You may think that this is a silly post… and it may be. I’ve just seen for the fourth or fifth time Lost in Translation (2003) by Sofia Coppola. It gave me again — though every time is different — that feeling of transport, calm emptiness or joyful melancholy (a strange or rather domestic elation) that should be what Natalia defines as “that sticky feeling” — an encounter with the work of art. But, as M.B. did for infinitely more important reasons, “I would not try to explain this feeling.”
What’s then with the untranslatable, with the secret — the thing we understand but, as is never uttered, cannot be translated. Is it ever lost?
We can’t — could we? — lose what we don’t have.
One would posses the experience of the hiding — we recognise the gesture of the secret being told — but the hidden thing itself remains unattainable and, therefore, it cannot be possessed, nor lost. Then, could it ever be translated?
