Translated by Denise Pierrotti
“We wouldn’t search for origins, even if they were lost or erased, but we would pick things up in the places where they grow, by the means: to crack things, to crack words”.2“
Gilles Deleuze
“Words don’t have the least possibility of
e x p r e s s i n g
anything. As soon as we start
to express our thoughts in
words and phrases, everything goes w r o n g.”
Marcel Duchamp 3
From the beginning, we have a quotation of Marcel Duchamp, m i s t r u s t i n g the power of words to e x p r e s s anything. I take his words as my own, because I also mistrust; if I translate mistrust into Portuguese I shall find the word desconfio
des
You mistrust, you analyze, browse, and investigate. Break, stretch, deconstruct, re-construct. Macerate, pulverize, drag and strain. Throw, burn, melt, and forge. The last syllable of the word desconfio is
The meaning of fio is thread. And weave. And entangle. And defy. And scratch.
If the quotation above had been said by other people, maybe it would have been understood as a mere disregard or disdain for the words. Maybe by someone who had been misunderstood far too many times. However, it was said by Michel Duchamp, somebody extremely aware of the relationships between words and things; language and translation; and their connections, always problematic, with their manner of meaning.
Let’s mistrust, then, of the apparent simplicity of his quotation, breaking it down.
Words don’t have the least possibility of expressing anything.
For Brazilian concrete poets4, for example, as well as for Mallarmé or Joyce (Duchamp’s neighbors?), interest in words doesn’t reside in their possibility of expressing something put forward by someone. For them words do their own things, in their material aspect: “All of this indicates nothing but: the will of constructing overcame the will of expressing, or of being expressed.” 5
As soon as we start placing our thoughts into words and phrases,
The words and phrases aren’t a neutral support where we simply place our thoughts, a content where they are going to live safely while waiting for somebody who will come to protect them. They can make the content that we place upon them deflective, distorted, deformed, remodeled. Words act and pulse and transform. That’s why for Duchamp, in this process,
everything goes wrong.
But what is this idea of being “wrong”? What is wrong? Maybe, wrong can be read as distant, referring to the distance of what was placed in relation to its supposed origin (inside the thoughts of someone?), where what would be “right”, is the original.
The adverb amiss, in Portuguese, could be something went wrong. To be wrong can also be moving around, meandering, and being distant from its origin. Surely these Duchamp words weren’t pronounced in Portuguese. The game between the adverb amiss (incorrect) and amiss (out of the way) is in this case, a possible reading that generates in the translation to Portuguese, obviously an incident not predicable to the author. In this case, the translation, or the detachment from the original, opens new possibilities of reading (incorrect?). If Duchamp put something into these words and phrases, no matter how ambiguous, he could not foresee all the exits, as I do in my language.
In this sense going wrong can also give us another approach to this quotation. The verb, to go is connected to a movement of externalizing. Every word foresees a reader. It is theirs the responsibility of “going” which was not placed in the words, the externalizing of a possible meaning. But there is not the least possibility that the thing which was placed would go right, or even approaching the intention of the one who placed it there. It becomes multiplied by the coefficient6.
It is like this text which you have just finished reading: everything is wrong.
1This text is originally from my Master’s Degree dissertation “Lugares Moles” (Soft Places), written by me, defended in 2007 in the Post graduation Program of ECA – USP.
2 DELEUZE, Gilles. Conversações. Rio de Janeiro. Ed. 34, 1992, p. 108.
3 THOMKINS, Calvin. Marcel Duchamp. Ed. CosacNaify, São Paulo, SP, 2005, p. 77 (grifos meus).
4 CAMPOS, Haroldo and Augusto de; PIGNATARI, Décio. Teoria da Poesia Concreta: Textos Críticos e Manifestos 1950-1960. Ed. Livraria Duas Cidades, 1975, p. 125.
