Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” Simon Zupan “The Fall of the House of Usher” is one of Edgar Allan Poe‟s best known Gothic short stories. As is common for the genre, its macabre tone is set by elements such as an eerie mansion, mysterious disease, sudden death of a protagonist, ghost-like side characters, stormy nights, and a coffin in a vaulted cellar. Poe further enhanced the Gothic effects on the discourse level by consistently using epistemic modality. As the analysis shows, the first person narration abounds in verbal and adverbial phrases such as might have been, seemed to be, possibly, perhaps, and beyond doubt, which add to the narrator‟s uncertainty and are indicative of his inability to comprehend the mysterious events he witnessed during his visit to the House of Usher. Conversely, in the Slovene translation, epistemic modality markers are sometimes left out or modified. This has an effect on the macrostructural level of the narrative. Whereas in the original, the narrator‟s perception and reasoning are characterized by uncertainty, the „same‟ narrator in the target text is seemingly better able to comprehend the reasons behind the otherwise inexplicable phenomena. 1. Introduction Epistemic modality is an established category in both monolingual and contrastive linguistics. Through stylistics, scholars have also studied its role in literary texts (e.g., Fowler 1977, 1996, Toolan 1998, Simpson 2004). However, in spite of extensive research in the field, relatively few studies have examined epistemic modality from a literary-pragmatic point of view regarding a functional comparison between original literary texts and their translations. The present article aims to fill this gap. It focuses on the Gothic short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” written by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), and its Slovene translation by Jože Udovič (1912-1986) from 1960. The article is divided into three parts: first, epistemic modality is presented as it is to be understood in this article, fol- AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 41 (2016) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Simon Zupan 6 lowed by a brief overview of past research about epistemic modality in contrastive linguistics and translation. The main part of the article comprises an analysis of examples of epistemic modality from Poe‟s original English version and Udovič‟s Slovene translation. 1 The paper concludes with an overview of the main findings and an assessment of the pragmatic implications of the identified translation shifts for the story as a whole. 2. Epistemic modality Epistemic modality has been intriguing linguists for decades. It is included in every study on modality, even if the terminology used to describe it varies somewhat (cf. Papafragou 2000, Palmer 2001, Kärkkäinen 2003, Pietrandrea 2005, Portner 2009, Boye 2012). Its original domain was philosophy, where the status of knowledge and belief has been dealt with within epistemology and epistemic logic since ancient Greece (cf. Boye 2012: 15-18). Traditionally, epistemic modality has been studied together with deontic modality. 2 Even though both express “the speaker‟s attitude towards what he says” (Pietrandrea 2005: 6), important differences exist between them, as the following two examples illustrate (Portner 2009: 2): 1. John must apologize. 2. John must be sick. In the first sentence, the speaker expresses their view on what the subject of the sentence should do. According to them, John is obliged to apologize for something he has done or in which he has been involved. The speaker‟s opinion is based on a set of beliefs about what is “right or wrong according to some system of rules” (Portner 2009: 2). These can include, for example, externally imposed moral principles, cultural expec- 1 The present study was originally going to also include an analysis of the use of epistemic modality in “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Finnish. Unfortunately, my esteemed colleague and dear friend Lisa Lena Opas Hänninen from University of Oulu, who was going to analyse Finnish translations of Poe, succumbed to an insidious illness in 2013. The article is dedicated to her memory. I would also like to thank the annonymous AAA peers for their invaluable suggestions and comments regarding the article. 2 There exist many categorizations and terms in use to refer to modality. The most common division is between epistemic and deontic (cf. Portner 2009), categories that are often referred to as extrinsic and intrinsic (cf. Quirk et al. 1992) or epistemic and root modality (cf. Papafragou 2000). A tripartite division with dynamic modality as a separate category is also common (cf. Palmer 2001). Modality is also frequently referred to as “stance” (cf. Biber et al. 2007). Halliday refers to modality in terms of modulation and modalization (2004), whereas some authors further distinguish between epistemic modality and evidentiality (cf. Boye 2012). Since the present article focuses on the pragmatic aspect of modality in translation, the basic and most common two-part distinction between epistemic and deontic modality is used. Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 7 tations, a sports club‟s ethical code and others. What is important is that the factors conditioning the speaker‟s opinion are external to the subject, which is what defines the speaker‟s modality as deontic (cf. Palmer 2001: 9). In the second sentence, the situation is different. The speaker is not concerned with obligation or permission pertaining to the subject. Instead, their modality is based on a deduction from the facts about the situation which are known to them. In the second sentence, for example, it may be that John has failed to show up for work or that he has but looks pale and is asking for water, on the basis of which the speaker concludes that John is ill. This is why the speaker‟s proposition “has to do with [the speaker‟s] knowledge” (Portner 2009: 2); more specifically, it conveys “the speaker‟s confidence in the truth of what he is saying, based on a deduction from facts known to him” (Coates 1983: 41). Epistemic modality thus concerns itself with the speaker‟s assessment of the truthvalue of the proposition. The speaker can adopt various positions depending on their judgement of the truth-value of the proposition. These range from possibility, on the one hand, to certainty, on the other. Modality is thus a continuum, which is why it is sometimes referred to in terms of a “gradient” (Quirk et al. 1992) or “scale” (Boye 2012). Michael Halliday, one of the main proponents of systemic functional linguistics, defines modality as the “intermediate degrees, various kinds of indeterminacy” that construe the “region of uncertainty that lies between „yes‟ and „no‟” (Halliday/ Matthiessen 2004: 176). The two extreme positions are referred to as positive and negative polarity, respectively. He further distinguishes between modality for propositions (for exchanging “information”) and modality for proposals (for exchanging “goods-&-services”). The former, which comprises epistemic modality, is referred to as modalization, and the latter as modulation. Halliday makes another astute observation regarding the semantic power relationship between modalization and polarity, which is that, regardless of the degree of the modal used (e.g. That‟s certainly John), such sentence in terms of power can never equal the unmodalized sentence (That‟s John). In other words, the speaker will only explicitly claim to be certain about the proposition when that is actually not the case (cf. Halliday/ Matthiessen 2004: 177). This complication, as we will see, has implications for the Slovene translation of “The Fall of the House of Usher” not only in terms of probability or certainty of the narrator‟s propositions but also for the type of reasoning or evidence for his evaluation. A variety of discourse devices are used to mark epistemic modality. Biber et al. (1999), who have conducted the most comprehensive corpus study of English grammar to date, including a chapter on epistemic modality, identify four major groups of modality markers: adverbials; verb/ adjective/ noun + complement clause combinations; stance noun + prepositional phase combinations; and modal verbs in the extrinsic sense. Almost all of them have several subtypes. From the point of view of my Simon Zupan 8 study, however, the most important subtypes include single adverbs (It was definitely a case of exploiting child labour) and comment or parenthetical clauses (Well, I‟m going to feel lucky if my car isn‟t towed, I think) among adverbials; verb + complement clause (The great moment seems to be slipping away) and adjective + complement clause with a first-person subject (We can be certain that the differentiation of the division of labour inevitably produces a decline) combinations in the second category and, finally, modal verbs used in the extrinsic sense (He must have been really frightened when he died) (cf. Biber et al. 1999: 972-974). Other authors use different categorizations of sentential, sub-sentential and discourse modality (cf., e.g., Portner 2009); however, their relevance goes beyond the scope of my study. In comparison with English, relatively few studies exist about epistemic modality in Slovene. As Pisanski Peterlin (2015: 30-31) has pointed out in her recent overview of the literature in this field, epistemic modality in Slovene has been examined in the general framework of modality in works such as Jože Toporišič‟s comprehensive grammar of Standard Slovene (Toporišič 2000) or in an overview of modality by Roeder and Hansen (2006). In recent years, several studies have also addressed epistemic modality from a pragmatic perspective in terms of its role in non-literary texts (cf. Pisanski Peterlin 2015: 31). The main reason behind the relative paucity of research in the field is that in Slovene specifically and Slavonic linguistics more generally, “[m]any grammarians do not consider the expression of necessity, possibility and volition part of grammar and, consequently, do not recognise modals as a category in its [sic] own right” (Roeder/ Hansen 2006: 153). 3. Epistemic modality in translation Modality has also been widely discussed from the point of view of contrastive linguistics. Approaches in the field vary. Some studies examine general features of modality across entire families of languages (cf. Hansen/ Haan 2009), while others focus on more specific features of epistemic modality between two given languages (e.g., Recsky 2006, Letica 2009, Usoniene/ Šoliene 2012, Kanté 2012). Regarding the present study, however, it should be pointed out that the majority of studies in the field generally consider epistemic modality from a purely grammatical or lexico-semantic point of view, with two languages as two separate systems. In contrast, it is necessary to mention research that concerns itself with the pragmatic aspects of translation and the relationship of modality between the source and target texts. Even though such studies are less common and mostly concern themselves with non-literary texts, they nevertheless also have implications for analyses of literary translations. An early example is a study of epistemic commitment or subjective mo- Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 9 dality in the Polish translation of an originally English book on Polish history (Tabakowska 1989). Its main finding was that the translator occasionally expressed a different level and kind of commitment to the truthvalue of the proposition than the original author, in particular with respect