One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I write. If it had been, I probably wouldn't have wanted to translate it. There are no one-liners. It's much more a truthful comedy than a play of dazzling wit.
Interpretation
The appeal of translating 'Heroes' lies in its distinction from Stoppard's usual style, featuring deeper truths rather than witty lines.
Tom Stoppard discusses the unique charm of translating the play 'Heroes', emphasizing that his typical writing style focuses on clever dialogue, while 'Heroes' offers a more sincere form of comedy. This distinction highlights the value of authenticity over mere wit in storytelling.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of authenticity in the arts.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.
A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
A poem should not mean but be.
All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.
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