Articulating through language the felt sense I have of the mental and embodied images during a Skinner class is a form of translation

There should be a video of me moving with Mallarme's poem (below), but I am having problems uploading.

With poet Keith Jarrett, we embarked on our third session translating a text together. This time, the text was not a poem; it was an excerpt from In Search of Lost Time by Proust.

My body, still too heavy with sleep to move, would make an effort to construe the form which its tiredness took as an orientation of its various members, so as to induce from that where the wall lay and the furniture stood, to piece together and to give a name to the house in which it must be living. Its memory, the composite memory of its ribs, knees, and shoulder-blades, offered it a whole series of rooms in which it had at one time or another slept; while the unseen walls kept changing, adapting themselves to the shape of each successive room that it remembered, whirling madly through the darkness. And even before my brain, lingering in consideration of when things had happened and of what they had looked like, had collected sufficient impressions to enable it to identify the room, it, my body, would recall from each room in succession what the bed was like, where the doors were, how daylight came in at the windows, whether there was a passage outside, what I had had in my mind when I went to sleep, and had found there when I awoke. The stiffened side underneath my body would, for instance, in trying to fix its position, imagine itself to be lying, face to the wall, in a big bed with a canopy; and at once I would say to myself, “Why, I must have gone to sleep after all, and Mamma never came to say goodnight!” for I was in the country with my grandfather, who died years ago, and my body, the side upon which I was lying, loyally preserving from the past an impression which my mind should never have forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glittering, glimmering flame of the night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn and hung by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Sienna marble in my bedroom at Combray, in my great aunt’s house, in those far distant days which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly defined, but would become plainer in a little while when I was properly awake.

In our attempt to translate this text into Spanish, Keith and I started by discussing the first two words in this excerpt, “my body,” and considered the distinction between “mi cuerpo” and “el cuerpo,” the options available in Spanish. Together, we focused on what these two different words evoked in us and the felt sense we experienced as readers within the framework of this opening paragraph.

When I read Proust’s words “my body” and we translate them as “mi cuerpo,” I become, almost imperceptibly, aware of my own body. This awareness is peculiar, because it is not as if I am thinking about my body or consciously reflecting on physical sensations. Rather, it is a sensation: I am like an empty glove that in an instant fills with my flesh and bones, with the mass of my body. In that moment, I am fully present in my body. Once this occurs, the following lines appear as image-sensations from the perspective of my own body; I see as if lying on a bed, looking out, sensing what is beneath, in front, and around me. At times, when I seek more clarity, I briefly see myself from the outside — my whole body lying down, as if filmed by a camera — but I quickly return to “being in my body” to continue following the text, identifying with the body of the character. My experience of these lines intimately involves my body, at the level of sensations, physically present and specific to my own height, weight, and other bodily characteristics.

If we use the word “el cuerpo,” which would literally translate as “the body,” I immediately experience a quasi-sense or quasi-image of my body as collective. It is no longer specific, with its unique height, weight, skin, and physical sensations. Instead, my body becomes one of many — a generality, a “together” with all other human bodies. Because of this, the following lines have less detail and feel more pictorial than sensorial. In other words, there is less tuning into the physical sensations arising from my own body; attention is directed outward, hovering on the surface, almost horizontal. The lines then read more like a story in the external world, where I am more a reader than a participant.

We decided that “mi cuerpo” gives more sense to the text than “el cuerpo.”

Poetry versus Proust’s prose

After the first two words, as we continued translating the text into Spanish, I realized that finding the right words in Spanish was quite different from our experience translating the previous poem. With this prose text, rather than pausing to find synonyms or reflecting on the sensory impact and nuanced meaning of individual words — as we did with the poem — we focused on the structure and syntax.

Our attention turned to sentence structure: how words are arranged to maintain narrative flow and preserve the original meaning. We examined each line to understand what it conveyed, and once we agreed on that meaning, we searched for Spanish words that could best express it. In this process, the sensory or emotional impact of the language felt less central.

Proust’s writing has a distinctive quality: the arrangement of words does more than tell a story or describe an event. His passages construct a narrative while drawing us into a deeply embodied experience. This dual engagement — intellectual and sensory — can be challenging to navigate. Initially, focusing on meaning interferes with fully immersing in the text on an embodied level, almost as if understanding and embodiment are mutually exclusive.