to the source of commitment (subjective/ objective). Differences in modality may lead to a perception of the translated text that is very different from the intended sense of the original. A more recent study was conducted by Ramón (2009), who compared three common English modal adverbs (certainly, probably, possibly) with their corresponding Spanish translations, for which she used a corpus of Spanish translations of original English texts, including fiction. Unfortunately, the analysis does not distinguish between different subcorpora, so conclusions regarding literary texts more specifically are not possible. Nevertheless, Ramón‟s research does show that modal verbs are occasionally omitted in Spanish translations, which happens partly because modal adverbs in reality do not “add modal nuance to the content, but rather act [...] as grammaticalized textual or pragmatic discourse markers” (Ramón 2009: 93). Finally, it is necessary in this context to highlight what is to date the only study regarding epistemic modality in English-Slovene translation. Pisanski Peterlin (2015) analyzes a corpus of 30 original Slovene popular science texts and 30 texts in the same field translated from Slovene into English and compares the frequency of epistemic modality use between the two corpora. She has found, among other things, that epistemic verbs are considerably more frequent in the translations, while epistemic adverbs are significantly less frequent in the translations (cf. Pisanski Peterlin 2015: 35). Her main finding is that epistemic modality in general is used approximately 25% more frequently in the translations than in the texts originally written in Slovene; the author thinks that this most likely is a result of interference with English (cf. Pisanski Peterlin 2015: 40). Even though the corpora comprise only non-literary texts, some of the findings also have implications for the present study. Unlike in linguistics, relatively little research has been conducted on epistemic modality in literary translation, and among the few studies available, the majority do not address epistemic modality specifically but together with other stylistic features. One such example is Ng‟s (2009) stylistic examination of four different Chinese translations of Hemingway‟s The Old Man and the Sea. Regarding translation of epistemic modality, she found that it was mostly retained in the translations. However, she also found cases where, for example, a low level of possibility in Santiago‟s discourse was changed to a high degree of certainty, as well as examples where modal operators were omitted (cf. Ng 2009: 240-241), without further elaborating on the effect of the translation shifts on the macrostructural level of the novel. Moindjie (2015) carried out a similar study on the example of English and French translations of two Arabic novels. According to him, modality in the translations was occasionally Simon Zupan 10 even more prominent than in the original texts. He thinks that this was not the result of poor or incorrect decisions on the part of the translator; instead, it was the lack of options that forced the translator to add epistemic modality or else risk the translation sounding too „dry‟ to English readers (cf. Moindjie 2015: 16). The only other similar study was conducted by Maria Wirf Naro (2012). Even though she does not focus on epistemic modality, her research is of interest because it also addresses the pragmatic and functional aspects of translation shifts in modality. By comparing English, French and Spanish translations of Heinrich Böll‟s novel Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, originally written in German, she demonstrates how (mis)translations of modal particles influence the functioning of the text at the macrostructural level, altering the effect it has on the readers. Since Böll used the modal particles “in order to recreate an impression of immediacy in fictional writing” (Naro Wirf 2012: 254), translation should retain these. As her examples show, the effect of the modal particles in the target texts is sometimes neutralized or even disappears completely, which deprives the novel and its protagonists of the element of orality that makes the original sound like the authentic representation of the narrator‟s voice (cf. Naro Wirf 2012: 260). It is precisely such implications of modality in translation shifts that will be the focus of the present study. 4. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” “The Fall of the House of Usher” is among Edgar Allan Poe‟s best-known short stories. It was first published during his “most creative period” (Canada 2001: 63) in 1839 in Burton‟s Gentleman‟s Magazine. In the fall of the same year, Poe published it in the collection of short stories Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Initial response to the story was negative, after the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger rejected it as uninteresting, claiming that Gothic stories were no longer popular with readers (Woodson 1969: 9). However, the subsequent decades and a growing popularity among the readers proved him wrong. The story has also drawn the attention of literary scholars, who have read and interpreted it in various ways: as a prime example of Poe‟s famous unity of effect principle in short stories (cf. Obuchowski 1975, Evans 1977), or as a metanarrative (cf. Hustis 1999), whereas others focused on its first-person narrator (cf. Rountree 1972, Peeples 2002). The consensus among critics is that “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a typical Gothic story from the domain of Poe‟s “fictions of containment” (Dayan 1999), characterized by a macabre tone, anxiety, tension and horror, combined with elements of the supernatural, which was later translated into many other languages. Perry and Sederholm (2009: 5) called “The Fall of the House of Usher” Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 11 the “turning point in Gothic literature in which Poe includes most of the basic rules of the game of horror writing.” The plot and the setting likewise make it a classic in the genre. The story is told by a nameless first-person narrator, who sometimes in the past witnessed a series of uncanny events. He received a letter from a long-forgotten childhood friend, Roderick Usher, who asked the narrator to visit him and alleviate his pain. The narrator decides to do so and arrives at his mansion to stay for a few days. The next thing he learns from Roderick is that his sister Madeline has passed away, and he asks the narrator to help him confine the body temporarily in a metal coffin under the mansion. Several days follow with anxiety rising. One stormy night, the narrator is reading a ballad to Roderick Usher, whereby the metallic noises described in the text at some point start matching the noises in the mansion. In a moment of horror, it dawns upon Roderick that they have buried Madeline alive. When the narrator tries to dispute that, Madeline appears on the doorstep and falls into her brother‟s hands, both of them dead. Horrified, the narrator escapes from the mansion, which then crumbles into the pond before it. The story was first published in Slovene translation in 1960 in a collection of Poe‟s prose entitled The Gold Bug (Poe 1960). All twenty short stories included were translated by the well-known Slovene writer, poet and translator Jože Udovič. To date, the quality and quantity of his work on Poe remains unsurpassed, which shows in the critical acclaim of the translations and in the fact that the stories were later republished several times in various editions. 3 It should be mentioned that some of Poe‟s stories were translated into Slovene several times; the most frequently translated one is the “Tell-tale Heart”, which has appeared in as many as fourteen different versions, followed by “The Black Cat” with seven (cf. Zupan 2015: 131). However, practically all of these were translations for the general readership and published in daily newspapers, and that in addition to their popularity, they were also republished because of their brevity. “The Fall of the House of Usher” has only been translated in one other version, viz. before Udovič, by Zoran Jerin and Igor Šentjurc (Poe 1952). However, that translation is inferior in quality and was never reprinted, while Udovič‟s translation appeared in all three subsequent Slovene editions of Poe‟s prose. 3 For more on the reception of Poe in Slovenia, including Udovič‟s translations of his short stories, see Zupan (2015). Simon Zupan 12 5. Epistemic modality in “The Fall of the House of Usher” in translation As I have claimed elsewhere (cf. Zupan 2008), the Gothic atmosphere in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is created at two levels: on the level of the plot and on the level of the discourse. The former is straightforward and common to all narratives of this genre. It is characterized by the somber, dark setting in which the story takes place, including an eerie mansion and a black tarn in front of it; mysterious events such as Madeline‟s inexplicable sudden death or Roderick‟s unknown disease; speechless, ghost-like minor characters; strange noises and stormy nighty, vaulted cellars and coffins. The second level manifests itself in other ways. On the lexical level, it is characterized by a prevalence of Gothic vocabulary that, on the one hand, is characterized by long nominal phrases replete with negative adjectives such as dreary, insufferable, half-pleasurable, decayed, hideous, unsatisfactory or pestilent; adverbs such as oppressively, barely, terribly, bitterly; and, on the other, by specific, mostly abstract, nouns with evaluative meaning such as melancholy, depression, iciness, agitation, deficiency or discoloration. The syntax, too, adds to the Gothic character. Sentences are typically long and complex, comprising multiple subordinate clauses and repetitive patterns (e.g., strings of prepositional phrases or appositions) indicating intellectual sophistication, which emphasizes the narrator‟s struggle to rationally deal with what he has witnessed. Peter Covielo, for example, describes Poe‟s exposition in the story as characterized by a “conspicuous fastidiousness: by its pile-up of detail, its successive dependent clauses and fussy adjectival qualifications” (2003: 881); he even ascribes to Poe a “hyperreal meticulousness” in the opening paragraph (2003: 880). However, that is not all. In addition, Poe - it is not entirely clear to what extent consciously - added epistemic modality to the narrative, which further complicates the narrative and adds another Gothic component at a subtler level through the interpersonal function of language. The main function of epistemic modality in the short story is to incorporate uncertainty into the narrative structure, beginning with the opening paragraph: What was it - I paused to think - what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 13 be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression. (Poe 1986: 139) [My emphasis, passim.] This excerpt from the long opening section of the story features the narrator‟s description of his arrival before the House of Usher and the thoughts running through his mind at that point. It is evident that the narrator is unnerved by the “insufferable gloom” that has “pervaded his spirit” moments before and is trying to establish why this happened. The reader learns about his inability to comprehend in two ways: the first is straightforward and apparent from the narrator‟s explicit question “What was it? ”, whose repetition is a stylistic way to emphasize his apparent discomfort. The second way is through epistemic modality. As