Retranslating Joyce for the 21st-Century 9004427392, 9789004427396

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Retranslating Joyce for the 21st Century

European Joyce Studies General Editor Geert Lernout (University of Antwerp)

Editorial Board Scarlett Baron (University College London) Kasia Bazarnik (Jagiellonian University) Valérie Bénéjam (University of Nantes) Teresa Caneda (University of Vigo) Ronan Crowley (University of Antwerp) Anne Fogarty (University College Dublin) Onno Kosters (Utrecht University) John McCourt (University of Macerata) Erika Mihálycsa (Babes-Bolyai University) Fritz Senn (Zürich James Joyce Foundation) Amanda Sigler (University of Virginia) Sam Slote (Trinity College Dublin) Dirk Vanderbeke (Friedrich Schiller University of Jena) Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp)

Founded by Christine van Boheemen-Saaf, in association with Fritz Senn

Volume 30

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ejs

Retranslating Joyce for the 21st Century Edited by

Jolanta Wawrzycka Erika Mihálycsa

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wawrzycka, Jolanta W., editor. | Mihálycsa, Erika, editor. Title: Retranslating Joyce for the 21st century / edited by Jolanta Wawrzycka, Erika Mihálycsa. Other titles: Retranslating Joyce for the twenty-first century Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, [2020] | Series: European Joyce studies, 0923-9855 ; volume 30 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020009341 (print) | LCCN 2020009342 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004427396 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9789004427419 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Joyce, James, 1882-1941–Translations–History and criticism. Classification: LCC PR6019.O9 Z784376 2020 (print) | LCC PR6019.O9 (ebook) | DDC 823/.912–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009341 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009342

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0923-9855 ISBN 978-90-04-42739-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-42741-9 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii Bibliographical Note ix Contributors xv Retranslation: “None the worse for wear however” (U 16.1465): Introduction 1 Erika Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka 1

Ulysses “in his French dress”: 1929/2004 Flavie Épié

33

2

A Revision Abandoned Fritz Senn

3

The Revision of Hans Wollschläger’s German Ulysses Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller

4

“Wavewhite wedded words”: The Soundscape of the Canonical Hungarian Translation of Ulysses (1974) and Its Remake (2012) 87 Marianna Gula

5

“Multiply the inlets of happiness” (U 14.677): On the Hungarian Translations of Internal Incongruities in “Oxen of the Sun” 103 Erika Mihálycsa

6

Translating Finger(tip) 124 Jolanta Wawrzycka

7

The Fabulous Artificer, the Architect, and the Roadmender: On Retranslating Aloys Skoumal’s Czech Ulysses 148 David Vichnar

8

Immanent Polyglossia of Ulysses: South Slavic Context Born Retranslated 165 Mina M. Đurić

48

58

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Contents

9

“Probably not a bit like it really” (U 4.99): Ulysses in Two Turkish Translations 179 Armağan Ekici

10

Translating Creativity, Creating Translation: The Third Brazilian Ulysses 202 Caetano Waldrigues Galindo

11

Translators’ Creativity in the Dutch and Spanish (Re)translations of “Oxen of the Sun”: (Re)translation the Bakhtinian Way 221 Kris Peeters and Guillermo Sanz Gallego

12

Hot Form and Hot Potato: “Grahamising” the Romanian Translation of Ulysses 242 Rareș Moldovan

13

(Re-)reforegnising the Foreign: Notes on the Italian Retranslations of James Joyce’s Ulysses 258 Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi

14

Dublinezen, or: the Dutch Dubliners 271 Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes

15

The Angered Italian Translator: from Pomes Penyeach to Finn’s Hotel 285 Ilaria Natali

16

Crosswords; or Rather, Crossing Worlds Fabio Pedone and Enrico Terrinoni

17

Derrida and the Phantom Yeses of Ulysse Sam Slote Index

319

300

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Acknowledgements The genesis of this volume goes back to two workshops organized by the editors in collaboration with Fritz Senn at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, the first in May 2010, the second in October 2017, both dedicated to specific problems of retranslating Ulysses. The materials of the 2010 workshop have come out in the 2012.2 issue of Scientia Traductionis and have, to a degree, impacted a number of the past decade’s re-editings and retranslations of Joyce into Italian, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, German, Polish and Romanian, the last two still in progress. Our primary thanks are due to Fritz Senn and the Zurich Joyce Foundation for hosting the workshops and for bringing together experienced and emerging Joyce scholars and translators. Senn’s lifelong hyper-close readingas-translation has been and continues to be the most important inspiration in our own work. We extend our thanks to all full-time and drop-in participants of Zurich translation workshops and to the contributors to the ensuing publications, for their astute discussions that generated and proliferated insights all but unattainable in larger, more crowded settings. In alphabetical order, they are: Katarzyna Bazarnik, Erik Bindervoet, Rosa-Maria Bosinelli, Teresa Caneda, David Califf, Tim Conley, Flavie Epié, Ruth Frehner, Guillermo Sanz Gallego, Marianna Gula, Robbert-Jan Henkes, Arleen Ionescu, András Kappanyos,  Veronika Kovács, Leevi Lehto, Rareș Moldovan, Ashraf Noor, Elena Păcurar, Ilma Rakusa, Friedhelm Rathjen, David Spurr, Enrico Terrinoni, Ira Torresi, Fritz Senn, and Ursua Zeller. We would also like to thank the organizers of two translation panels at the 2018 Antwerp Joyce Symposium, Guillermo Sanz Gallego and Kris Peeters. As participants, we were enriched by their innovative takes on some of the issues that have long preoccupied both of us. Among other participants and audience members, Flavie Épié, Marija Grievska, Katarzyna Bazarnik, Fritz Senn, Robbert-Jan Henkes, Erik Bindervoet and Armağan Ekici offered particularly valuable commentary on the panels’ content. We are deeply grateful to the contributors of this volume for their teamwork and for their patience with our seemingly endless queries. We remain indebted to them for everything they have taught us. Our gratitude also goes to the Readers of the two first drafts of this volume: their keen and judicious critical comments helped us and our contributors sharpen their points and refine their arguments.

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Big thanks to the Brill team: Geert Lernout, Masja Horn, Rebecca Evans and Ellen Girmscheid. And very special thanks to Violeta Šalčiuvienė and to the whole VTeX team for their expertise, efficiency and guidance throughout the book production process. We also wish to thank Armağan Ekici and Alexander Tso for their initial help with indexing. Jolanta Wawrzycka acknowledges Radford University’s McGlothlin travel grant to attend the 2017 Zurich workshop and the Fall 2018 Faculty Development Leave that supported parts of this project. Additional acknowledgements by individual contributors appear at the end of their chapters. Some book projects live with families: support and indulgence from Jon and Alexander Tso and Szilveszter and Katalin Mihálycsa helped us carve out time for this very rewarding work.

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Bibliographical Note

Serbian Fb/Stojaković Finegana buđenje. Trans. Siniša Stojaković. Knjiga I (Book I). (Beograd: Pasus, 2014). Knjiga III i IV (Book III and IV). Beograd: Pasus, 2017.

Bibliographical Note In line with the conventions of this series the following editions of Joyce’s works have been used, unless additional or alternative editions have been cited in the essay concerned. The following standard abbreviations for parenthetical textual references have been used: CW D FW JJA JJII LI, LII, LIII

P SL SH U

James Joyce, The Critical Writings of James Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann (New York: Viking Press, 1959). James Joyce, Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes, ed. Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz (New York: Viking Press, 1969). + page and line number. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (London: Faber, 1939). The James Joyce Archive. Ed. Michael Groden, et al. (New York: Garland, 1977-79). Richard Ellmann, James Joyce. Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). James Joyce, Letters of James Joyce, Vol. I, ed. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Viking Press, 1957). Volumes II and III, ed. Richard Ellmann (New York: Viking Press, 1966). James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Chester G. Anderson (New York: Viking Press, 1968). James Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce. Ed. Richard Ellmann (New York: Viking Press, 1975; London: Faber, 1975). James Joyce, Stephen Hero. (New York: New Directions, 1963). James Joyce, Ulysses. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler et al. (New York and London: Garland 1986).

Translations The following abbreviations of translations of Joyce’s works have been used: Dubliners Dutch D/Dub/Bloem 1 Dubliners. Trans. Rein Bloem (Van Gennep, 1968, 1st ed; 1997; 7th ed).

x

Bibliographical Note D/Dub/Bloem 2 Dubliners. Trans. Rein Bloem (Amsterdam: Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep, 2004; 8th ed.). D/Dub/Bindervoet-Henkes Dublinezen. Trans. Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes (Amsterdam: Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep, 2016).

German G/Dub/Beck Dubliner. Trans. Harald Beck (Reclam, 1994; 2005).

Italian I/Dub/Ghirardi Dublinesi. Trans. Margherita Ghirardi Minoja (Milano: 1961). I/Dub/Balboni I dublinesi. Trans. Maria Pia Balboni (Milano: Bompiani, 1988).

Turkish T/Dub/Belge Dublinliler. Trans. Murat Belge (Istanbul: İletişimYayınları, 1987).

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Italian I/P/Pavese Dedalus. Ritratto dell’artista giovane. Trans. Cesare Pavese (Milano: Frassinelli, 1933).

Spanish Sp/P/Alonso Retrato del Artista Adolescente. Trans. Dámaso Alonso (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1978).

Turkish T/P/Belge Sanatçının Bir Genç Adam Olarak Portresi. Trans. Murat Belge (Istanbul: De Yayınevi, 1966).

Ulysses Bulgarian Bu/Vasileva Odisej. Trans. Iglika Vasileva (Sofia: Iztok-Zapad, 2011).

Croatian Cr/Gorjan Uliks. Trans. Zlatko Gorjan (Rijeka: Otokar Keršovani, 1957).

Bibliographical Note

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Cr/Paljetak Uliks. Trans. Luko Paljetak (Opatija: Otokar Kersovani, 1991).

Czech Cz/Vymĕtal-Fastrová Odysseus. Trans. Ladislav Vymĕtal and Jarmila Fastrová (Prague: Vaclav Petr, 1930). Cz/Skoumal Odysseus. Trans. Aloys Skoumal (Prague: Odeon, 1976). Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný Odysseus. Trans. Aloys Skoumal. Revised and edited, Martin Pokorný (Praha: Argo, 2012).

Danish Da/Boisen Ulysses. Trans. Mogens Boisen (Gyldendal Verlag, 1980).

Dutch Du/Vandenbergh Ulysses. Trans. John Vandenbergh (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1969). Du/Claes-Nys Ulysses. Trans. Paul Claes and Mon Nys (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1994). Du/Bindervoet-Henkes Ulixes. Trans. Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes (Amsterdam: Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep, 2012).

French F/Morel Ulysse. Trans. Auguste Morel, 1929 (Paris: Gallimard, 1948). F/Morel 2 Ulysse, trans. Auguste Morel, Stuart Gilbert, Valery Larbaud, ed. Jacques Aubert Œuvres complètes, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1995). F/Aubert Ulysse. Trans. Tiphaine Samoyault, Patrick Drevet, Sylvie Doizelet, Bernard Hœpffner, Marie-Danièle Vors, Pacal Bataillard, Michel Cusin, Jacques Aubert, also editor (Paris: Gallimard, 2004). F/Aubert 2 Ulysse. Trans. Tiphaine Samoyault, Patrick Drevet, Sylvie Doizelet, Bernard Hœpffner, Marie-Danièle Vors, Pascal Bataillard, Michel Cusin, Jacques Aubert, also editor, 2004 (Paris: Gallimard, 2013).

German G/Goyert Ulysses. Trans. Georg Goyert (Zürich: Rhein Verlag, 1956 [1927, 1930]).

xii

Bibliographical Note G/Wollschläger Ulysses. Trans. Hans Wollschläger (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975). G/Wollschläger-R Ulysses. Trans. Hans Wollschläger. Revised by Harald Beck, Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller. In consultation with Fritz Senn (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2018).

Hungarian Hu/Gáspár Ulysses. Trans. Endre Gáspár (Budapest: Nova Irodalmi Intézet, 1947). 2 vols. Hu/Szentkuthy 1 Ulysses. Trans. Miklós Szentkuthy (Budapest: Európa, 1974). Hu/Szentkuthy 2 Ulysses. Trans. Miklós Szentkuthy, ed. Tibor Bartos. Budapest: Európa, 1986). Hu/Revised Ulysses. Trans. Marianna Gula, András Kappanyos, Gábor Kiss, Dávid Szolláth (Budapest: Európa, 2012).

Italian I/De Angelis Ulisse. Trans. Giulio de Angelis (Milano: Mondadori, 1960, 1971; revised ed. 1988). I/Terrinoni Ulisse. Trans. Enrico Terrinoni with Carlo Bigazzi (Roma: Newton Compton, 2012). I/Celati Ulisse. Trans. Gianni Celati (Torino: Einaudi, 2013).

Macedonian Ma/Serafimov Ulis. Trans. Sveto Serafimov (Skopje: Misla, Kultura, Makedonska kniga, Naša kniga, 1977). 2 vols.

Polish Pl/Czechowicz “Ranek” [fragment of “Calypso”]. Trans. Józef Czechowicz, in Koń rdzy, ed. Tadeusz Kłak (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie, 1990 [1938 in Pion]), 435-443. Pl/Słomczyński Ulisses. Trans. Maciej Słomczyński (Warszawa: PIW, 1969; rev. 4th ed. Pomorze: Bydgoszcz, 1992). Pl/Wawrzycka [unpublished; translation in progress].

Portuguese (Brazilian) Po/Houaiss Ulisses. Trans. Antonio Houaiss (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1966; 1982).

Bibliographical Note

xiii

Po/Pinheiro Ulisses. Trans. Bernardina da Silveira Pinheiro (Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2005). Po/Galindo Ulysses. Trans. Caetano W. Galindo (São Paulo: Penguin Companhia das letras, 2012).

Romanian Ro/Ivănescu Ulise. Transl. Mircea Ivănescu (Bucureşti: Editura Univers, 1984). 2 vols. Ro/Moldovan [unpublished; translation in progress].

Russian Ru/Hinkis-Horužij Uliss. Trans. Viktor Hinkis and Sergej Horužij (Moscow: Respublika, 1993).

Serbian Se/Paunović Uliks. Trans. Zoran Paunović (Beograd: Geopoetika, 2008; 4th ed.).

Slovenian Sl/Gradišnik Ulikses. Trans. Janez Gradišnik (Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije, 1967). 2 vols.

Spanish Sp/Subirat Ulises. Trans. J. Salas Subirat (Buenos Aires: Santiago Editor, 1959). Sp/Valverde Ulises. Trans. José Maria Valverde (Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1976). Sp/Tortosa Ulises. Trans. Francisco García Tortosa (Madrid: Catédra, 1999).

Turkish T/Erkmen Ulysses. Trans. Nevzat Erkmen (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1996); 13th printing, 2011. T/Ekici Ulysses. Trans. Armağan Ekici (Istanbul: Norgunk Yayıncılık, 2012); 3rd printing, 2015.

Finnegans Wake Polish Ft/Bartnicki Finneganów tren. Trans. Krzysztof Bartnicki (Kraków: Korporacja Ha!art, 2012).

Contributors Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes translated the complete works of Joyce into Dutch (2002-2018), as well as the complete lyrics of The Beatles and of Bob Dylan, Karl Kraus’ The Last Days of Mankind and, together and independently, other major and minor works of English, French, German and Russian authors. Solo and as a duo they publish articles (about matters Joycean, e.g. in the European Joyce Studies and in the online Genetic Joyce Studies), books of poetry, plays etc. Their monograph on Finnegans Wake, the Finnegancyclopedie, appeared in 2005; in 2012 their Oxford World Classics Finnegans Wake edition (with Finn Fordham). Their critical, emended edition of Finnegans Wake, also with Finn Fordham, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli was Professor Emeritus of English Language and Translation, University of Bologna, Italy, and director of the Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators, University of Bologna-Forlì (1992-6). In 2000, she co-founded and directed the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (now Department of Interpreting and Translation) for six years. She published widely on metaphor, screen translation, and the language of advertising and politics. As a Joycean, she published Myriadmindedman: Jottings on Joyce (1986), The Language of Joyce (1992), Anna Livia Plurabelle di James Joyce nella traduzione di Samuel Beckett e altri (1996), ReJoycing: New Readings of Dubliners (1998), and Joyce and/in Translation (2007). She served as President of the International James Joyce Foundation from 2000 to 2004. Mina M. Đurić is Assistant Professor of Serbian Literature of the 20th Century at the Department of Serbian Literature with South Slavic Literatures, the University of Belgrade. She completed her doctoral dissertation on the modernization of 20-century Serbian prose in relation to the creative reception of James Joyce’s literary works. She attended Joyce events in Zurich, Rome, and Trieste. Her research focuses on comparative literature, interdisciplinary studies of contemporary Slavic literatures in the context of world literature, literary theory, music and translation. In addition to numerous papers, she has edited a book on Mina Karadžić Vukomanović in German and Russian, and co-authored three books for high school.

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Contributors

Armağan Ekici translated James Joyce’s Ulysses, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, and Raymond Queneau’s Exercises de Style into Turkish, and published two volumes of essays: Lacivert Taşından Tabletler (The Tablets of Lapis Lazuli, 2016) and Umut, Kendi Enkazından (Hope, From Its Own Wreck, 2019). He also edited Turkish translations of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds and The Hard Life, two novels, and participated in a joint project of translating Bob Dylan’s lyrics. He studied Business Administration in the Middle East Technical University and works in a bank. Flavie Épié is finishing her doctoral work in English Studies at Université BordeauxMontaigne, under international joint supervision with the University of Antwerp. In her research she focuses on a comparison of the two French translations of Joyce’s Ulysses, covering the published works, which both result from collaborative projects, as well as their genetic files. Before the PhD, she earned her Master of Arts degree in English Studies from the University of Nantes, taught French as a Second Language at the University of Waterloo, and English as a Second Language in high school. She currently teaches translation, translation studies and British literature in the English department of Université Bordeaux-Montaigne. Ruth Frehner is a curator at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation. She was one of the corevisers of Hans Wollschläger’s translation of Ulysses (2018), and also contributed to a new translation of “Penelope.” Also, she co-curated exhibitions and co-edited publications such as A Collideorscape of Joyce: A Festschrift for Fritz Senn and the bilingual James Joyce: “gedacht durch meine Augen – thought through my eyes.” Currently she is finishing an edition of Sylvia Beach’s letters to James Joyce with Ursula Zeller. Caetano Waldrigues Galindo teaches historical linguistics and literary translation at Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil. He has published translations from Romanian, Italian and Danish. His translations into Portuguese include the works of David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, T.S. Eliot, and Alice Munro. He translated Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Finn’s Hotel and Ulysses.

Contributors

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Guillermo Sanz Gallego holds a joint PhD from both the University of Seville (Spain) and the University of Antwerp (Belgium). He lectures in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University, and at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), where he teaches courses on translation, multilingual practices, and language skills. He has essays published both in peer-reviewed journals, and in books, on translation studies, literature, the Spanish Civil War, censorship and propaganda, cinema, and on translation training. He has also co-edited special issues of journals on different topics, such as on ‘Translation in Exile’, and on ‘Retranslation.’ Marianna Gula teaches courses in Irish culture, literature and film at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. She has published widely on Joyce in Irish University Review, European Joyce Studies, Papers on Joyce, Scientia Traductionis and in Hungarian journals. She is the author of A Tale of a Pub: Re-Reading the “Cyclops” Episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the Context of Irish Cultural Nationalism (2012). She was a member of the translator team re-working (re-editing and partially retranslating) the canonical Hungarian translation of Joyce’s Ulysses (2012). Her current research focuses on the politics and ethics of remembering in the context of post-Belfast Agreement Northern Irish fiction and film. Erika Mihálycsa lectures on 20th and 21st century British and Irish literature at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. She has published on Joyce’s and Beckett’s language poetics, Joyce in translation, Beckett and the visual arts, as well as in the field of Modernism studies, Flann O’Brien, and translation studies. Together with Rainer J. Hanshe, she edits the biannual online journal HYPERION – On the Future of Aesthetics, issued by Contra Mundum Press. She is a literary translator between Hungarian and English, having translated texts by Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien, Anne Carson, Julian Barnes, George Orwell, Patrick McCabe, Medbh McGuckian, and others into Hungarian, and a handful of contemporary Hungarian authors into English. Rareș Moldovan is Associate Professor of English at the Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj Napoca. His publications include Symptomatologies. A Study of the Problem of Legitimation in Late Modernity (2011), articles on literary theory, American and Irish literature, the relation between literature and film.

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Contributors

He has also translated into Romanian works by Thomas Pynchon, Michael Cunningham, Chuck Palahniuk, Harold Bloom, and is currently working on a new translation of Joyce’s Ulysses. Fabio Pedone is a translator and a literary critic. He teaches at the Scuola del Libro in Rome. He is currently translating and annotating Finnegans Wake with Enrico Terrinoni. He has translated works by David Jones (In Parenthesis), Jaimy Gordon, and Damon Galgut among others. His articles have appeared in numerous Italian newspapers, among which Il manifesto and Left. Kris Peeters is senior lecturer and chair of the Department of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) where he teaches French language, culture, literature and text analysis. He is member of the TricS-research group (Translation, interpreting and intercultural Studies) and board member of the Conseil Européen pour les Langues / European Language Council. His research at the intersection of Bakhtinian discourse theory and translation studies mainly focuses on the poetics of literary translation and retranslation, especially with regard to dialogism, heteroglossia, (free) indirect discourse, translator’s voice. Fritz Senn is the founding director of the Zürich James Joyce Foundation. He has written on Joyce, translation and subjects such as Ochlokinetics. He may have been the first to tackle translation issues in Joyce. He is a presence at all Joyce events, including Dublin and Trieste Joyce Schools. His publications include Joyce’s Dislocutions: Essays on Reading as Translation (1984); Inductive Scrutinies: Essays on Joyce (1995), He also published Joycean Murmoirs. Fritz Senn on James Joyce (ed. Christine O’Neill; 2007), and an extended interview, Portals of Recovery: Fritz Senn on Reading: Joyce, Homer, Translation (eds. Erika Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka, 2017). Sam Slote is Associate Professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin and Co-Director of the Samuel Beckett Summer School. His most recent book is Joyce’s Nietzschean Ethics (Palgrave, 2013). In addition to Joyce and Beckett, he has written on Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Raymond Queneau, Dante, Mallarmé, and Elvis.

Contributors

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Enrico Terrinoni holds a PhD in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama (University College Dublin). He is Chair of English at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia, Italy. He has translated James Joyce’s Ulysses (with Carlo Bigazzi) and Finnegans Wake (with Fabio Pedone) into Italian and edited the Italian translation of Joyce’s letters and essays. He also translated works by Brendan Behan, James Stephens, Francis Bacon, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Lee Masters, Oscar Wilde, Muriel Spark, Michael D. Higgins, Alasdair Gray, and Simon Armitage. He is the author of Occult Joyce (2008). His translations won him the Premio Napoli, Premio Annibal Caro and Premio Von Rezzori / Città di Firenze. Ira Torresi is Associate Professor at the Department of Interpreting and Translation, University of Bologna-Forlì. With Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli she has edited Joyce and/in Translation (2007) and two dossiers on Joycean Collective Memories (2009 and 2014), for the mediAzioni online journal. She has also authored several papers on Joyce and translation. Her main other areas of research are child language brokering, advertising and gender in translation, and comparative visual semiotics. David Vichnar is senior lecturer at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University Prague, and an editor, publisher and translator. His publications include Joyce Against Theory (2010) and Subtexts: Essays on Fiction (2015). He is editor of Hypermedia Joyce (2010), Thresholds (2011), Praharfeast: James Joyce in Prague (2012) and Terrain: Essays on the New Poetics (2014). He has coedited VLAK magazine (2010-15), since 2009 has acted as programme director of the annual Prague Poetry Microfestival, and manages Litteraria Pragensia Books and Equus Press. He was editor-in-chief of Hypermedia Joyce Studies, the first online journal of Joyce scholarship. His articles on contemporary experimental writers and translations of contemporary poetry and fiction – Czech, German, French and Anglophone – have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. Jolanta Wawrzycka is professor of English at Radford University in Virginia. She has lectured at the Joyce Schools in Dublin and Trieste and contributes annually to Zurich Joyce Foundation August Workshops. She is a Trustee of the International James Joyce Foundation. Her publications include guest-edited Joyce/translation issues of James Joyce Quarterly (2010) and Scientia Traductionis (2010; 2012) and

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Contributors

co-edited books, Portals of Recovery (2017) and James Joyce’s Silences (2018). She also edited Reading Joycean Temporalities (2018). Her translation of Joyce’s Chamber Music as Muzyka intymna has been published in Kraków (2019). She has also translated Roman Ingarden, Czesław Miłosz and W.B. Yeats. Ursula Zeller is a curator at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation. Among her most recent projects is the forthcoming edition, together with Ruth Frehner, of Sylvia Beach’s letters to Joyce, which are a centrepiece of the Hans E. Jahnke Bequest at ZJJF. She was involved in a German translation of “Penelope” and was part of the team headed by Harald Beck, which revised Hans Wollschläger’s German translation of Ulysses, with Fritz Senn as advisor. Another main interest of hers is the performance of Joyce’s fiction; she has developed dramaturgic concepts for a variety of Joycean productions that were put on stage in Zurich.

Introduction

Retranslation: “None the worse for wear however” (U 16.1465) Erika Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka

“A beautiful language” (U 16.345), opines Bloom after overhearing an exchange in Italian as he and Stephen enter the cabman’s shelter. Before Stephen translates it for Bloom as haggle over money, Bloom continues, volunteering beautifully sounding but lexically off “Bella Poetria,” semantically misleading “Belladonna,” and the aphastic “Voglio” that has haunted him all day. But it is the melodiousness of Italian and “the southern glamour that surrounds it” that Bloom reflects on, “there being more languages to start with than were absolutely necessary” (16.352) – illustrating the deceptive closeness of languages, as well as the frustrating liability of interlinguistic encounters to go off-themark. This rich passage serves as an exemplar of the kinds of readerly cruxes to overcome – the non sequiturs, polyglossy, multilingual wordplay, syntactic indeterminacies and, indeed, aesthetic/poetic facets of language that make up the fabric of Ulysses – and make reading difficult. Enter translators, and the challenge of bringing out these features in “more languages to start with” grows exponentially, even though this shaky Italian apparently constitutes no translation problem, staying the same in translated texts. What ought to be translated, however, is that which derails translation – among many other things, the interference of English “poetry” in the macaronic Italian poetria. Since the turn of the millennium, Joyce’s works, Ulysses especially, have been retranslated into a range of European and non-European languages, many of them revised and thoroughly re-edited. These new translations are likely to change the experience of Joyce’s texts, and to shift emphasis to areas of Joyce’s excessive, overflowing textuality that were only sporadically addressed by earlier translations. Just like their predecessors, the new translations are products of their own time and of the literary sensibilities that they reveal in complex ways. Apart from their responsibility towards Joyce’s original texts, retranslations also take a stance towards the existing translation(s) by signalling departure from – or indebtedness to – the previous translations, or by devising different strategies for dealing with Joyce’s textual complexities.1 1 These and a few other considerations served as the context of the “ReTrans” Workshop hosted by the Zurich Joyce Foundation in October 2017. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_002

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In compiling this collection, we were guided by a number of questions that are pertinent to both Joyce studies and translation studies. Given the insights offered by genetic studies, textual scholarship, publishing history, the unearthing of popular cultural references, as well as an increasing focus on such features of Joyce’s texts as indeterminacies, volitional errors, and selfparody, it becomes apparent that the Joyce known to the earlier translators is no longer the same Joyce. Recent retranslations of his work are informed and impacted by the new scholarly findings; they also respond to the discoveries of translation theory and show an awareness of the fallacy of domestication and cultural translation. In turn, this cannot but affect recent retranslations of Joyce in terms of paradigm shifts in target language literatures and the corresponding changes in literary tastes. In this book we considered the extent to which the new translations have the potential to change the concept of literariness, literary language and reading in and for the 21st century, and to approximate the impact that the Joyce text had on the English language and on received notions of literariness in English. Do these changes compare to those effected by the earlier – by now, often “canonical” – translations?

1

Only Once More That “Retranslation Hypothesis”

The points raised above echo a cluster of arguments captured in the so-called “Retranslation Hypothesis” that originated in a special issue of Palimpsestes 4 (1990) on retranslation, especially in the two programmatic essays by Antoine Berman2 and Paul Bensimon,3 both of whom attribute to first translations a tendency to reduce the translated work’s alterity in order to integrate it in the translating culture. Conversely, retranslations acquire the potential to approximate more closely the original’s constitutive difference, drawing on the earlier translations’ work of introducing these into the receiving culture. Taking as his point of departure Goethe’s three modes of translation described in West-Östlicher Divan, Berman seeks to account primarily for “great” translations with the potential to change and redeploy the target language (TL), that acquire the status of originals in the TL and thus transcend the condition of translations, of progressive aging. For him, “great” translations are virtually always retranslations: they are invariably events in the TL, characterized by an extreme systematicity; they create an intense link with the original, with great 2 Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction,” Palimpsestes 4 (1990): 1-7. 3 Paul Bensimon, “Présentation,” Palimpsestes 4 (1990): ix-xiii.

Introduction

3

effect in the receiving culture; and finally, they constitute an important precedent for contemporary and ulterior translations, being sites of encounter between the original and the translating language. These “great” translations lift the défaillance, the lack and resistance of non-translation that forever menaces all cultures and counterbalance it by the abundance (copia) they bring to the target culture, by the translation text’s textual richness. In order for this abundance to emerge, “great” (re)translations also have to be marked by kairos, a propitious historical moment. The theme was revisited in issue 15 of Palimpsestes, “Pourquoi donc retraduire?” (2004), where among other scholars, Annie Brisset urged for a reconsideration and re-historicization of what she saw as Berman’s teleological, well-nigh theological, assumptions about “great” translation, which overlook the fact that kairos may itself be “a chronological illusion, a product of history’s successive ‘truths,’” as well as leaving unaddressed the temporal contingencies of every judgment on translation, by which every definition of translation or translation ethics risks turning into an anachronism.4 Brisset thus calls for a metacritical interrogation of the ideas on which the value of the so-called “great” translation rests, for resituating each (re)translation inside its own chronotope5 – much in line with Borges’ seminal essay on how the translators of The Thousand and One Nights projected the taste, aesthetic and ideological assumptions of their own time and culture on their original.6 In her scrutiny of the historical-cultural and geographical conditioning of the ideas and prescriptions of “greatness,” Brisset takes as her litmus test the definition of aesthetic value presented in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, demonstrating how ideas of canonicity and Weltliteratur have morphed through the ages, and how their foundation in an ideology of originality, singularity is merely pronounced to be universal, but only appears valid inside the episteme of Western

4 Annie Brisset, “Retraduire ou le corps changeant de la connaissance. Sur l’historicité de la traduction,” Palimpsestes 15 (2004), http://journals.openedition.org/palimpsestes/1570; DOI: 10.4000/palimpsestes.1570 accessed 15 January 2019. 5 Brisset demonstrates how Berman’s theory fails to describe the actual paradoxes and historical contiguities of translation, giving as example the first French translation of Darwin’s The Origin of Species (Clémence Royer, 1862), which, rather than illustrating an accommodation to TL culture expectations, brings to light a crucial moment of inadéquation between the signs of the world and those of language in the history of modernity, as certain of Darwin’s key concepts become illegible in the translation, to fit dominant contemporary epistemological paradigms in France. 6 Jorge Luis Borges, “The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights,” trans. Esther Allen, in The Translation Studies Reader eds. Lawrence Venuti with Mona Baker (London – New York: Routledge, 2000): 34-48.

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culture. Her essay advocates for a wholesale reassessment of the hypothesis of the periodicity of translation, that is, the existence of what Bensimon called empan traductif 7 (“translational span”), and an examination under the double perspective of the longue and courte durée, for investigating if translation, or translation ethics, indeed possesses its own temporality. Nevertheless, the closer allegiance of retranslations to the textuality of the original quickly became a doctrine, as demonstrated by a series of publications on retranslation that take for granted Berman’s foundation in lack/défaillance and a discourse of progressive defamiliarization, side-stepping the fact that Berman never claimed that retranslations are by definition closer to the source text. Berman’s ideas were further developed by Yves Gambier,8 Siobhan Brownlie,9 and others, who attribute to retranslations an emphasis on the source text’s otherness, and were operationalized as the “Retranslation Hypothesis,” gaining traction in Translation Studies. Thus, Lawrence Venuti assumes a greater self-reflexivity on the part of retranslators because “retranslations are designed to challenge a previous version of a foreign text, they are likely to construct a more dense and complex intertextuality so as to signify and call attention to this competing interpretation.”10 Perhaps the feature of the “Retranslation Hypothesis” to spark the most sustained criticism is its reliance on an ideology of linear progress and perfectionnement of modernist inspiration.11 Accordingly, Françoise Massardier-Kenney proposes to reset the thinking of/through retranslations from an ideology of lack to one of invention, of “mobility, multiplicity, and plurality,”12 oriented toward an assessment of what, in the terms of Henri Meschonnic, translation

7 8 9 10 11

12

Quoted in Brisset. See Yves Gambier, “La Retraduction, re Tour et de Tour,” Meta 39.3 (1994): 413-417. See Siobhan Brownlie, “Narrative theory and retranslation theory,” Across Languages and Culture 7 (2006): 140-170. Lawrence Venuti, “Retranslations: The Creation of Value,” in Translation and Culture, ed. Katherine M. Faull. Bucknell Review 47.1 (2004): 25-38, 32. See the overview of the “Retranslation Hypothesis” by Kaisa Koskinen and Outi Paloposki, “Retranslation,” in Handbook of Translation Studies, eds. Yves Gambier, Luc van Doorslaer, vol. I (Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010): 294-297; Elizabeth Lowe, “Revisiting Re-translation: Re-creation and Historical Re-vision,” in A Companion to Translation Studies, eds. Sandra Bermann and Catherine Porter (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014): 413-424. See also Isabelle Collombat, “Le XXIe siècle: l’âge de la retraduction,” Translation Studies in the New Millennium. An international Journal of Translation and Interpreting 2 (2004): 1-15; Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva, Theories on the Move. Translation’s Role in the Travels of Literary Theories (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006). Françoise Massardier-Kenney, “Toward a Rethinking of Retranslation,” Translation Review 92 (2015) 73-85: 82.

