaute (1996: 144) argue that by demonstrating the ambiguous potential of words Sterne expands the limits of language.

Locke’s theory of the association of ideas which (among other influences and perhaps, Sterne’s natural inclination) leads Tristram to jump from one subject to another so that the narrative loses all its linearity, is not the only Lockean concept that has had a fundamental influence on Tristram Shandy. Discussing the Signification of Words Locke (1690) states that ‘unless a man's words excite the same ideas in the hearer which he makes them stand for in speaking, he does not speak intelligibly’ (III.II.8). We need look no further for the inspiration for the endless misunderstandings between members of the Shandy household. Sterne seems to stress that obsessive ideas are not conducive to mutual understanding: a hobby-horse can make a man blind to other people’s intentions and feelings. On the other hand, as Brissenen (1971) points out, the reconciliations after the misunderstandings between the Shandy brothers underline the importance of the ‘sentimental virtues of sympathy and tolerance’ (259).

 Mainly Tristram employs ambiguous language to make a risqué joke but there is more in it than cheap laughs. It seems obvious that even if Tristram enjoys his indecency, he is at the same time also having fun at the expense of the reader who cannot help seeing sex everywhere. He forces us to face our hypocrisy in these matters (Whittaker 1988: 41) as well as parodies the feigned modesty of contemporary writers (Watts 1996: 60).

One should be careful not to read too much into the instability of language in Tristram Shandy. Werner (1999) claims that ‘the ambiguity and incompleteness of language’(140) makes it difficult for the reader to understand the text. Probyn (1987) argues that dialogue is reduced to a ‘conflict of hypotheses or hobby-horses’ (141). Yet Tristram Shandy is far from nonsensical. New (1994) points out convincingly that ‘[t]he idea of indeterminate text is so often confused with a meaningless one’ (123) and goes on to explain how the joke that arises from the misinterpretation of the word ‘bridge’ for a nose as a ‘bridge’ over a ditch can only be understood if the reader knows full well both meanings of the word and which one Corporal Trim wants to use here – and that ‘bridge’ as a card game does not come into it at all.

It seems that postmodernist ideas of indeterminateness cannot, at a closer look, be applied to Tristram Shandy as comfortably as theories of a fragmented, non-linear text, which will be discussed next.

4.1.4. Intertextuality

The intertextuality resulting from extensive borrowings is a central concept in postmodernist thought. As mentioned above, McHale (1992) discusses writers of our time in terms which could easily be applied to Sterne. If ‘original’ stories can no longer be written, he says, it makes sense to use meta-texts for ones advantage and thus contribute ‘something genuinely “new and lively” after all’ (27). ‘We have learnt to expect from a novel coherence and legibility: character, narration, space, time, event, etc.’, he says, but instead we get a ‘repertoire of destabilizing strategies’ (217). The trouble with applying these concepts to Tristram Shandy is, of course, that it was not written ‘at the tail end of a long literary tradition’ (27). As argued in 3.2., Tristram Shandy is deeply embedded in its own time, and even if postmodernist ideas of intetextuality can indeed be used to describe one aspect of Sterne’s writing, they cannot very comfortably explain them. One should not forget that Sterne was an Anglican clergyman who, like most of his contemporaries, did believe there is a such a thing as Truth and cannot very well be seen as an advocate of a world without fixed values. It is not likely that the sermon in the second volume was printed as a joke, and if a man believes that a spot of fun does not do anyone any harm, it does not mean that he is not a serious man. To claim that Tristram Shandy is all surface is to fall into the same trap as those nineteenth-century critics who lamented a lack of serious content.

Hans C. Werner’s (1999) reading of Tristram Shandy, which is based on chaos theory, claims that as ‘complexity increases, it makes room for chaos, which is a prerequisite for a new sort of order that is governed by rules more profound than ordinary human rules [...] The new order is created through self-organization from chaos’ (156). I agree with Werner that chaos in a narrative is ‘something significantly different from a mere surface “cloak”’ (144) but while his overall interpretation is very interesting, I find it unnecessary to claim that the order appears from the chaos itself without human influence, as the book was written by a human Laurence Sterne, who probably knew what he was doing.

With certain reservations it is, however, only fair to say that ideas of intertextuality and meta-texts have contributed significantly to the understanding of Tristram Shandy. The unstable, non-linear structure of the book, which was not much understood in the nineteenth century, can now be appreciated again.

