Bergman’s Persona (1966) focuses on the relationship between the actor Elisabet (Liv Ullmann) and her nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson). Their function in the film points to a dialectic of sublation (aufgehoben from a Hegelian principle of Geist) and mimetic (Platonic) passivity. Two issues are of primacy here: Is translation a process of sublation of the original, or is it mimetic, that is, reproducing the original in the copy? Mimesis first opens up the question of original versus imitation and it remains a forerunner of what comes after it, in the name of translation. It is therefore far from being the case that translation and mimesis have no correspondence with each other. In mimesis the meaning does not substantially change; rather what changes is the very thing that is no longer itself but the other in a playful disposition. Miming in that sense is not about copying something or the other; it is the reflection of the other, which constitutes the being of the actor. Elizabet is not Alma; Alma is not Elisabet. But they converge in a literal sense, correspond, imitate, and translate. Alma and Elisabet start to mirror each other in their appearance and clothing as the film progresses. The paper will explore the various modes of translation practices, such as resemblance, resistance (to exemplariness of the original text), conversion, equivalence, correspondence, mimesis, in the text of Persona, where Elisabet will be read as the original but the silent text, and Alma as the translated text.

Authors:
Amresh Sinha, The School of Visual Arts, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Amresh Sinha is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at The School of Visual Arts in United States

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