Introduction

5

texts do to the receiving language, to TL literary forms and literary culture at large.13 For this, she takes Derrida’s thinking of “good” literary criticism as her model, in which literary criticism (and by extrapolation, the extreme close reading required by translation) is “an inventive experience of language, in language, an inscription of the act of reading in the field of the text that is read.”14 Translation, like Derrida’s concept of literature, rests on a constellation of singularity and iterability. Conversely, the existence of retranslation(s) can be seen as “evidence of the failure of translation” as well as its success, “its ability to keep a work alive and to provide a space in the receiving culture and language.”15 Massardier-Kenney calls for recognizing retranslation as “an essential step in the process of constituting a text as literature and to make visible this process in a dialogic rather than hierarchical way,” for, “while literary texts may owe their life to translation, it is to retranslation that they owe their afterlife.”16 The case studies on first and successive translations of classics into French she cites include César Oudin’s 1614 translation of Don Quijote, in turn lauded and deprecated inside changing paradigms of translating and Translation Studies, apparently for the same reason: for its all but literalist closeness to the original, including the stylistic and syntactic idiosyncrasies of Cervantes’ Spanish.17 Recent analyses have shown that a close scrutiny of retranslation texts and their strategies at the macro and micro level tends to demolish the hypothesis of their being by default closer to the original, as well as of the general domesticating tendencies of first translations. In her cogent discussion of the history of Kafka in translation, Michelle Woods shows how Kafka’s first and all too easily dismissed Czech translator, Milena Jesenská, worked in an aesthetic and within a vibrant milieu of the Czech avant-gardes, and conversely, that in the case of the early English translations of Kafka by the modernist writer and native Scots speaker, Willa Muir, the pressure to normalize the TT arose not from a translatorial agenda, but from the peculiar historical and political pressures on an outsider writer to conform to linguistic standards.18 Ex13 14

15 16 17 18

Henri Meschonnic, Ethics and Politics of Translating. Trans. Pier-Pascal Boulanger (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011), 52. Jacques Derrida, “This Strange Institution Called Literature: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Derek Attridge ed., Acts of Literature (London – New York: Routledge, 1992): 33-75, 52. Massardier-Kenney, “Toward a Rethinking of Retranslation,” 78. Ibid. emphasis added. Jean Cassou, the editor of Cervantes in the Pléiade series, based his translation (which he calls a “revision,” 1980) on Oudin’s text: Massardier-Kenney, 78. Michelle Woods, Kafka Translated. How Translators Have Shaped our Reading of Kafka (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

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amining successive English translations of Flaubert and Sand, Sharon DeaneCox soberingly concludes that what characterizes (re)translations is “prevalent variability,” and she suggests that, instead of progressive steps toward the “completion” that remains forever a promise of essentially incomplete translation for Berman, retranslations can be viewed as “instantiations of the interpretive potential of the source text.”19 Thus, for instance, of the two Italian retranslations of Ulysses to appear within a single year – by Enrico Terrinoni (2012) and Gianni Celati (2013) – the latter is a writer-translator’s creative appropriation of Joyce’s text, relying heavily on (especially Northern Italian) dialectal versions and linguistic invention, which certainly doesn’t follow the English original more closely than the first Italian Ulysses translator, Giulio De Angelis’ scholarly work.20

2

Modernist Translatorial Practices and the Joyce Modernist Project

Joyce’s own engagement in translation is well-documented. In the last decade, the context of translation has been devised as an angle from which to approach Joyce’s oeuvre. Thus, Wawrzycka’s “Translation” situates Joyce in the context of the translatorial environment of his education and his later immersion in translations of his own works.21 Tracing “Joyce’s performative engagement with language(s)” that defines his “translatorial, inter-linguistic ethics of being in the world,”22 she credits early school translation exercises as whetting stones that taught Joyce “to decode cryptograms of cultures and ideologies, scripts whose protean nature yielded the poly-idiomatic language of Ulysses”23

19

20

21 22 23

Retranslation: Translation, Literature and Reinterpretation (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 190, 191. See also Lance Hewson’s review of the book, Parallèles 27.2 (2015), https:// www.paralleles.unige.ch/en/tous-les-numeros/numero-27-2/hewson/ accessed 15 January 2019. Scholarly apparatus to accompany De Angelis’s Ulisse was published as a separate volume titled Guida alla lettura, eds. Giorgio Melchiori and Giulio de Angelis (Milan: Mondadori: 1984/2000). To date, the most detailed comparative analysis of the two contemporary Italian retranslations of Ulysses, by Terrinoni and Celati, is found in Serenella Zanotti’s Italian Joyce: A Journey through Language and Translation (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2013), 201-210, and in Michaela Marroni’s study, “Silenzio, Molly parla italiano. Perché tradurre Ulysses,” Traduttologia. Rivista di Interpretazione e Traduzione 7-8 (July 2012 – January 2013): 57-80. See Wawrzycka, “Translation,” in John McCourt, ed., James Joyce in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 125-136. Ibid. 126. Ibid.

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and, ultimately, “the monstrous idiolect of FW.”24 In describing Joyce’s relationship with translation, Wawrzycka distinguishes several categories that include school translation exercises, “translatorial sorties” into German and DanoNorwegian, “ambassadorial translations” of Synge, Yeats and Hauptmann, selftranslations, and collaborative translations of his works – all made additionally complex by “language direction”: from Latin or French or German into English; from English into Dano-Norwegian or Italian; and both into and from English in the case of early school translations, foundational to language instruction.25 Eventually, by writing from and through translation, and later through and across languages, Joyce cast English into relief, making his “text” a site of competing idioms/idiolects and linguistic conventions/traditions, an apex of the modernist attitude that challenges the hegemony of national languages, cultures, and ideologies. Thus, the context of translation emerges as a crucial critical tool that positions Joyce at the crossroads of European literary and linguistic traditions embedded in wider contexts of cultures, religions, histories and political systems.26 The modernists’ intense concern with translation was driven by the conviction that “the establishment of personal and cultural identity require[d] engaging with the multiple Others of the foreign languages and traditions.”27 In almost all cases, their approach to translation coincided with Joyce’s own apostate attitude to all aspects of “received” tradition. Emily Wittman writes that modernists “offered a fresh engagement with classical literature, viewing its translation as an interpretive and generative practice, a form of literary criticism. They largely dispensed with the traditional goal of paraphrastic fidelity, embraced new forms of equivalence, and practiced more extreme forms of translation, including rewriting,” whereby “modernist translations of Homer”28 find their radical realizations in The Cantos and Ulysses. Pound, engaged in a wide array of inventive translational practices, even “came to think of translation

24 25 26 27 28

Jean-Michel Rabaté, James Joyce, Authorized Reader (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), 117. Wawrzycka, “Translation,” 126. Ibid. Steven Yao, Translation and the Language of Modernism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 194. Emily O. Wittman, “Translation,” in Vincent Sherry, ed., The Cambridge History of Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) 371-385: 371.

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as a model for the poetic act: blood brought to ghosts.”29 In “Cavalcanti,” for instance, he distinguishes between “interpretative translation” prepared as an accompaniment to the foreign text, and “the other sort,” endowed with autonomous aesthetic value.30 But in 1901 another sort was produced by Joyce who, at the tender age of nineteen, translated Gerhart Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang as Before Sunrise and, defeated by Hauptmann’s Silesian German, excised parts of the text, acknowledging obligingly that: “asterisks mark where the text has proved untranslatable” (JJA 11, 530). Pound did ask for the translation in 1928, when, having learned from W.B. Yeats about the existence of Before Sunrise, he wrote “a philological note” to Joyce: “The Yeats alledges [sic] that in time past … thou madest some traductions [sic] of the plays of G. Hauptmann. […] If these juvenile indiscretions still exist the time may now have come to cash in on ’em,” adding that “the noble Gerhardt [sic] is struggling with Ulysses […] in choimun.”31 Joyce didn’t comment on Hauptmann reading Goyert’s 1927 translation of Ulysses, nor could he send Before Sunrise to Pound,32 so we cannot know how Pound would asses it (Maria Jolas found the translation “an interesting facet of [Joyce’s] mind,” particularly since it was done “at such an early age”).33 What we do know is that Pound’s idiosyncratic translation strategies, and his works’ systematic questioning of the author’s own authority, raise anew the question whether something called “correct, adequate” translation exists at all. The jury is still out, but it cannot be denied that Joyce’s standing in Weltliteratur owes as much to his early supporters (Pound, Yeats, Eliot, Weaver) as it does to his early translators and foreign mediators – among them, Valery Larbaud, whose 1921 lecture at Adrienne Monnier’s La Maison des Amis des Livres was decisive in persuading Sylvia Beach to publish Ulysses. Indeed, Larbaud’s lecture marks the first significant Joyce criticism in any language; it was translated by T.S. Eliot for the first issue of The Criterion. Larbaud, instrumental in translating Ulysses into French, believed that “Ulysses would only improve in translation.”34 Joyce’s text-world is easily the most revolutionary in High Modernism, exploding monolithic visions of the text or of the canon to replace them with “lit29 30 31 32 33 34

Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 150. Ezra Pound, “Cavalcanti,” in Literary Essays, ed. T.S. Eliot (New York: New Directions, 1968), 200. Pound/Joyce. The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, ed. Forrest Read (New York: New Directions, 1970), 234-35. The history of the Before Sunrise manuscript is presented in Jill Perkins, Joyce and Hauptmann (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1978), 9-14. Ibid. 13. See Wittman, “Translation,” 381.

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9

terish fragments” (FW 66.25-6) and fluid work-in-progress, radically questioning the author’s position and even the stability of the text, and by co-opting chance and coincidence as co-creators, turning his “ouvroir” into an exercise in “miswriting.”35 Joyce reportedly told Arthur Power that the modernist creator must be “prepared to founder” and to “write dangerously”:36 the author who thought and wrote dangerously also did everything he could – and since he assembled and supervised his translating team, he could do much – to ensure that the French translation would be equally innovative. In addition to multifarious involvement in the translation process, that included revisions, proofreading, and direct translatorial contributions, Joyce also mediated between his increasingly polarized translators and, famously, arbitrated the “Trianon Treaty” (LIII, 173).37 Liliane Rodriguez writes that the French Ulysse “had to sound as new as the original,” which meant that “[t]ranslating innovation became the mission statement of Joyce’s team, and the author’s own commitment.”38 Disappointed by the lukewarm reception of Ludmila Savitsky’s French translation of A Portrait,39 Joyce worked to ensure that things would be different with the French Ulysse: he advised the translator team “on the full spectrum of linguistic variation: diachronic, diastratic, aspectual, idiolectal,” relentlessly pointing out to them via Gilbert that idiolectal variation was to be observed down to the minutest detail, providing each character with “a specific tone, verbal tics, a proper (or dirty, but not always) exclamatory style. And that is to be translated.”40 Fritz Senn, however, cautions us about the degree of Joyce’s involvement in the French, but also in the German translation, noting that “[t]he two

35 36 37 38

39 40

Tim Conley, Joyces Mistakes: Problems of Intention, Irony, and Interpretation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 6, 36. Arthur Power, Conversations with James Joyce, ed. Clive Hart (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 95. See also Joyce’s April 8, 1928 letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, where Joyce decries antipathies between Larbaud, Gilbert and Monnier, ibid. Liliane Rodriguez, “Joyce’s Hand in the First French Translation of Ulysses,” in Renascent Joyce, eds. Daniel Ferrer, Sam Slote, André Topia (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013) 122-142: 132-133. Rodriguez documents Joyce’s involvement in the collaborative work, from assembling the team (Auguste Morel and Valery Larbaud, assisted by Stuart Gilbert, Philippe Soupault and himself) and providing them “with a plan and a mission” (126), from 1921 to publication, including translating passages himself (for instance, from “Oxen”) and regular revisions of the translators’ work, resulting in extensive notes taken by Gilbert – 161 pages on “Penelope” alone – and successive stages of proofing: 129-131. Julien Green’s review pronounced its language “inert”: see Rodriguez, 132. Rodriguez, 130, 131, 138n8. See also Épié, footnote 1, in this volume.

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‘authorized’ Ulysses translations (the quotation marks indicate the doubtful nature of such authorization, definitely not a wholesale approval), Goyert’s and Morel’s, could, conceivably, be based on the author’s tip-off.”41 Indeed, the Goyert-Joyce correspondence documents some of the prompts Joyce offered (notably, Goyert had but 14 questions in “Oxen”42). When the German translation was published in 1927 with Joyce’s blessing (“vom Verfasser geprüfte Augsgabe von Georg Goyert”), Joyce objected and insisted that the claim be removed.43 In contrast, the 1929 French translation’s pronouncement of having been produced “avec la collaboration d’auteur” bears more weight, even if it is also somewhat misleading. Senn does speculate that in dealing with the undecidable pronoun of “Could never like it after Rudy” (U 8.610), “Morel (and probably the whole team involved, possibly on Joyce’s advice?) settled for Molly: ‘Elle ne s’y plaisait plus après Rudy.’”44 Goyert, Morel et al plunged Joyce into rereading Ulysses through German and French. The challenge that Joyce’s already-translated English45 poses to translators is corroborated by the inchoateness, hesitancy, the hit-and-miss processes in interior monologues, the openness to chance and contingency (homography, homophony), and, on the other hand, by compacted meaning superscribed with allusions and a citational practice that is difficult to tease out into definite statements. And yet, cautions Philippe Soupault, “Ulysses is [the] book where nothing is done at random.”46 If, as Rodriguez claims, “Joyce reached beyond the traditional distinction between target- versus sourceoriented strategies by making the translators focus on the innovative scope of the novel,”47 his collaboration with his French translators has yet to be ade-

41 42

43 44 45

46

47

Fritz Senn, Joycean Murmoirs,” ed. Christine O’Neill (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2017), 90; emphasis added. These questions, together with Joyce’s notes, were published by Alan M. Cohn, ed., “Joyce’s Notes on the End of ‘Oxen of the Sun,’” James Joyce Quarterly 4.3 (Spring 1967): 194-201. Fritz Senn, Joyce’s Dislocutions, ed. John Paul Riquelme (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1984), 2. Senn, Joycean Murmoirs, 91; emphasis added. See Wawrzycka’s essay in this volume, where she suggests that Joyce’s work with his translators “could be understood in terms of retranslation, given the degree to which Joyce was unfettering English from its own Englishness by translating it from the familiar into the foreign English of “changeably meaning vocables” (FW 118.27).” Philippe Soupault, Souvenirs de James Joyce: Traduction d’A. Livie Plurabelle de James Joyce (Alger: Charlot, 1943), 48. Quoted in Rodriguez, “Joyce’s Hand in the First French Translation of Ulysses,” 126; emphasis added. Rodriguez, 132.

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quately assessed in terms of retranslatorial practices signaled in the letters of Joyce/Gilbert to Larbaud.48 It is worth returning to Joyce’s encounter with untranslatables signaled by asterisks. Deficiencies of his German notwithstanding,49 Joyce chose excision rather than risk a botched approximation, certainly not the first translator to do so. Hardened Joyceans might ascribe it to prescience: Joyce’s twentiethcentury mind anticipating what a century later would galvanize translation studies. Indeed, at the onset of this millennium, the notion of the untranslatable has become a pivotal cultural/philosophical term, with its own scaffolding in the form of a dictionary: the 2004 Dictionnaire des intradusibles, edited under the directorship of Barbara Cassin, brought out a decade later in English as Dictionary of Untranslatables, translated and edited under the directorship of Emily Apter.50 In the 1990s, Cassin, a translator and scholar of classical philosophy, theorized the “untranslatable” in her works on Parmenides and the Sophists, and described “untranslatables” as “instability of meaning and sensemaking, the performative dimension of sophistic effect, and the condition of temporality in translation.”51 Translators throughout the centuries (translators of Joyce included) have grappled with instability of meaning and the temporality of translations as a day-to-day, pedestrian reality of what it means to translate, as the contents of this volume also highlight – alongside another of Cassin’s insights, that of the interminability of translation: that translation can never be over, and permanently calls for translation anew.

3

Untranslatability, Translatorial Creativity, and Appropriating Translation

Emily Apter, the English editor of Cassin’s Dictionnaire des intradusibles, followed this unorthodox philosophical lexicon with a seminal critique of the 48

49

50

51

Ibid. 133; Rodriguez quotes Joyce’s and Gilbert’s letters to Larbaud that emphasize Ulysses’ “neologisms, inversions, unorthodox combinations of words,” which Larbaud promises to carry to “any extreme” possible. In 1904, Yeats, rejecting the play for staging by the Irish Literary Theatre, wrote to Joyce that he didn’t think Joyce was “a very good German scholar” (LII, 58). Jill Perkins offers a thorough critical commentary on the merits of Joyce’s translation in Joyce and Hauptmann; see esp. pp. 29-36, as she also draws on the works of earlier Joyce critics, including Marvin Magalaner and Vivian Mercier, as well as on Joyce’s own early critical writings. See Vocabulaire européen des philosophies. Dictionnaire des intradusibles, ed. Barbara Cassin (Seuil: Le Robert, 2004), and Dictionary of Untranslatables. A Philosophical Lexicon, ed. and trans. Emily Apter et al (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). Preface to Dictionary of Untranslatables, vii.

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discipline of World Literature that capitalizes on substitutability and translatability from which the translated work’s global currency hails, and celebrates “nationally and ethnically branded ‘differences’ that have been nichemarketed and commercialized as ‘identities.’”52 Intended as a humanistic intervention in a discipline that is apolitical or disturbingly aligned with market economy, Apter’s proposal is to activate untranslatability as a theoretical fulcrum of comparative literature with bearing on approaches to world literatures, literary worldsystems and literary history, the politics of periodization, the translation of philosophy and theory, the relation between sovereign and linguistic borders at the checkpoint, the bounds of non-secular proscription and cultural sanction, free versus privatized authorial property, the poetics of translational difference, as well as ethical, cosmological and theological dimensions of worldliness.53 Taking as her point of departure the thinking of, and through, untranslatability and nonnegotiable singularity of Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jacques Derrida, and Abdelfattah Kilito, Apter’s book aims – as she herself puts it in a recent revisiting of the theme – to sketch “a cartography that added voids and subtracted from solids,” and to repoliticize reading of, and in, translation.54 To intersect with the notion of the untranslatable is the “un-understandable” – linguistic, semantic opacity – decried by Erich Auerbach in his well-known 1936 letter to Benjamin, written from his Istanbul exile and reflecting on the effects of the Turkish language reform and modernization of the state and discussed by Apter as an outcome of the crisis “induced by the disenfranchisement of formerly predominant languages” (Persian, Arabic), resulting in the condition of “radical unlearning,” “linguistic statelessness, opacity, and illegibility”55 of tradition, right down to the foreignness of one’s “own” language. This Unverständlichkeit is relevant to a broader poetics (and practice) of confronting immanent untranslatability, amounting to the refusal to translate;56 it is the alignment of the two that gen52 53 54 55 56

Emily Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (New York: Verso, 2013), 2. Ibid. 3-4. Emily Apter, “Untranslatability and the Geopolitics of Reading,” PMLA 134.1 (2019) 194200: 196. Ibid. 194-95. See Abdelfattah Kilito, Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, trans. Wail S. Hassan (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008). At the same time, Apter’s example of one ethical

Introduction

13

erates discordant textual encounters and events of reading, where the “thetic” or naïve belief in meaning and referent are suspended57 – busting the premises of an easy-to-digest “global monoculture.”58 While Apter’s absolutizing of untranslatability and her apparent endorsement of the refusal of translation as a means of ethically recognizing aesthetic and cultural difference have come up against considerable criticism,59 the foregrounding of everything that impedes and therefore provokes translation – and by extension, of what constitutes disruptive literature and the writing of philosophy as literature – has, among other merits, thrown light on the necessity of a translation approach to literature60 and philosophy as philosophizing, beyond the pale of Translation Studies.61 But first and foremost, it has

57 58 59

60

61

refusal of translation – from Spivak’s English translation of Mahasweta Devi’s Breast Stories – the obliterating of two politically charged Bengali words, denoting tribal and professional categories of people subsumed in the caste of untouchables (a generic name highly problematic in Indian languages), and their substitution by the generic English misnomer untouchables, can be seen, from a different angle, as a case of patent domestication: of erasure of cultural, historical-political specificity and its replacement by something familiar in the TL: see Apter, “Untranslatability and the Geopolitics of Reading,” 199. Jacques Derrida, “This Strange Institution Called Literature,” 45. Cf. Apter, “Untranslatability and the Geopolitics of Reading,” 197. Apter, “Untranslatability and the Geopolitics of Reading,” 195. See Lucas Klein, “Reading and speaking for translation: de-institutionalizing the institutions of literary study,” in Futures of Comparative Literature. ACLA State of the Discipline Report, eds. Ursula K. Heise et al. (New York: Routledge, 2017) 215-219; see also David Damrosch’s review of the book, Comparative Literature Studies 51.3 (2014) 504-508, largely a defence of the discipline of World Literature against the charge of theoretical-ideological uniformity. Most importantly, one has to mention Lawrence Venuti’s veritable manifesto against what he describes as the hijacking and instrumentalization of translation by the advocates of (essential, inherent, a priori) incommensurability or “the Untranslatable,” and his passionate plea for seizing translation seriously as a creative act that transforms its original: Contra Instrumentalism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Venuti shows how the philosophical myths of essentializing untranslatability are grounded in a series of faulty translations – of tropes and metaphors (most importantly, traduttore – traditore) originating in contextually specific condemnations of bad translation practice, and generalized to engulf all assumptions of translatability in an equation of translation with betrayal (of sense, of the original, of some ineffable, essential foreignness pertaining to the original): see “Proverbs of Untranslatability,” 83-126. To appropriate the subtitle of Tim Parks’ penetrating and nuanced analysis of the trade of literary translation, Translating Style: A Literary Approach to Translation – A Translation Approach to Literature (New York: Routledge, 2007). Apter’s J’Accuse is also directed at the discipline of translation studies, tailored to AngloAmerican translation history and practice, and indeed not giving too wide berth to untranslatability studies. Scholars of Joyce-in-translation have, on the contrary, from the

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galvanized discussions around reading in, and as, translation, scrutinies of the practice of the translation of untranslatables – the practicalities and stylistics of “the strike of matter on matter” in translation, which “ignites the fire that at once immolates and recreates the native tongue.”62 Or, as Venuti astutely writes, the translation of the so-called untranslatables “is so hard as to require resourceful – and, for translators, rather routine – strategies like coining a neologism or assigning a new meaning to an old word.”63 Rather than prohibiting translation, untranslatables engender creative, even excessive rapprochements and departures, derailments across the translating languages and the often multilingual texture they deploy. It is via such (re)translatorial creativity – which, in its turn, has impacted and continues to impact the receiving literatures and literary tastes – that “Joyce” is received across the globe, slowly colouring the way in which he is read and taught even in the Anglo-American world.64 One might counter the (putatively ethical) withholding of translation with Fritz Senn’s practice of reading as translation, initiated as early as 1967 – of pointing out what (reading in) translation does to the original and our understanding of it: how it makes visible secondary, tertiary meanings, lingering over- and undertones, semantic disturbances and clashes, syntactic and other ambiguities, interferences from other languages; how translation illuminates and even constitutes untranslatability. And a case could be made for a reassessment of experimental, excessive, even appropriating translation – translation practices that bring into play that estranging action of literariness in the original advanced by Derrida,65 and which can be assimilated to Fritz Senn’s concept of dislocution,66 that prime category of the untranslatable that prohibits, but at the same time also endlessly provokes (re)translation: thus, for a translation that dislocutes. A translation practice that operates along the

62 63 64

65 66

start focused on the elsewhere of European and non-European translation traditions and have by default grappled with untranslatables more than with transfer and equivalence. Shaden Tageldin, “Untranslatability,” in Futures of Comparative Literature. ACLA State of the Discipline Report 234-35: 235. Contra Instrumentalism, 54. For a discussion of how a globally circulating Joyce might change his reading “at home” see Eric Bulson, “Joyce and world literature,” in John McCourt, ed., James Joyce in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 137-147. See Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge, (London: Routledge, 1992), esp. pp. 44-45. This spatial metaphor for unconventional uses of language and style was tentatively defined by Senn as “all manner of metamorphoses, switches, transfers, displacements,” expressive of a principle of the (Joycean) text that produces deviations, heretical turns, detours, multiple transmission errors and miscommunications; to this category are subsumed misquotations and style parodies as well; Fritz Senn, Joyce’s Dislocutions 202, 206.

Introduction

15

lines opened by the modernists themselves, at the crossroads of late modernism, neo-avant-garde and postmodern linguistic experiment, which, even if it occasionally strays from the text, still recreates in the TL some of the very textual, stylistic strategies and conceits which render the original singular. To demonstrate this concept of dislocution in translation we will turn to two books of translations from Rilke, both authored by experimental writers in their own right, William Gass and Dezső Tandori. Although at face value they couldn’t be more different, a comparative reading might reveal that some of their solutions are consubstantial. William Gass’s Reading Rilke is an unorthodox artist biography, exercise in exegesis, exemplary essay on translation, and a practical demonstration of “transreading” (translation as rewriting, co-creation); it shows on sixteen successive English versions of the Duino Elegies what translation does to our reading experience, and the textual negotiations in trying to come close to Rilke’s combination of intricate syntax, “not-earthbound” register, aural “dissonant clamor,” and intense sensuousness of imagery, which yields “not poems, but miracles.”67 If there are any rules laid down by Gass, one is the “perverse” caveat, “the translator must avoid construing.”68 Nevertheless, in his critique of Gass’s book, J.M. Coetzee points out how, despite the apparent side-stepping of wider theoretical concerns, Gass’s translations regularly perform those construings themselves, in “tighten[ing] up Rilke’s terminology and oil[ing] the joints of his syntax.”69 Moreover, Coetzee sees them enact one of the key concepts of the Elegies, Verwandlung – transformation – which Gass translates, transforms, morphs into the portmanteau-like coinage “withinwarding,”70 whose inscription of “within / inward” arguably points to an act of inhabiting the other. Coetzee’s most acute critique of Gass’s “transreading” concerns both its conception and practice: accordingly, “the translator does not first need to understand the text before he translates it. Rather, translating the text becomes part of the process of finding – and making – its meaning: translating turns out to be only a more intense and more demanding form of what we do whenever we read.”71 In other words, (pre)conception – construction of previous understanding, or rather, the illusion of understanding – may prod the translator to smooth out

67 68 69 70 71

William H. Gass, Reading Rilke. Reflections on the Problems of Translation (New York: Basic Books, 1999): 56-93, 59, 69. Ibid. 48. “William Gass’s Rilke,” in Stranger Shores: Literary Essays 1986-1999 (London: Penguin, 2001) 60-73: 64, 72. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 70.

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Mihálycsa and Wawrzycka

incongruities and hesitancies. As Coetzee shows, this is what happens in Gass’s translation of one of the most conceptually opaque of the Elegies, the Eighth, whose form enacts the groping for a language that could make accessible the pre-linguistic mode of being of animals: in a fractured passage that has the effect of “a speaker pushing at the limits of language,” Rilke employs the words Gestaltung (form/formation) and das Offne (the open), which Gass renders as “preconceived things” and “acceptance.”72 Turning Coetzee’s arguments inside out, however, one can see in Gass’s striking choices, especially for das Offne (one of the keywords in Rilke’s oeuvre), seemingly at an angle to the poetics of fine-tuning expounded in his book, something else than channelling openness and polyguity into one direction, while smoothing out the original phrase’s hesitancy:73 they could also be framed as a (semantic) going-around, eluding and alluding to, das Offne which, with its radical openness, defies even literalist approximation. While such examples seem surprisingly close to appropriating translatorial choices, they can also be seen as gropings toward an allusive translation poetics which renounces claims to denomination/designation, allowing meaning to emerge along by-ways and by-the-ways, and dehiscence – as something inherent in the very practice of translation. In roughly the same years, but with a declarative, (de)creative and appropriating translation poetics, Dezső Tandori was also engaging with the Duino Elegies. He was easily the most radical postwar poet in Hungary and his deconstructive postmodern practice of the dispersal of meaning, citational and (self-)re/trans-creative text-world, writing-apart and writing-awry, has dismantled the subject of speech, the authority of the author, as well as the stable boundaries of text-paratext, words, and syntax. His 2009 Rilke and His Angels is a hybrid book that grafts onto a (provisional) selection of Rilke’s poems his own reflexive texts, accompanying (supplementing, commenting, coalescing)

72

73

Ibid. 71-72. Rilke’s text runs: “…denn schon das frühe Kind/wenden wir um und zwingens, daß es rückwärts/ Gestaltung sehe, nicht das Offne, das/ im Tiergesicht so tief ist,” R.M. Rilke, Die Gedichte (Leipzig: Insel, 1998), 658; in Gass’s translation, “for we compel even the young child to turn and look back at preconceived things,/ never to know the acceptance so deeply set inside/ the animal’s face,” Reading Rilke 210. Coetzee perspicuously draws attention to a tendency of construing in Gass’s translations and exegesis, and its corollary, of occasionally balancing and aestheticizing the phrase even in the face of a pre-formed, groping quality in the original; at the same time he himself, in an essay on English translations of Kafka, uses the very argument of (re)historicizing, apparently lacking in Gass’s book on Rilke, observing that “a striving toward strangeness and denseness… may, as history moves on and tastes change, be pointed toward obsolescence too”; “Translating Kafka,” in Stranger Shores, 74-87: 87.

Introduction

17

drawings, as well as (pseudo) (self-)quotations, to illustrate fifty years of creative engagement with Rilke.74 The guiding principle of this “Autobiography” is acknowledgedly arbitrary (to the extent that Tandori inscribes the word “arbitrary” in one of the early poems): a translation, turning inside out (the Hungarian word for translation being fordítás, “turning”), writing across Rilke’s conception of angels, celestial beings, superscribed with those of Tandori’s own – including the generations of his adopted sparrows, unfailing inhabitants of his self-cannibalizing texts. Importantly, the deviations from Rilke’s originals are, according to Péter Pór, beyond explanation by any norms of translation “equivalence,” and can only be ideologized:75 Tandori consistently reads the early poems from the vantage point of the Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, infusing them with a deconstructive, post-Wittgensteinean negativity. Pór calls the technique that serves this translatorial poetics of the calque: what seems a gross translatorial mistake points at an elsewhere in the Rilke oeuvre, to the gnomic late poetry, and even the most radical derailments of sense gesture at some (for Tandori at least) essential feature of the original.76 Rilke’s images are thus trans-valued, retroactively turned inside out; late texts establish the network of meanings and associations (dissociations) in which early poems, even of the tame Heimatdichtung variety, participate – alongside an accident of a ski jumper who fatally misjudged the void into which he hurled himself at 140 km/h, or the poet’s own movements gone awry. The calque strategy leaves it undecided whether the translation follows the original by extreme literalism, or deliberately peels off from the original: whereas

74

75

76

Rilke és angyalai. Önéletírás égiekkel. Műfordítások, rajzolások, hódolatok és vallomások, 1959-2009 [Rilke and His Angels. Autobiography with Celestials. Translations, drawings, hommages and confessions, 1959-2009] (Budapest: Kortárs, 2009). The book reads/writes apart, as its hypotext, a 1988 volume in which Tandori and another translator, Gyula Tellér, published their respective translations and extensive comments on the Elegies, as well as the translations from Rilke of Tandori’s masters. ”Ki volt előbb, Rilke vagy Tandori?” [Who Was There First, Rilke or Tandori?], Holmi (December 2010), http://www.holmi.org/2010/12/por-peter-ki-volt-elobb-rilke-vagy-tandori -tandori-dezso-rilke-es-angyalai accessed 16 January 2019. One example given by Pór is the coalescing of Leid/Mitleid (suffering/compassion) with Lied (song) in one of the Rilke juvenilia: this apparent misreading is thrown in a different light by a reading together with the Ninth Elegy’s conflation of Lied/music and Leid in the line, “wie selbst das klagende Leid rein zur Gestalt sich entschließt” (Die Gedichte 663) – in Gass’s interpretive translation, “how even Sorrow, in the midst of lamenting, is determined to alter” (Reading Rilke, 215). The poetics of this translation is found in nuce in Rilke’s famous self-commentary from his gnomic period, in which he warns that no word of the poem (including conjunctions) equals the corresponding words of everyday language.