Re-engaging with the text

After my session with Keith, I returned to the text and read it several times. With each reading, the need to grasp meaning intellectually gradually faded, allowing a more embodied response to emerge. This shift occurred gradually, in layers: I first read carefully, noting each word and its interaction with the next, attending to the subtle imprint it left on me. This imprint goes beyond comprehension: to truly understand the text, I had to bring my own physical presence and sensory memory into the process.

Take, for instance, the passage:

“My body, still too heavy with sleep to move, would make an effort to construe the form which its tiredness took as an orientation of its various members, so as to induce from that where the wall lay and the furniture stood, to piece together and to give a name to the house in which it must be living.”

I began by slowly reading, “My body, still too heavy with sleep to move…,” then continued, “…would make an effort to construe the form which its tiredness took as an orientation of its various members…” As I read, the words enveloped me. I imagined my own body — groggy and sluggish with sleep — lying in bed, knees drawn up, hands nestled, enveloped in fatigue. I became aware of my body’s weight, my deep, slow breath, and how my body sank into the mattress. In that moment, Proust’s description of his body became indistinguishable from my own experience. Only then did the subsequent lines — “…so as to induce from that where the wall lay and the furniture stood, to piece together and to give a name to the house in which it must be living”—resonate clearly in a new, embodied way.

Memory and embodied reconstruction

This reading reminded me of a theatre workshop in Italy, led by Jairo Cuesta and Jim Slowiak, both students of Jerzy Grotowski. We did an exercise called “My Grandmother’s House,” guided by questions prompting us to physically recall and reenact waking in our grandmother’s home:

“You wake up in the morning in your grandmother’s house. What is the light like? Where is it coming from? Are you covered with something? What does the fabric feel like? What is the temperature?”

Focusing on one element — say, what I was covered with — brought back the heavy bedspread in my grandmother’s house, along with its intricate crochet pattern, whiteness, and size. Continuing simple actions, like getting out of bed and placing my feet on the floor, I could feel the coolness and see the color of the tiled floor. With each movement and memory, more objects reappeared vividly. I became acutely aware of my own body — its movement, sensations on the skin, shape of limbs, and gaze height. This formed a living composition, through which the memory of my grandmother’s house came to life.

Proust’s description of his heavy, sleepy body becoming aware of its contours, and how this bodily awareness leads to the reappearance of walls and objects of his childhood home, evokes a similar experience. In both cases, the memory or sensation of the body’s presence — posture, spatial orientation, and sensory engagement — reconstructs the surrounding space. Suddenly, the passage becomes crystal clear: what had felt dense and difficult to grasp is now a vivid, embodied experience.

Language, words, and embodied memory

One additional layer in Proust’s text: the body’s memory not only reconstructs objects and space, it can also recall a name.

Before exploring this, consider a moment when Keith and I debated translating “wall,” which appears multiple times:

“My body, still too heavy with sleep to move, would make an effort to construe the form which its tiredness took as an orientation of its various members, so as to induce from that where the wall lay and the furniture stood…”

In Spanish, the options were pared and muro.

• Keith: “To me, muro feels more conceptual.”

• Andrea (looking at images online): “Images of muro show monuments or outdoor walls. Pared implies an enclosed space with an inside and outside. Muro doesn’t suggest that; it’s often a standalone wall.”

• Keith: “Okay, let’s go with pared.”

This applied to “as the unseen walls kept changing.” But since “walls” is plural, it translates to paredes. Using paredes introduces subtle difficulty: it evokes a more complex, enclosed structure. Muros, plural, is easier to visualize because it implies a simpler, self-contained wall.

This distinction shows that imagining is not entirely abstract: the material properties of objects and our body’s organization — limb positions, organs, upright posture — shape how we perceive and envision. Our physical limitations influence imagination, just as handling objects in real life depends on size, weight, and structure.

Therefore, while paredes is more accurate for Proust’s enclosed house, muros is conceptually simpler and easier to picture. Proust’s writing engages embodied perception and sensory attunement, even when describing memory rather than imagination.