ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the inherent multimodality of language across sight and sound. Specifically, it considers the letter “│”, offered by Adam in Dante’s Paradiso as the word for God in his long-lost Edenic language, and of course familiar in English as the first-person subject pronoun (sometimes mistaken for the number 1). This “│” can function both as an image and as something that has a linguistic (e.g., metrical) value, and therefore it complicates multimodal analyses. Because of this, it poses a particular and suggestive challenge to translation. This chapter traces the translational ramifications of “│”, seeking to elucidate the element of illustration that inheres in translation, and vice versa, as well as the pictorial aspect of all writing.