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the syntax and phrasing of the original is followed with literalist adherence, to the point of fracturing the unity of the phrase and injecting the word surface with a hesitancy and Sprachskepsis rarely found in the original. Tandori often makes strange beyond recognition the poem’s relation between speaker and object – stylistically “damaging” early poems, but writing them “up” into pieces that could be called consubstantial with the Elegies and Sonnets.77 All in all, in fracturing and down-grading Rilke’s texts, Tandori “impossibilizes” the former’s teleological discourse of the transcendence of poetic language, of the faith deposited in the poem standing in the place of lost transcendence, showing the text to be the empty place of the fugue of meanings. To cap his interventions is his rendering of the famous opening of the Second Elegy – “Jeder Engel ist schrecklich”78 – in a logical turning inside-out of the stark German sentence: “Mind iszonyú, ami angyal” (Everything [is] terrible that [is] angel),79 a radical withinwarding, Verwandlung of a classic, subsuming the whole history of its translations, that renders terrifying-ness the constitutive difference of angelhood.

4

“Ought to sample something” (U 16.332): Some Practicalities of Retranslating Untranslatables80

It may be trite to point out that no writer of modern literature comes close to Joyce in the sheer density, and challenge, of untranslatables. To begin with, all of Joyce’s text-world was written in a language which came to replace the ancestral tongue, become illegible and unverständlich in the span of less than three generations; the writer’s position in this “acquired speech” (P 189) is by default secondary and dispropriated, sharing the condition of the subject of Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other, of “I only have one language; it is not mine,” and being consequently thrown in unending translation without a lan-

77

78 79 80

In the Elegies this practice is further complicated with gestures of breaking up the word surface: Hungarian agglutinative words, clipped, thus make gaps visible, as is the case of Tandori’s “kivét,” a clipped form of “kivétel” [exception], a word hovering between verb and noun position, also readable as “ki” [out] + “vét” [vb. err, mistake]. Die Gedichte 633. In Leishman’s English translation: “Every angel is terrible” – in Gass’: “Every Angel is awesome.” Reading Rilke 64, 192. Rilke angyalai 33. The editors wish to acknowledge the help of Joyce translators Robbert-Jan Henkes, Erik Bindervoet, Caetano Waldrigues Galindo, and Armağan Ekici, in clarifying some of the translation examples below.

Introduction

19

guage of departure and one of arrival.81 This immanent untranslatability resulting from the condition of internal translation rings in every word Joyce wrote, with the accruing of shibboleths, cruxes, exploitations of chance, homophony, sliding signification, multilingual language games – indeed, with the practice of Ulysses and the Wake rewriting, stylistically retranslating their own textual material; it is on this lack of foundation, or “prosthesis of origin,” that Joyce’s poetics of radical estrangement of English rests. One of the purposes of this book is to show how such revolutionary textuality provokes and resists permanent (re)translation, soliciting translatorial creativity and excess that hybridizes the receiving language, occasionally going against the grain of TL norms and received styles. The text of Ulysses is inherently multilingual: English is both defamiliarized and foreignized through the introduction of a wealth of foreign terms and idioms, its diachronic and synchronic expanse navigated. Of the innumerable examples of such polyglossia, one is found in “Proteus,” framed by exercises in style that combine historical thieves’ canting with “high” literary diction peppered with foreign words – here, a string of five verbs from German, French, Italian, given an English declension: She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. (3.392) The trial of translation is to what extent the TL can accommodate, or even be forced to accommodate, comparable foreignness. As expected, translations vary greatly from one language to another, from near-complete domestication to degrees of foreignization that exceed Joyce’s original. Apparently, Dutch is one of those languages that accommodates Joyce’s terms with the suppleness of English: Ze sukkelt verder, schleppt, traînt, dragt, trascint haar last. (Du/Vandenbergh 59) Zij sjouwt, schleppt, traineert, trekt, trascineert haar last. (Du/Claes & Nys 54) Ze sjokt, schleppt, traînt, zeult, trascient haar last. (Du/Bindervoet & Henkes 59) The differences among the three translations, mainly of declension, result in changed rhythm patterns, Bindervoet and Henkes’ recent retranslation thread81

Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 1.

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Mihálycsa and Wawrzycka

ing a series of (with one exception) long monosyllables to enhance the effect of trudging movement. Italian – only limitedly accommodating of non-Latinate vocabulary – shows a different picture: Lei strascica, sleppa, traina, tira, rimorchia, il suo fardello. (I/De Angelis 46) Lei arranca, strascica, strascina, tira, trascina il suo fardello. (I/Terrinoni 74) …lei non fa che arrancare, schleppen, trainer, to drag, trascinare il suo fardello. (I/Celati 65) Whereas De Angelis gives schlepp[en] an Italian inflection and strings it with Italian synonyms, Terrinoni’s list is all-domestic, featuring even the trascina of Joyce’s choice. Celati, on the other hand, in an act of demonstrative foreignizing, turns the list into a (mental) glossary of foreign-language synonyms, italicized and in the infinitive, including – mutatis mutandi – the plain Engish word to drag, which would make translated Stephen a student of English. Belonging to a different family of languages, Turkish has to work harder to make place for Joyce’s internal translations: Sırtında yüküyle kadın ağır ağır ilerlemekte, schlepp ve de train etmekte, yayan yapıldak gitmekte, hemcileyin trascine eylemekte. (T/Erkmen 79; The woman slowly progresses with her load in her back, she schlepps and trains, she goes barefoot, she trascines at the same time.) Kadının yükü var: zahmetle çekiyor, asılıyor, sürüklüyor, hamil oluyor, taşıyor. (T/Ekici 52; The woman has a load: she pulls it with difficulty, jerks it, drags it, becomes a carrier to it, carries it.) In his 1996 translation Erkmen makes recourse to a combination of the Turkish auxiliary “etmek/eylemek” and the (virtually unchanged) foreign verb forms “schlepp, trascine”: many verbs from Arabic, Persian, French and Italian entered Turkish via this method, and in the modern workplace people use English words (since the 1980s, in English spelling) in Turkish sentences, so in computer language, to delete something is “delete etmek” (literally, “to do delete”). This foreignizing touch is supplemented with Turkish idioms for dragging progress (“ağır ağır ilerlemek”) or going barefoot (“yayan yapıldak gitmek”), as well as what appears to be a neologism: the nonce word “hemcileyin” – approximately, “at the same time” – that only shows up in Erkmen’s transla-

Introduction

21

tion in Google searches. Curiously, in this case it is the retranslation that opts for a thorough back-translation, stringing domestic synonyms for laborious progress, which show no trace of internal translation or miscegenation. One of the most radical features of Ulysses is its constant self-parodying drive, its tendency to mock even the scaffolding and structural patterns it sets up. Thus in “Oxen of the Sun,” an episode which replicates the succession of English prose styles, internal anachronisms and stylistic incongruities show the tongue of the anarchic Joycean “Deranger” firmly in cheek. In one such instance, the Synge-like stage Irish of the Celtophile Haines (himself a spectral apparition in a Gothic parody) is punctuated by a patent neologism for drugs, only documented from the end of the 1880s: “Dope is my only hope” (14.1024), in a phrase that combines the shock-effect of breach in period style with a humorous internal rhyme. Here is how the three Brazilian Portuguese translations approach the phrase: O meu dopar é o meu só esperar (Po/Houaiss 533; My doping is my only hoping) O entorpecente é minha única esperança (Po/Pinheiro 452; The narcotic is my only hope) A droga é minha única esperança (Po/Galindo 642; The drug is my only hope) Translations by Houaiss and Galindo salvage the anachronism. Whereas Houaiss renders a mock-pretentious internal rhyme and neologism, Pinheiro’s retranslation relinquishes both the singsong and the stylistic shock-effect, relying on a standard word for narcotic substance. In contrast, Galindo’s re-retranslation harnesses “droga” that in the context works as a deliberate howler. In other retranslations the problem is addressed with added textual comedy: Verdoving is mijn enige hoop… (Du/Vandenbergh 478) De roes is mijn enige redding… (Du/Claes & Nys 438) Doop is mijn enigste hoop…. (Du/Bindervoet & Henkes 488) Whereas the first two Dutch translations, forgoing any attempt at an internal rhyme, smooth out the anachronism and mitigate the meaning of “dope” (“verdoving” being the standard word for anesthetic, whereas “roes” is the standard word for fuddle, drink- or drug-induced high), Bindervoet and Henkes’ trans-

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Mihálycsa and Wawrzycka

lation playfully rhymes “hoop” with “doop,” a word whose original meaning is baptism by submersion, or a thick sauce, but which acquired a tertiary, contemporary meaning of drugs, so a comic ambiguity is created as to the meaning intended by Haines, the speaker. Moreover, an etymological link is also highlighted, as the English “dope” derives from the Dutch doop; to add to the multi-layer game with period style, internal stylistic miscegenation and contemporary parlance is the word “enigste,” currently a regional form of “enige” (sole, only), but also an 18th century literary archaism linked to the 18th century Dutch polemicist, Johannes Kinker, whose work constitutes the backbone of Bindervoet & Henkes’ translation of the Junius parody. By this, an extra intratextual correspondence and a link to domestic literary tradition are added into the bargain. The two Turkish translators harness different language effects: Yegâne ümidim cennet tozu… (T/Erkmen 461; My only hope is heaven powder…) Medet ol, ey alkol! (T/Ekici 396; Be my help, o alcohol!) The “heaven powder” in Erkmen’s translation is slang for cocaine – an in-yerface anachronism in the context; Ekici’s version, apparently an internal rhyme of “ol” (be) and “alkol” (alcohol, a French-derived neologism in modern Turkish, thus an anachronism for the putative date of the style parody to be translated), is in fact a fake rhyme. Since alkol is pronounced with the French “l”, in order to make it rhyme with “ol” pronunciation has to be faultily distorted – the effect (and the humour) of the translated phrase deriving precisely from this silly false rhyme, akin to a spoonerism. Apart from drilling into TL literary history, “Oxen” also presents translators with ample opportunities to creatively navigate the synchronic expanse of TL, especially the “Coda,” which amalgamates dialectal variants, pidgins and substandards of English across the globe, offering an appropriate cultural revenge on the English language and literary canon, and displaying arguably the richest example of Joycean heteroglossia and heterolingualism. Some of the more obscure dialectal forms were obviously beyond the reach of early translators. One such item pops up in a near-musical variation sequence on the theme “I’m broke,” in a lingo identified as “Parlyaree,” the global pidgin Italian spoken by travelling actors, musicians and impresarios82 – here, presumably a distortion of niente soldi: 82

J.S. Atherton, “The Oxen of the Sun,” in James Joyce’s Ulysses: Critical Essays, eds. Clive Hart and David Hayman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 313-339: 334.

Introduction

23

Query. Who’s astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week gone. (14.1465, emphasis added) Italian translators have to battle the added difficulty that the effect of foreignness is likely to be lost, yielding intralingual rather than interlingual translation: Non avere svanziche. (I/De Angelis 387) No tenere dinero. (I/Terrinoni 416) Non avele io un soldo. (I/Celati 584) The three translators’ strategies are vastly different. Whereas Celati has a botched-up phrase produced by a beginner in the language, with the mixing up of the liquids possibly connoting a child’s, or Chinese person speaking Italian, De Angelis situates the speaker on the margin of Italian: his ungrammatical phrase displays svanzica, a twenty-lira silver coin whose name derives from the German zwanzig, in use in the northern Italian provinces that were once part of the Hapsburg Empire. Terrinoni chooses to replicate Joyce’s centrifugal gesture: he dispatches “Parlyaree” abroad, into macaronic Spanish. Languages with a history of colonial expansion can fall back on overseas dialectal versions, as shown in Galindo’s Brazilian Portuguese retranslation, “M câ ê rícu” (“I am not rich”), which emulates a thick Cape Verdian Creole.83 The Dutch translations can also harness Afrikaans: Ikke van noppes niks (Du/Vandenbergh 493; Me don’t have not a thing) Ikke geen pingping (Du/Claes & Nys 451; Me no have money) Ik leg platsak aan de gallemieze (Du/Bindervoet & Henkes 503) Whereas Vandenbergh keeps to the standard usage, employing a common doubling of “[have] nothing” (“noppes niks”) to intensify negation, Claes and Nys opt for “pingping,” an onomatopoeic word emulating the clinking of coins, with a (possible) suggestion of Chinese Dutch. Finally, Bindervoet and Henkes carnivalize the phrase, splicing an Afrikaans variant of “platzak” (“skimpy”: mean, niggardly), to Yiddish-derived slang (challesj, from Hebrew ḥallāš: “weak” + mies [bad]), pointing at miscegenation as a source of linguistic energy and joycense.

83

See Galindo’s essay in this volume.

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Mihálycsa and Wawrzycka

With some translations the phrase is at sea, so to speak: in Turkish, Tigı teber, şahı leventiz (T/Erkmen 473) Meteliğe kurşun. (T/Ekici 470) Erkmen employs an idiom for pennilessness from Ottoman times, referring to the seamen on Levantine ships left with only their swords for a possession. Ekici’s retranslation, on the other hand, clips the domestic idiom “meteliğe kurşun atmak” (literally, “shooting bullets at a penny”), leaving out the verb “atmak” (shooting). Landlocked languages without a history of colonial expansion can rely on internal hybridization and occasional (fake) multilingual superscriptions: the latter is the case of Szentkuthy’s 1974 Hungarian translation, which back-dates macaronic Italian to bog Latin, in line with a general tendency to suffuse Ulysses with mock-Latin academic clowning, Kasztráció financiálisz (Hu/Szentkuthy 527) Árva kanyilóm sincs (Hu/Revised 404) whereas the Revised 2012 text renders pidgin Italian with a poignant borrowing from Romani, kanyiló (from khané love: no money), gesturing at constitutive hybridity at the heart of the language. A line-up of similar Joyce effects in translation is likely to complicate expectations of a progressive perfectionnement, and to reveal instantiations of translatorial creativity that are time-bound in so far as they are impacted by, and they impact in turn, the repertory of available styles and breaches of style, in the TL. Since theory has boosted Joyce’s visibility and “visitability”84 and recast our understanding of his modernism, it is increasingly the less spectacular, seemingly inconspicuous occurrences of Joyce’s busting of the mimetic pact, the unity and continuity of narrative, voice and discourse, and his co-opting of contingency and chance, that more scholarly-oriented new translations and revisions can illuminate.

5

“Give us a squint at that literature” (U 16.1669): 21st Century Retranslations of Joyce

The essays in this volume address a broad set of issues pertinent to Joyce studies, translation studies, and translation theory. Recent retranslations of Joyce’s 84

Jean-Michel Rabaté, The Future of Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) 124.

Introduction

25

works cannot but effect and reflect shifts in Joyce scholarship that parallel those of genetic studies; they have not only responded well to the scholarly developments in all these fields, but also, in terms of reception, exerted significant influence on target language cultures. The authors offer multi-angled critical attention to the issues of translation and retranslation, enhanced by their diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and innovative methodologies. Among the foci of interest are the rendering of modernist intertextuality and multilingualism in translation, of the more disruptive breachings of syntactical and stylistic norm, especially where these are enmeshed with musical and sound effects – thus, a whole range of translational dislocutions; importantly, all the essays raise the question of (re)retranslatorial creativity coming in the wake of modernist-derived translatorial practices, at the intersection of textual scholarship and contemporary notions of translation ethics.85 Whereas in the literature about this issue, translation scholars tend to take the limelight, this volume showcases the work of scholar-translators and practicing translators: on its pages, no less than twelve Joyce translators and translation/revision team members, themselves internationally recognized Joyce scholars or well-versed in Joyce scholarship, show us their workshop and their grappling with the whole range of Joycean untranslatables and joycense – in alphabetic order: Erik Bindervoet, Armağan Ekici, Ruth Frehner, Caetano Waldrigues Galindo, Marianna Gula, Robbert-Jan Henkes, Rareș Moldovan, Ilaria Natali, Fabio Pedone, Enrico Terrinoni, Jolanta Wawrzycka and Ursula Zeller. Several other contributors are also active literary translators. As will become clear, some contributors who are primarily translators may be less invested in Translation Studies as a discipline, but one cannot but appreciate their direct presentation of how they approach interlingual conundrums, how they position themselves against the solutions offered by their predecessors,

85

The editors wish to point out that the terms “retranslation” and “revision” used throughout this volume, while self-evident in and of themselves, differentiate nevertheless between the level of retranslators’ engagement with translations that exist in their languages. “Retranslation Hypothesis” discussed above notwithstanding, “retranslation” in this volume designates a new translation that sets itself apart from preceding translation(s) in terms of strategy, fidelity to Joyce’s original, building on previously unavailable scholarship, etc. “Revision,” as discussed in chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 14, refers to a much more systematic engagement on the part of retranslators with translation(s) that preceded their own work, with Joyce’s original text, and, of course, with scholarship. If retranslations start largely from scratch, with nods to translations that came before, revisions (frequently group projects) build on preceding translation(s) and are driven by a corrective impulse, though by no means is “corrective” understood here in pejorative terms. Finally, occasional use of “(re)translation” serves as a shorthand for a more general reference to the process/outcome of both translation and retranslation.

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and, with predecessors in mind, how/what/why they had altered in their own translations. The first three chapters of the book are devoted to the early translations and recent team retranslations/revisions of Ulysses into French and German. The 1929 and the 2004 French translations of Ulysses are the subject of Flavie Épié’s opening chapter. The first translation, by Auguste Morel, Stuart Gilbert and Valery Larbaud, with some input from Joyce himself, and the muchanticipated 2004 Gallimard team translation lead by Jacques Aubert were both cultural events. Aubert and his team argued that the aim of their work was to bring forth a version of the text that was “closer to Joyce and closer to us,” thereby defining their translation project in opposition to the earlier translation. Épié’s chapter gives a detailed account of the origin of the retranslation project and close analyses of the text itself, including the translation of proper names and compounds and specifically Joycean stylistic and syntactic issues. The author presents a few of the strategies used by Aubert’s team to translate Ulysses for the twenty-first century, questioning to what extent they “undid” French, as Bernard Hœpffner, one of the retranslators, phrased it. Fritz Senn addresses the issue of retranslations in general and speculates that each new translation implies dissatisfaction with the existing ones and brings to light different aspects of the text, according to the translators’ different priorities. Senn narrows his focus to the 2018 re-touched version of Hans Wollschläger’s 1975 version of Ulysses, which, after a decade, had to be terminated due to a legal quagmire. Senn examines the reasons why this reputed translation was in fact in need of updates and revisions, more in tune with the original and more aware of cross-connections. Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller, members of the Wollschläger revision project led by Joyce translator and textual scholar Harald Beck (with Senn as consultant) discuss Wollschläger’s 1975 German Ulysses and the revisions that reflect the paradigm change in Joyce translation from writer-translator to scholar-translator. The project took ten years, but the retranslation remains unavailable for copyright reasons. The authors take a closer look at the German rendering of Bloomian internal monologues and at “Sirens” through the lens of Wollschläger’s own translational priority, style. It is of particular interest to examine how Wollschläger, both a musicologist and musician by academic training, deals with the chapter that aspires to the state of music. In the chapters that follow, Marianna Gula and Erika Mihálycsa discuss a group project of retranslating/revising Ulysses into Hungarian. Gula has been a member of the team of translators (Kappanyos-Gula-Kiss-Szolláth) who worked on the revision of Miklós Szentkuthy’s 1974 canonical Hungarian translation and she contends that its soundscape has become thoroughly recast in

Introduction

27

the course of the retranslation/revision project. The exuberant translation of Szentkuthy, an experimental modernist writer and translator, was to a great extent spurred by his dissatisfaction with how his predecessor Endre Gáspár’s 1947 text “flattens” and “sobers up” Joyce’s sentences, depriving them of their poetry, playfulness, verbal music and rhythm. Gula explores crucial dimensions of the revision process, focusing especially on how a global approach to Joyce’s text – in stark contrast to Szentkuthy’s tendency to treat translation tasks locally – has reworked the soundscape of “Sirens,” giving the Hungarian reader a more vivid sense of the polyphonic texture and performative nature of the chapter. The retranslation has also thoroughly renegotiated the relationship between sound and sense in the episode, at times recovering musical effects from the realm of nonsense. Erika Mihálycsa addresses the revised version’s “retailoring” of the “Oxen” style parodies, with respect to its predecessors, focusing on the treatment of conspicuous stylistic incongruities and anachronisms that Joyce scholarship started unearthing in the 1970s, as well as on the rendering of linguistic substandards (the “fearful jumble” of dialectal versions, cant, and pidgins). In comparing the strategies of Gáspár’s 1947, Szentkuthy’s 1974, and the 2012 translations, Mihálycsa comments on the varieties of linguistic experimentation and creativity employed in the case of portmanteau words, wordplay, multilingual literary and cultural references. She also reflects on how these translations put the target-language reader to work, as compared to the difficulties encountered by the reader of the original – and how these differences reflect the broader changes in reading habits and in target-language literary sensibilities in the decades that fall between Szentkuthy’s flamboyant translation and the 2012 text. Slavic translations of Ulysses are the subject of the next three chapters. Jolanta Wawrzycka is currently translating Ulysses into Polish and she contributes a study of the opening of “Calypso” and a detour to a passage in “Oxen of the Sun,” a scope that her chapter shares with Rares Moldovan’s in this volume. To date, there is still only one Polish translation, Maciej Słomczyński’s 1969 Ulisses, though another is said to be in the works. Wawrzycka approaches translation as literary re-languaging (trans-semantification) and she studies the elements of Słomczyński’s Ulisses side by side with her own ongoing translation. Noting that Joyce’s English is already-translated and that his language register can curb translators’ rendition of the original’s polysemic, paronomastic and syntactic ambiguities, the chapter presents translatorial priorities in Wawrzycka’s work, including salvaging wherever possible Joyce’s economy of expression that frequently falls victim to interpretive trans-splaining and verbose overdetermination, and preserving Joyce’s patterns of repetition that

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she finds to be foundational to textual memory in the original. Mindful that Joyce’s deliberately repetitive elements resist transfer into Polish and demand re-contextualization, Wawrzycka’s retranslation attempts to overcome some of the strictures of Polish language rules by adopting Joyce’s own rule-bending, whereby, rather than conforming to the target language/culture, she sides with the source text wherever possible. The second Czech Ulysses, following an early translation (Vymětal and Fastrová, 1930), was published in 1976, in Aloys Skoumal’s translation as Odysseus. It was republished in 2012, the year that Martin Pokorný began to revise Skoumal’s work. David Vichnar has gained access to Pokorný’s notes on revision and he offers a comparative analysis of examples that map three chief areas of Pokorný’s “mending of the potholes” in Skoumal’s translation. They include necessary updates and amendments based on the changes in the textual material of the original effected by the Gabler edition of Ulysses, which was inaccessible to Skoumal during his translation. Also, because the Latinate beginnings of the “Oxen of the Sun” episode were “normalised” and “naturalised” in Skoumal’s rendering, Vichnar offers Pokorný’s example of corrective measures undertaken in retranslation. Finally, Vichnar addresses Skoumal’s tendency in the “Eumaeus” episode to “comb” the disheveled syntax and “improve” the “bad” writing of this episode. As Pokorný comments, “it is as if the vulgarity and heresy of the original were more acceptable to Skoumal than the far graver danger of Joyce writing ‘bad prose.’” In her contribution Mina Đurić posits the polyglossia of Ulysses as the paradigm of the modernistic global novel and she traces the translation history of the cultural connections between Slavic elements in Joyce’s text and their back-translations (seen here as a different species of retranslation) into the South Slavic languages. Đurić’s discussion shows how that kind of “translationese” is not only important for Ulysses and its retranslations, but also for retranslations of other works. (Re)written through translations into Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Czech and Russian, Ulysses also represents the translatorial tradition of in the target cultures. In the context of the South Slavic languages, Joyce’s text in translation tests the binding power of earlier translations of English authors and reflects a paradigm change in translation culture. One of the questions addressed by Đurić is, how the Slavic material from Joyce’s Ulysses is translated into Slavic languages. Using examples from “Cyclops,” the chapter analyses the characteristics of the process that Đurić calls “translavication.” In the chapters that follow, two translators reflect on their Joycean odysseys. Armağan Ekici translated Ulysses in the wake of an overtly experimental, nearcanonical 1996 version by Nevzat Erkmen. Ekici’s predicament stemmed from

Introduction

29

the singular history of modern Turkish: whereas Erkmen’s translation text is suffused with pre-language reform Ottoman Turkish, with a wealth of erudite terms from Arabic and Persian – a language that has become nearly impenetrable to present-day readers – Ekici’s translation, published in 2012, had a very different agenda, prioritizing the contemporary reader’s enjoyment, the recreation of a wealth of Joyce effects at the macro and micro level, and rendering the rich humour of Ulysses. His essay presents his translation strategies and a hands-down comparative discussion of a series of examples and translation problems ranging from the inchoate mind’s grammar in interior monologues, through slips and volitional errors, to misquotations. Brazilian translator Caetano Waldrigues Galindo comments on selected phrases from three translations of Ulysses into Brazilian Portuguese: Antônio Houaiss’s 1966 landmark translation, Bernardine da Silveira Pinheiro’s 2005 version, and his own translation published in 2012. His chapter illuminates the differences between the translators’ approaches to Joyce’s lexical and syntactic challenges and illustrates the many practices in his own translation processes that yielded new language effects in Portuguese, on par with Joyce’s. Galindo, a prolific translator of Anglo-American literature, is deeply invested in the issues of creativity in translation and his chapter points to the instances of Joyce’s punning, onomatopoeia or malapropisms where he navigated the challenge with acuity that allowed him to re-create Joyce’s text effects for Brazilian readers. Creativity is also at the center of the next chapter, co-authored by Guillermo Sanz Gallego and Kris Peeters, where they assess the translators’ creativity in the “Oxen” episode by comparing translations and retranslations into Dutch (Vandenbergh 1969; Claes & Nys 1994; and Bindervoet & Henkes 2012), and into Spanish (Salas Subirat 1945; Valverde 1976; and García Tortosa & Venegas Lagüéns 1999). Their chapter tests the “Retranslation Hypothesis” that proposes translations to be more target-oriented – offering a smooth reading of the source text material and enhancing its readability in order to guarantee an efficient integration of the foreign into the target culture – than sourceoriented – often claiming to restore the source text material in a richer way, i.e., more faithful to the original. Looking at various elements of the hybrid discourse in the “Oxen” episode, the authors offer a reading of the various translations and retranslations that foreground the (re)translators’ creativity and the diverse ways in which the (re)translator’s voice may alter the narrator’s voice. This in turn alters the target reader’s experience either by reducing ambiguity by means of explicitation, simplification and dialectical (either/or) forms of discourse, or by enhancing the source text’s linguistic hybridity and

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polyglossia, turning the translator’s voice into an authentic and creative engagement with the original’s dialogical (both/and) meaning potential. Rareș Moldovan is currently working on a new Romanian version of Ulysses. His chapter offers a close reading of the celebrated first 1984 Romanian translation of Ulysses by poet and translator Mircea Ivănescu. As is the case with other publications of Ulysses in Central and Eastern Europe, Ivănescu’s translation was an epochal achievement, hailed for its literary and poetic quality as well as for its technical prowess. Moldovan’s chapter, like Wawrzycka’s, examines passages from “Calypso” and “Oxen of the Sun” in Ivănescu’s rendering and in his own translation-in-progress and illuminates some of the micro-processes and modernist counter-realist style effects, ranging from syntactic anomalies through lexical innovation to the use of slang and linguistic substandards, that can show the extent of a translation’s daring. The next chapter, in the form of a sub-coda, provides a fitting commentary on the processes discussed in the preceding chapters. Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi present “the notion of re-foreignization,” by which they mean “restoring Ulysses to its legitimate foreignness in a recipient culture that differs not only geographically, but also diachronically, from the culture it was originally intended for.” They study the “disruptive potential” of Ulysses both in terms of the literary polysystem and in the larger cultural milieu, and their macro-scale sweep is illustrated with micro-scale examples from Italian translations, that correspond in tenor to all the examples in the preceding chapters. The authors of the final set of chapters step away from Ulysses to afford the reader a peek into the retranslation process of other Joyce texts, from Dubliners and Pomes Penyeach to Finnegans Wake. Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes have translated the entire body of Joyce’s works, but in this volume they offer a lively account of their experiences with Dubliners published in 2016. Their chapter details a number of translatorial choices, all grounded both in archival materials that provided insight into the evolution of Joyce’s stylistic apparatus, and in scholarship that guided their findings and shaped the translation process. Well-versed in all editions of Dubliners, the translators stress the necessity to work with the most up-to-date edition of Joyce’s text, but also not to discard earlier versions whose textual variants significantly contribute to our understanding of the text’s history. Thoroughly familiar with all of Joyce’s oeuvre, the translators provide numerous lexical cross-references that help clarify their final choices and solutions. Ilaria Natali offers a comparative study of Italian translations of Joyce’s poems by numerous Italian translators: Glauco Natoli (1932), Ugo Mursia (1944), Eugenio Montale (1946), Alberto Rossi (1949), and Aldo Camerino (1988). An important name, that of the writer Cesare Pavese, is missing from

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this list, even though, after having completed his translation of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he was invited to translate Pomes Penyeach in 1948. Pavese declined to work on the poems claiming to be “angry” at the elements that he could not understand. But translations of Pomes Penyeach have – and continue to – flourish in Italy, as demonstrated by Natali’s own translation of this collection in 2012, and the recent translation by Giulia Benvenuti and Domenico Corradini Broussard (2016). She also cites the case of the controversial publication of the collection Finn’s Hotel in 2013, containing two prose fragments that include and frame the lines of “Tutto è sciolto” and “Nightpiece.” Regardless of whether Joyce considered the pieces in Finn’s Hotel as independent works or early drafts for Finnegans Wake, a doubt is cast on the status of the two poems, which could now be read – and translated – according to new criteria. Overall, like Pavese, the translators of Pomes Penyeach seem to have various reasons to be angered: they are confronted by seemingly endless levels of textual instability. In a different take on the creative approach, Enrico Terrinoni and Fabio Pedone, the Italian translators of Finnegans Wake (Book III.1-2: 2017; Book III.3-4; Book IV: 2019), who have taken over the monumental venture after the passing of Luigi Schenoni (the Italian translator of Books I and II), contribute a playful chapter that interrogates translation in an engagingly novel way: Terrinoni and Pedone devise an intertextually parodic Ithacan polylogue between themselves and the text of the Wake. The chapter showcases new ways to reenvision interpretive practices, as well as interactions between retranslations, intertexts, and readers/translators. The book’s grand finale comes from Sam Slote, whose chapter addresses translations not only in terms of multiplying the number of texts in the world but also in terms of the fictionalisation of a text as it is transposed into a different language. Once a text gets translated, it becomes retranslatable and reretranslatable, further multiplying the number of texts. Translation adds to and changes the text, whereby some of the problems associated with translations are cognate with the problem of textual transmission in general. Slote’s chapter addresses translational and editorial problems in both Ulysses and Derrida’s essay on Ulysses as a way of highlighting the problems of textual, translational multiplicity. He focuses on Derrida’s list, in “Ulysses Gramophone,” of over fifty instances where the French Ulysse has a oui that translates a phantom yes where there was no yes in Ulysses. Many of these phantom yeses derive from specific structural, idiomatic differences between English and French. By suggesting that a translation is a fictionalisation of a text, Slote asserts that a translation – even a supposedly good translation – lies about the original: it misrepresents the original in the act of presenting it in another

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language. The phantom yeses are both symptomatic and exemplary of this ineluctable modality of misrepresentation. In his Joycean Murmoirs, Fritz Senn reminded us that non-native readers of Joyce have the advantage of never losing sight of the fact that they cannot take for granted the language they read: they will “see language probably before anything else … while native speakers – and not seldom native scholars – may not notice it as language but look right through it.”86 Translators – the closest non-native readers of any original – possess this metalinguistic awareness in excess, something that makes them uncommonly perceptive of what Joyce’s texts show us with singular intensity: “that every language is also foreign up to a point.”87 Already aware that to be a translator is to dare fail with a Beckettian antidote to aplomb, contemporary Joyce retranslators are working under the auspices of a scholarship of industrial proportions, as well as with an eye on their predecessors’ achievements. As of the latter, what is expected of them is, above all, to make strange the receiving language to a comparable degree to which Joyce estranged English: to be prepared to translate dangerously a writer who became the epitome of writing dangerously.88 Or, in Senn’s Wakean term, to be prepared to translude:89 to dislocute linguistic and stylistic norms, to lend Protean metamorphism, dynamism, indeterminacy, and above all, creativity to the text, even in the face of patent untranslatabilities. Once again, Joyce shows the way. At the end of “Eumaeus,” Stephen sings a German song which closes on the (no doubt faultily remembered) verse, “Und alle Schiffe brücken” (16.1884). A probable slip in the foreign language, this phrase reveals in a flash an active (nonce) verb, brücken (from die Brücke: bridge) to be the flipside of Schiffbruch, shipwreck – as though drawing attention to the fact that even the act of foundering, the derailment of sense at the interface of languages can shoot unexpected, creative bridges between two foreignnesses. 86 87 88 89

Joycean Murmoirs, 82. Ibid. Cf. Arthur Power, Conversations with James Joyce, 95. Dislocutions, 37.