can be seen from the narrator‟s „conclusion‟ (there are combinations …), Poe expresses it in the form of a generic sentence, whose salient epistemological feature is to express truths that “cannot, in general, be ascertained solely with reference to any particular localized time” (Carlson 1989: 167). This suggests that the narrator considers his proposition as always true. He additionally corroborates the probability that the proposition is true with the prepositional phrase beyond doubt, functioning as a modal adverbial, which is also an explicit indicator to the reader that the narrator‟s level of certainty is very high. However, the fact that he does not use an unmodalized sentence reveals precisely the opposite, viz. that he is not certain about the “power of combinations”. The same pattern appears in the next sentence, which is likewise heavily modalized. The first marker (it was possible) appears at the opening of the sentence and effectively functions as another proviso in the sense “a mere different arrangement […] could modify […]”, which indicates that the narrator is once again speculating and that his proposition does not have the semantic weight of an unmodalized sentence. In addition, the adverb perhaps emphasizes the speculative character of the narrator‟s attempt to rationalize the otherwise irrational response to the image before his eyes. His „conclusion‟ is thus not as conclusive at it may look at first sight. As the following excerpt from the Slovene translation will show, the modalized parts in the Slovene translation have undergone minor modifications: Ustavil sem se in pomislil, kaj je to, kar me je ob pogledu na Usherjevo hišo tako potrlo. Bilo je nerešljiva uganka, in nisem se mogel ubraniti mračnim sencam, ki so sredi premišljevanja navalile name. Moral sem se sprijazniti z mislijo, ki pa me ni zadovoljila, da se nedvomno zelo preproste, naravne stvari lahko povežejo med seboj in s prav posebno močjo vplivajo na naša čustva, čeprav so ti vzroki globlji, kakor seže naš pogled in jih ne moremo doumeti. Bilo bi mogoče, sem si mislil, da bi že nekoliko drugačna razvrstitev posameznosti, ki so sestavljale to pokrajino, nadrobnosti te podobe, lahko Simon Zupan 14 predrugačila ta žalostni videz ali morda celo docela spremenila ta mračni vpliv. (Poe 1993: 31-32) „I paused and I thought, what was it, that depressed me so much upon looking at the House of Usher. It was an insoluble mystery, and I could not defend from the dark shadows, that stormed upon me as I pondered. I was forced to reconcile with the thought, which however did not satisfy me, that undoubtedly very simple, natural things can interconnect and with a special power influence our emotions, even though these reasons are deeper, than our look can reach and we cannot comprehend them. It would be possible, I thought to myself, that even a somewhat different arrangement of the particulars, that comprised this landscape, the details of this picture, could modify this sorrowful appearance or possibly even completely alter this somber influence.‟ 4 A minor discrepancy can be observed in the first sentence. Whereas in the original, the question what was it appears twice, the translator decided to avoid the repetition. Since the repetition is stylistically used to make more authentic the indirect presentation of the narrator‟s thoughts, this effect is to some extent weakened in the target text. The shift has repercussions also for the general epistemic structure of the narrative. As Susan Bernstein (2008: 987) has pointed out, this passage is important because it “opens a space for „something other‟, some concept not yet articulated, some understanding not yet acquired” even if “the vacancy preparing for the sublime will in fact not be filled”. The explicitly modalized parts, however, are retained and possibly even strengthened. Thus the original phrase beyond doubt is retained with the adverb nedvomno („undoubtedly‟), and the same applies to the adjective possible which in the original appears together with an extraposed complement clause. However, in the target text its notion is delivered with the adverb mogoče („possibly‟). In addition, the meaning of the adverb perhaps, which in the original text relativizes the infinitival clause to annihilate, is likewise retained in the translation with the adverb morda („perhaps‟), and its effect is corroborated by the modal verb lahko („can‟). From an epistemic point of view, the meaning-potential of the target text is comparable to that of the original. However, the previous passage becomes interesting in the light of another one from the introductory part of the story, where the narrator switches from contemplation of the cause of his uneasiness to a more detailed observation of the exterior of the mansion: Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be 4 The back-translations are based on Udovič‟s Slovene translation and are to a large extent literal. For ease of reference, the back-translations follow the punctuation of the Slovene translation. Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 15 that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. (Poe 1986: 141) As the highlighted structures indicates, this passage, too, is heavily modalized and reveals the broad range of linguistic means that Poe employs to convey modality. In the first sentence, modality in the first verb group is conveyed by the modal verb must, which is used to indicate logical necessity. As Lyons has pointed out, such a “conclusion reached by the speaker presents itself as an objective fact” (1977: 798); in the given situation, the narrator is consoling himself with the explanation that his discomforting experience could not have been real. In the following sentence, the narrator‟s attention switches from mental processing of his inner psychological response to finding himself before the mansion to his visual inspection of its exterior. However, even here, where a concrete and factual description is expected, it does not happen. Instead, the narrator focuses on the abstract features (excessive antiquity) of the mansion, and the proposition again occurs with an added epistemic relativization, this time through the verb seem. Thus instead of describing the situation with “[i]ts principal feature was that of an excessive antiquity”, the narrator evidently marks the proposition as a subjective one. The same epistemic pattern occurs in the final sentence in relation to the wild inconsistency that the narrator observed in the exterior of the house. Once again, the narrator does not opt for an unmodalized sentence in the sense of There was a wild inconsistency… but pads it with the verb appear. Epistemic modality in both sentences thus reiterates the fact that even when observing concrete phenomena with regard to the House of Usher, the narrator‟s focus is on appearance as opposed to essence. In the Slovene translation, modalization in the last part of the passage changes: Ko sem prepodil iz svojega duha, kar so morale biti samo sanje, sem si natančneje ogledal, kakšna je hiša v resnici. Najznačilnejše se mi je zdelo, da je bila zelo stara. V stoletjih je njena barva zelo obledela. Drobne gobe so preprezale vso zunanjost in visele od žlebov kakor tenko stkana mreža. Vsega skupaj pa le še ni zajelo pravo razpadanje. Noben del zidu se še ni bil podrl in kar dobro ohranjeni večji deli stavbe so bili v velikem nasprotju z razpadajočimi, drobečimi se posameznimi kamni. (Poe 1993: 34) „Shaking off from my spirit, what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly, what the house was really like. The principal feature seemed to me, that it was very old. Over the centuries its color has faded considerably. Simon Zupan 16 Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior and hung from the eaves as a finely weaved webwork. However, not everything had been hit by real dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen and well preserved large parts of the building were in large contrast with the dilapidating, crumbling individual stones.‟ As can be seen from the gloss, the first two instances of epistemic modality are retained in the target text, and the sentence retains practically the same meaning as in the original. However, the last sentence undergoes modification. While in the original sentence the verb appear marks epistemic modality, it disappears in the translation. Instead, the demodalized sentence becomes a positive unmodalized one. The relationship between the large parts of the building and its individual stones in translation is thus presented in a factual instead of a tentative way. As a result, the narrator‟s perception in the translation seems superior to that of the original, as if he were able to see more. Since Poe‟s narrators are notorious for being “clear-eyed” (Covielo 2003: 884), their inability to perceive objective reality only emphasizes their agony. For this reason, these elements should preferably be retained in the translation. However, further analyses of the target text reveal that this is not the only example where the narrator‟s visual perception is affected by translation shifts in epistemic modality. A similar problem appears in the passage that describes the moments after the narrator enters the mansion and meets Roderick Usher‟s doctor: On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. (Poe 1986: 141) The narrator is once again relating to what he saw, in this case his perception of the expression on the doctor‟s face. His report includes not only its objective features but the subjective ones, i.e. how they are perceived. His depiction thus is a combination of the concrete (countenance) and the abstract (a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity), with the former serving as an indicator of the physician‟s inner response to encountering the visitor in the house. The immediately noticeable stylistic and narrative feature is the comment clause I thought that is inserted in the narrator‟s proposition about the expression on the doctor‟s face. The short clause is an example of what Michael Toolan (1998: 54) calls “metaphorized modality” or verba sentiendi, verbs which describe “acts and states of feeling, thinking, perception, i.e. mental processes which, to an observer, are not directly accessible” (Graumann/ Sommer 1989: 45). The definition aptly describes the function of epistemic modality in the given context, where it is used to indicate the subjectivity of the observation and at the same time to signal the narrator‟s presence and his dis- Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 17 tance from the events and the people that he encounters at the House of Usher. By having both a description of the narrator‟s inner thought and a description of the exterior of the protagonist, the latter is background. In addition, the description is in contrast with the cognitive verb think, descriptions being the result of perceptions rather than thinking. In translation, however, the „same‟ narrator sounds different: Na nekem stopnišču sem srečal hišnega zdravnika. Na njegovem obrazu sem opazil poniglavo prekanjenost, hkrati pa osuplost. Pozdravil me je, se zdrznil in šel mimo mene. (Poe 1993: 35) „On one of the staircases, I met the family physician. On his face I noticed low cunning, and at the same time perplexity. He accosted me, startled and walked past me.