4.2. Translating non-narrative elements

The first task a translator faces when he/she has to find ways of translating non-narrative elements is paying due attention to them, sometimes indeed detecting them. Some are glaringly obvious and give the translator a noticeable jerk, but others can be well hidden. Leppihalme (1997), who has done experiments with students where they were asked to translate texts which were heavily burdened with allusions, stresses the fact that it is the translator’s responsibility to conduct a ‘close intra- and interlinguistic analysis’ (15). The better the translator’s knowledge and understanding of the target culture – and target period, if a considerable amount of time has passed since the writing of the text – the more likely he/she is to detect insertions, allusions, ambiguities. With experience a translator develops an eye for anything irregular, a slight change in style, perhaps, or words that do not quite fit into the context, which alerts him/her to suspect that the text might contain an allusion or pun.

The modern translator of Tristram Shandy has been spared most of the hard work. The editors of the various editions have left few stones unturned. The massive Florida Notes by New, Davies and Day, from which all modern editions draw, were published 1984. Most obscure allusions have been traced and various aspects of eighteenth-century life have been explained, but unfortunately the notes have been written for an English speaking audience, and sometimes a pun or a connotation obvious to a native speaker can slip from the translator’s grasp because it is not mentioned in the notes.

With any translation task, comprehension is only half of the work: when a translator has established that there is an allusion or ambiguity in the text, he/she must decide what to with it. The simplest solution, footnotes, I abandoned, as it is not common practice in present day Finland to annotate novels aimed at the general public, and it could be said that footnotes call for unnecessary effort and even distract the reader from what is more important, more relevant (cf. Gutt 1990: 140). Relevance can be seen as a particularly prominent concept when carrying non-narrative elements across language boundaries. How relevant to a modern Finnish reader is an allusion to Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy? He/she is not likely to have even heard of the book, let alone read it.

Having given up the idea of footnotes I was all set to add explanatory endnotes to the Finnish edition, but as my work progressed I began to feel that the book would speak for itself and that any notes might distance from the immediate reading experience. Just like Sterne two centuries earlier, as argued above, the publisher and I wanted readers; we did not want to alienate them with an edition which gives the impression of being aimed at a learned elite. This decision was not, however, taken as licence for a careless attitude to detail. Even if a reader – English-speaking ones included – is not likely to detect all hidden meanings and allusions, and certain elements of the book will inevitably be obscure or incomprehensible, the translator cannot skip a single word, meaning or allusion, and must decide every time what he/she will do about it. By leaving the notes out, problems of copyright were also avoided. Franssen (1995) complains in his review of the Norwegian translation that ‘most of the notes are unacknowledged fairly literal renderings, or at best summaries, of those in Graham Petrie’s Penguin edition’ (120). It is true that most English editions do supply notes to which a baffled English reader can turn, but the fact that English is widely spoken as a second language in present day Finland gives an opportunity to many of the curious to consult these English editions. If it turns out that there is demand for an annotated Finnish edition and a publisher can be found, there is no reason why not to go ahead later.

To complicate matters further, there is a problem with translating non-narrative elements which concerns readers’ expectations. In a culture where the majority of literature is published in translation, the public has learned to expect a certain crudeness as a result of a phenomenon described by Chesterman (1997):

if readers’ attention is unintentionally drawn to the translation de dicto, then there is something wrong with it: the very fact of having their attention drawn in this way constitutes an unwanted side-effect. (130-1)

I have a suspicion that because these side-effects are in fact rather common in translations, and readers have become quite thick-skinned and ready to forgo all sorts of anomalies. Admittedly, my only proof for this is the lack of complaints in the press. To alert these desensitised readers intentionally, one needs to deliver clear clues, as subtleties are likely to be lost. No wonder scholars who have tried to establish translation universals have come to the conclusion that explicitness is a feature of most translations (Baker 1998: 289).

There is, by the way, another side to this coin: from the responses I have had over the years I have come to the conclusion that when a translation succeeds in drawing the reader’s attention intentionally to the actual language of a translation, say through a pun, the reader is likely to take this as a proof of the overall quality of the translation by becoming positively aware of the fact that the text is a translation. Successful puns tend to earn more praise and recognition than other elements in a translation simply because they are so easy to detect.

Those non-narrative elements of Tristram Shandy which are very culture-specific, such as most quotes, tend to lose a certain amount of relevance when carried across a language boundary. Puns, on the other hand, which mostly serve to create humorous effects, contain more material that can and should be shared with the Finnish reader and give him/her a chance to take part in Tristram’s hide and seek games. As the narrative structures of the ST are practically identical in the Finnish translation, the reader is exposed to the same foregrounding techniques which should make him/her aware of his/her reading experience, and the intimacy the reader is seduced to feel with the author is not necessarily hindered by cultural and temporal distance. Even if some of the intertextuality is lost, in the context of the whole book, the partnership with the author and the impression of life-like prose should not be all that different for the Finnish reader.