Chapter 1

Ulysses “in his French dress”: 1929/2004 Flavie Épié

Abstract This chapter represents the latest take on the history of the French translations of Joyce’s Ulysses. Épié offers a fresh look at the various stages that produced both the 1929 translation and the 2004 retranslation of Joyce’s work. Well-grounded in archival and critical research, the essay also draws on the published works and private notes of the retranslators. Numerous examples from both renderings illustrate Épié’s thorough commentary. The author discusses the retranslators’ working premises and methodologies, providing insight into the strategies and priorities in translating Joyce’s stylistic and syntactic features. Épié concludes that the 1929 translation tended to domesticate Joyce’s text, while the Aubert team leaned toward foreignizing and, by deciding against footnotes, tended to explicitate and thus lengthen the text.

Joyce’s Ulysses has only been translated into French twice: the first translation, closely linked to the publication of the original work in Paris in 1922, was published in 1929; the second team of translators was given three years to complete the new translation, which was published in 2004. The two translations were both collaborative endeavours, written seventy-five years apart, with different aims stemming from their own translating contexts and therefore from the evolution of both the French language and the reception of Joyce’s work. In 1929 the main concern had been to translate Joyce’s innovations into French so as to produce a version of Ulysses “in his French dress” as Joyce himself wrote, with a particular focus on the specificity of each character’s voice.1

1 The phrase is Joyce’s; it appears in a letter written to Valery Larbaud on August 5, 1928. See: John L. Brown, “Ulysses into French,” in Joyce at Texas: Essays on the James Joyce Materials at the Humanities Research Center, eds. Dave Oliphant and Thomas Zigal (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 43. The specificity of each character’s voice was, according to Larbaud, the main focus: “[…] je tâche de rendre le ton […] chaque personnage a son ton, ses tics, ses exclamations propres (ou sales, mais pas toujours), – et c’est cela qu’il faut traduire.” Valery Larbaud, Lettres à Adrienne Monnier et à Sylvia Beach, 1919-1933, ed. Maurice Saillet (Paris, France: IMEC, 1991), 312.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_003

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These elements were still important seventy-five years later, but new parameters also had an impact on the enterprise, such as the colossal amount of literary criticism on Joyce’s works, or the experimentations carried out in French literature, such as the constrained writing of the OULIPO movement, or even the evolution of a different stance towards translation itself, namely with the works of Antoine Berman who had a great impact on French translation studies, increasing our awareness of the deforming tendencies of the translating process.2 It is worth noting that the first ever critical book publication on the completed Ulysses, Stuart Gilbert’s James Joyce’s Ulysses, A Study, derived from the author’s work on the revision of the 1929 translation. Unlike the team working in the 1920s, the 2004 retranslators could not ignore the later evolution of Joyce’s prose writing and the publication of Finnegans Wake. Through an analysis of the stance of the 2004 team of translators towards Morel’s work, but also of their own translation project and choices, this paper aims to show how paradoxically indebted the new translation is to the 1929 enterprise and text, and to study the influence of various contextual parameters on a retranslation designed seventy-five years later to depart from what Jacques Aubert nonetheless called “a moment and a monument” of French literature.3

1

Criticism and Homage: Translating after Morel, Larbaud and Gilbert

As is often the case in matters of retranslation, the 2004 enterprise originated in a criticism of the previous translation of Ulysses by Auguste Morel, Stuart Gilbert and Valery Larbaud. Such criticism was brought forth by Joycean scholar Jacques Aubert when he was director of the edition of Joyce’s complete works for the prestigious “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade” collection of Gallimard editions: in a 1982 radio interview, he said that Morel’s Ulysse needed to be revised, and even corrected.4 Auguste Morel’s opus had then long occupied a specific status in French literature – it was not merely considered a translation of Joyce’s novel but had acquired an aura of its own, not only because of the intervention of the writer himself in the course of the translation process but 2 Antoine Berman, La traduction et la lettre ou L’auberge du lointain (Paris, France: Éditions du Seuil, 1999). 3 James Joyce, Œuvres II, ed. Jacques Aubert, trans. Auguste Morel et al., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris, France: Gallimard, 1995), 1029. 4 Jacques Aubert, “Translating the Unreadable,” in Through Other Eyes: the Translation of Anglophone Literature in Europe, eds. Richard Trim and Sophie Alatorre (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007), 3-15.

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also because of Valery Larbaud’s participation, which had been foregrounded while Morel’s name sunk into oblivion despite his having done most of the work.5 As he himself remembered it, Jacques Aubert’s suggestion created an uproar in the French literary milieu to the point of being deemed “blasphemous”: It was argued that such a project amounted to cultural sacrilege, since the book was part and parcel of the French literary heritage, for it documented a historical moment in the development of the French language in the field of literature.6 The suggestion was left at that and in 1995, Morel’s translation was published unaltered in the Pléiade series. The unprecedented critical apparatus that came along with the edition featured many notes devoted to comments on the translation choices or at least to quotes and explanations of the original text, despite it being published in French, making available to readers a layer of information absent from the 1929 Ulysse. After Georg Goyert’s 1927 German version, the 1929 French one was only the second translation of Ulysses to be published, and it has been particularly saluted for its incredible rendering of French as it was spoken in the 1920s, to the point of being praised as an “incredible anatomy of the French language” by André Topia.7 The main quality of Morel’s translation, which was to be historically close to the original, had by the early 2000s become its main flaw and the major reason for a retranslation, alongside the imprecisions Aubert had already pointed out. Because of Morel’s consistent use of contemporary idioms, idiosyncrasies and slang, the translation had become difficult to understand without a dictionary or without notes, and it had acquired what Pascal Bataillard called a “bad unreadability.”8 Bataillard’s apparently tautological phrase opposes the filter of an aging translation to the actual complexity of the original, and points to the temporality of caducity and incompleteness that according to Antoine Berman characterizes all translations.9 The 1929 French 5 Liliane Rodriguez, “Joyce’s Hand in the First French Translation of Ulysses.” In Renascent Joyce, edited by Daniel Ferrer, Sam Slote, and André Topia (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 20130, 122-141. 6 Aubert, “Translating the Unreadable,” 3. 7 André Topia, “Retraduire Ulysses: le troisième texte,” Palimpsestes 15 (2004): 134-135. 8 Autour de la nouvelle traduction de Ulysses: table ronde, avec Jacques Aubert, Pascal Bataillard, Bernard Hœpffner et Tiphaine Samoyault. Tours: 21st International James Joyce Symposium, 2008. http://lettres.univ-tours.fr/actualites/symposium-james-joyce-98040.kjsp?RH= 1231322589450 accessed 13 July 2018. 9 Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction,” 1.

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Ulysse was hard to read, but for the wrong reasons. Stephen Joyce, heir to the moral rights on his grandfather’s work, also advocated for a retranslation: in 2001 he managed to convince Gallimard and Jacques Aubert was asked to supervise the project. In 1929, the main aim of translating Ulysses had been to promote Joyce’s text within the French literary milieu; 2004 was about commemorating a literary classic: the event of the “Déjeuner Ulysse” organized by Adrienne Monnier in June 1929 was mirrored by that of a publication planned for the centenary of Bloomsday.10 As in 1929, the translation was undertaken by a group. Initially composed of thirteen members, Aubert’s team of retranslators finally counted eight: four academics who either had had a hand in the Pléiade edition (Jacques Aubert, Marie-Danièle Vors, Michel Cusin) or had contributed to Joycean scholarship (Pascal Bataillard), three writers (Tiphaine Samoyault, Patrick Drevet, Sylvie Doizelet) and a professional translator (Bernard Hœpffner). Because they were strongly opposed to the manner the project was then carried out, the retranslators insisted that the 2004 set-up was quite different from that of 1929. The first team of translators had been organized along a hierarchical pattern: Auguste Morel had translated the whole book, then his work had been reviewed by Stuart Gilbert, and then by Valery Larbaud who had the final say. Joyce answered questions and solved conflicts between the translators. This hierarchical organization implied a horizontal approach to the translation of the novel, as the translators worked on the episodes in chronological order and those were then successively revised, by Morel and Gilbert, and then Larbaud.11 In 2004, Jacques Aubert insisted on a more democratic organization, which was also linked to a more vertical approach to the text: each translator was in charge of one episode or more. Such a distribution meant that all of the episodes would be translated simultaneously by each team member, and then submitted to the team for revision. It was decided that, being in charge of supervision, Aubert would have the last word in case of major disagreements, but he claimed that he never had to make use of this power, for the translators were ultimately responsible for their own choices.12

10

11 12

For accounts of the “Déjeuner Ulysse,” see: Brown, “Ulysses into French,” 46; Joyce, Œuvres II, 1032; Laure Murat, Passage de l’Odéon: Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier et la vie littéraire à Paris dans l’entre-deux-guerres, Folio (Paris, France: Gallimard, 2005), 255. Joyce, Œuvres II, 1032; Brown, “Ulysses into French,” 40-41. “Retraduire Ulysses. Table Ronde Animée Par Bernard Hœpffner, Avec Jacques Aubert, Michel Cusin, Pascal Bataillard et Tiphaine Samoyault,” in La Ville Des Écrivains. Vingtet-Unièmes Assises de La Traduction Littéraire (Arles 2004) (Arles: Atlas, Actes Sud, 2004), 49.

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Over the course of the three-year span, the team regularly met in Lyon to discuss matters of harmonization and various individual translation questions, in an effort to maintain the overall coherence of the work, despite the original dismantling. Besides obvious productivity reasons linked to the short amount of time the translators were allotted to complete the work, the distribution of episodes was accounted for using aesthetic arguments, as it was feared that a single translator would not be able to fully render the extent of the linguistic variety of Joyce’s text. The amount of work was, unequally, distributed as follows: Tiphaine Samoyault Bernard Hœpffner Pascal Bataillard Patrick Drevet Jacques Aubert Sylvie Doizelet Marie-Danièle Vors Michel Cusin

8. Lestrygonians / 11. Sirens / 12. Cyclops / 18. Penelope 7. Aeolus / 15. Circe / 17. Ithaca 3. Proteus / 5. Lotus Eaters / 16. Eumaeus 6. Hades / 13. Nausicaa 1. Telemachus / 10. Wandering Rocks 9. Scylla & Charybdis 4. Calypso 2. Nestor

32.79%a 28.36% 13.08% 10.04% 7.46% 4.44% 2.19% 1.64%

a The percentages, which were based on the original text and calculated by Bernard Hœpffner, can be found on a document submitted as part of the application for funding to the Centre National du Livre in Jacques Aubert’s archive for the 2004 translation. (Jacques Aubert, “Pourcentage de traduction assuré par chacun des traducteurs” (undated), Folder “CNL,” Archives Aubert, Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes / ITEM.)

Tiphaine Samoyault claimed that this division of work had facilitated the process of renouncing all linguistic normativity and Bernard Hœpffner described it as some kind of “eight-person schizophrenia,” illustrating the tension between individual and collective work.13 Looking closely at the list, one realizes that the fourteenth episode, “Oxen of the Sun,” is missing. The decision of the 2004 retranslators regarding this specific episode highlights the complexity of their stance towards Morel’s translation. Although Bernard Hœpffner clearly stated in his logbook that it was decided to “stow it out of sight,” the 1929 Ulysse kept resurfacing in the translators’ discussions, starting with the definition of their translation project given in the postface for the new translation in which they argued that their work aimed at bringing forth a version of the text that was “closer to Joyce and closer 13

Tiphaine Samoyault, “Retraduire Joyce,” in La Retraduction, eds. Robert Kahn and Catriona Seth (Rouen, Le Havre, France: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2010), 233 and 235; Bernard Hœpffner, “Straightening out Ulysses: A Translator’s Notes,” trans. Jeffrey Zuckerman, The Paris Review, 2017. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/ 2017/07/25/straightening-out-ulysses/ accessed 29 September 2018.

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to us.”14 The repetition of the comparative highlights the hovering presence of the first translation against which the new project was defined, while the phrase in itself professes the will to bypass it and restore a direct link to the original by both correcting some of the former failings and providing a somehow more accessible French version. The same elements were emphasised in Bernard Hœpffner’s presentation of the translation at the 2004 Assises de la traduction littéraire in Arles when he pointed out that “Morel’s translation was historically close to the original” but that, on the contrary, “the new translation [was] linguistically, Joyce-ly and Ulysses-ly close to the original.”15 The retranslation, thus, cannot escape comparison, and it seems that the main argument justifying the new endeavour was the necessity to provide a new version that would be better-suited for twenty-first-century readers but also do better justice to Joyce’s growing focus on the materiality of language. Nevertheless, far from being completely discarded, Morel’s translation resurfaced elsewhere since part of it was integrated into the new one, as Aubert and his team retained the 1929 “Oxen of the Sun.” They contended that this inscribed the history of the French translation of Ulysses within the work, making for a parallel with the particular style of the fourteenth episode, as the history of translation mirrored the history of the English language.16 Tiphaine Samoyault further suggested that inserting Morel’s translation in the midst of other retranslated episodes made for a new reading of it, as it was inevitably modified by the co-text in the fashion of Borges’s Pierre Ménard. The decision was heavily criticized, for instance by Fritz Senn who deemed the inserted episode “a plastic heart” graft within the retranslation, and it is one of the battles that the 2004 team lost. Bernard Hœpffner admitted as much in a logbook entry dated to January 16, 2003: Tiphaine [Samoyault] wants to try her hand at translating ‘Oxen of the Sun,’ the episode that, from the start, we had agreed we would keep in Morel’s translation; she will abandon it several months later.17 14

15 16 17

Bernard Hœpffner, “Straightening out Ulysses: A Translator’s Notes”; Jacques Aubert, Michel Cusin, Bernard Hœpffner, Tiphaine Samoyault, Marie-Danièle Vors, Pascal Bataillard and Sylvie Doizelet, “Écrire Après Joyce,” in James Joyce, Ulysse (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 972. Hœpffner, “Retraduire Ulysses. Table Ronde,” 43. Autour de la nouvelle traduction de Ulysses: table ronde. Hœpffner, “Straightening out Ulysses: A Translator’s Notes.” This attempt is confirmed by a list of the repartition of the episodes dated from 2 February 2003 in Jacques Aubert’s archive, which attributes episode 14 to Tiphaine Samoyault, when all other lists feature “sera conservé de la traduction de Morel” (“will be kept in Morel’s translation”). Jacques

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Hœpffner and Samoyault further confessed that the justification had been an “act of bad faith” on the part of the retranslators, acknowledging that the echoes would not work in that part of the novel and putting in perspective the supposedly increased expertise provided by hindsight and scholarly work.18 With a praised former French version to live up to, the combination of a tight schedule and of a greater awareness of all the problems in the fourteenth episode probably played a decisive role.

2

“Undoing” French: Translating Ulysses in and for the 21st Century

The 2004 team of translators’ attitude towards the 1929 translation is therefore characterized by a tension between criticism and homage, rejection and integration, which crystallizes in a form of paradoxical indebtedness reflected in the phrases defining a retranslation project that aimed at a French Ulysse “closer to Joyce and closer to us” and at restoring a ‘good unreadability.’ How is this achieved in the retranslation and how does it differ from what Morel, Gilbert and Larbaud had done? Bernard Hœpffner’s logbook provides a few interesting leads: We agree, as our guiding principle, on the credo in Stephen Hero: ‘He put his lines together not word by word but letter by letter.’ We also decide not to Gallicize everything as Larbaud had done with the preceding translation. […] We agree that we’ll respect the syntax of each sentence, that there’s to be almost absolute respect for Joyce’s punctuation – including his use of repeated colons and ellipses of varying length.19 The translator points to a greater interest in rendering the materiality of language and in respecting Joyce’s syntax, which can often prove difficult within the specific constraints of the French language. This results in a form of foreignization, or rather anglicization of the French version, which is the main line of work that distinguishes the 2004 project from its predecessor.

18 19

Aubert, “Liste Des Traducteurs” (2 February 2003), File “Réunions,” Archives Aubert, ITEM. Autour de la nouvelle traduction de Ulysses: table ronde; Hœpffner, “Straightening out Ulysses: A Translator’s Notes.” Hœpffner, “Straightening out Ulysses: A Translator’s Notes.” The guideline “franciser jusqu’à l’extrême gauche” was given by Joyce: it is one characteristic of the 1929 translation, but the recommendation was not always respected.

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A very revealing instance is the case of proper names. In a 2014 article Tiphaine Samoyault acknowledged that this was “a tricky question”: reminding the readers of the guideline given by Joyce in 1929, she argues that in 2004 it was impossible to abide by. Translating “Stephen Dedalus” by “Étienne Dédale” or “Leopold Bloom” by “Léopold Florissant” or “Fleurance” was out of the question.20 The issue of the intricate puns on names and nicknames, however, was less easily solved, and Bernard Hœpffner’s logbook sketches out the evolution of their stance through time: October 2001 – […] Pointed discussions over how much to Gallicize proper names (last names, geographical locations): a matter of understanding how Joyce had undone English, and how we might in turn undo French. […] Patrick Drevet almost convinces us that the place names ought to be translated, but his absence at the next meeting allows us to renege; as it would be impossible to be fully consistent.21 Two years later, the team came up with a solution to, “in turn, undo French”: February 2003 – […] When it’s necessary to translate a proper name or a last name because there’s a particular significance that recurs in the text, we decide to find a name that ‘sounds’ English (so as not to create a Dublin where everybody has French names). Blazes Boylan becomes Flam Boylan […], Miss Dubedat becomes Mlle Wimafoy, Alexander Keyes is rechristened Alexander Descley, and so on. What a strange activity to ‘translate’ English names; we’re veering dangerously away from ‘translation’ […].22 The process is particularly patent with the example of “Blazes Boylan,” which has been much commented upon by Tiphaine Samoyault. The translators first chose to alter the spelling by cutting the final -s from the nickname and Gallicizing the last name, resulting in “Blaze Boilan”: this variant gives a more direct access to the English words “blaze” and “boil” that most English learners would recognize. However, pronounced the French way, “blaze” (/blaz/) either points to the slang word for “name” or “nose” (blase or blaze) or to a present-tense form of the verb blaser, while “Boilan” would be pronounced /bwalɑ̃ / and foster the deletion of the diphthong, thus phonetically obscuring the reference to 20 21 22

Tiphaine Samoyault, “Vulnérabilité de l’œuvre en traduction,” Genesis 38 (2014), 57-68: 64. Hœpffner, “Straightening out Ulysses: A Translator’s Notes.” Ibid.

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“boil.” Other variants included “Braise Boylan” or “Boylan la Braise,” this time using a metonymy from blaze to ember, trying to retain the fire-like attribute while also remaining phonetically close to the original with the /b/ alliteration and the phonemes /ɛz/. They finally drifted away from this rather letterfor-letter approach and used “Flam Boylan,” pronounced /flam/ like flamme (flame) spelled without the two final graphemes, which results in a nickname that looks and sounds somehow English.23 In 1929, Morel had translated the nickname by “Dache” (/daʃ/), a slang word meaning “devil,” which worked well in the context from which the nickname originated but did tend to Gallicize the character: Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going. (U 11.430) Viens le dire à Dache, dit Dache Boylan qui s’en va. (F/Morel 2, 301) Approche-toi de la flamme, dit Flam Boylan en s’en allant. (F/Aubert 2, 444) In the retranslation, the register is less colloquial as they chose to focus on what is perceived by the eye, by the ear and on more transparency rather than on the use of an idiom. In line with this notion of reintroducing a form of foreignness in the French text, the 2004 team also chose sometimes to make part of the translation processes apparent: a word that is repeated in the original could have different yet close enough translations in the target text, or a fragment could be developed to contain both the form and content of the source text. The first strategy was applied to “Buck Mulligan”: the nickname of the first character in the novel, and which Jacques Aubert underlined as a major translation question in one of the first letters addressed to the team of translators dating from January 9, 2001.24 The nickname is indeed quickly used in puns and echoes as Joyce blurs the limits between proper and common nouns, which calls for translation. The team agreed on “Bouc” (male goat), but also on the fact that it could not appear as such in the very first lines of the book, because the domesticating effect would be too strong. According to Tiphaine Samoyault, they decided that to use the original nickname “Buck” but that it would become its domesticated alias “Bouc” whenever the word acquired the intermediate 23

24

Tiphaine Samoyault, “Actualité de la fiction: Théorie, Comparaison, Traduction” (Habilitation à diriger des recherches, Paris VIII, 2003), 91; Samoyault, “Vulnérabilité de l’œuvre en traduction,” 65. Jacques Aubert, “Courrier N°3. Notes sur ‘Télémaque,’” January 9, 2001, 4, Folder “Réunions,” Archives Aubert, ITEM.

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status between proper and common noun, the common noun itself appearing uncapitalized when needed. With this strategy, which the translators claimed they applied to all nicknames, they hoped to remain faithful to the letter of the text to render Joyce’s work on the diffracted meanings of proper nouns through the gradation included in the translated text.25 Here are a few examples: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead (U 1.1) Majestueux et dodu Buck Mulligan parut en haut des marches (F/Morel 2, 3) En majesté, dodu Buck Mulligan émergea de l’escalier (F/Aubert 2, 45) Tripping and sunny, like the buck himself (U 1.42) Sautelant et soleilleux, comme le cabri lui-même (F/Morel 2, 4) Leste et solaire comme un vrai bouc (F/Aubert 2, 46) Redheaded women buck like goats (U 1.706) Les rousses font ça comme des chèvres (F/Morel 2, 24) Les rouquines bouquinent comme des chèvres (F/Aubert 2, 74) The variations are more consistent than they are in Morel’s, because of a greater attention to the repeated signifier, as Aubert for instance uses the noun bouc and the verb bouquiner (mate) when the 1929 text featured cabri (kid) and the understatement “font ça” (do it), probably trying to avoid repetition, which has been traditionally condemned as poor style in French literature. Interestingly enough, although early versions of “Telemachus” do feature the gradation, the phrase “Bouc Mulligan” never actually appears in the retranslation as it was printed and distributed in 2004: the translators’ discussions bear the mark of a process that has disappeared in the final version.26 The translation process is apparent in cases calling for the dissociation of form and content, especially in the translation of foreign languages. Tiphaine Samoyault underlined the questions triggered by the linguistic heterogeneity of Joyce’s text, and most particularly on the fragments in Irish and Yiddish, which appear mostly in direct discourse. In “Cyclops,” she argued that the

25

26

Tiphaine Samoyault, “‘Son nom est légion et nous sommes plusieurs’: Ulysses de James Joyce et la traduction collective,” in L’Autre de l’œuvre, ed. Yoshikazu Nakaji (Saint-Denis, France: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2007), 263. According to the variants featured in the typescripts for “Telemachus” displayed in Jacques Aubert’s archive for the retranslation (ITEM, Paris), the decision was made, between January and March 2003, fairly late in the translation process.

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instances of Irish strengthen the slang ring given to the dialogues, but also underline the fact that English is a foreign language in Ireland. She accounts for her translation strategy, that is to consistently keep the Irish expression and have it coexist with its translation into French, using the specific status of Irish and the relationship to English portrayed in the twelfth episode.27 Never better, a chara, says he. (U 12.148) Ça colle, compère, qu’il dit. (F/Morel 2, 333) Au mieux l’ami, a chara, au mieux. (F/Aubert 2, 488) Bi i dho hust, says he. (U 12.265) Bi i dho hust, qu’il dit. (F/Morel 2, 337) Bi i dho hust, ta gueule, il lui dit. (F/Aubert 2, 493) Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn fein amhain! (U 12.523) Sinn Fein ! que dit le citoyen. Sinn fein amhain ! (F/Morel 2, 345) Sinn Fein ! Nous-mêmes ! fait le citoyen. Sinn Fein amhain ! Nous-mêmes seuls ! (F/Aubert 2, 503-4) The 2004 strategy is more consistent than that of 1929, when the fragments in Irish were either replaced by their translated equivalents (“compère”) or kept as such (“Bi I dho hust,” “Sinn Fein!”), but it is also an instance of what Fritz Senn has called “embedded footnotes.” Here, the 2004 team of translators did not un-do French, but rather Joyce’s text, probably out of a didactic will to spell it out for the readers and of a strategic move to include information that would have required footnotes. This didactic strategy, which amounts to refusing to choose between form and content so as to convey as much information as possible, is one of the distinguishing features of the two translations: it is also often used in 2004 when translating clichés or puns. It may be explained by the move from writer-translators to scholar-translators willing to produce an accessible yet comprehensive French version of Ulysses. If more accessible to 21st-century readers, the 2004 translation is also more daring and unsettling because of some of the strategies in translating a few of Joyce’s well-known stylistic features. Paying specific attention to linguistic morphology as well as syntax, the retranslators’ foreignizing of the text also shines through strategies imposing English onto French. In English, qualifying adjectives are placed in a sequence before the noun, whereas in French 27

Samoyault, “‘Son nom est légion et nous sommes plusieurs’: Ulysses de James Joyce et la traduction collective,” 263-64.

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adjectives are usually placed after it. This grammatical structure has consequences on the translation of noun phrases in general and on that of Joyce’s compounds in particular. With “ashplant” (U 3.284) for instance, the writer creates a compound that is surprising for the eye by making one word out of two, but he keeps the standard order of components in a noun phrase. Morel had translated it by “canne de frêne” (F/Morel 2, 50), which is standard French and obviously gets rid of the compound, while the 2004 retranslators imitated the original structure and chose “frênecanne” (F/Aubert 2, 108). The effect in French is much more striking because the strategy changes the target language by applying a rule of the source language. Another example is the “applewoman” (U 8.74), who in 1929 is a standard “marchande de pommes” (F/Morel 2, 171) and who becomes the portmanteau “pommarchande” (F/Aubert 2, 271) in the retranslation – bolder than the original, because fusing the two words by getting rid of the last syllable of pomme. As in the source text, readers are able to easily understand the signified, but the signifier goes a step further in terms of effect, which must be one of the reasons why the 2004 retranslators inconsistently used this strategy and had their text feature less of those compounds than the original. The 2004 Ulysse is less ironed out in terms of style, which also shows a stricter respect for Joyce’s syntax to the point of sometimes pushing the boundaries of French grammar, which contributes to the foreignization of the translated text. The oft-quoted never ending noun phrase describing the Citizen in “Cyclops” is one striking example: […] a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. (U 12.151-55) […] un héros aux larges épaules, à la vaste poitrine, aux membres robustes, aux yeux francs, aux cheveux roux, aux abondantes taches de son, à la barbe touffue, à la bouche énorme, au large nez, à la longue tête, à la voix profonde, aux genoux nus, à la poigne d’acier, aux jambes poilues, à la face colorée, aux bras musclés. (F/Morel 2, 333-4) […] un héros large d’épaules à la poitrine vaste aux membres robustes aux yeux francs aux cheveux roux aux éphélides nombreuses à la barbe broussailleuse à la bouche énorme au gros nez à la tête longue à la voix profonde aux genoux nus aux mains musculeuses aux jambes poilues à la face rubiconde aux bras musclés. (F/Aubert 2, 488)

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Morel had respected the gigantic enumeration and translated the compound adjectives according to the canonical translation of Homeric epithets, as “swift-footed Achilles” is traditionally translated by “Achille aux pieds légers.” Although the description seems endless, the switch from adjective to prepositional phrase, along with the standard word order in French noun phrases made it impossible for the translator to delay the coming of the noun “hero.” In 2004, Samoyault goes a step further by deleting the commas, which makes the sentence stand out more: the description feels even more relentless because there is no visual hint that readers should catch their breath. Indeed, commas are rarer in Joyce than in standard English, but in standard English they are already rarer than in standard French.28 Samoyault also worked further on sound effects to compensate the lack of a regular repetitive structure. She created echoes using adjectives ending similarly (-ste, -euse, -onde, -u), and consistently used a sequence “noun + adjective” whereas Morel had sometimes switched to restore a more idiomatic phrase (“au long nez, à la large tête”) or had used longer phrases (“aux abondantes taches de son”) or clichés (“à la poigne d’acier”). In the first translation, the enumeration stands out but the original is domesticated; in the second, style is foregrounded and elements of Joyce’s syntax are applied to the translation. Comma deletion was consistently worked on at every stage of revision of the retranslation typescripts, and the very existence of such corrections in Aubert’s archive means that it is a natural tendency of French that the team was aware of and intent on curbing for stylistic reasons. “Un-doing French,” then, meant steering away from a form of linguistic standardization that would iron out Joyce’s style. Translating in the 21st century also meant taking into account the evolution of the possibilities offered by literature in the target language, which enabled the team of retranslators to push further their experiments, but also to take into consideration the evolution of the target language. A surprising, though minor, feature of the 2004 Ulysse is the presence of words in verlan, which is a form of French slang that appeared in the late 1980s and that has supplanted other forms of slang, such as some of the old trade-specific words and phrases in Morel’s translation.29 The name of this slang is the key to its construction process, as “verlan” is the backwards form of l’envers (the reverse): it is a form of cryptic, playful French slang that jumbles syllables, letters and sounds to convey new meanings; in other words,

28 29

Samoyault, “Vulnérabilité de l’œuvre en traduction,” 67. Larissa Sloutsky and Catherine Black, “Le Verlan, Phénomène Langagier et Social: Récapitulatif,” The French Review 82, no. 2 (2008): 308-24.

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a form of slang that somehow un-does standard French. Two verlan words appear in the new translation of Ulysses, in Pascal Bataillard’s episodes, as the decision was his but not unanimously approved by all team members:30 With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort. (U 3.372) À pas de femme elle suit. Le ruffian et sa ribaude. (F/Morel 2, 53) De ses pas de femme elle le suit: le ruffian chouraveur et sa meuf tournant en balade. (F/Aubert 2, 112) And there he is, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and him laughing at a yarn. (U 16.685-6) Et visez-le maintenant, ajouta-t-il, c’est le même type, tout en se tirant la peau avec les doigts, un truc à lui évidemment, le voilà qui rit d’une histoire. (F/Morel 2, 678) Et le voilà maintenant, ajouta-t-il. Le même keum, tirant la peau de ses doigts, un truc spécial évidemment, et lui qui rigole d’une bonne histoire de matelot. (F/Aubert 2, 488) “Meuf” is the verlan form for femme (woman) while “keum” is that of mec (bloke). Both words are quite commonly used in colloquial language and would be understood and identified as slang by most 21st-century readers, contrary for instance to Morel’s “ribaude” which is archaic, whereas “type” is colloquial but more standard (fellow). Although the widespread use of these two words was recognized in the reference dictionary Le Petit Robert in 2005, which means that they appeared in the retranslation of Ulysses before being fully lexicalized, this type of slang still remains associated to a specific French social reality, as it originated in the “working-class, immigrant-populated northern suburbs of Paris” according to a case study by Natalie J. Lefkowitz.31 The translation thus bears the mark of the time at which it was undertaken and although providing diastratic variations in the target language is a form of faithfulness to Joycean linguistic variety and playfulness, and therefore a creative gesture on the part of the translator, using verlan is an anachronism as well as a form of domestication in the context of Ulysses because it is strongly rooted and fairly stigmatized in French linguistic history. This controversial element 30 31

Autour de la nouvelle traduction de Ulysses: table ronde. Natalie J. Lefkowitz, “Verlan: Talking Backwards in French,” The French Review 63, no. 2 (1989): 313.

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furthermore raises the question of the reception and status of Ulysses in the 21st century: can verlan be used in a literary classic from the 1920s? It is closer to us, but is it closer to Joyce? The seventy-five-year gap between the two translations and the resulting hindsight, with the emergence of Joycean scholarship and the evolution of French literature and language, along with the move from writer-translators to scholar-translators, are the main differences between the first and second Ulysse “in [their] French dress.” Aubert’s team of retranslators was well-aware of the impact of Morel’s translation and they decided to work on the elements that had either made the text opaque through time or on those which could not benefit from the prodigious amount of criticism on Joyce’s work, from the very existence of Finnegans Wake or from the experimentations in French literature itself. While the 1929 translation focused on semantics and tone, the 2004 focused on syntax and style; Morel tended to domesticate, whereas Aubert’s team tried to foreignize; when the first team of translators made clearcut choices, the retranslators tended to provide a version of the text that is sometimes lengthened by a will to be comprehensive as if to compensate for the absence of footnotes. The new translation is more precise, more daring and in many ways more consistent than its predecessor, although the decision concerning “Oxen of the Sun” occasioned a few irregularities. It is also more accessible for 21st-century readers for linguistic reasons, but for commercial reasons too as Morel’s translation is now only available in the prestigious highend Pléiade edition, while Aubert’s team’s was published in the “Du monde entier” collection in 2004 and re-edited in the budget-friendly “Folio” collection which includes part of the critical apparatus from the Pléiade edition respectively available for about a quarter and for a tenth of the Pléiade price. In that regard, Gallimard’s editorial decisions reflect Aubert’s characterization of Morel’s work as “a monument” and of a retranslation designed to be “closer to us.”32 32

It is also asserted on the back cover of the 2004 edition: “La présente traduction s’adresse, elle, aux générations d’aujourd’hui, pour lesquelles la lecture, l’écriture, et leur intrication, constitutive de la tradition littéraire, introduisent à un univers autre, textuel, marqué par la diversité et la polyphonie.” (James Joyce, Ulysse. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.)

