Re-vision as Remediation: Hypermediacy and Translation in Anne Carson’s Nox

Abstract

This article explores Anne Carson’s Nox (2010) in the light of remediation. Nox is a book about death and the recording of loss: lost time, a lost brother, and lost presence. It conveys this loss through the logic of hypermediacy and a word-for-word translation of Catullus 101. Nox reworks the materiality of an original notebook, yet hides its paper materiality in the very act of displaying it. It translates every word of Catullus 101 in a separate entry so as to make us aware of the impossibility of a full retrieval of meaning, and ends up making the integral translation entirely illegible. Both hypermediacy and translation, I argue, function as metaphors for the inability of the speaker to represent her deceased brother Michael. Both effectuate a deferral, or screening-out, of presence. This screening out of presence at once affirms the visuality of textuality in Nox: Carson’s book revolves around the image of a paper-based text. This dimension of the imaginary in a literary work like Nox, I conclude, forces us to reconsider the practice of comparative literature as an intermedial practice in an age of digitization.