Moonlight and “Translation”: A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Richard Powers’ The Gold Bug Variations

Abstract

Richard Powers’ The Gold Bug Variations, like his other works, has a style unique to the author, who always connects disparate ideas to foreground hidden, global networks beyond our local perception. In this monumental third novel, however, his authorial style of connecting many variegated motifs that are usually perceived as unrelated is highlighted to such an exceptional degree that it self-reflexively seems to become a thematic motif: translation. Although some scholars have analyzed this feature from different perspectives, such as the theme of encoding, narrative ecology, and intertextuality, the novel’s repeated allusion to A Midsummer Night’s Dream has not attracted enough attention for its significance in the thematic motif of translation, which unites apparently unrelated ideas such as Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and genetics. This essay aims to analyze the novel’s allusion to the quoted dialogue between the mechanicals from the perspective of the novel’s uniting motif.
Several correspondences between The Gold Bug Variations and A Midsummer Night’s Dream indicate that Jan’s repeated allusion to Quince’s question about the representation of moonlight on stage should not only be considered in the context of the quoted dialogue but also in the context of the whole play. The problem of representation discussed by the mechanicals in the scene quoted in the novel is later picked up by Theseus, whose argument on theatrical representation shares the idea of collaboration with Jan’s theory of translation. To Jan, translation in an ideal sense is a bi-directional act performed by two defective languages in collaboration with each other to achieve meaning in the purest form. This theory of translation applies to Powers’ treatment of the disparate motifs in The Gold Bug Variations. It could be argued that the hierarchical structure Jay A. Labinger discovered in the novel is based on the principle of translation.
One representative example of Jan’s theory of translation is her own repeated allusions to Quince’s line about how to represent moonlight on stage. They are not intended simply as alluding to a specific element of the quoted dialogue; as she repetitively alludes to Quince’s question, they become adapted into the context of the novel by various degrees. First, the allusions to Quince’s question reflect the context of the original play; however, as the novel progresses, Jan begins to apply the spatial model of Quince’s question to the metaphorical and often cryptic description of her desire. This “translation” of Quince’s question, “to bring the moonlight into a chamber” into the novel’s context is finally achieved in the scene of Jan and Franklin’s reunion. The theme of translation suggested in the reunion scene hints to a reading of the metafictional twist at the very end of the novel. Examining A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a pivotal intertext will shed some light on how disparate motifs in The Gold Bug Variations are intertwined through the principle of translation to form a sense of coherent unity.