Chapter 2

A Revision Abandoned Fritz Senn

Abstract This chapter looks at the revision of the 1976 German translation of Joyce’s Ulysses, a collaborative project undertaken by scholars. The discussion of the legal issues is followed by a few examples that illustrate why a revision was needed and warranted. The examples address the matters of language register, idiom, punctuation, internal monologue, and a few others, to suggest that the German translation had a very different effect on German readers than did the original on the English-reading audience.

James Joyce: Ulysses: Roman, Übersetzung von Hans Wollschläger. Revision der Übersetzung Harald Beck mit Ruth Frehner und Ursula Zeller. Beratende Mitwirkung Fritz Senn. Vorwort Harald Beck (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2018), “Unverkäuflicher Sonderdruck” is a book with a merely bibliographical but no practical existence: it was aborted before its publication. You cannot buy it. A mere 200 copies are reserved for a handful of experts and participants as well as libraries as a live document of what can happen to the literary revision of a classic. The subject is revisions of Ulysses translations. In the nature of translations, revisions are normal and necessary, not least because new generations seem to demand updates. There are by now hundreds of renderings of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare since new approaches change over centuries and fashions, but also because translators focus on diverse and often entirely new facets. The number of possible translations of any literary work like Ulysses is unlimited. Almost every single sentence could be handled otherwise. Ever since copyright restrictions have fallen new attempts have been made to square the literary circle to improve or set distinctive priorities. In broad outlines, the first translations of Ulysses were hard put to get the facts and realia right, already intricate enough with terms like “curates,” “shebeens,” or “homerule.” At a secondary stage the stylistic spectrum, allusions, refractions or registers (HibernoEnglish) have complicated the issues involved. No wonder we now have three or more versions in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese etc., and at least two in French, German, Greek, Turkish, with no end in sight.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_004

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On top of it all, legal aspects may intervene, as in the case of the abovementioned spectral book. In Germany, Georg Goyert was the first to translate Ulysses almost unaided. He did have opportunities to consult the author but seems to have made little use of it, in the time of correspondence by letters. One such letter extant at Southern Illinois University shows that Goyert had a mere 14 questions for the Coda, the last part, of “Oxen of the Sun,” one of the most resistant parts of the whole epic. When the German Ulysses entered the scene in 1927, in three expensive volumes, it caused quite a stir and had an impact on writers who did not read English. Joyce, however, voiced dissatisfaction – no wonder since Goyert obviously had next to no experience of Dublin and scant access to slang. Therefore, the first translation of 1927 was revised by the publisher, Daniel Brody of Rhein Verlag, with some but hardly extensive advice from Joyce (who had turned his attention to “Work in Progress”). The 1929 French translation by Auguste Morel and others was heavily consulted, and the revised German version appeared in 1930 in two still expensive, handsome volumes and was subsequently replaced, with minor changes, by one volume as the only German version.1 Revisions are not without intrinsic hazards. The 1927 Ulysses had gone seriously astray over “the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying” in “Eumaeus” (U 16.535), and, as often, the revising committee consulted the authorised French version, which offered “de formalités et de mesures dilatoires” (F/Morel 552), and adapted it literally “… Formalitäten und diktatorischen Massnahmen” (D/Goyert 629). No doubt, what they aimed at was “dilatorischen Massnahmen,” but in all likelihood a typesetter was unfamiliar with the adjective “dilatorisch” and replaced it with the much more common “diktatorisch” which, in the Germany of the time, was certainly very much in the air. The blunder amounts to a cultural, contemporary slip that, it seems, escaped everyone’s attention. In the mid-1960’s, the rights had ceded to Suhrkamp Verlag who decided to have a complete edition of Joyce’s works, the “Suhrkamp-Ausgabe” under the editorship of Klaus Reichert. Ulysses was assigned to Hans Wollschläger, translator and author of great reputation and one of the best stylists at hand, a disciple, incidentally, of Arno Schmidt. Wollschläger spent several years on the task and sent drafts to me as the internal copy-editor and coordinator; Ulysses necessarily had to be brought in line with Dubliners, translated by Dieter E. Zimmer, and A Portrait (Klaus Reichert). 1 The changes are documented in Breon Mitchell, James Joyce and the German Novel 1922-1933. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976, 56-89.

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The editorial process was complicated; I read through the drafts and added suggestions and corrections, sent them back and then received the changed, or unchanged, version for renewed perusal. At a later stage, Klaus Reichert also overhauled the version (and essentially contributed to the “Oxen of the Sun” episode); then of course proofs were read by all three. The second German Ulysses was published early in 1976. Reichert and I, the philological and often pedantic suppliers who, inevitably, cramped Wollschläger’s elegant (we at times thought too elegant) style, and, aware of inevitable as well as gratuitous flaws, were apprehensive when the finished translation was ceremoniously launched and at the mercy of tendentiously supercilious German reviewers – were all the more astonished that, without the indispensable time for scrupulous comparisons, the new Ulysses was lauded into the literary Olympus as the “translation of the century”(!), practically overnight. It became an instant classic, and deservedly so, and even more so when Hans Wollschläger proved to be an enthralling performer who gathered an enthusiastic fellowship behind him. The base of the 1976 Ulysses anteceded the Synoptic and Critical Edition by Hans Walter Gabler, which appeared in 1984, and it was always understood that the translation would be updated. This, however, only occurred in 2007, when an oral agreement was reached between Wollschläger and the publisher that the authoritative text would be considered and some other necessary adjustments (errors, oversights) would be made. A few months later Wollschläger died and years afterwards it turned out that no written contract had been made. Harald Beck, an excellent Joyce scholar with abundant expertise who had been part of Gabler’s editorial team, was entrusted with the revision, assisted by two academic Joyce scholars who were later replaced by Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller. The existing translation of considerable reputation was scrupulously gone over, and, inevitably, every alteration entailed consequences elsewhere, so that interventions proliferated. Within a decade the original version was effectively overhauled, mainly with the aim of factual accuracy and internal consistency. What the publisher deplorably neglected to do was to secure the rights of the revision. There is no question that Wollschläger would never have agreed to massive alterations by three, or more, expert revisers. So, when the revised translation was announced in the spring of 2017, the Wollschläger Estate stepped in and interdicted the publication. In its view, Wollschläger’s “work of art” had been destroyed, desecrated. The publisher announced the withdrawal and lukewarmly apologized. Die Zeit, a German weekly, ran a superficial account of the affair, which was taken up but soon forgotten and a necessary public examination never occurred.

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There is, with the exception of the 200 special copies mentioned above, no revised German Ulysses – it would have been more “revised” than “Wollschläger.” All the enormous effort that went into the adjustment is thus wasted. Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller give an account in this volume of what they had reason to change. Hans Wollschläger’s Ulysses has its uncontested merits. It has had an impact on contemporary German literature. At the same time, there is justification for a revision (now impossible) or a replacement. We now know so much more about the novel/epic, especially because so many notes and drafts have become available and are studied intensely. New aspects keep coming to light.

… Preparatory to anything to follow, I must admit that all points raised about the Wollschläger translation can also be chalked up against myself as it was my responsibility to oversee the entire work. Of course, in the numerous instances of disagreement the translator’s choice was decisive. And then Wollschläger, a recluse genius not inclined to work within a team, was not excessively amenable to corrections, many of which confessedly annoyed him, and he tended to prefer his own instincts. He was able to formulate with brilliance and in his translation he excelled at the more literary passages, but he was less at home with common usage or even slang. He was given the unique opportunity to spend a few weeks in Dublin to absorb its atmosphere and its idioms, but he declined the generous offer – as “one look at Joyce’s handwriting” would tell him more than a visit to Ireland. So, the lower registers, say Bloom’s thoughts or Irish colloquialisms, were not his strength; his interior monologue has an air of conscious reflection rather than spontaneous associations. Frequent use of clarifying punctuation makes Bloom seem much more in control, and whatever is pre-grammatical in the original is made to comply to the rules that Joyce felt in no need to oblige. Some idioms do not seem familiar. Bloom tells Mrs Breen that his daughter is “getting on like a house on fire,” which becomes “Legt sich ganz schön ins Zeug, die Kleine” (G/Wollschläger 218, “puts her shoulder to the wheel”). Bloom muses that if one were to write a love letter in terms of pure mathematics, it would “[f]all quite flat” (U 11.602); Wollschläger’s “Da schlägt man doch lang hin” (376) takes an entirely different direction: “that would knock you flat down.” Some constructions were misunderstood. In the talk about the postcard sent to Mr Breen, a lawyer’s opinion, “It implies that he is not compos mentis.

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U. p: up.” is countered by “– Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he’s balmy?” (U 12.1043). This becomes: Es wird da angedeutet, daß er nicht ganz compos mentis sei. U. p. up. – Angedeutet? Du bist wohl selber nicht ganz compos! (G/Wollschläger 445) The implication is that “he is not quite compos mentis” turns into: “– Implication? You are not quite compos yourself!,” as though it were directed at the lawyer. Bloom thinks of young babies (“t.t’s,” tiny tots) and their demands: “Selfish those t.t’s are” (U 8.366). The babies become teetotallers (also abbreviated as “t.t”): “Wie selbstsüchtig diese Antialkoholiker doch sind” (G/Wollschläger 225). A simple everyday question in a pub, “Who’s standing?” (U 8.994), is extended and elaborated into “Wer am höchsten in der Kreide steht, gibt eine Runde aus” (G/Wollschläger 280: “whoever is most in debt will stand a round”). One danger is interpretation without enough evidence. “Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss. Enthusiast” (U 4.492). The butcher’s enthusiasm is most likely connected with his Zionist propaganda. The Wollschläger version turns him into a lecher: “Tiefe Stimme hat der Kerl, Dlugacz. Agenda undwieweiter? Das wär’s, mein Fräulein. Ist scharf auf sie” (G/Wollschläger 96: “is keen on her”). In retrospect, I wonder if I did not catch such flaws at the time and find it hard to think that I did not. But then, unfortunately, Wollschläger never returned our drafts and corrections. But I am certain that both Reichert and I insisted that Eglinton’s “I admire him [Shakespeare], as old Ben did, this side idolatry” (U9.45) is erroneously rendered as “… obschon ich ihn bewundere, wie der alte Ben es tat, was hierzulande Götzendienst ist” (260, “… which is, here in these parts, [considered] idolatry“). The term “Götzendienst” renders Old Testament “idolatry” and retains its totally negative censure; Ben Johnson had in mind that he did not idolize Shakespeare. Inevitably, there are oversights as when Bloom’s remark on Gerty MacDowell – “That’s why she’s left on the shelf and the others did a sprint” (13.773) – was misunderstood: that Gerty is “left on the shelf” is translated literally as “Deswegen also war sie auf dem Felsvorsprung sitzen geblieben, als die andern einen Wettlauf machten,” A “shelf” can indeed mean a ledge of rock (“Felsvorsprung”), such as the one Gerty is seated on (U 13.513), but the figurative idiom was overlooked. When Mulligan mockingly asks the milkwoman “Is there Gaelic on you?” (1.427), his word-by-word transliteration of how “Do

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you speak Gaelic?” would sound in Gaelic is beyond a translator’s reach, but “Nichts mit Gälisch bei Ihnen?” (G/Wollschläger 22) changes the tone to a gruff contempt of her ignorance. In “Sirens,” when Bloom is passing by the Ormond bar, one might get confused about what is going on with “boots”: Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the Ormond hallway heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping, their boots all treading, boots not the boots the boy (U 11.1142) How to deal with “boots not the boots the boy”? It looks – and in part is – a play on words, so that some kind of joke is recreated: Den horchenden jungen Haus grobbulligen Hausknecht schreckend, hörte Bloom in der Ormond-Halle Brummen und Brüllen von Bravo, fettes Rückenklopfen, Schuhgetrappel, Stimmgebelle, nicht Rebell, der Boy (G/Wollschläger 397) The repetitive boots are replaced by an echoing “Stimmgebelle, nicht Rebell” (voice-barking, not rebel) for the sake of phonetic, or musical, effect. The original does not primarily sport a frivolous jingle but interposes a meta comment typical for the episode: by lexical coincidence “boots” refers both to footwear and the boy who cleans the boots in a hotel, it is an embedded linguistic footnote. Some additions sound gratuitous. Wollschläger had a penchant for minor and not so minor amplifications. Bloom’s terse “Might be the one bit me, come back to see,” remembering a bee-sting (13.1144), is considerably spread out: “Könnte vielleicht die gewesen sein, die mich gestochen hatte, kam mal wieder vorbei, um nachzusehen” (G/Wollschläger 529). Questioned about the funeral, Bloom thinks: “Going to crop up all day, I foresee” (U 8.215), which is rephrased: “Jetzt werd ich den ganzen Tag ausgefragt, bis aufs Hemd, sehs schon” (G/Wollschläger 219): “bis aufs Hemd” is added (something like “to the last shirt”), without any obvious gain. A simple, almost low key fleeting memory – “That was a nice nun there, really sweet face” (U 8.144), is expanded to “So ein reizendes Ding, das Nönnchen da, richtig süßes Gesicht,” with decorative elaboration and a choice diminutive: “Such a nice thing, that little nun there…” (G/Wollschläger 216). The flavour is changed, though one might well claim that the translation in itself “reads well.”

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Punctuation cannot be simply transferred from one language into another and it would be otiose to demand exact correspondence. Wollschläger tends to insert commas for the sake of better understanding: Bloom remembers a dress his wife wore: “She didn’t like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore it choir picnic at the Sugarloaf” (U 8.165) – all in one rush. “Sie mochte es gar nicht, weil ich mir den Knöchel verstauchte am ersten Tag, wo sies trug, beim Chor-Picknick, auf dem Sugarloaf” (G/Wollschläger 217; the translation is accurate, word by word, but is split up into five discrete units). One might qestion if punctuation has any function in the interior monologue; commas are a sign of structural control which is precisely what thronging nascent thoughts or phrases pointedly lack. There are small, trivial matters too, as for example Bloom’s habit of beginning thoughts with “Wonder why/if …,” which is almost a trademark of his interior monologue, but so low key that it is hardly registered (the “Calypso” chapter alone contains 8 instances). Bloom’s casual remark on a former lawyer, “Wonder why he was struck off the rolls” (U 6.232), becomes more ponderously reflective: “Da möcht ich wohl wissen, warum man dem die Zulassung gestrichen hat” (G/Wollschläger 132). In more narrated episodes like the first part of “Nausicaa,” Joyce can move from the interior of a nearby Church to the beach and Gerty MacDowell’s thoughts in one breathless sweep without any interruption: Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all saints, they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father Conroy handed the thurible to Canon O’Hanlon and he put in the incense and censed the Blessed Sacrament [*] and Cissy Caffrey caught the two twins [*] and she was itching to give them a ringing good clip on the ear but she didn’t [*] because she thought he might be watching [*] but she never made a bigger mistake in all her life because Gerty could see without looking that he never took his eyes off of her [*] and then Canon O’Hanlon handed the thurible back to Father Conroy and knelt down looking up at the Blessed Sacrament and the choir began to sing the Tantum ergo [*] and she just swung her foot in and out in time as the music rose and fell to the tantumer gosa cramen tum. (U 13.489) The items of the Litany of the Virgin are separated by commas, but then we move from the actions in the Church to Cissy on the strand and then to her thoughts and from there to how Gerty reacts to her, and we finally swing back to the church events and once more to Gerty – all without a single pause or

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punctuation (indicated above by [*]). Its omission must be intentional. The translation shows other intentions (indicated by commas in bold): Königin der Engel, Königin der Patriarchen, Königin der Propheten, der Heiligen all, beteten sie, Königin des allerheiligsten Rosenkranzes, und dann übergab Pater Conroy dem Kanonikus O’Hanlon das Räucherfaß, und er legte den Weihrauch hinein und beräucherte das Gesegnete Sakrament, und Cissy Caffrey fing die beiden Zwillinge ein, und es juckte sie, ihnen eine Ohrfeige zu geben, die sich gewaschen hatte, doch tat sie es nicht, weil sie dachte, er könnte sie vielleicht beobachten, aber niemals in ihrem ganzen Leben beging sie einen größeren Irrtum, denn Gerty konnte auch ohne hinüberzublicken sehen, daß er kein Auge von ihr wandte, und dann gab Kanonikus O’Hanlon das Weihrauchgefäß an Pater Conroy zurück und kniete nieder und blickte empor zum Gesegneten Sakrament, und der Chor begann das Tantum ergo zu singen, und sie schwang den Fuß her und hin im Takt, während die Musik zum Tantumer gosa cramen tum anstieg und fiel. (G/Wollschläger 501) The orchestration changes by the insertion of more than a dozen commas, according to the rulebook. Features like Anglo-Irish or regional slang are generally beyond the translator’s grasp. A case in point is Buck Mulligan’s clever and unmistakeable imitation of Synge’s artful diction: – It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. ‘Twas murmur we did for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I’m thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery’s sitting civil waiting for pints apiece. (U 9.558-62) Given the impossibility of an adequate rendering, Wollschläger settled for a Berlinese variant, clever in its own way and eminently quotable: Also wat saar ick dir, Männeken, wa ham uns schon janz dumm un dämlich jesessen, der Haines un icke, wie det Kerlchen da uff eemal det Ding reinflattern läßt. Wo uns der Pansen druff stand, det war eene Spülung, also eene Spülung, saar ick, die selbst dem Herrn Pastor uff die Beene jebracht hätte, un er, wat macht er? Er läßt sich det Kreuz von die Nutten weichleiern. Un da sitzen wa so eene Stunde und noch zweie un

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dreie in dem ollen Connery seinem Saftladen, janz jesittet un zivilistisch, un warten, det et endlich mit regnen anfängt. (G/Wollschläger 272) Fake Synge is replaced by the slang of a big German city, a major move that is easy to condemn. But an effect is achieved, one poignantly out of place (no attempt at glossing is made here, this would be in turn a major translation problem the other way around). In such case, translation faces the dilemma of either not marking a distinctive eccentricity at all or else marking it wrongly, and hardly any blame can be attached for a bold diversion. In all fairness, it would be otiose to expect translators to recreate an Anglo-Irish register or in fact differences in dialect. The deviation into Berlin slang, an obvious makeshift, is not consistently applied. In the Gothic Novel passage of “Oxen of the Sun”, Mulligan’s twisted report on what Haines may have uttered at a soirée is again unmistakably couched in the distinctive Synge style: … This is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? (U 14.1018) The German rendering remains fairly literal: Davon mag meine Erscheinung wohl künden. Donner und Ewigkeit, wie soll ich überhaupt wohl Ruhe finden, murmelte er dumpf, wo ich die ganze Zeit durch Dublin wandere mit meinen lumpigen paar Liedern und er hinter mir her ist wie ein Gespenst oder ein Nachtmahr? (G/Wollschläger 579) No German reader would suspect a hint of an Irish flavour and, more seriously, no connection could be made between two passages far apart. Certain textual links inevitably do not survive in translation. The point of these samples is simply that the vaunted translation that a German audience read and enjoyed and largely admired, is an outstanding work of art by Hans Wollschläger that does not always do justice to what James Joyce may have had in mind, potentially the impeccable work of a genius, to which Joyce’s original is only slightly inferior. To revise it would not be a sacrilege, but could be amply justified; the main question is how far it should

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go. Since a revision is no longer a possibility, an entirely new translation might be preferred and after more than 40 years is perhaps overdue. Maybe it is already in the wings.

Chapter 3

The Revision of Hans Wollschläger’s German Ulysses Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller

Abstract Two scholars who were part of the team of revisers of Hans Wollschläger’s translation of Ulysses discuss a few clusters of challenges to overcome. After outlining the team’s translatorial priorities, the first part of this essay focuses on the worlds of thought of Bloom and Molly, by tackling the language of visual and sensory formulations that resists interlinguistic transfer. Examples of Joyce’s use of interior monologue, HibernoEnglish, and other syntactical experiments serve to illustrate Wollschläger’s departures from the original that the revision sought to amend. The second part is devoted to the challenges of linguistic musicality in “Sirens.” It is particularly interesting to examine Wollschläger’s approach as a translator to the episode’s syntactic and lexical musicality, transposition, sound, rhythm, and register – given that Wollschläger was a musicologist and trained musician.

1

Translational Priorities: Counterparts1

In German culture, Hans Wollschläger’s translation of Ulysses (1975) has canonical and cult status. Understanding itself as a Nachdichtung, a work of art in its own right rather than translation proper, it continues to be celebrated for its powerful, unique style(s). In fact, some readers of the German Ulysses find that even after moving on to the original, the “Wollschläger sound” still reverberates in, and overlays their appreciation of Joyce’s unique English. In view of such qualities, some thirty years after its appearance, Suhrkamp decided in favour of a revision of Wollschläger rather than a new translation. But well aware that its quality by necessity also constituted its shortcoming, they

1 This paper consists of two originally separate essays. The part on interior monologue is by Ruth Frehner, the one on “Sirens” by Ursula Zeller. Chapter 2 in this volume also discusses Wollschläger’s translation of Ulysses.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_005

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appointed a team of revisers who explicitly understood their role to be that of scholar-translators. Apart from its first and obvious task of harmonizing the translation with Gabler’s critical edition of the original – which had been Wollschläger’s own express wish – the revision’s major focus was thus on the documentary character of the text, i.e. it reads Ulysses as a linguistic and cultural document of its time and place, basing its work on decades of Joycean research mainly in the lexicological, philological, and popular culture fields. The revision sought to bring across both features of Joyce’s text: the stylistic/experimental as well as the documentary, which of course sometimes led to a conflict of priorities. In that case, it would give precedence to the latter. Wollschläger, by contrast, made a point of ignoring the “veritable flood” of Joyce scholarship, declaring it to be mostly “irrelevant.”2 He thereby also chose to ignore Joyce’s near obsessive concern with factual and technical accuracy, which was just then beginning to be explored in more detail. Wollschläger saw his central, if not sole task in the recreation of the novel’s unique aesthetic form, its autonomous, entirely non-referential linguistic structure,3 as he understood it, to which Goyert’s early translation had – by necessity, Wollschläger admitted – been unable to do justice. Wollschläger was well aware of the double-bind resulting from this single focus: while Joyce’s stylistic radicalness called for a break of translational rules and for the translator’s own creativity “to an unprecedented extent,” that same creativity had to be surrendered to Joyce’s. In particular, he deplored the necessity to reproduce the “impurity” of Joyce’s language, its “fragments and defects,” its debris, as well as Joyce’s volitional errors: an obligation that he, a writer himself, experienced as artistic “self-abdication.”4 In view of such an attitude it is hardly surprising that in practice Wollschläger did not always abide by his theoretical insight, but chose to smooth over irregularities of the source text, to “correct” and “improve” on interior monologue passages, for example, ellipses and “lacking” punctuation, or types of register.5 Wollschläger’s domesticating and explicating tendency is another feature where the revision sets in.

2 Hans Wollschläger, “‘Und weinte Buttermilch.’ Schwierigkeiten beim Übersetzen des Ulysses,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 December 1975: no pagination (our translation). 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 At some stage, Wollschläger had even toyed with the idea of punctuating the “Penelope” chapter, thus removing the semantic ambiguities inherent in the gliding syntax even where it could be saved in the German translation. Cf. Dieter E. Zimmer, “Zum Schreien schwierig. Wie die Neuübersetzung von Joyces Kolossalroman entstand.” Die Zeit, 30 January 1976, 34.

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It foreignizes the German translation, in equivalence to the original’s rougher textual surface, reintroducing ambiguities and opaqueness, making the translation yet a bit more of the challenge that Joyce’s text is to native speakers. This started with putting a pronoun back in here and there, for which Wollschläger had given a likely referent. A major case in point is the interior monologue. Wollschläger’s standardizations often diminished the interior monologue’s elliptic nature and waywardness. His overall practice of inserting articles, commas, filler words, explanatory turns of phrases, is particularly inappropriate in interior monologue, as it undermines the very nature of this narrative technique. Above all Molly got her share: a word count shows that Wollschläger managed to extend Molly’s monologue by 17.2%, while the rest of the book only grew by 5.9%.6 In other aspects too, the trademark and strength of Wollschläger’s Ulysses, his linguistic and stylistic originality – who could have come up with such clever solutions like “Berater / Bereiter” for “the wife’s advisers – admirers” (U 12.767ff.)?7 – produced instances in which his creativity runs counter to Joyce’s. Moreover, there are instances where he compensated a lack of knowledge and understanding by creative invention. For the revisers this meant the replacing of a sparkling neologism with a standard expression. Beck gives an example in his preface to the revision: “creature cocoa” (U 17.370), which in Wollschläger became “sahnungsvolle(r) Kakao,” a curious, if pretty portmanteau of Sahne and ahnungsvoll, “cream” and “full of (negative) intimations.” The nocturnal cocoa is now a mere, but rather poetical “Labsal Kakao,” a delicious refreshment, in accordance with the OED’s definition of “creature” as “material comfort promoting well-being.”8 The revision, which offers a fairly literal translation, opted against Wollschläger’s wordplay, as ahnungsvoll is rather pointless in the context and cannot live up to Joyce’s pun on creature comfort. Rather, it compensated the loss of pun by choosing a word with a somewhat different, elevated register. Apart from physical comforts, “Labsal”

6 Thus, Molly’s “well I suppose he wont find many like me” (U 18.1334) becomes “also da kann ich mich schon sehen lassen sowas wie mich findet er da nicht alle Tage” (G/Wollschläger 1002): nine words nearly double to seventeen in the translation. The revision reduces this to eleven words: “also so eine wie mich findet er wohl nicht alle Tage” (G/Wollschläger-R 869). 7 “Berater” is the equivalent of adviser, while “Bereiter” carries Bloom’s Freudian slip from chivalry (no pun intended) into the sexual realm, and hence possibly closer to Bloom’s subconscious fears: a “Bereiter” being a person who breaks in horses, here refers to “riding a woman like a horse.” 8 Harald Beck, “Preface to the revision.” Ulysses. Trans. Hans Wollschläger, revised by Harald Beck, with Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller. Consultant Fritz Senn. With a preface by Harald Beck (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2018), 13.

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often denotes spiritual ones; a religious overtone which resonates in the context of the mass that the narrative mockingly celebrates in the protagonists’ joint libation of “Epps’s mass product.” The major part of the lexicological and documentary research, it is true, was not accessible in Wollschläger’s time – even if he had had an interest in it at all. In particular, Google books and vast virtual libraries greatly facilitated the work of philologists and brought to light many new Joycean sources from newspapers, pamphlets, advertisements and popular literature, revealing an almost entirely new intertextual network, which could also be made visible in the German version. Such intensive investigation during the revision in a number of cases resulted in a lucky coincidence of Wollschläger’s and the revisers’ priorities, and actually helped to put sound before sense, or to adjust and refine the register, as the discussion of “Sirens” will show. The only sense in which Wollschläger took Ulysses to be a historical document was literary. In his essay, he refers to a metaphor by Fritz Senn, one of his editors, for the novel’s language as a “historical museum” and he goes as far as describing Ulysses as virtually composed of literary quotes and echoes:9 the Bible, Shakespeare & Co., and other mostly canonical literature. This is where he stops; his notion of intertextuality derives from a high-culture definition of literature. However, by carrying Senn’s image of the novel to an extreme, he seemed in principle, if not always in practice, to share the revisers’ position that in Ulysses, rather than inventing new words, Joyce was infinitely creative with the treasures, high and low, that he found. Hiberno-English is certainly the most prevalent form of dialect in Ulysses, Irish shining through on the level of both syntax and vocabulary. On the one hand, in Ulysses, Hiberno-English comes very “naturally” to its Dublin characters, whose use of it is not just local colour, but “has something to say about [the characters’] role in the narrative and [their] social situation,” resulting in “different Dublin voices … which can be distinguished by their uses of Hiberno-English.”10 The use of such constructions is quite subtle and might manifest itself only in a contact clause where the relative pronoun is omitted as in Bloom’s “what was the name of that priestylooking chap was always squinting in when he passed?” (U 8.176).11 On the other hand, it occurs as parody, as for instance in Buck Mulligan’s mock-Synge speech in “Scylla

9 10

11

Wollschläger, “Und weinte Buttermilch.” Gisela Zingg, Is there Hiberno-English on Them? Hiberno-English in Modern Irish Literature: The Use of Dialect in Joyce, O’Brien, Shaw and Friel (Bern, New York, etc: Peter Lang, 2013), 82-83. Zingg, 235.

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& Charybdis”: “It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we were, Haines and myself …” (U 9.558). Wollschläger, in a fairly free adaptation, transposed Mulligan’s imitation of rural Hiberno-English into a Berlin brogue and thus into a dialectal form with urban connotations: “Also wat saar ich dir, Männeken, wa ham uns schon janz dumm un dämlich jesessen, der Haines und icke …” (G/Wollschläger 280). Moreover, Wollschläger’s “Männeken” (Berlin dialect for “manikin,” “little man,” “dwarf”) is hardly adequate for “mister honey,” Mulligan’s temporary nickname for Stephen which comes straight out of Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.12 With “Und daß du’s nur weißt, Honigjunge, uns war’s da richtig speiübel, dem Haines und mir selber” (G/Wollschläger-R 243), the revision opted for a different strategy: to avoid the trap of an identifiable dialect by using colloquial language and providing a link to “mister honey” – “Honigjunge” – of the German translation of the Playboy.13 One exception to the principle of the revision to bring the language closer to the original are early parts of the “Oxen” episode set in Dublin’s Maternity Hospital where, in analogy to the development of an embryo, the story is told in the style of the historical stages of old and middle English. While Joyce did not make any concessions as to historical orthography, Wollschläger used it prominently as a marker to emphasise the language development, thereby reducing the readability of an already complex text. However, the revision did not interfere here, as it wanted to preserve the very specific character of Wollschläger’s translation in this episode. Thus it limited itself to bringing it in line with the critical text, for instance in the case of a change of just one letter: the preGabler editions read “perpetuation” in “the problem of the perpetration of the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape” (U 14.971).14 And of course it emended minor errors, mainly of a lexical nature.

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14

John Millington Synge, “The Playboy of the Western World,” in Four Plays and The Aran Islands, ed. Robin Skelton. The World’s Classics 585 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 87ff. John Millington Synge, Der Held der westlichen Welt, translated into German by Anna Elisabeth Wiede and Peter Hacks. 1956 (Leipzig: Reclam, 1961). See Beck, “Preface to the revision,” 17. The Paris First Edition of Ulysses also had “perpetration,” but it read “perpetuation” from the 8th edition (1926) onwards. In his textual notes to the synoptic edition, Gabler maintains that the word was most probably put on the errata list of the first edition by assistants (Stuart Gilbert?) since the autograph errata listings do not extend to this chapter. See Hans Walter Gabler, “Textual Notes,” in James Joyce, Ulysses. Critical and Synoptic Edition, ed. Hans Walter Gabler, with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior, Vol. 3 (New York: Garland, 1984), 1746.

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Interior Monologues Revisited and Revised

A major concern of the revision focused on the interior monologue of the three protagonists, in particular Bloom’s and Molly’s. Its interventions in their all too well-phrased thoughts and meanderings considerably helped to bring the translation closer to the original text. Just how much this did matter to Joyce we know from Frank Budgen: when asked how he was progressing with the novel, Joyce answered that he had been working hard all day on just two sentences. Budgen thought of Flaubert and the mot juste – but Joyce told him that he had already found the words and had been trying to find the perfect word order.15 The context is this: in “Lestrygonians,” a peckish Bloom passes, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers, with its silk ribbons, lady’s finest underwear on display. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore. (U 8.637-39) Wollschläger translates this as follows: Sein Hirn gab sich hin. Parfüm von Umarmung fiel ihn allseits an. Mit ausgehungertem Fleisch, dunkel, flehte er stumm darum, Anbeter sein zu dürfen. (G/Wollschläger 236) The very plain syntax of “fiel ihn allseits an” for “all him assailed” does not reflect the original’s unusual word order. Only a slight change to “fiel allseits ihn an” would have produced assonances of l-sounds (“fiel allseits…”) and nsounds (“ihn an“) and thus, importantly, a certain fluidity.16 The last part, “flehte er…” (“he begged silently to be allowed to be an adorer”) is a rather clumsy infinitive structure which somehow destroys the mystery and musicality of these erotically charged sentences. This is the final version of Wollschläger revised: Sein Hirn gab sich hin. Dufthauch von Umarmung allseits ihn bestürmt’. Mit hungerndem Fleisch verschwommen, sehnt’ er sich anbetend stumm. (G/Wollschläger-R 209) 15 16

Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, 1934 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 20. This was in fact an early version of the revision: “Sein Hirn gab sich hin. Parfüm von Umarmungen fiel allseits ihn an. Mit ausgehungertem Fleisch, dunkel, ersehnte er stumm anzubeten” (G/Wollschläger-R, draft version October 2010).

