The Oval Frame of Translation: Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”

Abstract

Poe's Oval Portrait presents an interesting allegory of transformation from life to death, from death to another form of life, as the painter transforms the life of his wife into a lifeless model for his painting. This complex relationship between the model and the painter is comparable to the one established between the original text and the translated copy. In the tale, the supposedly invisible painter-translator takes on an explicitly visible authorial role, sacrificing the life of his wife for the benefit of his art, thus subverting the traditional hierarchy of the original and translation. The painter is rather faithful to his mother tongue and culture in reproducing the wife in the form of art. The wife, therefore, is successfully transformed or reproduced into the cultural image of an ethereal woman. We can observe in Poe's philosophy of composition and translation that the role of the writer or the translator, for Poe, is to affect the reader, not by scientific observation or accurate rendering but by creating or recreating aesthetic pleasure for the reader. Poe is more concerned with the aesthetic communication between the text and the translator(the reader) than the absolute integrity of the text which cannot be altered without damaging the organic structure, without entailing necessarily 'the scandal of translation.'