Samuel Beckett and Translation
Edited by José Francisco Fernández, Mar Garre García
- Includes especially commissioned contributions by three translators who worked with Samuel Beckett
- Revisits traditional analyses of Beckett’s work which did not account for Beckett’s bilingualism. In all contributions, both versions of a Beckett text are considered originals, each one having its own dynamic impuls
- Contains ample knowledge of previous scholarship in the field: it continues the path (bold, systematic, comprehensive) initiated by ground-breaking monograph A Tongue Not Mine (2011), by Sinéad Mooney
- Reveals unknown aspects of Beckett’s practice of translation, e.g., not in all cases did he impoverish his texts when he rendered them in a second language
- Displays full coverage of literary genres: attention is paid to prose fiction, theatre (including radio plays) and poetry translated by Beckett
Samuel Beckett and Translation explores the idea that at the core of Beckett’s work there is no fixed centre but a constant movement between variants of French and English. This collection of newly commissioned edited essays opens up original lines of enquiry into this restless impulse and how it finds a resonance in Beckett’s writing. Topics, including Beckett’s self-translations, translations of other authors and poetics of translation, are discussed in an Introduction and thirteen chapters followed by a section of commentary from seasoned translators who have worked on Beckett’s texts. In examining the full range of Beckett’s literary genres, this book presents how the high voltage released by Beckett’s bilingualism informs the intricacies of his literary production.
Notes on contributors
Introduction, José Francisco Fernández and Mar Garre García
SECTION I. BECKETT’S SELF-TRANSLATIONS
1. ‘" … bouche en feu … "’. A Genetic Manuscript Study of Samuel Beckett’s Self-Translation of Not I’, Shane O’Neill
2. ‘Tracing Translation: The Genesis of Comédie and Film (fr)’, Olga Beloborodova
3. ‘The Self-Translation of the Representation of the Mind in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy’, Waqas Mirza
4. ‘Vagaries of Bilingualism. A Curious Case of Beckett’s Translations of his Own Poems’, Sławomir Studniarz
5. ‘Literal Translation vs. Self-Translation: The Beckett-Pinget Collaboration on the Radio Play Cendres (Embers)’, Pim Verhulst
SECTION II. BECKETT’S TRANSLATIONS OF OTHER AUTHORS
6. ‘Esperando a Goethe: Translation, Humanism, and "Message from Earth"’, Patrick Bixby
7. ‘"A stone of sun": José Juan Tablada’s Poems in Samuel Beckett’s Translation’, María José Carrera
8. ‘Translation’s Challenge to Lyric’s Immediacy: Beckett’s Rimbaud’, Amanda Dennis
9. ‘"Are Beckett’s Texts Bilingual? "Long after Chamfort" and Translation’, Matthijs Engelberts
SECTION III. BECKETT’S POETICS OF TRANSLATION
10. "Au plaisir: Beckett and the Neatness of Identifications", John Pilling
11. ‘A Poetics of the Doppelgänger: Beckett as Self-Translator’, Dirk Van Hulle
12. "Tuning Absent Pianos: Watt and the Poetics of Translation", Fábio De Souza Andrade
13. "‘The absolute impossibility of all purchase’: Property and Translation in Beckett’s Postwar Prose", Martin Schauss
SECTION IV. COMMENTARY
‘Some Remarks on a Sentence in A Piece of Monologue’, Antoni Libera
‘The Third Language of Translation’, Gabriele Frasca
‘From All That Fall to Stirrings Still’, Alan W. Friedman. ‘Beckett Translating’, Erika Tophoven
Index
This excellent collection of critical essays revitalises the study of one of the most vexed questions in Beckett Studies – the role played by Beckett’s bilingualism in the shaping of his texts. Collectively the contributors map out new and exciting ways to approach and understand Beckett’s complex strategies of translation and self-translation.