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From “Parfüm” to “Dufthauch”: while “Duft” (scent, fragrance) pertains to olfaction, “Hauch” (waft, whiff) as in the composite “hauchdünn” (very thin and delicate), in the given context also carries something of the materiality (or should one say immateriality?) of silks and semi-transparent stockings and underwear. Thus “Dufthauch” is a kind of hinge between Bloom’s merely visual impression and his olfactorily enhanced reverie. “Allseits ihn bestürmt’” for “all him assailed” is more intense and suggests sudden and vehement excitement rather than what “fiel ihn allseits an” connotes, i.e. “to be overcome by fear, tiredness or homesickness.”17 “Verschwommen” (obscurely) foregrounds not so much the aspect of darkness that “dunkel” expresses, but means above all that something is not clear, blurred, or difficult to see or understand, which also has a strong semantic component of “obscurely.” The “m-” and “n-” assonances and the long-drawn /e:/ sounds (“sehnt’,” “anbetend”) reinforce Bloom’s yearning, just as the elision of the final “e” in the two past-tense verb forms “bestürmt’” and “sehnt’” add a poetic element. And finally, “sehnt’ er sich anbetend stumm” produces a kind of oscillation; with this unusual word order, “stumm” (mute) can be an adverb, here to qualify “sich sehnen” (he mutely craved), but it could also be read as an adjective in the sense of “he craved to be adoring [and] mute.” Only a few minutes after the silks and stockings, Bloom enters Davy Byrne’s Pub and thinks about what he should have: Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. (U 8.758-60) Paar Oliven möchte ich wohl auch ganz gern, wenn sie die dahaben. Italienische sind mir am liebsten. Ein Gläschen guter Burgunder: räumt sie weg, diese ganze. Rutscht dann wie geschmiert. Dann noch einen schönen Salat, dann bin ich wieder die Ruhe selbst. Tom Kernan, der versteht was vom Anmachen. Bringt Pfiff in die Sache. Reines Olivenöl. (G/Wollschläger 241) Wollschläger had a full stop after “cool as a cucumber,” so he associated the somewhat free-floating expression, an idiom that means “die Ruhe selbst [sein] / [to be] very calm,” with Bloom’s state of mind, losing the cucumber and with it a potential indeterminacy. It is questionable whether the reader in

17

Already Goyert had used “bestürmte” (192).

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the target language, by courtesy of the translator, should have an easier reading experience than the reader of the original: even with the full stop after the cucumber a possible reference of the phrase to Tom Kernan is at least thinkable. In the critical edition there is now a comma after “cucumber,” which reinforces the degree of indeterminacy of “cool as a cucumber.” A reference to Tom Kernan is now just as plausible as it is to Bloom. Moreover, the allusion to Kernan is comic, because he is not only known for his salad dressings, but he also has a streak of vanity in him as far as his dress is concerned. Ein paar Oliven wär schön, wenn sie die hätten. Italienische am liebsten. Gutes Glas Burgunder nimmt das. Ölt. Ein schöner Salat, kühl wie ne Gurke, Tom Kernan, der versteht was vom Anmachen. Bringt Pfiff in die Sache. Reines Olivenöl. (G/Wollschläger-R 213) There is no way to reproduce the double sense of “dress” in “Tom Kernan can dress,” but keeping the cucumber in place, the revised version at least retains the phrase’s indeterminacy. The example also shows how Wollschläger’s translation is substantially longer, as the elliptic “take away that. Lubricate” becomes “… räumt sie weg, diese ganze. Rutscht dann wie geschmiert” (“clears it away, that whole. Slides then without a hitch”). The revision reduces Wollschläger’s nine words to a mere three: “… nimmt das. Ölt” (…takes that. Lubricates). And a last point: while both versions keep the indeterminacy of “that,” neither Wollschläger nor the revision reproduce the (non-finite) shorthand aspect of the verbs used in this snippet of interior monologue. The pre-Gabler version “Good glass of burgundy; take away that. Lubricate” – with the semicolon after the burgundy – encourages a reading of “take away that. Lubricate” as a kind of blurred afterthought to the effects of Bloom’s choice of olives and wine. The critical edition has removed the semicolon and the phrase shifts towards expressing an intention or indeed a prediction in the sense of “in order to / will / would take away that [and] lubricate.” In the following example, from “Nausicaa,” a tired Bloom muses about the bats in the air: Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. (U 13.1130) Joyce here describes Bloom’s visual experiment with utmost precision; above all he expresses movement by means of a verb – “blob” – and a rhythmic ele-

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ment by alliteration and assonance. Both Goyert’s and Wollschläger’s solutions are static and ignore the fact that in the original “yellowish” is an adverb and not an adjective: sieht man gelblichen Klecks (G/Goyert 426) (you see yellowish blob) sieht man einen gelblichen Klümpchenklecks (G/Wollschläger 529) (you see a yellowish blob) Wollschläger’s “Klümpchenklecks,” was perhaps created for its rhythm, doubling the same semantic content: “blob” translates as “Klümpchen,” “Klecks,” “Fleck” and many other related meanings. The revised version comes very close to the original as the English “blob” is translated as a verb and the assonance of noun and verb – “blotch blob” – is maintained: sieht man einen Fleck gelblich klecksen (G/Wollschläger-R 433) (you see a blotch yellowish blob) Neither Wollschläger nor the revision reproduce the elliptic verbalisation of Bloom’s thoughts. Thus, in “Stare the sun for example like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish,” the “if” of the conditional clause, the preposition in “Stare the sun…” and the pronoun “you” or even “you will” before “see” are omitted. Goyert, by leaving out the indefinite article in “sieht man gelblichen Klecks” made a minor attempt at reproducing something of that mental shorthand. Considerations such as these invariably give rise to questions as to how far a revision, which is after all not a new translation, could/should go in bringing the translation closer to the original. Molly’s voice has some Hiberno-English colouring, above all in her syntax, and it is likely that Joyce’s wife Nora, who came from Galway, contributed to Molly’s language. Even if a translator recognizes such Hiberno-English vocabulary or syntax, it does not necessarily mean that these elements will be identifiable in translation. The Wollschläger revision has adjusted some of these dialectal forms in order to convey a semantically adequate rendering of such turns of phrase. In the first example Molly thinks of the time when Bloom was courting her and made his first advances, and of the pleasure his letter “with all those words in it” gave her. She then remembers how Bloom’s manners

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were making it so awkward after when we met asking me have I offended you (U 18.320-21) Hiberno-English forms an indirect question by simply asking the question as if it were a direct one, leaving out the introductory “whether” or “if” of Standard English. und es nachher so genant machte als wir uns wieder trafen er fragte mich habe ich dich beleidigt (G/Goyert 767) dass es hinterher richtig peinlich war dann wie wir uns wieder trafen fragte ob er mich vielleicht gekränkt hätte (G/Wollschläger 955) Goyert imitated this construction with a direct question, but Wollschläger applied standard German grammar: the subjunctive with the introductory “ob” (whether), followed by the necessary adjustments to word order. He thereby sacrificed an important characteristic of Molly’s linguistic universe. The revision brings back the Hiberno-English form of the indirect question, and by using the colloquial “hab” instead of “habe,” it increases the oral quality: dass es hinterher richtig peinlich war als wir uns wieder trafen und er fragte hab ich Sie gekränkt (G/Wollschläger-R 835) Finally, the innocuous question “have I offended you” creates the problem of how Molly should be addressed: with the familiar “du” or with the formal “Sie”? Goyert’s Leopold Bloom used “du,” making the question sound full of concern. Wollschläger circumvented this problem by not imitating the Hiberno-English syntax. However, he inserted a “vielleicht” (perhaps), probably to accommodate a joco-serious element in the question. And the revision, with its aspiration to bring the translation closer to the original, opted for the HibernoEnglish variant. Choosing the formal “Sie” allows for an ironic twist in Bloom’s question and a touch of banter in their exchange. In the next example Molly remembers an outing in a rowing boat in Bray. Bloom’s plan to impress Molly is thwarted: there is a storm coming and Molly, growing worried not only because she cannot swim, comments resentfully: and the hat I had with that feather all blowy and tossed on me (U 18.972)

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Molly uses “on me,” not “on my head.” However, since a literal translation “auf mir” would sound odd in German, both Goyert and Wollschläger resort to “auf dem/meinem Kopf(e):” und der Hut mit der Feder ganz ramponiert sass mir windschief auf dem Kopfe (G/Goyert 789) (and the hat with the feather sat all battered and crooked on my head) und der Hut den ich hatte mit der Feder total ramponiert und verbeult auf meinem Kopf (G/Wollschläger 985) (and the hat I had with the feather all battered and dented on my head) This seems quite plausible, but it is not really the point of Molly’s train of thought: where else would she have her hat if not on her head? In HibernoEnglish it is rather common to say that something happens “on somebody” to express the pertinence to the person that is affected. Thus, before the time of central heating, an Irish person might have said “The fire went out on me.” Or, after the return from a holiday, you might tell a friend that your flowers had died on you during your absence. This dative “on me” (derived from the Irish) is very much in tune with a German dative construction:18 und den Hut den ich hatte mit der Feder hat mir der Sturm ganz zerzaust (G/Wollschläger-R 857) (and the hat I had with the feather the storm has all ruffled up [on me]) The German “mir,” the dative of the 1st person pronoun, expresses that the storm (as the agent) did something to Molly, i.e. ruffled up her hat, which of course annoyed her. The last “sentence” of Molly’s soliloquy (U 18.1368ff.) starts off with a paroxysm of indignation on her part as she is thinking about how vulgar Boylan can be – slapping her on her bottom for not calling him Hugh, standing barefaced before her without asking permission, etc. The end of her comment,

18

This German dative is called “Pertinenzdativ:” it is used to express the relevance of an action to a given person. See example 3 in Raymond Hickey, “Syntactic ambiguity in Hiberno-English,” in Studia Anglica Posnaniensia (15) 1983, 39-45. https://www.uni-due .de/~lan300/03_Syntactic_ambiguity_in_Hiberno_English_(Hickey).pdf accessed 19 July 2018. Goyert did use a dative construction with “sass mir […] auf dem Kopfe” (“sat” [+me] …), but needed to add the adverbial “on the head.”

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you might as well be in bed with what with a lion God Im sure hed have something better to say for himself an old Lion would O well I suppose it is because… (U 18.1376-78) left the translators somewhat perplexed. Apparently, Goyert did not really know what to do with it and omitted it altogether: [man könnte] grade so im Bett liegen mit was mit einem Löwen du lieber Gott ich bin sicher dass ein Löwe was Besseres zu sagen hätte (G/Goyert 803) (you might as well be lying in bed with what with a lion good God I am sure that a lion would have something better to say) Wollschläger chooses a different route: aber da könnte man ja gleich mit einem ja was eigentlich ins Bett mit einem Löwen mein Gott also bestimmt wäre mit dem was besseres anzufangen so ein alter Löwe der würde na ja schön es lag wahrscheinlich… (G/Wollschläger 1004) (but you might as well go with a well [yes] what exactly to bed with a lion my God but certainly there would be something better to do with it such an old lion he would well alright I suppose) The lion becomes a passive being but above all, Molly’s thought peters out with “der würde na ja schön,” which is quite contrary to the emphatic closure. Moreover, “na ja schön” translates as “O well,” which introduces her next thought. Wollschläger produces a gliding syntactic unit which affects the conclusion to her statement by rendering it rather hesitant. With “na ja schön” he also loses one of Molly’s distinctive “O”s. Molly’s “an old Lion would” is based on a Hiberno-English way of reinforcing something that you have just said. Such tags, which are formed with the auxiliary or a modal verb at the end of a sentence, as in “I would tell him to leave immediately, so I would,” are quite a common feature of Hiberno-English. The revision restores this element and now the passage reads: …mein Gott also bestimmt hätte der was Besseres vorzuweisen so ein alter Löwe aber sicher oh gut es lag wahrscheinlich… (G/Wollschläger-R 871) (…my God but certainly he would have something better to show evidence of such an old lion that’s for sure oh well I suppose …)

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The final example is a musical postscript, a small window on the topic of quotations from songs. As a singer Molly has a large repertoire of songs at her disposal and her thoughts are often imbued with melodies and lyrics. The song in question, “Love’s Old Sweet Song,” is alluded to many times throughout the novel. Moreover, as Molly tells Bloom in the morning, she will sing it on her upcoming concert tour (U 4.314). At night, the whistling of a train far away – “frseeeeeeeefronnnng” (U 18.596) – immediately brings to her mind the end of “Love’s old sweeeetsonnnng” (U 18.598). As she now feels wind in her, she takes the opportunity of the sound of the train as a cover to pass it. The longdrawn whistling sound, the ritardando of the end of “Love’s Old Sweet Song” and her bodily urge all mingle: I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God or do the least thing better yes hold them like that a bit on my side piano quietly sweeeee theres that train far away pianissimo eeeee one more tsong (U 18.905-8) piano ganz leise sweeee der Zug ist ganz weit fort pianissimo sweeee noch einer song (G/Goyert 787) (piano very quietly sweeee the train is very far away pianissimo sweeee one more song) piano still sweet swiiiii da ist der Zug noch mal weit weg ganz pianissimo iiiiiiii noch einen song (G/Wollschläger 982) (piano still sweet swiiiii there is the train again far away very pianissimo iiiiiiii one more song) The last lexical unit, “tsong” was for both Goyert and Wollschläger “one more song” in the original. Whereas Goyert with “… noch einer song” clearly tends to encourage a reading where “einer” refers to the fart that Molly is trying to let go quietly, Wollschläger with “… noch einen song” manages to reproduce the latent ambiguity fart/song with more ease.19 Goyert’s “sweeee” for Molly’s mental singing is slightly problematic, as in German the vowel sound of “sweeee” would be pronounced as a long /e:/ rather than an /i:/. Also, with “sweeee” after the “pianissimo,” Goyert makes 19

The last two lines of the song’s lyrics are “Still to us at twilight comes Love’s old song/comes Love’s old sweet song.” Even though song and fart share the masculine gender in German, the textual context suggests that her aside “one more” refers to another fart rather than another song.

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Molly restart the note, when in fact she is merely continuing it where she left off. Wollschläger tried to solve the problem by taking up the “sweet” from the former occurrence of the train motive.20 The distribution of the /i:/sound in “sweet swiiiii” on two lexical items probably has its origin in Wollschläger’s choice to use the English song title throughout the whole book. Apparently, “sweet swiiiii” ensures that “swiiiii” is associated with the song and it prepares the ground for “iiiiiiii” (rather than Goyert’s “eeeee”) when the last sustained note of the song continues to sound through Molly’s mind after her aside. But the effect of the long-drawn note is spoilt by the initial double start. Why Wollschläger inserted the intensifier “ganz” before “pianissimo” is not clear. In the revision, the “tsong” made it very difficult to find a satisfactory solution. There were quite a number of attempts, including the suggestion to simply leave Wollschläger unchanged and end with “Tsong” (draft, 2015). Then it was decided to translate the underlying “sweet song” which became “süßes lied.” This makes perfect sense, as it is not so much the song title that is quoted, but the phrase marking the end of the song in Molly’s head. Since the other fragments of the song that reverberate through the text are, for obvious reasons, also in translation, these last two words of the song in Molly’s mind are simply the continuation of the latter. And finally, Wollschläger’s “piano still” for “piano quietly” was replaced with “piano leise….” This anticipates the “leise” for Molly’s “easy” that she uses seven times when she sits on the chamberpot. Thus our second attempt looked as follows: Piano leise süßes süüü da ist der Zug noch mal weit weg pianissimo üüüüü noch ein slied (G/Wollschläger-R, final draft March 2016) On the first page proof in March 2017 this was emended to: piano leise süüüü da ist der Zug noch weit weg pianissimo üüüüü noch ein ßeslied (G/Wollschläger-R 855 (piano easy sweeeee theres the train still far away pianissimo eeeee one more tsong) The unit “süßes” was deleted because no longer necessary, and “slied” was changed to “ßeslied:” when singing one would syllabify the two words as “süßes-lied.” Joyce obviously wanted his readers to hear Molly sing on the page and a translation should do no less. 20

In the pre-Gabler editions, it was indeed “Love’s old sweet sonnnng” which the critical edition changed to “Love’s old sweeeetsonnnng” (U 18.598).

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The few examples of interior monologue or free indirect discourse presented here showed revisions concerning word-order, syntax, and register as well as renderings of Hiberno-English phrases. In some instances, Wollschläger, with the best intentions, smoothed the flow of language, thereby losing intriguing indeterminacies and thus a major hallmark of interior monologue. The examples of Hiberno-English demonstrate that the revision could make these dialectal forms shine through the translation syntactically, or, if that was impossible, it could render them at least in a semantically adequate form. Obviously, the many filler words that Wollschläger used throughout the novel were also a concern in passages of interior monologue: loquacious though Molly is, she is very often far less wordy in the original, and the revision tried to give her back some of that original voice.

3

“Words? Music?”: “Sirens” before and after Revision

This part takes a closer look at “Sirens” through the lens of Wollschläger’s own translational priority, style. The chapter seems an obvious choice: it marks the novel’s shift to, and possible climax of, an increasingly self-referential language at play, with the documentary and historical elements receding to the background, so that in most cases, the revision would naturally adopt Wollschläger’s translational focus. His emphasis is as much on the Sirenesque features of sound and rhythm as on lexical and figurative creativity: his Ulysses is a text that takes full effect in performance, in being listened to. It is thus of particular interest to examine how Wollschläger, a musicologist and musician by training, deals with the chapter that most aspires to the state of music. 3.1 Lexical Musicality To begin, there are a number of musicological terms that Wollschläger decided to ignore or that escaped his notice. Among them are “halftime,” “in cry of passion dominant” – or “demisemiquaver” (11.1193), which he rendered as “Demisemitriller” (G/Wollschläger 399). The musician’s ear took precedence over the musicologist’s, “Zweiunddreißigstel” in German, i.e. half of a half of a quaver (“Achtelnote”). Wollschläger’s version is based on the verb “to quaver” rather than the noun and hence more euphonic even than the original, thanks to the onomatopoeic German equivalent “trillern.” This in nuce illustrates Wollschläger’s and the revision’s different translational priorities, his neglect of mundane realia and technical detail even in his own field of expertise. Since “demisemiquaver” is the standard technical term, the revisers decided with Bloom, “numbers it is,” sacrificing sound to precision, in accord

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with Joyce’s concern with technical accuracy and with their main translational focus. Conversely, while many musical metaphors and puns in “Sirens” are inevitably lost in translation, there are still quite a few that the revision could save. Cowley, he stuns himself with it: kind of drunkenness. … All ears. … You daren’t budge. Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking shop. Fiddlefaddle about notes. (U 11.1191-95) Denken strikte verboten. Immer bloß Fachsimpelei. Schnickschnack nach Noten. (G/Wollschläger 399) Denken strengstens verboten. Immer am Fachsimpeln. Larifari wegen Noten. (G/Wollschläger-R 336) Wollschläger’s “Schnickschnack” semantically overlaps with “knick-knack” and in this context it translates back as “idle talk,” which is its original, but today secondary meaning.21 Acoustically it works well, with its ablaut reduplication of “schnacken” (a regionalism for “to chatter”) echoing the morphological pattern in “fiddlefaddle.”22 By using the preposition “nach,” rather than the standard “über” or “wegen” (about), Wollschläger compensates for the loss of overtone in the noun, transforming the literal expression “about notes” into a musical metaphor, meaning “thoroughly,” “systematically,” or “appropriately.” However, “systematic or appropriate prattling” to the revisers seemed to be a contradiction in terms. The revision’s choice “Larifari” follows a similar onomatopoeic pattern. More specifically, it is a musical term deriving from the solmization system, which attributes an Italian syllable to each note in the musical scale, do re mi fa sol la… It also served as a mnemonic device for singers to practice a melody without distraction by the lyrics, hence its meaning of “nonsense” or “palaver.”23 At the same time, however, the seeming gibberish of La re fa

21 22

23

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch. 16 vols. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1854-1961. Vol. 15, column 1328-29. Online version accessed 30 June 2018. “Fiddle-faddle” was composed on either a homophone of the musical instrument, or on the verb “to fiddle,” in the sense of “making aimless and frivolous movements,” as the OED suggests. Either way, the fiddler’s fiddle clearly resonates in it. Grimm, vol. 12, column 202, and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_von_Arezzo accessed 2 July 2018.

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(re) is an instance of perfect self-referentiality, as each syllable that is being sung de-notes its musical note. In this sense, apart from its local significance in the paragraph, “Larifari” also becomes a metaphor for the musical self-referentiality of the Sirens chapter. The mnemonic technique, also called solfège or solfa, behind the revision’s “Larifari” harks back to an earlier moment in the chapter: Lenehan’s “solfa fable” (U 11.247) – “Solmisationsfabel” in both German versions – is in that manner all told in monosyllabic words. This vignette comically executes and proclaims one aspect of the chapter’s aesthetic programme – a rhythmic pattern that Germanic languages find notoriously difficult to handle. The topic of monosyllabism will be taken up below. In the next example, the musical overtone in both the original and the revised translation works by the clang association to Latin “cantare” in “canter.” Sceptre will win in a canter, he said. (U 11.374) Zepter macht das Rennen im kurzen Galopp, sagte er. (G/Wollschläger 368) Zepter wird hochkant gewinnen, sagte er. (G/Wollschläger-R 312) Wollschläger opted for the standard rendering of the phrase “to win in a canter,” “das Rennen machen,” “winning with great ease.” By adding the literal meaning of the noun “canter,” “kurzer Galopp” (short race), he renders the dead metaphor’s equestrian origin transparent, which is absent in the German phrase. The revision’s “hochkant gewinnen” loses the equestrian, but in exchange gains the musical resonance in the original: “hochkant (or haushoch) gewinnen” precisely means “to win easily.” German readers are likely to hear the musical association, the Latin word being alive, for instance, in “Kantate.”24 The Latin root of “cantare” is also present in the following line, which oscillates between literal and figurative meaning. Richie, admiring, descanted on that man’s glorious voice. (U 11.778) Richie, bewundernd, verbreitete sich über des Mannes herrliche Stimme. (G/Wollschläger 383)

24

There is also the German word “Kantersieg,” a friendly takeover from English, but “einen Kantersieg gewinnen,” in the revisers’ ears sounded too technical and inelegant.

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Richie, bewundernd, besang in höchsten Tönen des Mannes herrliche Stimme. (G/Wollschläger-R 324) Wollschläger employs the (foregrounded) figurative meaning of the verb “descant,” “sich über etwas verbreiten,” to expatiate on a theme, and ignores its musical origin. The nominal form’s meaning, the highest voice in a musical score, also resonates in the phrase, so the revision tries to bring this across in the expression “in höchsten Tönen (sc. von etwas sprechen).” However, Richie’s expansive enthusiasm “about damn all” (U 11.626) tends to get lost, so that its standard verb was replaced by “besingen,” to sing the praise of sb. or sth., which has a literary, Homeric ring, bringing in the quasi-epic proportion of Richie’s praise. The poetic syntax of “des Mannes herrliche Stimme” (instead of “die herrliche Stimme des Mannes”) further evokes a classic epic narrative. The next example features a verb describing a literal displacement, while implicitly it also comments on a structural musical feature of the chapter. Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low. (U 11.92-93) Miss Kennedy stellte das Teebrett manierlich auf eine hochgekippte Lithium-Flaschenkiste nieder, sicher vor Blicken, tief. (G/Wollschläger 358) Miss Kennedy transponierte das Teebrett manierlich nach unten auf eine umgedrehte Kiste Lithiumwasser, sicher vor Blicken, tief. (G/Wollschläger-R 304) “Transpose” can be taken over tel quel, and alliteratively, “transponieren” tunes in rather nicely with “manierlich.” Unlike for instance French, the German word has a semantic range similar to the English. The literal usage is quite rare, however, and limited to educated language. Hence “transponieren” is more conspicuous than in the original text, with the musical aspect clearly foregrounded.25 One could almost say that it is the musicological term that German readers will take in first, and then read it as a literalization of the term’s spatial metaphor. With the verb, the revision also changed Wollschläger’s

25

Moreover, this rhymes with the two sirens’ tendency to use high-falutin’ words to show off the education they probably lack – the revision’s choice of verb playing here with the “Uncle Charles” principle.

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“nieder” (down) to “nach unten” (down to), which evokes with more emphasis the shifting of a tune to a lower pitch. 3.2 Linguistic Transposition In German, transposition is also a linguistic term for morphological derivation, i.e. transposing from one word class, or syntactic position, to another – a pattern that “Sirens” conspicuously plays with. Thus, for example, “Boylan, eyed, eyed” (U 11.419), rendered as “Boylan äugte, äugte.” (G/Wollschläger 369), which was altered into “Boylan, beäugt, äugte” by the revisers (G/WollschlägerR 313): once apposition and once predicate. Through linguistic transposition, it seems, Joyce created a literary analogue to the central musical element of repetition and variation, one instance of which is musical transposition, i.e. the reprise in a different key or pitch of a musical theme from the exposition. Rhapsodies about damn all. (U 11.626) Jetzt geht das dicke Getue los. Rhapsodien auf schlechthin alles und jedes. (G/Wollschläger 377) Rhapsodiert das Blaue vom Himmel herunter. (G/Wollschläger-R 319) Verb or noun? Both are justifiable. In view of the frequent morphological derivations and their quasi-musical structural function, the revision opted for the verb, which also intensifies the musical metaphor in “Rhapsodies.” With “Liszt’s rhapsodies,” which occur twice (U 11.36, 11.983), it forms another transpositional pair. An intriguing example is offered by this sentence with the lexemes sip: She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped, sweet tea. (U 11.138-40) Voll Abscheu schlürfte sie drauf ihr Gebräu, heißen Tee, einen Schlürf, schlürfte sie süßen Tee. (G/Wollschläger 359) Voll Abscheu schlürfte sie ihr Gebräu, heißen Tee, einen Schlürf, geschlürft, süßer Tee. (G/Wollschläger-R pre-final) The verb sip is repeated as a noun, transposed to the object position and rendered as an unusual “Schlürf” instead of its standard equivalent “Schluck,” in

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order to make the transposition transparent in German. A translational challenge is the second instance of “sipped”: should one conclude from formal identity to a functional one? Wollschläger reads it as a verb and ignores the comma after the second “sipped,” which makes “sweet tea” a less likely direct object to that “sipped,” and that, in turn, a less likely active verb. Hence also the free-floating nominative case in the revision, enhancing the free play of word variation. The pervasive transposition pattern, in conjunction with the comma, seems to support the translation of “sipped” as a past participle, “geschlürft,” acting as adjective in apposition to “Schlürf.”26 The last example, with an adverb transposed to the predicate position, also addresses the issue of compensating strategies. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. (U 11.589) Heiser leiste sein Kehlapfel. (G/Wollschläger 376) Mild und heiser heiserte sein Adamsapfel. (G/Wollschläger-R pre-final) Heiser heiserte sein Adamsapfel leise. (G/Wollschläger-R 318) This is one of the rare instances in which Wollschläger’s version is quite a bit terser than Joyce’s. It is unclear why, instead of “hoarsely,” he chose to transpose the other adverb, “softly,” into a verb, “leisen,” which the revision replaced with “heisern,” in analogy with the original’s “to hoarse.” In both cases, there is an equally ‘ungrammatical’ German verb playing the text’s transpositional game. The suggestion first discussed by the revisers, triggered by the pair “hoarsely – softly,” is an allusion to the opera Tristan und Isolde, to Isolde’s aria on Tristan’s death: “Mild und leise wie er lächelt” (“Mildly and gently how he smiles”). Joyce’s line is embedded in the passage in which Father Cowley asks Simon Dedalus to sing the aria “M’appari” (from Martha), likewise a song of love and loss, love and death. Moreover, we see a dusty landscape painting on the wall of the Ormond, entitled A Last Farewell, where the allusion to “Mild und leise” would be appropriate. While there is no such allusion in the original, another Wagner opera, Rheingold, resonates in the chapter (and other

26

The revisers were leaning towards that version, but decided in the end to remain closer to Wollschläger, but reproducing the unusual comma before “sweet tea”: “einen Schlürf, schlürfte, süßen Tee” (G/Wollschläger-R 305).

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operas throughout the novel), which would further justify the compensation of translational losses elsewhere. But the idea was abandoned, since the team leader established the rule to refrain from introducing elements absent in the source text – so no compensatory allusions and no neologisms. 3.3 Sound and Rhythm Through some slight infidelities to the original’s semantic and syntactic properties, the revision sought to retain some of the foregrounded acoustic qualities, such as assonance and rhythm. Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure’s skyblue bow and eyes. (U 11.394) Funkelnder Bronze Azur äugte nach Blazurs himmelblauem Schlips und Blick. (G/Wollschläger 368) Funkelnde Bronze azur beäugte Blazurs Schlips und Aug himmelblau. (G/Wollschläger-R 313) A good part of the original’s assonantal and alliterative pattern could be salvaged thanks to the lexical identity or strong similarity of the three colours in both languages.27 Wollschläger chose to replace “eyes” with “gaze” (Blick), thus reproducing the eye – sky(blue) assonance through “Schlips und Blick.” The revision sought to retain the characteristic word pair, “eyed – eyes,” but for rhythmical reasons chose the noun’s singular, “Auge,” and shortened it to a monosyllabic “Aug,” which is only used in poetry. “Schlips und Aug” now resounds in a dual assonance /i/ – /au/ with the adjective. Another lyrical feature is the revision’s change of standard word order to a post-positional “himmelblau”: its very position makes the phrase poetic and saves it from the clumsiness of Germanic declension, which only applies to adjectival pre-position. The brevity further adds to the rhythmicality, and in its effect the phrase moves closer to the original. Applying grammatical rules of poetry to a prose text seemed quite in the spirit of “Sirens.” In a few instances the revision went a small step beyond Joyce’s verbal musicality. Most conspicuously, it sought to recreate the superbly rhythmical, staccato effect of the Pat the waiter passages.28 Usually, 27

28

Wollschläger took azure as a noun and hence as the sentence’s subject, thus merging Miss Douce’s tone of colour with Boylan’s (literally: “the azure of sparkling bronze”), whereas in the revision, Boylan’s azure is translated as adjective-adverb, so that his ‘blueness’, the object of Miss Douce’s gaze, merely comes to tint that gaze. Chapter 4 and Chapter 9 in this volume also discuss “Pat.”

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German translators can do little but capitulate before the monosyllabic wealth of English, but the linguistic playfulness of this sequence legitimized a certain experiment. Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat. (…) Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went. (U 11.822-23 and 11.847-48) Der kahle Pat kam auf ein Zeichen näher. Eine Feder und Tinte. Er ging. Eine Unterlage. Er ging. Eine Löschblattunterlage. Er hörte, der taube Pat. (…) Der kahle taube Pat schlug ihm lang eine Unterlage hin, Tinte. Pat besetzte mit Tinte und Feder die lang hingeschlagene Unterlage. Pat nahm Teller Schüssel Messer Gabel fort. Pat ging. (G/Wollschläger 385 and 386) Kahl Pat auf Wink sich naht’. Ein Stift und Tint’. Er ging. Ein Block. Er ging. Ein Löschblock. Er hört’, taub Pat. (…) Kahl taub Pat bracht Lösch Blatt Tint’. Pat setzt’ mit Tint’ Stift Lösch ganz flach. Pat nahm Teller Schüssel Messer Gabel. Pat ging. (G/WollschlägerR 325 and 326) In his literal translation Wollschläger seems to have tried little to increase the staccato effect, his inventiveness showing itself mostly in cases of lexical challenge. The revision again in poetic manner cut final syllables, signalling their omission with the customary apostrophe, as in “naht’” instead of “nahte.” “Wink” (beck) was chosen instead of the two-syllable “Zeichen,” taking up “winkte” (beckoned), which is used in both German versions for “Bloom signed to Pat” (U 11.669-70). “Kahl Pat auf Wink’ sich naht” sounds like a line from a dramatic ballad, almost as if retroactively coloured by the Croppy Boy, which will be sung a few pages later. “Kahl Pat,” and even more so, “Kahl taub Pat,” which replace Wollschläger’s standard translations with article and inflection, likewise poeticize the phrase, as if turning the uninflected prepositional adjective into an epithet, something of an ironical Homeric epitheton ornans. It is not quite clear why Wollschläger put “schlug ihm … hin” for “brought,” rather than the obvious “brachte.” Perhaps in order to avoid the two syllables, not thinking of using poetic apostrophes. “Löschblock” reduces the number of syllables in Wollschläger’s typically German compound noun to half, with still one too many. But polysyllabic words are now a clear minority: 5 out of

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45 words, as against the total of 49 in the original – which still gets by with one syllable less. In order to achieve this effect, it was necessary to take further liberties, such as the splitting of “Löschblatt,” a blotting pad or paper. For rhythmic reasons, the second sentence in that sequence even dropped the second half of that word altogether. The prandial instruments did not leave any room for play, but with the four parallel two-syllable words, the sentence has a clear rhythm, all the more so as “Gabel” (fork) the only noun with a long vowel comes last and hence does not interrupt the rapid staccato, but ends it on a long-drawn stressed /a:/. 3.4 Syntax With syntax being all about rhythm, particularly in “Sirens,” this aspect often blends into the preceding one. Following Wollschläger’s translational priority in this chapter, the revision also applied it to areas where he had abandoned it: creative departures from syntactic rules to him seemed less of a stylistic feature. The syntactic aspect in particular displays his tendency to “correct,” explicate and standardize Joyce’s English – and this not only in interior monologue passages, as these examples will show, when Wollschläger repeatedly chose to forego musical effects. One such effect is a structural analogy to music. While both arts are linear, music also works by acoustic overlays, which Joyce tries to emulate by splitting up a sequential unit. After an interval Mr Dedalus raised his grog and – That must have been highly diverting, said he. (U 11.271-72) Nach einer Pause hob Mr. Dedalus seinen Grog und sagte: – Das muß ja höchst unterhaltsam gewesen sein. (G/Wollschläger 364) Nach einem Intervall hob Mr Dedalus seinen Grog und: – Das muß ja höchst unterhaltsam gewesen sein, sagte er. (G/Wollschläger-R 309) By standardizing the syntax Wollschläger takes away the effect of the simultaneity of voices as it is simulated by the interpolation of direct speech and third-person narrative. The revision reproduces the original’s unorthodox syntactic pattern, which in German can be done to the same effect, heightened somewhat by the strikingly unusual position of the colon following a conjunction.

