The Matrix and the Machine

Vincent Ravalec

Artwork by Elephnt

The Matrix

When the explorers probed the Matrix, they found it was composed of remnants, dust, debris, forgotten memories, all sorts of detritus. The nature it gave rise to emanated from it, a rampant outgrowth manifesting the Universe’s capacity to revitalize itself by endlessly reinventing new possibilities.

Man, a miniscule organism set on its surface, capable of transforming his environment, of thinking and analyzing his mental structure, of altering his biological components, was a potential intercessor allowing the Matrix to give birth to new beings.

At the heart of the Matrix were golden keys. Engraved on them were inscrutable verses. Like bizarre nursery rhymes. The language enabling their decipherment must have been forgotten.

If one tried, they yielded expressions resembling those silly maxims that prevail among Boy Scouts or are found in the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, the ones that talk about respecting others, about the beauty of life.

This plunged the explorers into the most profound perplexity.

 

The Machine

When the explorers discovered the Machine, they realized it was composed of the remains of gases, inert materials seeking the favor of movement.

The objects it gave rise to emanated from it, definitive, static architecture manifesting the Universe’s capacity to impose formal limits enabling the comprehension of the incomprehensible and the curbing of its mad growth.

Man, a miniscule organism set on its surface, capable of transforming his environment, of thinking about his own mental structure and of altering his biological components, was one of its tools. In order to give birth to himself and reach a new state of being, he had to learn how to make use of it, but also, in the end, to free himself from it.

At the heart of the Machine were golden keys. Engraved on them were strange incantations. Like esoteric formulas whose language—which would have enabled their decipherment—must have been forgotten.

Upon testing, they yielded bizarre expressions resembling those idiotic legalistic formulations that, among other things, allow travel to be regulated, security to be guaranteed, and responsibilities to be quantified, the sort of recommendations one finds in the traffic code.

Needless to say this plunged the explorers into utter perplexity.

translated from the French by Wendeline A. Hardenberg

Read the original in French

Listen to the text in the original French read by the author:

Nouvelles du monde entier II (2009), or “Tales from around the World II” in English, is an eclectic assemblage of odd stories that refract bizarre globe-trotting themes and reflections on contemporary art and the state of the world in the twenty-first century in ingeniously strange ways. Although each story can stand on its own, reading the others alongside provides a fuller picture of the world inside the collection, where the Joker is a real force to be reckoned with.

I initially purchased the volume sight unseen, simply as Ravalec’s most recent collection at the time and a possible well from which to draw new translations. My first plan was to engage in a “NaNoTraMo” of my own invention, translating one story a day for the month of November 2012 until I had a whole book’s worth of first drafts. My plan broke apart on the very first story after the prologue—a scene-setting novella over 12,000 words long. Chastened, I decided to tackle the stories in order of length rather than publication. Only two stories took up a single page each: “La Matrice” and “La Machine.”

Upon turning to the page featuring “La Matrice,” I knew immediately that something was afoot—the font was different from the rest of the book. I read through it quickly and relished its pint-sized sci-fi. Then I turned to the page with “La Machine,” and discovered the same font. Flipping back and forth, I realized the two stories—set apart from all the other stories in the book—were proposing diametrically opposed visions of the universe using virtually the same language. I was entranced.

Translating the two stories as a pair was a necessity. This meant that although I would have certainly translated the title of “La Matrice” as “The Womb” if it had stood on its own, its inextricable relationship to “La Machine” meant it could only be “The Matrix,” even if it did conjure up visions of the Wachowskis’s films more than generative organs. It also meant that I had to carefully compare the word choice in both stories, making sure they matched exactly where the French was identical, and making sure they differed subtly where the French deviated. It was such a delightful puzzle, and I hope other readers can experience the same wonder I felt when I stumbled across these stories.

Vincent Ravalec (b. 1962) is a well-known contemporary French writer of avant-garde novels, short stories, poems, and pop songs, as well as a pioneer of virtual reality cinema. He stopped his formal schooling at the age of fourteen and worked as an apprentice carpenter and assistant movie producer before beginning to write in the early 1990s. After two well-received collections of short stories—Un pur moment de rock'n roll (1992) and Les clefs de bonheur (1993)—his first novel, Cantique de la racaille (1994), was awarded the very first Prix de Flore and was later made into a film. He has since been prolific in a wide variety of media in France. His most recent novel, Bonbon désesperé, was published in 2016 by Éditions du Rocher. He lives in Paris.

Wendeline A. Hardenberg (b. 1983) is a faculty librarian at Southern Connecticut State University who pursues literary translation as part of her creative activity. She has previously published an excerpt from Aubry’s novel Perséphone 2014 (Persephone 2014; Mercure de France, 2016) with Asymptote in 2019, as well as a different excerpt from La Folie Elisa (Elisa Folly; Mercure de France, 2018) with Columbia Journal in 2021. Her translation of Marie-Claire Bancquart’s volume of poetry, Avec la mort, quartier d’orange entre les dents (With Death, an Orange Segment Between Our Teeth), came out with Orison Books in 2023. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.