5 Entre eles, Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari e Augusto de Campos. Uma das críticas da poesia
6 Marcel Duchamp discusses the participation of the audience in the process of significance of the works of art which present the concept of artistic coefficient. The artistic coefficient would be “arithmetic relationship between what remains not said although intended, and what is said unintentionally”. See DUCHAMP, Marcel. O ato criador. In: BATTCOCK, Gregory (edit.). A nova arte. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1987, p. 73.
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You mistrust, you analyze, browse, and investigate. Break, stretch, deconstruct, re-construct. Macerate, pulverize, drag and strain. Throw, burn, melt, and forge. The last syllable of the word desconfio is
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<!–[endif]–>
The meaning of fio is thread. And weave. And entangle. And defy. And scratch.
If the quotation above had been said by other people, maybe it would have been understood as a mere disregard or disdain for the words. Maybe by someone who had been misunderstood far too many times. However, it was said by Michel Duchamp, somebody extremely aware of the relationships between words and things; language and translation; and their connections, always problematic, with their manner of meaning.
Let’s mistrust, then, of the apparent simplicity of his quotation, breaking it down.
Words don’t have the least possibility of expressing anything.
For Brazilian concrete poets4 , for example, as well as for Mallarmé or Joyce (Duchamp’s neighbors?), interest in words doesn’t reside in their possibility of expressing something put forward by someone. For them words do their own things, in their material aspect: “All of this indicates nothing but: the will of constructing overcame the will of expressing, or of being expressed.” 5
As soon as we start placing our thoughts into words and phrases,
The words and phrases aren’t a neutral support where we simply place our thoughts, a content where they are going to live safely while waiting for somebody who will come to protect them. They can make the content that we place upon them deflective, distorted, deformed, remodeled. Words act and pulse and transform. That’s why for Duchamp, in this process,
everything goes wrong.
But what is this idea of being “wrong”? What is wrong? Maybe, wrong can be read as distant, referring to the distance of what was placed in relation to its supposed origin (inside the thoughts of someone?), where what would be “right”, is the original.
The adverb amiss, in Portuguese, could be something went wrong. To be wrong can also be moving around, meandering, and being distant from its origin. Surely these Duchamp words weren’t pronounced in Portuguese. The game between the adverb amiss (incorrect) and amiss (out of the way) is in this case, a possible reading that generates in the translation to Portuguese, obviously an incident not predicable to the author. In this case, the translation, or the detachment from the original, opens new possibilities of reading (incorrect?). If Duchamp put something into these words and phrases, no matter how ambiguous, he could not foresee all the exits, as I do in my language.
In this sense going wrong can also give us another approach to this quotation. The verb, to go is connected to a movement of externalizing. Every word foresees a reader. It is theirs the responsibility of “going” which was not placed in the words, the externalizing of a possible meaning. But there is not the least possibility that the thing which was placed would go right, or even approaching the intention of the one who placed it there. It becomes multiplied by the coefficient6.
It is like this text which you have just finished reading: everything is wrong.
1This text is originally from my Master’s Degree dissertation “Lugares Moles” (Soft Places), written by me, defended in 2007 in the Post graduation Program of ECA – USP.
2 DELEUZE, Gilles. Conversações. Rio de Janeiro. Ed. 34, 1992, p. 108.
3 THOMKINS, Calvin. Marcel Duchamp. Ed. CosacNaify, São Paulo, SP, 2005, p. 77 (grifos meus).
4 CAMPOS, Haroldo and Augusto de; PIGNATARI, Décio. Teoria da Poesia Concreta: Textos Críticos e Manifestos 1950-1960. Ed. Livraria Duas Cidades, 1975, p. 125.
5 Entre eles, Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari e Augusto de Campos. Uma das críticas da poesia
6 Marcel Duchamp discusses the participation of the audience in the process of significance of the works of art which present the concept of artistic coefficient. The artistic coefficient would be “arithmetic relationship between what remains not said although intended, and what is said unintentionally”. See DUCHAMP, Marcel. O ato criador. In: BATTCOCK, Gregory (edit.). A nova arte. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1987, p. 73.
