I realized something in the middle of Alice in Wonderland that suddenly made my breath hitch and a bloom of sadness grow inside me as the Hatter walks Alice toward the castle of the White Queen and mutters the words to "The Jabberwocky" under his breath. I have long loved this poem and now as it was being spoken to me in the voice of Johnny Depp and the translation appeared in those annoying yellow Ariel letters at the bottom of the screen I realized that some things can never be translated, that in translation they will always lose something - that undeniable and all-important something that makes them perfect.
How sad that the French will never be able to understand the words in quite the same way - neither the words of "The Jabberwocky" nor the phrase "Have I gone around the bend?" No, for them it will always be a flatter picture, the bend replaced by the cool question "Have I gone mad?"
How I wanted to tell them that there must be bends to madness, that madness is never a straight line or a simple phrase.
And then the sad realization that the same is true of me - I will forever be forced to live in the shallows of this language, never to understand the deepest parts.
Sad, that.
How sad that the French will never be able to understand the words in quite the same way - neither the words of "The Jabberwocky" nor the phrase "Have I gone around the bend?" No, for them it will always be a flatter picture, the bend replaced by the cool question "Have I gone mad?"
How I wanted to tell them that there must be bends to madness, that madness is never a straight line or a simple phrase.
And then the sad realization that the same is true of me - I will forever be forced to live in the shallows of this language, never to understand the deepest parts.
Sad, that.
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