‟ The target sentence lacks the narrator‟s subjective observation I thought, even though an equivalent exists in Slovene (zdelo se mi je). The translator also made no attempt to compensate for it in any other way in the vicinity. The sentence is thus unmodalized, and the expression on the doctor‟s face is presented in a factual manner, which has an effect on the macrostructural level. Whereas in the original the narrator indicates that his observation is subjective, in the translation the narrative suggests that the expression on the doctor‟s face is presented in an objective way, once again as if the narrator were more knowledgeable than in the original. My analysis shows that visual perception is not the only type of perception affected by translation shifts. The narrator‟s aural perception likewise is prone to modification. The passage is taken from the part of the story that describes a time during the storm when the narrator is trying to calm the agitated Roderick, who by that time has gradually become aware that Madeline has been interred alive. According to the narrator, the only way Roderick could distract himself at the time was by playing the guitar; he often accompanied himself “with rhymed verbal improvisations”. The extract describes the moment during one of the ballads when the narrator realizes that Roderick is slowly losing his mind: The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. (Poe 1986: 147) Besede ene tistih rapsodij sem si lahko zapomnil. Naredila je name tako močan vtis, ker se mi je zdelo, da sem v njenem globljem pomenu prvikrat opazil, kako se Usher docela zaveda, da se je njegov ponosni razum zamajal na svojem prestolu. (Poe 1993: 41) Simon Zupan 18 „The words of one of those rhapsodies I have easily remembered. It made such a strong impression on me, because it seemed to me that I noticed in its deeper meaning for the first time, how Usher was fully aware, that his lofty reason had tottered upon her throne.‟ The excerpt features two instances of epistemic modality: the adverb perhaps and the verb fancied, whereby the latter is corroborated through the predicate fancied that I perceived because embedded in it is another explicit signal by the narrator that his narrative is about his perception and not about objective reality. As can be seen from the translation, the narrator uses the latter in connection with the proposition about his realizing for the first time that Roderick is slowly losing his mind. As was the case with visual perception, he relativizes his aural perception with the help of the comment clause it seemed to me (se mi je zdelo). The epistemic status of the proposition thus equals that of the original. However, that is not the case with the adverb perhaps. Whereas in the original the narrator evidently speculates about why he was so impressed by Roderick‟s performance and explicitly indicates that with an epistemic modality marker indicating possibility, the same effect is lost in the translation. Instead of the relativization in the original, an unmodalized sentence is used, and the wording suggests that the narrator is confident about the reasons for the powerful effect of the ballad on him. The narrator‟s aural perception thus appears to be stronger than in the original text. The problem of such a translation shift is that an apparently greater reliability on the part of the narrator works against the characteristics of Poe because at the time when he wrote the story he “perceived a world in which the reliability of the senses, the objective reality of the physical world, and the trustworthiness of reason had been discredited” (Folks 2009: 61). Finally, translation shifts in epistemic modality also affect the reader‟s perception of the narrator‟s perception. After the narrator finds himself within sight of and eventually inside the House of Usher, he is exposed to a multitude of visual and aural stimuli, which in turn trigger considerations of various aspects of the House of Usher not only as a building but also as a family residing in it. In the following passage, the narrator contemplates the fact that over the centuries the stem of the family “had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch”, which is why over time, the name started to denote both the family and its mansion: It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other - it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 19 length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the “House of Usher” - an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion. (Poe 1986: 139-140) This long sentence, in which the narrator contemplates the “deficiency” of the family, is replete with epistemic modality, which is marked as often as four times and comprises as many different types of modality discourse markers: adjective (possible), adverb (perhaps), modal verb (might) and the verb seem. The high frequency of modal markers is indicative of the narrator‟s high level of uncertainty regarding the plausibility of the belief about the relationship between the two entities, building and family. However, the four markers refer to three different propositions. The first two relate to the proposition about the potential mutual influence between the good condition of the building and the character of the family; the third regards the possibility that the same name came to denote both the family and the mansion because the family only developed in a direct line of descent; and the fourth modalizes the postmodifying clause after the noun appellation, which for reasons of emphasis, as Poe set out in one of his poetological articles (Poe 1848: 130), is repeated twice. At the level of the story, such extensive use of epistemic modality serves as a signal to the reader that the narrator‟s understanding is, at best, an attempt to rationally explain the situation; however, the true nature of the relationship between the concrete and the abstract with regard to the House of Usher remains a mystery. This becomes evident through translation shifts in the target text: Ko sem se v mislih ukvarjal s to rečjo, sem spoznal, da je zaradi te pomanjkljivosti ostajal značaj hiše