"The intention of the poet is spontaneous, primary, graphic; that of the translator is derivative, ultimate, ideational." -Benjamin, The Task of the Translator

“…there is a sharp boundary line between the actual world as source of representation and the world represented in the work. We must never forget this, we must never confuse—as has been done up to now and as is still often done—the represented world with the world outside the text (naïve realism);…But it is also impermissible to take this categorical boundary line as something absolute and impermeable (which leads to an oversimplified, dogmatic splitting of hairs). However forcefully the real and the represented world resist fusion, however immutable the presence of that categorical boundary line between them, they are nevertheless indissolubly tied up with each other and find themselves in continual mutual interaction…"-Bakhtin, Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel

"The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star." -Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

"According to Aristotle, a child does not begin to laugh before the fortieth day after his birth; only from that moment does it become a human being." -Bakhtin, Rabelais In the History of Laughter