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Another remarkable and baffling syntactic structure may perhaps be read in the light of the transposition principle: Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both two ears with little fingers. (U 11.129-30) Nachdem Miss Kennedy Milch noch in süßen Tee gegossen, pfropfte mit kleinen Fingern sie beide Ohren sich zu. (G/Wollschläger 359) Nachdem süßen Tee Miss Kennedy eingeschenkt mit Milch, pfropfte mit kleinen Fingern sie beide zwei Ohren sich zu. (G/Wollschläger-R 305) Wollschläger removed most of the sentence’s strangeness. His version is grammatically standard, with the sole omission of “hatte,” which should follow after “gegossen” (having poured). “Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk” links back to “Miss Kennedy, pouring now a fulldrawn tea” (U 11.126) of just a moment ago; variation on a theme. By virtue of the completed action the pouring Miss Kennedy is transposed into a “Miss Kennedy having poured”: a process similar to that type of morphological derivation, or transposition, where a verb becomes an adjective that designates a state achieved through the verb it derives from. Hence the entire phrase “Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk” could be read, not as a subordinate clause, but as taking the subject position in the sentence, with Miss Kennedy as its nucleus and the rest of the phrase in apposition to it.29 3.5 Register This last section will look at one more musical aspect, that of register, and in the process cast a side-glance at two other chapters. Throughout the novel, a number of Wollschläger’s phrases, sparkling though they are, clash with Joyce’s tone and register. The following passage describes the sensuous effects of music on Bloom, who is listening to the aria from Martha, full of longing and desire. Bloom’s arousal evoked by Flotow’s romantic music is rendered in musical language. 29

Actually, the revision team discussed “Süßen Tee Miss Kennedy eingeschenkt mit Milch pfropfte mit kleinen Fingern beide zwei Ohren sich zu,” which dropped the pronoun “sie” in the subject position of the main clause and replaced it by the entire Miss Kennedy cluster, reducing the sentence to one main clause. In the end it seemed too speculative, and stranger than the original. Whatever Joyce’s intention, the revision attempted a readable approximation of the unusual syntax, putting the object, “süßen Tee,” before subject and predicate, but keeping the temporal conjunction “nachdem” (after).

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Tenderness it welled: slow, swelling. Full it throbbed. That’s the chat. Ha, give! Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect. (U 11.701-02) Zärtlichkeit wallte darin: langsam und schwellend. Es pochte voll. Da liegt der Hase im Pfeffer. Ha, geben! Nehmen! Pochen, ein Pochen, ein Pulsen, stolz erekt. (G/Wollschläger 380) Zärtlichkeit sie wallte auf: langsam, schwellend, voll pochend. Das ist es! Ha, gib! Nimm! Pochen, ein Pochen, ein Pulsen, stolz aufgerichtet. (G/Wollschläger-R 322) To begin with, Da liegt der Hase im Pfeffer! is too long in the context of accelerating pulsation and increasing desire, which the language tries to reproduce. And would not Bloom be unlikely to come up with such a graphic phrase in a moment of sexual excitement? The revision replaced it with a short, simple phrase to fit the staccato of the throbbing pulse, an exclamation that backtranslates as This is it! But the main reason for the change is register. The colourful expressiveness of the phrase, a colloquial figure of speech, is typically Wollschläger. In its long history, which takes its origin in a recipe for rabbit roast in pepper sauce, Hase im Pfeffer, the rabbit underwent several semantic changes and came to mean that someone has discovered the crux of the matter, or finally recognized the real problem.30 This is the only sense in which the phrase comes close to That’s the point!, but never without that essentially negative undertone. The next instance has a pre-Gabler variant, which affects the overall understanding of the passage and thus highlights the importance of harmonizing Wollschläger with the Gabler source text. To some extent, it also touches on the issue of register. Bloom has been listening to Ben Dollard’s moving performance of The Croppy Boy and silently comments on the audience: Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs. For all things dying, want to, dying to, die. For all things born. Poor Mrs Purefoy. (PreGabler) Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs that want to, dying to, die. For all things dying, for all things born. Poor Mrs. Purefoy. (U 11.1101-03) 30

Lutz Röhrich, Lexikon der sprichwörtlichen Redensarten, 2nd ed., 5 vols. (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder, 1994), 667.

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Schauder jetzt. Fühlen Mitleid. Müssen sich eine Träne abwischen, weil Märtyrer. Denn alles, was verreckt, will, ums Verrecken, verrecken. Dafür wird alles geboren. Arme Mrs. Purefoy. (G/Wollschläger 396) Schauder jetzt. Mitleid fühlen sie. Müssen sich eine Träne abwischen für Märtyrer, die sterben wollen, sterben vor Verlangen zu sterben. Für alles was stirbt, für alles was geboren. Arme Mrs. Purefoy. (G/Wollschläger-R 334) Here, Wollschläger’s task was certainly more difficult, with the phrase “for all things dying” misplaced between “martyrs” and “wanting … to die.” In preGabler Bloom’s train of thought is indeed somewhat confusing. For once Wollschläger interpreted a perfectly grammatical sentence as an interior monologue ellipsis, translating for as a causal conjunction. The full stop after “martyrs” may well have influenced his choice of verb for die, since “dying to, die” does not directly refer to “martyrs” but to “all things” mortal. And still, the choice cannot be fully justified. “Verrecken” is very coarse language for “to die miserably,” worse than, say, “kicking the bucket.” Wollschläger used it for Mulligan’s phrase “whose mother is beastly dead” (U 1.198-99), and indeed, “verrecken” is what animals do under the worst of circumstances. At the same time, the figurative phrase “ums Verrecken” (at all costs), not really elevated language either, sounds less crude than the literal usage of the verb. Wollschläger probably opted for this in order to save Bloom’s pun, irrespective of register. “All things dying,” it is true, includes the whole range of organic life, and hence perhaps of register, but Bloom is still thinking of the youthful Croppy martyr, even in the pre-Gabler text. The revision sought to save both pun and register with an expression which back-translates as “dying from longing or desire to do something.” Its verbal “pitch” is more consonant with a religious or political martyr’s otherworldly idealism and of course is further supported by the original noun and verb pair that had been rejoined by Gabler. While Wollschläger found many excellent solutions for puns and other cruxes, there is a variety of stylistic overachievements, one of which is found in “Telemachus.” – Seymour’s back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army. (U 1.695f.) – Seymour ist wieder in der Stadt, sagte der junge Mann und faßte erneut nach dem Felszacken. Hat die Medizin hingeschmissen und schmeißt sich dafür jetzt auf den Militarismus. (G/Wollschläger 33)

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– Hat die Medizin hingeschmissen und will zur Armee. (G/WollschlägerR 51) The original phrase is short and simple; Haines is passing on a bit of information. Wollschläger’s rendering of the bland words translates as “throwing himself at militarism,” which in style and register sounded completely unHainesian – apart from the fact that nothing as exuberant and ideologically biased is going on in the original. As it seems, Wollschläger had a liking for Buck Mulligan’s histrionic language, and since Haines is talking to Mulligan and Stephen, the translator’s Mulliganese may have intruded here. The revision’s version (a colloquial “wants to [join] the army”) is even shorter than the original; it changes the ideological term back into the neutral noun and along the way removes the two Wollschlägerian filler words “dafür jetzt” (“instead now”). Let us conclude with two examples to illustrate how Wollschläger’s and the revision’s different priorities did not always result in conflict, but sometimes happily converged. Thus, philological research helped us maintain both sound and lexical precision in “what do you call them: dulcimer” (U 4.98 and 11.67576). Wollschläger took “Hackbrett,” faute de mieux (G/Wollschläger 379). The alluringly foreign and “sweet” sounding word had to be translated by the German equivalent, which literally means “hacking on a board.” One could hardly think of a less musical name for an instrument. However, it turned out that the English word dulcimer is and has been used in German for the English variety of that instrument. In German, too, that phrase now tunes in nicely with Bloom’s oriental fantasies, with a yet more exotic ring than in the original.31 In the same way, research in popular and everyday culture would sometimes prove useful beyond documentary accuracy. For instance, a part of the parody of Elijah’s evangelical messianism in “Circe” begins to resonate in a new way, when it emerges that Joyce put some contemporary American advertising language in the prophet’s mouth, which is rendered in the translation. You got me? It’s a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It’s the whole pie with jam in. It’s just the cutest snappiest line out. (U 15.220103)

31

For a detailed discussion of this example see Fritz Senn, “Transluding off the Toptic; or, The Fruitful Illusion of Translatability,” in Fritz Senn, Joyce’s Dislocutions. Essays on Reading as Translation, ed. John Paul Riquelme (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 24-38.

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Ist doch ’n ganz schöner Lebenstrost, was? Sowas gibts nicht alle Tage. Ist erst richtig die Marmelade aufs Brot. In einem Rutsch raus aus dem ganzen Schlamassel. (G/Wollschläger 673) Ist ’n schöner Lebensaufheller, ganz klar. Die heißeste Nummer aller Zeiten. Kuchen satt und Schlagsahne. Die flotteste, fescheste Kollektion überhaupt. (G/Wollschläger-R 572) Wollschläger’s “Lebenstrost” (consolation) for “lifebrightener” changes into a more pragmatic (life stylish, we could say today) “Ist ’n schöner Lebensaufheller, ganz klar,” as in American newspapers it was washing powder that was being praised as an amazing “clothes-saver, clothes-whitener, lifebrightener.” Likewise, “just the cutest snappiest line out” is found similarly or verbatim in several fashion advertisements.32 Wollschläger, with some reason of course, translated it as a traffic metaphor, the fastest trip, or slide, out of this misery (“Schlamassel”). The revision opted for a literal translation of the advertising phrase, to make its origin more transparent. It deliberately chose “Kollektion” rather than “Linie” (which is a homonym in German, too), in order to emphasize the commercial aspect of Elijah’s prophetic language. The main meaning of the passage lies in the medley of advertising phrases itself, which further highlights the commodification of religion that Joyce is parodying here. In view of Wollschläger’s translational priorities, rhythmic-acoustic as well as lexical and figurative inventiveness, it is surprising to see that in the very chapter that gives precedence to these musical qualities, he made less of an effort to take up the challenge of Joyce’s intermedial “translation” of word into music than he did with other stylistic challenges, particularly in “Oxen.” In certain instances, specifically in “Sirens,” the revision would move the German text a bit more in Wollschläger’s direction. In others, and throughout the novel, it did indeed ‘de-Wollschläger’ the translation, for example in what one would expect to be part of his concerns: the sound of linguistic register.

4

Conclusion

The paradigm shift in the understanding of a translator’s role in the decades between Wollschläger’s quasi-canonical translation and its recent revision 32

The source of these quotes and allusions, as well as a great many others can be found in the electronic journal James Joyce Online Notes, founded and co-edited by Harald Beck.

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could probably not have been embodied more markedly than by the auratic figure of writer-translator Wollschläger and the head of the revision team, Joyce scholar Harald Beck, who spent decades of his academic life working on Ulysses as a unique treasure trove for philological, material, source and popular culture research. In practice, however, there was a solid middle ground from which the revision team was working, well aware that a revision is not a retranslation. Its main objective was to bring the German version closer to the original through an increase in precision, without altogether sacrificing the characteristic Wollschläger sound. It is likely, however, that readers who see in Wollschläger a work of art in its own right will oppose such an “editing” of an original: lovers of Joyce may welcome the fact that certain Ulyssean features have been put into sharper relief. Thus, for instance, in standardizing Joyce’s language in several ways, in particular in such a crucial stylistic device as interior monologue, Wollschläger also diminished the novel’s modernity. By faithfully reducing punctuation and maintaining unconventional syntax, the revision also reintroduced some of the original’s ambiguities and strangeness. And, not least, it was one of the very aspects of the revision’s priority that worked to support Wollschläger’s vision of Ulysses as a “literary historical museum” and make it more concrete in German: extensive research on Joyce’s literary sources helped to elucidate and recreate the network of cross-reference and allusion on which Joyce’s novel is based. To some extent, no doubt, the effort to reconcile contrasting translational priorities in one text is an attempt at squaring the circle. It made the revisers more than ever realise and appreciate the antipodal qualities of Joyce’s art, which ideally should be brought across by a parallactic variety of translations.33 33

Unfortunately, the German readership has been denied the revised Wollschläger edition. It transpired only a few weeks before the publishing date that the current copyright holder vetoed the revised edition and that it could not be commercially published. As indicated in Chapter 2, only a limited edition of 200 appeared, primarily for libraries and academic institutions.

Chapter 4

“Wavewhite wedded words”: The Soundscape of the Canonical Hungarian Translation of Ulysses (1974) and Its Remake (2012) Marianna Gula

Abstract In contrast to some other recent retranslations of Ulysses, rendering the poetry/musicality of Joyce’s text was not among the initial motivation of the Hungarian remake of Miklós Szentkuthy’s 1974 canonical Hungarian translation of Ulysses, published in 2012. Szentkuthy, a creative writer as well as a translator, was a master of the Hungarian language with a keen sense of rhythm and music, amply demonstrated in his rendition of Joyce’s text. Nevertheless, the soundscape of his playful, musical translation became thoroughly recast in the course of the collective revision process, in which I participated. This chapter discusses how our treatment of poetic/musical effects in “Sirens” was shaped by a view of Joyce’s language effects that radically departs from Szentkuthy’s, as well as by a consistently applied global approach to the text, in stark contrast to Szentkuthy’s tendency to treat translation tasks locally.

1

“Word-Sporing” versus “Wedded Words”

In the opening pages of Ulysses dominated by the polytropic clowning of Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus’s taciturn sufferance of it, the reader unexpectedly comes across a lyrical passage of liminal narrative status – both rooted in and pointing beyond Stephen’s consciousness – that transforms a Yeatsian metaphor for the sea into a metaphor for poetic language in a highly performative way: Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide (U 1.242-49, emphases added).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_006

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This early instance of lyricism in the verbal and tonal multiverse of Ulysses encapsulates three interrelated dimensions of Joyce’s text pertinent for my inquiry: a recurring self-reflexive thematisation of the nature of poetic language and a strong connection to music;1 a highly poetic and performative use of language – a heightened attention to the movement and sounds of language, which, according to Derek Attridge, is a defining feature of poetry;2 and a recurring association of the rhythmic movement of the sea (and water more generally) with poetic language/music, dramatised most forcefully in the music-saturated “Sirens” episode. Furthermore, the metaphor “wedded words” implies a degree of control in the rhythmic movements of language producing poetic effects. Miklós Szentkuthy’s decision to retranslate Ulysses was to a great extent spurred by his dissatisfaction with how his predecessor Endre Gáspár handled the poetry, playfulness, verbal music and rhythmic richness of Joyce’s text. He gave voice to his dissatisfaction as early as 1947 in an essay “James Joyce,” his contribution to the lively debate among Hungarian artists and intellectuals about the significance of Joyce’s works, generated by the publication of the first Hungarian translation of Ulysses.3 Having mapped multiple facets of Joyce’s talent – his ability to blend realism with the madness of the imagination, his all-pervasive humour (described as a “typically English” [sic] trait of Joyce’s realism), his myth-making faculty, “his extraordinary erudition,” his predilection for “amassing […] with a Baroque boundlessness,”4 and so forth – Szentkuthy discusses at length Joyce’s innovative use of language, commended as probably the most important aspect of his work.5 The essay has an addendum focusing on Gáspár’s translation which opens with the acknowledgement that

1 Stephen’s repeated poetic musings on rhythm, meter and rhyme, particularly concentrated in the “Proteus” and “Aeolus” chapters, are complemented by Leopold Bloom’s less informed, but sill pertinent thoughts on the subject, most particularly in “Lestrygonians.” 2 In his book Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction, Derek Attridge singles out Joyce’s Ulysses as an instance of prose, parts of which can be described in terms of poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5. 3 Miklós Szentkuthy, “James Joyce,” Magyarok 3.3 (1947): 193-205. Gáspár’s 1947 translation was the second in Central and Eastern Europe after the Czech translation in 1930. Concerning the debate see Márta Goldmann, James Joyce kritikai fogadtatása Magyarországon (James Joyce’s Critical Reception in Hungary) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 2006), 43-53. 4 All references are to Erika Mihálycsa’s translation of Szentkuthy’s essay: Miklós Szentkuthy, “James Joyce: Summa Atheologiae,” trans. Erika Mihálycsa. Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics 8.1 (2014): 119-45: http://contramundum.net/assets/HFA_8.1_2014.pdf accessed 2 May 2018. 124. 5 Ibid. 132.

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“we must be […] grateful to Endre Gáspár for his Titanic venture,” only to continue in a condescending manner that “We cannot expect the impossible from Endre Gáspár: he could not possibly have kept up, throughout the two colossal volumes, with the word-coinage, wordplays, recondite allusion, pervasive flirtation with verse, with the syntax-distorting daring, imagery-madness and sound-magicianship.”6 To support his final verdict that instead of re-creating “the text’s magic powers,” Gáspár produced “a surprisingly good photographic image,” Szentkuthy provides a list of “representative” examples, the majority of which are taken from “the particularly musical chapter” of “Sirens,” where “the inspiration for linguistic invention seems to be more permanently pressing than in other places.”7 Szentkuthy’s examples demonstrate his harsh claims that Gáspár’s translation “normalises,” “consolidates,” “flattens,” “dilutes,” “irons out,” “sobers up,” “tames,” “greys,” “kills” Joyce’s sentences, depriving them of their poetry, playfulness, word-music and rhythm.8 At one point he gives vent to his exasperation by simply noting that “A poet worth his salt cannot translate ‘jingle jaunty jingle’ with the one word ‘csengő’ [n. bell, adj. ringing]” – repeated three times.9 In a kind of retrospective arrangement it becomes highly ironic, however, that Szentkuthy – whose liberties with the word of Ulysses in his own translation have become widely recognised, even by his avid readers – criticises Gáspár’s translation from the vantage point of philology as well, paying meticulous attention, for instance, to whether the same word is repeated, and if yes, how many times, not comprehending why Gáspár does not pay attention to such important details. Szentkuthy is right in claiming that his examples are “representative,” since Gáspár’s translation repeatedly flattens, normalises Joyce’s language effects, even if, one could add, at times the opposite is the case when the effort to render the language effects of the source text produces misfit Hungarian verbal constructs.10 I part ways with Szentkuthy, however, with regard to the assumptions framing his critique. In accordance with his overall Circean, orgiastic, baroque vision of Joyce as a neurotic, nihilistic, destructive and synthesising genius, Szentkuthy describes the quoted sentences as “Satanic,” “deviant,” “scatter-brained,” “stupid,” “foolish,” “idiotic,” “encapsulat[ing] grammatically

6 7 8 9 10

Ibid. 136-37. Ibid. 137, 134. Ibid. 136-45. Ibid. 140. A thorough reading of Gáspár’s translation of “Sirens” also challenges the widely held critical view that from a semantic point of view his translation is more exact than Szentkuthy’s.

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all the yawning vulgarity of these plaster-nonentities [Joyce’s characters in general]; the filthy street smell of language.”11 If most of Szentkuthy’s fanciful descriptions are more or less ill-fitting for the cited sentences, the last one is entirely out of touch with its object, as it refers to a Bloomian mental comment, “Innocence that is” (U 11.298), an instance of what Fritz Senn has called “short-mind,” as well as a marker of the Irishness of the character, displaying a typical Hiberno-English grammatical feature, the reversal of standard English syntax.12 Szentkuthy’s descriptions of individual sentences fit well enough, however, into his broader views on the effects of Joyce’s innovative use of language. Starting out by emphasising Joyce’s predilection for “pure verbal music,” for “inarticulate onomatopoeia,” and comparing Joyce’s “word-blending” to “the intermingling voices of Bach’s fugues,” he continues by discussing Joyce’s language in terms of “sound-perversion” and “word promiscuity,” arguing for its strong affinity with nonsense, and ending up by the following description: “Joycean word-sporing with its whole groundlessness and infinity wants to express nothing else but the sporing futility, the disorderly, vegetal growing into nothingness, of existence at large: we may see a fin-de-siècle impasse yawning in these directionless word colonies resembling tumescent bacterial growths.”13 In the light of this description, it holds little surprise that in Szentkuthy’s translation, the self-reflexive metaphoric image “wavewhite wedded words” becomes “hullámfehér párzó szavak” (wavewhite mating words; Hu/Szentkuthy 13), which in the revision process has been replaced by “Hullámfehér egybekelt szavak” (wavewhite wedded words, the elevated word “egybekelt” literally meaning becoming one in marriage; Hu/Revised 15).14 Szentkuthy’s conception of Joycean language effects in terms of wordsporing also becomes manifest in his rendition of musical effects in the “Sirens” episode. In an erotically charged scene we seehear how the barmaid

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Szentkuthy, “James Joyce,” 140. Another vivid example of Szentkuthy’s exaggerating misrepresentation of Joycean language effects is his description of the sentence “Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard, not seen, read on” (U 11.240) – especially the “heard, not seen” bit – in terms of having a “Dadaist, telegraphic staccatoing, idiotic torso-shape” (140). For a discussion of Szentkuthy’s treatment of Hiberno-English in Ulysses see my article “‘The spirit has been well caught’: The Irish Dimension of the Canonical Hungarian Ulysses (1974) and Its Remake (2012).” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 21, no. 1 (2015): 123-50. Szentkuthy, “James Joyce,” 134-36 (emphases added). It should be noted, however, that although the revised version renders the poetic nature of the phrase semantically and stylistically, neither version does justice to its musically performative dimensions.

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Miss Douce yields to the vulgar solicitations of Boylan and Lenehan to sound the bell of her garter – Sonnez la cloche!: “Smack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable a woman’s warmhosed thigh” (U 11.413-15). Szentkuthy felicitously renders the sound effects: “Patt. Mint a parittya: röppen, csattan, kigombolva, szabadon a gumi harisnyatartó, combmeleg és combról pattan,” but then heightens the excitement by adding “nőszag, bugyi, csípők láza” (womansmell, knickers, heat of hips; Hu/Szentkuthy 329). The revision process has weeded out the final flurry uncalled for by the source text, also reshaping the sound effects in an attempt to alliteratively wed the Hungarian word for “thigh,” “comb” with the lexical onomatopoeia “smack,” rendered as “cupp(an)”: “Cupp. Hirtelen elengedte a kinyújtott harisnyatartót, az hirtelen visszacuppant, cuppmeleg a cuppanójára, harisnyameleg női combra” (Hu/Revised 259). Word-sporing of a different kind, gesturing towards the unbound semiosis of the Wake, can also be detected in Szentkuthy’s rendition of Bloom’s synaesthetically performative fantasy about Molly falling apart as a result of being abandoned by a lover (possibly Boylan), “Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair un comb:’d” (U 11.809) as “Hullámosálmosalámoshalálosshampootlanloncsos haja mosatla (N, álzárlat)” (wavy sleepy wash under deadly shampooless dishevelled hair unwash [ed, fake closure]) (Hu/Szentkuthy 344).15 As the fantasy offers no more than a moderate echo-play on the words “wavy” and “heavy” and a punctuationally challenged “uncombed,” Szentkuthy’s solution has been replaced by “Hullámosámosámosúlyosúlyosúlyos haja fé sület: len” (Hu/Revised 269), which is closer in phonetic and semantic effects to the source text, even if from a purely musical perspective it is inferior to Szentkuthy’s solution.16 Word-sporing in the name of pure music and nonsense (unmotivated onomatopoeia), can in turn be illustrated by in Szentkuthy’s translation of Bloom’s playfully alliterating mental comment on the opening chords of The Croppy Boy played on the piano, “Curlycues of chords” (U 11.1016) as “Hörghurut és kutykurutty a zongorán” (Bronchitis and ribbit – an onomatopoeic rendition of the sound a frog makes in Hungarian – on the piano; Hu/Szentkuthy 352). The revised version 15

16

Erika Mihálycsa has already persuasively argued that Szentkuthy seems to have approached Ulysses “from, and with a background knowledge of the unbound semiosis of the Wake – packaging, as it were, the experience of reading two texts in one for the Hungarian reader.” See “Horsey Women and Arse-temises: Wake-ing Ulysses in Translation,” in Why Read Joyce in the 21st Century?, eds. Franca Ruggieri and Enrico Terrinoni. (Roma: Edizioni Q, 2012), 79-92, 87. The last bit, “fé sület: len” is one of the rare instances in the episode when Gáspár’s solution has been restored. Gáspár’s playful solution also produces an extra effect: the breaking up of “fésületlen” (uncombed) also yields “sületlen” (half-baked/nonsensical).

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renders the aural playfulness of the phrase, also paying equal attention to its referential function: “Kunkorfarkú akkordok” (Hu/Revised 275; quite literally, “curlycues of chords”). As these few preliminary examples suggest, the revision process aimed to sustain the musicality of the target text, to effect a heightened awareness of the aural qualities of language, but in a way that also intensifies referentiality, drawing attention to their interplay. After all, it is “the momentary and surprising reciprocal relationship established between phonetic and semantic properties of language, a mutual reinforcement that intensifies both aspects of language,” as Derek Attridge has argued, that Joyce’s wedded words enact in multiple and varied scenarios in “Sirens.”17

2

Local Flow and/or Global Structure

The task of rendering the poetic/musical dimensions of “Sirens” is nuanced further by the fact that it is not only the flow of language that has been described as musical in this chapter. Music also operates as a structuring device, becoming manifest, among others, in the form of repetition (with a difference).18 While the poetic/musical flow of language has a strong affective dimension, eliciting a bodily as well as a cognitive response from the reader, the musicality of the text in structural terms calls forth the reader’s recognition. While the former yields local joys, the latter is a global experience. Szentkuthy consistently favoured the former over the latter, best demonstrated in the case of “Sirens” by the repeated lack of correspondence between the way he translated the verbal items in the introductory sixty-three lines – variably described by critics as an overture, prelude, or the tuning of a symphony orchestra before a concert – and the rest of the episode, which fleshes out and situates in context the initial shorthand items, retrospectively ascribing sense to them.

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Derek Attridge, “Literature as Imitation: Jakobson, Joyce and the Art of Onomatopoeia,” in Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988), 127-58, 151. See also Mihálycsa’s compelling argument drawing on Attridge’s claim in “Music hath jaws: Translating Music and Silence in Joyce’s Ulysses,” in James Joyce’s Silences, eds. Jolanta Wawrzycka and Serenella Zanotti (London – New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 209-29. On the critical debate elicited by Joyce’s written claim that his “Sirens” episode has “all the eight regular parts of a fuga per canonem” (Letters I: 129); and his description of the episode in conversation as “a fugue with all musical notations” (quoted in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982], 459), see Zack Bowen, Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce: Early Poetry though Ulysses (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), 51-53.

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Neither does the reader of his translation gain a sense of how Joyce’s text produces a musically mirroring, chiasmic effect by making numerous verbal items from the first third of the episode (after the introductory sixty-three lines) return recontextualised in the last third. Szentkuthy’s non-global approach to the text does not always have major consequences, even if one cannot but wonder, for instance, why the lexical onomatopoeia “Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap” (U 11.28 and 11.756) – marking the audience’s response to Simon Dedalus’s performance of M’appari – is rendered at the start as an instance of non-lexical onomatopoeia “Kleppklopp. Klipklapp. Klappiklapp” (Hu/Szentkuthy 316), only to become domesticated later into its lexical counterpart, with an unmotivated residue of the opening solution: “Tapsra tapsra taps […] Taps (a taps) […] Dupla taps […] Klappraklapp” (“taps” meaning “applause” in Hungarian) (Hu/Szentkuthy 342). It is equally puzzling why an instance of non-lexical onomatopoeia, the end of Ben Dollard’s trenchant rendition of The Croppy Boy, “Will lift your tschink with tschunk” (U 11.56), is rendered onomatopoeically – “Csing. Csang” (Hu/Szentkuthy 361) – only at its second appearance, but is landed in the realm of nonsense at the very start: “Add a csikket, hagyd a sikket” (give me a cigarette butt, leave the chic) (Hu/Szentkuthy 317). At times, however, Szentkuthy’s non-global approach can have far-reaching consequences that affect the reading experience in radical ways. His treatment of an onomatopoeic leitmotif for sexual arousal, a phonesthetic configuration wedding “knock,” “knocker,” “cock” and the sound effect “carra(carracarra),” semantically rooted in Boylan (with impatience) reaching his four o’clock destination and knocking on Molly’s door, but also projected onto other scenes of seduction – is a case in point. In the opening, Szentkuthy translates the two shorthand appearances of the motif, “with a cock with a carra” (U 11.38) and its reversal a few lines later, “with a carra, with a cock” (U 11.50) with the same item: “a kos, a kandúr és a fajd” (the ram, the tomcat and the grouse) (Hu/Szentkuthy 317). However, this initial effort at harmonisation in the name of nonsense is not carried over into the rest of the text. When variations of the motif appear three times later, Szentkuthy offers unrecognisably far cries from his opening solution. This discrepancy is just the beginning of the story, not the end. After its initial doubled-up appearance, the motif, existing as pure sound, becomes semantically charged in the following sentence: “One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul de Kock with a loud proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock. Cockcock” (U 11.986-88). Szentkuthy’s translation – “Valaki koppant az ajtón, Paul de Basoche kappan koppant, kopogtató a roppant fajbunkójával, hangja basszus, alighanem Paul de Basoche” (One tapped on a door, capon Paul de Basoche tapped, a

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knocker with a huge knocker, his voice is bass, most probably Paul de Basoche; Hu/Szentkuthy 351, emphases added) – undoubtedly lives up to, even intensifies, the erotic playfulness of the source text, creating a phonesthetic interplay between the words “koppant” (knocked), “kappan” (a capon) and “roppant” (a choice word for “huge”). Like the source text, it also integrates the personal name, Paul de Kock in the game, by transforming it into Paul de Basoche, a name foreign to the Hungarian eye by appearance only, since if it is read phonetically, it ineluctably conjures up a horny person in a vulgar way.19 Szentkuthy’s felicitous rendition of Joycean language effects on a local level, however, causes complications in the global economy of the motif. Variations of the motif appear two more times, first as part of a Bloomian train of thought echoing Boylan at Molly’s door – “Cockcarracarra” (U 11.1048) – then in the context of a passage focusing on Miss Douce engaged in a seductive hand job on the beerpull in front of a solicitor guest, George Lidwell, while listening to the doleful ballad of The Croppy Boy – “With a cock with a carra” (U 11.111218).20 Szentkuthy renders both instances onomatopoeically, the former as “Kukurikúkukurikú” (Cock-a-doodle-doo cock-a-doodle-doo; Hu/Szentkuthy 353), the latter as “A marka és a farka. Kukurikú” (Her/his palm and her/his tail/cock (slang). Cock-a-doodle-doo; Hu/Szentkuthy 355). The rub, however, with these apparently fine local solutions is that their onomatopoeic effects are entirely unmotivated, as they do not echo the sentence in which the motif is semantically grounded. The reason is that Szentkuthy’s playful translation of the sentence that describes Boylan knocking on Molly’s door trades in the onomatopoeic effects of “with a cock carracarracarra cock. Cockcock” for the vulgar wordplay of the name Paul de Basoche: “hangja basszus, alighanem Paul de Basoche” (his voice is bass, most probably Paul de Basoche). Szentkuthy’s intervention radically alters the reader’s experience of the text: the onomatopoeic effects in his translation – “Kukurikúkukurikú,” “Kukurikú” – become detached from Boylan, and by extension, from any semantic foundation, and thus they metamorphose into prime examples of Szentkuthy’s vision of Joycean language effects in terms of “sporing” “directionless word colonies.”

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Szentkuthy’s translation makes explicit both senses of the word “knocker” entering into play in the sentence. The appearance of the domesticated Hungarian version of Paul de Kock’s name is a rare instance of Szentkuthy’s global handling of the text, as it complies with his domestication of the name already in the “Calypso” episode. The latter scene is also haunted by Boylan, as Bloom seems to realise at that moment that Miss Douce is more interested in George Lidwell than Boylan: “Ha. For him then, not for. Infatuated” (U 11.1110).

