Argon Valley, the South African Utopia of Ahmed Essop (1931- ), or Reflections on Why the Story “The Pagans” Will Never be Translated into Spanish
- Autores: Juan Miguel Zarandona Fernández
- Localización: Rethinking society: Individuals, Culture and Migration / Vladimer Luarsabishvili (ed. lit.), Vol. 2, 2021 (Migration and Society. Literature, Translation, Film), ISBN 978 9941 9692 7 0, págs. 22-40
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
Ahmed Essop (India 1931), a South African man of letters belonging to the country’s Indian community, can be regarded as a master short story writer who has not yet been appreciated as much as he deserves. However, his readers know well how his pages depict his nation’s hard contradictions and bitter traumas, and how he does it involve the five senses and with great realism. And he has done it on a continuous basis, from the very beginning of his literary career. In spite of this, from time to time, he has also managed to express himself in other literary genres and creative possibilities, as it is the case of the short story “The Pagans”, published in Johannesburg in 2002. This text shows, and shares, all the typical characteristics of a very old and prestigious kind of texts, the Utopian one associated with travel to exotic regions, most frequently set in the reign of the imagination. Consequently, its mere existence does not surprise as much as its African, or, to be more precise, South African, origin. It has not been a region that has been able to indulge frequently in much literary escapism. This special writing has always proved to be a luxury. This has also been a rarity within the whole context of Essop’s literary output. Because of all these facts, this article, apart from analysing and evaluating briefly the textual Utopian framework of the story, taken from the tradition or breaking away from it, beyond any precise time or space, or necessarily originating in its author’s conflictive African scenario, will try to reflect on the hypothesis claiming that many circumstances will prevent this fictional short story from being ever translated into Spanish. Among science fiction specialists it is a commonly accepted truth to believe that the universe is probably inhabited by other intelligent beings, but, due to its immense size, we will never be able to contact them and their civilized planets. We are referring to the well-known ‘Drake equation’, a mathematical formula that tried to provide an answer to this dilemma from 1961. Texts constitute a similar huge universe. There are so many in so many languages that their likelihood to get translated one day is almost nil. This phenomenon can also be studied with the help of mathematical combinations.
