The Romance of Infidelity Fidelity is the most basic ethical term in translation. Infidelity means betrayal of the original work and its author. An artist is expected to be faithful only to himself. An artist can be revolutionary; an artist can reject a tradition or a teacher. This is how schools of art or writing or music come into being. This is what the history of art is all about. Betrayal and promiscuity are respected in an artist. In the primary arts, there is no original to betray. You can take The Odyssey and do anything you want with it — write a play, a ballet, a novel, another poem even — and no one will say you were unfaithful to it, unless you make an absolute mockery of it. And most likely not even then. You have simply interpreted it according to your whims and the times you live in. You are an artist. What about the secondary arts: performing music, directing plays, adapting novels into screenplays? Here there is an original: a musical composition, a play, a novel. A performer can be accused of getting it wrong, a director of going too far, an adapter of missing what made the novel great. But it’s rarely a question of fidelity; usually it’s a question of eccentricity, incompetence, misinterpretation, commercialism. A performer’s style strips a piece of music of its power; a director’s change of gender or time doesn’t work or is too clever for everyone’s good; an adapter cravenly sands over all the bumpy, provocative aspects of the novel. But even at their worst, they’re only misinterpreting, being experimental, selling out. They are first and foremost interpreters, and when they do a poor job, they are simply bad, incompetent interpreters. They have a style, are allowed a style. They take too many risks, or too few, but they are allowed risks. The only thing truly at risk, as with the original artist, is reputation, because the performer, director, adapter
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