Theodorakis had a point. Oliver Sacks, in his book Musicophilia draws attention to Darwin’s claim that song preceded speech in humans. Merlin Macdonald, it seems, went further still, arguing that mimetic use of rhythm in human communities long preceded language. It is held that only in the human brain is there a functional connection between the auditory and the dorsal premotor cortex. If Mikis Theodorakis had, by luck, by study, or by instinct, hit the nail on the head in the rhythm of his accented French, I had failed to convey this to his audience at the time.
After that, I was wary of requests to do simultaneous interpretation. I think I did it only once more, some thirty years later. This was in Hong Kong, when Michel Butor gave a talk. He is a significant literary figure in France, an essayist and novelist. With Alain Robbe-Grillet he was one of those who launched the ‘nouveau roman’ of the fifties or sixties. He wore a salopette, almost like a trademark, and was a very engaging person, as was his wife.