vseskozi enak in da so tudi ljudje podedovali značaj tega rodu z nespremenjenimi potezami, in ko sem premišljeval, koliko je v dolgih stoletjih prvo moglo vplivati na drugo, sem prišel do zaključka, da je zaradi te pomanjkljivosti posestvo in ime neprestano prehajalo z očeta na sina, posledica pa je bila: prvo se je tako izenačilo z drugim, da se je izgubilo ime dvorca in se spojilo s čudnim in dvoumnim označevanjem “Usherjeva hiša” - to pa je kmetom, ki so ga uporabljali, pomenilo tako hišo kot družino samo. (Poe 1993: 33) „When I was thinking about this thing, I realized, that owing to this deficiency the character of the house always remained the same and that people likewise inherited the character of this family with unchanged traits, and when I was thinking, how much the former might have influenced the latter, I came to a conclusion, that owing to this deficiency the estate and the name continuously passed from father to son, and the consequence was: the former became so identified with the latter that the name of the mansion was lost and merged with the quaint and equivocal appellation “House of Usher” - and this to the peasantry who used it meant both the house and the family.‟ Simon Zupan 20 Instead of four modality discourse markers in the original, the translation features only one, and translation shifts affect all three propositions that are modalized in the original. The proposition about the mutual influence between the good condition of the house and the character of the family is modified because the translator only mentions the character of the house (značaj tega rodu) and the character of the family (značaj tega rodu), i.e., not the relationship between the concrete and the abstract. The narrator nevertheless speculates about a possible mutual relationship between the two „characters‟, as indicated by the verbal structure might have influenced (moglo vplivati). This part of the relativization from the original text is thus preserved. However, this does not apply to the second proposition about the transfer of the name from one generation to the next because the family only had a direct line of descent. Instead of speculating about it, as is the case in the original, the narrator in the target text concludes that this was the reason why the name was passed on from one generation to the other; the narrator in the translation thus uses an unmodalized sentence, presenting an idea as if this were a fact. The third proposition undergoes the same demodalization. Unlike in the original, where the narrator distances himself from the proposition with the verb seem, in the target text, he uses an unmodalized sentence and states that to the peasants, the name House of Usher meant both the mansion and the family as if that were a fact. Consequently, the narrator in the target text appears to perceive and mentally process the situation differently. 6. Conclusion A comparison of the Slovene translation of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and its original reveals various translation shifts in the use of epistemic modality. At the microstructural level, these manifest themselves as missing or changed modality discourse markers. The most frequent one is the replacement of modalized propositions with unmodalized ones. As a result, the representation of the narrator‟s (visual and aural) perception and thinking are affected at the macrostructural level: in the Slovene translation, the narrator appears to know more and better comprehend the unusual phenomena at the House of Usher than his counterpart in the original text. In addition, these shifts have an effect on the narrative level of the story. Perry and Sederholm (2009: 5) speak of “inexplicability”, while Folks (2009: 61) describes Poe‟s narrators as “treacherously unreliable”. As the analysis shows, it is precisely through epistemic modality that such effects are built into the narrative. In addition, the epistemic void created by modality is one of the means to create the uncanny in the story, one of the principal features of the Gothic genre (cf. Savoy 1998: 9- 11). Compared to the original text, the translation thus has a reduced Epistemic Modality in Translation: Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 21 potential to evoke these effects in readers. For these reasons, translators should make every effort to preserve these elements in the target text. The question remains why epistemic modality in the Slovene version of “The Fall of the House of Usher” was changed, even though the majority of modal markers could have been preserved and even though Slovene translators are more likely to use epistemic modality in Slovene translations of English texts - at least in non-literary translation - than when writing original texts in Slovene (cf. Pisanski Peterlin 2015: 40). Since the translator is no longer alive, it is not possible to ask him directly about his decisions. The most likely explanation is that he failed to identify all instances of epistemic modality and in particular their role in the original text; alternatively, translation shifts are the result of inconsistency on the side of the translator, which is not an uncommon phenomenon in Slovene translations of English literary texts (cf. Čerče 2015: 181). The deviations may also have to do with the nature of modality as such. Since modality is, to describe it in Hallidayan terms, part of the interpersonal function of language and is concerned with the context of communication, it is thus more easily missed than the ideational function, concerned with the content of the message. Finally, it is also possible that the translator deliberately decided to intervene stylistically, which is also not an uncommon occurrence in Slovene literary translations from the same period (cf. Onič 2013). 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