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In contrast, the revision aimed to consistently render the semantically motivated echo-play around the motif. Thus in the sentence semantically grounding it, Szentkuthy’s phonesthetic interplay between the words “koppant” (knocked), “kappan” (a capon), “roppant” (a choice word for “huge”) has been retained almost intact, but the wordplay on the name has been replaced by an onomatopoeia: “Valaki koppant egy ajtón, valaki koppanva tappant, Paul de Kock, hangos büszke koppantással, roppant kappan koppant, kikirkiriki. Kappkopp” [(Hu/Revised 274, emphases added). The onomatopoeic “kikirkiriki” is echoed later by “Kukirikikéri” (Hu/Revised 276) and “Egykukikikéri” (278), and all this is anticipated in the opening by “Egykukikikéri” and “kikirí.” All the forms participating in the game evoke the onomatopoeic rendition in Hungarian of the sound the cock makes, but with added semantic reverberations, which become translucent only in connection with Miss Douce’s erotic performance with the beerpull: “Egykukikikéri,” meaning: “Here’s a small prick, who wants it?,” which can also be read as an instance of textual revenge for Boylan’s sexual conquest of Molly. The new version then weds sound and sense in a highly performative manner, balancing between, taking into consideration the local and the global, the affective and the cognitive dimensions of the text.

3

Pat, a Waiter Who Waits21

In what follows, I will focus on the textual representation of an apparently minor figure, Pat, the bothered/deaf waiter of the music-saturated Ormond Bar, whose sole function in the action is to move to and fro, serving the guests. Pat merits heightened attention, however, as his minor role in the action is counterpointed by his crucial textual and meta-textual functions. Karen Lawrence has already claimed that Pat, who “seehears lipspeech” (U 11.1002), can be seen as a figure for Joyce’s reader, who translates the visual experience of a silent text into the aural experience of music.22 I would further argue that Pat is also a figure for the poetry and music of “Sirens,” since not only is he in constant

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Chapter 3 and Chapter 9 in this volume also discuss “Pat.” Karen Lawrence, Who’s Afraid of James Joyce? (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 38. On the interplay, the reciprocal relationship between the aural and the visual in the chapter see Jean-Michel Rabaté’s foundational article “The Silence of Sirens” in James Joyce: The Centennial Symposium, eds. Morris Beja, Philip Herring, Maurice Harmon, David Norris (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 82-88; and Mihálycsa’s “Music hath jaws,” exploring this dimension in Italian and Hungarian translations.

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movement, but the textual renditions of his movements also condense several of the episode’s most daring rhythmic/musical/sound effects.23 In addition to this, Pat is also emblematic of Joyce’s textual procedures in his multiple associations with liminality. It is the musically performative, rhythmic nature of the Pat-passages that represents multifaceted challenges for translators, so I will focus on this aspect; the shortest way there, however, is via Pat’s allround liminality. Pat’s liminality is foregrounded from the start in his repeated spatial association with the door – a textual detail wedding him with Bloom, who is dining with Richie Goulding “near the door” (U 11.392). Pat’s movements are also often liminal from a structural perspective, as they often shift the focus spatially between the inside (the saloon with the piano), the outside (the bar with the barmaids), and Bloom and Richie’s table. A major structural turnaround in the text is also performed via a circular, repetitive, rhythmical verbal game woven around his figure: Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait (U 11.915-19) In the wake of this passage the text seems to push a replay button, in a Joycean mode: it embarks on a massive recycling of verbal items from the first third of the episode (after the opening sixty-three lines), along with enacting a major perspective shift. While at the beginning it is the barmaids’ perspective that dominates, with Bloom approaching the Ormond bar enveloped in various echo effects – “Bloowho,” “Bloowhose,” “Greasabloom,” “Bloohimwhom” – from this point on, Bloom’s gaze and mind begin to frame the barmaids. It is also from here that Boylan’s musical leitmotif playing with the “jingling” sound and “jaunty” movement of the vehicle taking him to Molly, is replaced by the musical leitmotif, “Tap” (a reversal of Pat) made by the blind piano tuner returning to the Ormond bar for his tuning fork. Pat is also defined by verbal liminality. His narrative introduction, “To the door of the bar and diningroom came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat,

23

As Andreas Fisher has noted, “Joyce gives him an ingenious verbal ‘soundtrack’ all on his own, which like real music, is easier to read (aloud!) than to describe in detail.” See “Strange Words, Strange Music: The Verbal Music of ‘Sirens,’” in Bronze by Gold: The Music of Joyce, ed. Sebastian D.G. Knowles (New York and London: Garland, 1999), 245-62, 257.

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waiter of Ormond,” is counterpointed by a sentence highlighting how “Lenehan waited for Boylan with impatience” (U 11.286-90). The oscillation between waiting/waiter – verb and noun, act and actor – is the source of multiple verbal games24 centered around his figure in passages of liminal narrative status, that is, passages that can be explained both in terms of Bloom’s psyche and of a textual play pointing beyond individual psychology.25 This oscillation can be detected in the first uninspired attempt at some sort of a verbal game targeting Pat, “Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited” (U 11.393), which could, but does not have to be read as an attempt on Bloom’s part to distract himself in order to quell his anxiety over Boylan and Molly. The same applies to the above quoted lengthy rhythmical Pat-passage, which is directly preceded by Bloom’s panic over Boylan’s arrival at Molly’s door and his non-voiced yearning for some sort of distraction: “Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn’t. Settling those napkins. […] Wish they’d sing more. Keep my mind off” (U 11.912-14).26 In a similar vein, one can, but does not have to read Pat’s repeated framing by staccato sentences or syntagms containing nothing but single syllable words in the postorgasmic lull after Simon Dedalus’s performance of M’appari – anticipated in the opening by “Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up” (U 11.30) – in terms of Bloom’s attempts at distracting himself to counteract first the invading flow of dejection, and then boredom. If Pat is the epicentre of diverse rhythmic verbal games potentially enacting the power of rhythm to counteract undesirable affects, such as anxiety, panic, 24

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Such oscillation in also enacted by other words, most notably the word “rose,” constantly oscillating between functioning as a verb and a noun, which also enacts a war of the roses of sorts between the two barmaids. While on Boylan’s arrival, Miss Kennedy “rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile: fretted, forlorn, dreamily rose” (U 11.331), soon our attention is directed to how “Bronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose sought Blazes Boylan’s flower and eyes” (U 11.398). This feature reflects a general feature of “Sirens,” which occupies a liminal position in Ulysses in that it is from “Sirens” on that verbal games become increasingly detached from individual characters. The potential rootedness of the passage in Bloom’s psyche is further suggested by that the recurring play in the passage with how Pat “waits while you wait” echoes Bloom’s mental comment a few lines earlier: “Wisdom while you wait” (U 11.906). Susan Mooney comments on the liminal status of this passage, but not in terms of an oscillation between depersonalised textual game and character, but in terms of an oscillation between Bloom’s mind and an “observant, wily aurteur,” defined as “an acoustic auteur,” “the creative (often unconscious) organizer or mediator of acoustic fragments” at work in this episode, strongly resonant with David Hayman’s concept of the “arranger,” “a nameless creative persona.” See Ulysses: The Mechanics of Meaning (Madison, Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1982), 84. See also Mooney, “Bronze by Gold by Bloom: Echo, the Invocatory Drive, and the ‘Aurteur’ in ‘Sirens,’” in Bronze by Gold: The Music of Joyce, ed. Sebastian D.G. Knowles (New York and London: Garland, 1999), 229-44, 229.

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dejection and boredom, thus helping the human subject to regain control, he also actively participates in Joyce’s dramatisation of the affective power of music over human subjects. As soon as Simon Dedalus starts singing Lionel’s aria, M’appari, the reader’s attention is directed to the “braintipped” listeners’ bodily response to the “endearing flow” (U 11.669). Bloom’s rhythmically rendered request to Pat “to set ajar the door of the bar” can also be read as a spatial metaphor for his opening up to the influence of music. The ensuing metamorphosis of “that endearing flow” into an “invading” “flood” is enacted in language by sound taking over sense through lexical piling up, repetition, ellipsis, and the transgression of grammatical rules (U 11.705-09). The listeners’ complete surrender to the power of music, in turn, is enacted by even the bothered Pat’s orifices opening up, visualised typographically by the lack of punctuation: “it [Lionel’s returning voice] also sang to Pat open mouth ear waiting to wait” (U 11.718); while the blending of names in the description of how the music charms the characters – “charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Bloom’s heart” (U 11.720) – highlights the transindividual nature of the shared musical experience.27 So how does Pat fare in Hungarian translation? As for the last dimension – his participation in the scene enacting the affective power of music – not so well. Szentkuthy’s translation disrupts the verbal flow enacting the opening up of Pat’s orifices, by reintroducing commas and inflecting nouns; it does away with the performative rendition of the transindividual nature of the musical experience in a similar manner. The revised version mends the latter, but still disrupts the former with commas, even if the inflections are removed.28 As for the musically performative, rhythmic nature of several Pat-passages, however, there is a marked difference between Szentkuthy’s translation and the revised version. As is his wont, Szentkuthy treats most of the Pat-passages in isolation, and, as is not his wont, most of his solutions flatten Joycean language effects by depriving them of their playful rhythm.

27 28

As Attridge has observed, the heightening of language through rhythm also produces a certain impersonality (Poetic Rhythm, 12). The disruption of the flow of language with punctuation – “hallotta Pat is, tátott szájjal, tátott füllel … nyerte meg Pat szívét, Bloom szívét” (also heard Pat, with open mouth, with open ear … it won Pat’s heart, Bloom’s heart”; Hu/Szentkuthy 340) – is counterpointed by word-sporing in Szentkuthy’s translation of the passage focusing on the orgasmic flood of music. Images like “szentfolyás” (sacred flux), “ősáradás” (ancient flood/deluge); “szatírszökőkút” (satyr fountain; Hu/Szentkuthy 340) introduce semantic dimensions not even implied in the source text. For a more appreciative reading of Szentkuthy’s translation of the orgasmic passage see Mihálycsa’s “Music hath jaws,” which emphasises the “intense musical effect” of Szentkuthy’s translation (220-21).

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This is not to say that playfulness is entirely missing from Szentkuthy’s rendition of the Pat-passages. Ever alert to alliteration, he jocosely renders the alliterative music of “Pat paid for diner’s popcorked bottle” (U 11.317).29 At one point he even gives more than Joyce, radically departing from the word of the source text in a motivated manner: his rendition of the above quoted, structurally crucial Pat-passage is brought to an end by a mirth-provoking verbal construct: “Pat a penseur. Hó! Vigye már a pensemet” (Pat, the penseur. Ho! Come and take my money) (Hu/Szentkuthy 348). Apart from conjuring up Rodin’s well-known statue, the French word ‘penseur’ is also homophonous with the Hungarian word ‘pénzőr’ (guardian of money), which semantically chimes with the slightly foreignised Hungarian word “pensemet”/“pénzemet” (my money) at the end. The puns are, of course, a far cry from the effects of the source text, but fit well enough into the narrative situation, since the passage is preceded by Bloom’s unsuccessful attempt to catch Pat’s attention in order to pay and leave. Szentkuthy’s rendition of the rest of the passage also hints at – offers a shorthand version of – the circular, repetitive, chiasmic structure of the original: “Pat a pincér nagyothall. A vendég nagyokat hallgat. Hi, hi, hi, hi. Aki süket, az hall nagyot. Hi, hi. Pat a pincér” (Pat the waiter is hard of hearing. The guest is engaged in a long-long silence. Hee, hee, hee, hee. Whoever is deaf hears a big story. Hee, hee. Pat, the waiter; Hu/Szentkuthy 348) – even if the last bit, “Aki süket, az hall nagyot” (Whoever is deaf hears a big story), belongs in the realm of nonsense, in contrast to the source text’s semantically transparent play on how Pat, the waiter “waits while you wait.” Szentkuthy also renders part of the echo-play originating in this passage in the source text: the syntagm “wait while you wait” and the pure sound effect “Hee hee hee hee” reverberate twice, first in Bloom’s imagining Pat’s family waiting for “Patty come home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait” (U 11.1004), then in the visualisation of the blind piano tuner’s arrival at the door of the Ormond bar with a long list of who he did not see, brought to a close by “nor Pat. Hee hee hee hee. He did not see” (U 11.1283). Szentkuthy’s translation renders the first echo-effect by carrying over the play with “nagyothall” (hard of hearing) and the sound effect “Hi hi hi hi” (this time eliminating the commas), but he silences the second. What most of these Pat-solutions lack, however, is a marked and sustained rhythm, a vital component of several of the Pat-passages in the source text, so the revision process aimed to address the text’s call for the lost rhythm to

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Szentkuthy’s playful translation, “Pat fizette a vendég pukkanós palackját” (Hu/Szentkuthy 326) has been retained intact.

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return, and I would venture to say that it has managed to do so in several instances, even if it could have gone further. The structurally crucial, chiasmic Pat-passage, for instance, has become retranslated in a way that comes close to the (almost) 4/4 meter of the source passage:30 Szalvétából süket Pat csinál püspöksüveget. Pat a pincér nagyothall, Pat a pincér ajtónáll. Hihihihi. Áll csak áll az ajtónál, hihihihi ajtónáll. Hihi áll az ajtónál. Hihihihi nagyothall. Nagyothall és ajtónáll, hahóhall és ajtónáll. (Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat, the waiter is hard of hearing. Pat the waiter keeps the door. Heeheeheehee. He stands just stands at the door, Heeheeheehee stands at the door. Heeheeheehee is hard of hearing. Hard of hearing and keeps the door, heighohear and keeps the door; Hu/Revised 272, emphases added). The musicality of the passage is also ensured by semantically motivated sound effects. Since in Hungarian it is impossible to render the oscillation between waiter/waiting and the polysemous oscillation within the verb “wait” (wait upon, wait for), the new translation relies instead on an equally motivated interplay between the almost homonymous “ajtónál” (at the door) and “ajtónáll” (the noun “ajtónálló,” or “doorkeeper,” clipped into a verb); and their rhythmic chiming with “nagyothall” (hard of hearing), a word preserved from Szentkuthy’s translation. The musical interplay between “ajtónál-ajtónáll-nagyothall” around Pat’s figure is introduced in the scene dramatising the affective power of music and is at the core of the echo-play in the wake of the chiasmic Pat-passage: “Deaf, bothered. But perhaps he has wife and family waiting, waiting Patty come home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait” (U 11.1004) becomes in Hungarian, “Süket, nagyothall. De talán felesége van és családja, ők várják az ajtónál Pattyt, aki ajtónáll. Hi hi hi hi. Nagyot hall és ajtón áll, családja az ajtónál” (Hu/Revised 275). The blind tuner’s appearance in the Ormond bar at the end of the episode echoes, in turn, not only the pure sound effect “Hi hi hi hi,” but also the change in his leitmotif from “Tap” to “Tip” (U 11.1281) on arrival: “Hi hi hi hö. Nem látta, nem ő” (Hee hee hee hœ. He did not see, not he; Hu/Revised 282). The revision process has also thoroughly recast the translation of the most prominent instance of the staccato effects enveloping Pat’s figure in the silent 30

At a 2000 Zürich workshop, “Dynamics of Expectation,” John Bishop delivered a memorable performance of the passage in 4/4 time.

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interlude between the two musical performances. To fend off his dejection, Bloom decides to write to his (non-carnal) conquest, Martha Clifford, asking Pat to bring him a pen and ink, and a pad to blot: “Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went” (U 11.847-48), anticipated in the opening sixty-three lines by “Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up” (U 11.30). As Fritz Senn has observed, the passage – consisting of three sentences containing eight one-syllable words each – can also be seen as a dramatisation of Bloom’s fleeting reflection a few lines earlier on girls practising “scales up and down” the piano (U 11.842). Since Hungarian is an agglutinating language, rendering the staccato effect seemed at first impossible. Szentkuthy’s translation, containing three onesyllable words (including “Pat”) seemed to prove the point: “Kopasz süket Pat lapos blokkot hoz. Tintával a tollat leteszi laposan. Elvitte a tányért, tálat, kést, villát. Elment” (Bald deaf Pat is bringing a flat pad. With the ink he is putting down the pen flatly. He has taken away the plate, dish, knife, fork. He is gone; Hu/Szentkuthy 345). In the end, however, our collaborative effort produced the following, unanimously gratifying solution: “Kop sük Pat hoz toll tint lap tömb. Pat tesz tint toll Bloom lap tömb le. Pat visz tány tál kés vill. Pat megy” (Hu/Revised 270). To produce the desired rhythmic effect, we had to clip several Hungarian words, doing away with suffixes and cutting some of the words in half – which, we deemed to be a legitimate procedure in the textual economy of the episode. “Kopasz,” for instance, becomes “kop,” which felicitously echoes the Hungarian onomatopoeic rendition of knocking, “kopp,” thus becoming resonant with Boylan knocking on Molly’s door, the source of Bloom’s anxieties and dejection. Finding the right order of words that ensures the optimal interplay between phonetics and semantics also had the touch of Joyce’s far-famed full working day in Zurich, when he had the words in two sentences, but was seeking their “perfect order.”31 The effort was worth it, nonetheless, as we managed to find that “order in every way appropriate,” which has produced one of those rare instances when a translation can outjoyce Joyce in requiring greater creativity on the part of the reader. This success, however, did not accommodate the other three shorter and less striking instances of Pat’s staccato effects.32 31 32

See Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses and Other Writings (London, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 20. Neither did the revision process produce at all times unanimously gratifying solutions, as parallax stalked behind and goaded our team to the very end. On this see my “Translation as Parallax, Translating Parallax: Miklós Szentkuthy’s Hungarian Translation of Joyce’s Ulysses (1974) and Its Remake (2012),” in Parallaxing Joyce, ed. Penelope Paparunas, Frances Ilmberger, Martin Heusser (Tübingen: Günter Narr, 2017), 214-38.

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As this extremely selective comparison of the soundscapes of two Hungarian translations of Ulysses suggests, rendering the music and poetry of Ulysses has yielded joys interminable, but variable to Hungarian translators. As a result the two translations can lend radically different pleasures to Hungarian readers. While the musical flow (at times flood) of Miklós Szentkuthy’s translation of “Sirens” can offer plenty of local joys to the reader, the revised version renders the musical flow of the language always with an eye on the episode’s global musical structure. Thus, one cannot but agree with Mr. Bloom: “That’s joyful I can feel. […] My joy is other joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you are” (U 11. 970).

Chapter 5

“Multiply the inlets of happiness” (U 14.677): On the Hungarian Translations of Internal Incongruities in “Oxen of the Sun” Erika Mihálycsa

Abstract The present essay tackles a marginal translation problem, the rendering of the volitional internal incongruities, stylistic miscegenation, and anachronism in “Oxen of the Sun,” in the three Hungarian translations of Ulysses, the Gáspár (1947), Szentkuthy (1974), and the “Revised” texts (Kappanyos – Gula – Szolláth – Kiss, 2012). Joyce scholarship started drawing attention to this subversive feature of the episode in the 1970s and recent advances in genetic criticism have uncovered the full extent of Joyce’s deliberate confounding of the succession of English prose styles; in consequence, we need to address cases of patent breach in register and period style that earlier translations could also be expected to respond to. Drawing on Derrida’s conception of “abusive” translation as a form of (re)creative redeployment of the target language, the essay examines the comparative strategies of the three translations, of challenging dominant literary tastes and received notions of literariness in the translating culture in their own respective historical time, attempting to show how paradigm shifts in target-language culture may have influenced the translating of Joycean multilingualism, heteroglossia, and (self-)parody.

The appearance of a retranslation in a given culture, especially if it is a scholarly enterprise, is expected to illuminate stylistic features of the original that were side-stepped or downright muted in the first translations, thought to cater more to TL literary norms. Influential works of translation theory align retranslations – which benefit from advances in exegesis and, due to the shifts in both the source and host cultures, from the changing status of the translated author – with a closer and more daring approximation of the original, especially its disruptive traits.1 Accordingly, retranslations are credited with

1 See the discussion of the “Retranslation Hypothesis” in the Introduction, 2-6.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_007

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a heightened sensitivity toward that configuration of textual properties that make a text singular – that is, going beyond the possibilities pre-programmed by the cultural norms at the time of its creation.2 The central question in this essay is, in what manner translatorial creativity in early translations and then in retranslations furthers or, as the case may be, obscures or hinders the agenda of approximating a text’s singularity in the TL. I will adopt the Derridean concept of “abuse” in translation, as a deliberate, “strong” solution with the potential to upset the TL system; a “controlled textual disruption” which exerts an “unpacking and disseminating effect,” to generate “productive difference.”3 “Abusive” translation – where use and abuse are envisioned in a reciprocal relation of contrariness and complementarity – is understood to be a “strong, forceful translation that values experimentation, tampers with usage, seeks to match the polyvalencies or plurivocities or expressive stresses of the original by producing its own.”4 Such translation practice flies in the face of the “use-values” – “the chain of values linking the usual, the useful, and common linguistic usage” – of both its own language/system and those of the original, in order to “rearticulate analogically the abuse that occurs in the original text, thus to take on the force, the resistance, the densification, that this abuse occasions in its own habitat,” while at the same time “displacing, remobilizing, and extending” this abuse in the translation text in a series of decisive “textual knots.”5 In the following I will compare the strategies and degrees to which the three successive Hungarian translations of Ulysses “make strange” their own language, approaching them from a limited perspective: their treatment of internal stylistic miscegenation, polyphony and incongruities in the “Oxen of the Sun” style parodies. In addressing such issues that require a (re-)creative 2 Derek Attridge, The Singularity of Literature (London: Routledge, 2004), 63-64. Attridge considers singularity, like inventiveness and alterity, an event, “the event of singularizing,” whose emergence in time coincides with “the beginning of its erosion, as it brings about the cultural changes that accommodate it” (64). This event-nature makes it not only open to translation, imitation, or parody, but amounting to “an unending set of translations – for each new context in which it appears produces a further transformation” (73). 3 Philip E. Lewis takes over the concept and deconstructive practice developed by Derrida in Des Tours de Babel and applies it to gloss the English translation of “Le retrait de la métaphore”/ “The Retrait of Metaphors” and Derrida’s translation of Hegel in White Metaphor: “The Measure of Translation Effects,” in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 2000) 264-283: 269-271. 4 Ibid. 273. 5 Ibid. 270-271. Lewis refers to Derrida’s gloss of the “usure” of metaphors, “White Metaphor: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982) 207-272: 209.

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approach on the part of translators, I will attempt to show the ways in which they harness plurivocity, intertextuality and multilingualism and how they achieve synchronic and diachronic superscriptions of language. The first complete Hungarian Ulysses, the work of the erudite and prolific Endre Gáspár, fell victim to the times: published in 1,000 numbered copies in 1947, one year before the Stalinist takeover in Eastern Europe, it had no chance to circulate and to affect TL literary tastes, receding to a spectral existence. Gáspár created a highly interesting, at times literalist rendering, surprisingly sensitive to the original’s grammatical-lexical indeterminacies and cultural allusions.6 It was ousted, however, by maverick Miklós Szentkuthy’s stylistically exuberant 1974 Ulysses that was almost instantly trumpeted as the crowning achievement of Hungarian translation culture and through which the wider Hungarian readership first came in contact with Joyce’s book. The 2012 Revised version, carried out by a team of four scholars – project supervisor András Kappanyos, Joyce scholar Marianna Gula, critics Dávid Szolláth and Gábor Zoltán Kiss – is a thorough re-editing and partial retranslation based on Szentkuthy’s work which occasionally refers to Gáspár’s text; its interventions range from minimal editorial adjustments to retranslations of complete passages. In a sense, the Revised text is a scholarly palimpsest written across the two previous texts; the main objectives were to bring Joyce’s text closer to the Hungarian reader, to integrate the findings of recent textual scholarship, to highlight the manifold indeterminacies of Ulysses and to open up its allusive and subtextual potential.7 Gáspár had translated an author recognized by an international literary community as a controversial experimentalist master, but by the time the two

6 Péter Egri’s cursory verdict was, “Even if some of the peculiarly Irish linguistic and literary qualities got blurred or lost, Joyce’s wit, surrealist, expressionist, impressionist, naturalistic and symbolic effects as well as his musical tones were rendered with ingenuity and versatility”: “James Joyce’s Works in Hungarian Translation,” James Joyce Quarterly 4.3 (Spring 1967) 234-236: 234. For the history of Joyce’s Hungarian reception and translations see Márta Goldmann, “Belated Reception: James Joyce’s Works in Hungary,” Comparative Critical Studies 3.3 (2006): 227-248. 7 The most comprehensive comparative analysis of the Revised and Szentkuthy’s translation to date is Dalma Véry’s “Az Ulyssest olvasva” (Reading Ulysses), Nagyvilág 59.5 (2014): 541-596. András Kappanyos has outlined the objectives of the retranslation team in “At the End of One’s Witz (Translation Theory – and Some Practice),” Papers on Joyce 14 (2008): 38-49, and “Fragments of a Report: Ulysses Translation in Progress,” James Joyce Quarterly 47.4 (Summer 2010): 553-566. Marianna Gula has discussed various stylistic and philological aspects of the new translation, see her “Lost a Bob but Found a Tanner: from a Translator’s Workshop,” Scientia Traductionis 8 (2010): 122-133; “‘The spirit has been well caught’: The Irish Dimension of the Canonical Hungarian Translation of

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later translations emerged, Joyce had been safely canonized as a modern classic.8 Szentkuthy’s Ulysses came out in the 1970s, a golden age of Hungarian (re)translation, when many Modernist works appeared in their canonical Hungarian form. They were typically the work of writer-translators – heirs to the belles infidèles tradition of the Hungarian modernist writer-translators of the first half of the 20th century;9 the epitome of the type were Szentkuthy and Dezső Tandori, the experimental poet and translator of Woolf and Musil, both linguistically innovative and interventionist trans-creators, prone to adorn the text with extra language effects.10 Their translatorial approach was supplanted around the turn of the millennia by a more professional and scholarly-oriented practice, aimed at stripping away the stylistic idiosyncrasies of earlier translations and resisting the domestic tradition of aestheticizing the textual surface. Szentkuthy’s appropriating translation is based on an appropriating reading. He had reviewed Gáspár’s translation of Ulysses in 1947, stressing points

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Ulysses (1974) and Its Remake (2012),” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 21.1 (Spring 2015): 123-150, and “Translation as Parallax, Translating Parallax: Miklós Szentkuthy’s Hungarian Translation of Ulysses (1974) and Its Remake (2012)”, in Parallaxing Joyce, eds. Frances Ilmberger, Penelope Paparunas, Martin Heusser (Tübingen: NarrFrancke-Attempto, 2017), 214-238. In a 1983 speech on the occasion of Miklós Szentkuthy’s Joyce reading, Ferenc Takács argued that in contradistinction to his modernist contemporaries, Joyce was not a “classic” in Hungary but a writer of a curious in-between status which still allowed questions about the work’s value to be raised – something unimaginable in the case of Proust or Mann: “Joyce: a maradandóság változásai” (Joyce: metamorphoses of permanence), in Ferenc Takács, James Joyce: a hérosz és a kultusz / The Hero and His Cult: Essays on James Joyce (Budapest: L’Harmattan 2013) 36-43: 36. The agendas of the modernist Hungarian writer-translators of the first half of the 20th century ranged from semantic and formal equivalence to an experimental approach that viewed translation as an autonomous re-creation of the original, responsive to the TL literary field; the latter shows close parallels to Pound’s conception of translation as original (re)writing determined by TL literary norms and expectations, see “Guido’s Relations” [1929], in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti with Mona Baker (London – New York: Routledge, 2000), 26-33. For a discussion of how such experimental translations inhabit and at the same time challenge ethnocentric assumptions about literature, both harnessing and problematizing domesticating translation strategies, see Mihály Szegedy-Maszák’s discussion of Hungarian modernist poet-translator Dezső Kosztolányi’s work, in Megértés, fordítás, kánon (Understanding, translation, canon) (Budapest – Bratislava: Kalligram, 2008), 210-229. Cf. Miklós Györffy, “1977: A modern regény magyarul” (The modern novel in Hungarian), in A magyar irodalom történetei (Histories of Hungarian Literature), ed. Mihály SzegedyMaszák, vol. III (Budapest: Gondolat, 2007), https://irodalom.oszk.hu/villanyspenot/#!/ fejezetek/DVuA2seHTWiibfnF4zBd6g accessed 10 October 2019. On Tandori’s translation poetics see Introduction, 15-18.

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of divergence which illuminate his own translation poetics. The essay could be characterized with its own formula for Ulysses, “quixotically hobbyhorsical”:11 it reads the novel so much in his own image that it could serve as a companion to Szentkuthy’s novels produced to that date, the baroque metafictional anatomy of European culture, Prae (1934) and the encyclopaedic series St. Orpheus Breviary begun in 1938.12 In associating the independent function of language and the free play of meaning with avant-garde collage and automatic writing, he also reads Ulysses from the vantage point of Finnegans Wake; the later work’s disseminative poetics was to permeate, nearly three decades later, Szentkuthy’s own translation of Ulysses.13 It was to some extent due to the decisive influence of the 1970s translations of key modernist works, Ulysses first and foremost, that many of the innovative writers grouped under the label “postmodern prose turn” of the 1970s-80s subjected the Hungarian language to a transformation similar in scope to Joyce’s “revolution of the word.”14 The 2012 Revised version implicitly tackles this heritage, part of the work’s afterlife that is encapsulated in Szentkuthy’s translation choices, as well as bringing to life particular solutions from Gáspár’s submerged 1947 text.

1

“Queerities” (14.528): Translating Stylistic Incongruities

“Oxen of the Sun” can be characterized with the longest string of terms starting with dis-, poly-, or hetero-, and it is natural testing ground for a translator’s re-creative capacities. In 1974 J.S. Atherton in his seminal study on 11 12

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“James Joyce,” trans. E. Mihálycsa. HYPERION VIII.1 (Spring 2014), 119-145: 122. One example of Szentkuthy projecting his own prime structuring principles and intellectual frameworks on those of Joyce is when he makes Ulysses appear a monumental comedy of learning: “when [Joyce] tears words apart and glues the cat’s ear to the dog’s paw, he wants to show this: that our whole thinking is exactly such paranoia, that the grand raison of Descartes is no more than the contortions of the apoplectic tongue of an idiotic, degenerate animal species.” “James Joyce,” 134-5. In the same essay Szentkuthy writes, “because of the grand promiscuity the words keep fraying and exchanging in the aftermath of sensuous decomposition until they finally become … abstract, and Abstract Ornament emerges, only for letting an entirely unexpected permutation project the rocket of entirely unexpected images in front of our eyes in the next instant” (135). On Szentkuthy’s Wake-ified translation see my “Horsey Women and Arse-temises: Wake-ing Ulysses in Translation,” in Why Read Joyce in the 21st Century? Joyce Studies in Italy 13, eds. Franca Ruggieri and Enrico Terrinoni (Roma: Edizioni Q, 2012), 79-91. Cf. Péter Esterházy’s essay on Ulysses, “Yes,” trans. Ferenc Takács [2006], HYPERION VIII (2014.2): 99-108.

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“Oxen” drew attention to the stylistic mongrelisation and the systematic use of anachronism which deliberately confound the ambitious scheme of replicating the history of English prose styles.15 His insights were recently corroborated when Sarah Davison demonstrated how Joyce programmatically added intrusive phrases from other prose styles, turning the episode into a veritable “mock-enactment” of the “modern fetish” of historicism – into a performance of the “sham evolution of English prose history [where] the integrity of the stylistic imitations [is] undermined by systematic adulteration.”16 Most of these cases belong in the realm of patent untranslatability, many displaced quotes, signatures of specific English authors’ styles not being identifiable in the cultural memory of the TL; the parodies’ enhanced polyphony and their breaches in style are nevertheless “abusive” stylistic features that translations need to emulate. A look at the sources of “Oxen” reveals that even outwardly homogeneous passages redeploy linguistic-stylistic material from other writers, occasionally at considerable historical distance, with a wink at the cognoscenti. In a passage that imitates the ornate style of 18th century essayists, such as Addison and Steele, Mulligan presents his project of a nation-wide fertilizing farm, following Dixon’s invitation, “’Tis as cheap sitting as standing” (14.666): It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin, when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep. (14.672-679) Dixon’s pub witticism is a snippet from Swift’s 1738 Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation; the nuptial bed’s “dearest pledges” – off15 16

J.S. Atherton, “The Oxen of the Sun.” James Joyce’s Ulysses: Critical Essays, eds. Clive Hart and David Hayman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 313-339. Sarah Davison, “‘The True-Born Englishman’ and the Irish Bull: Daniel Defoe in the ‘Oxen of the Sun’ episode of Ulysses.” European Joyce Studies 25, New Quotatoes: Joycean Exogenesis in the Digital Age, eds. Ronan Crowley and Dirk Van Hulle (Leiden–Boston: Brill–Rodopi, 2016), 111-140: 133. Davison first published her insights in “Joyce’s Incorporation of Literary Sources in Oxen of the Sun.” Genetic Joyce Studies 9 (Spring 2009), http://www.geneticjoycestudies.org/GJS9/GJS9_SarahDavisonOxen.htm accessed 10 October 2019.

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spring – hark back to Spenser’s Faerie Queene, while “unaccountable muskin” is one of the stylistic infelicities pilloried by Dr. Johnson; in the passage it sits next to a scriptural echo, “hide [a light] under a bushel” (Matthew 5:14-15; Gifford 402). These dissonant voices and registers are combined in a polished period that mirrors the stylistic good form prescribed by 18th century essayists, ironically linking it to ideas of reproductive sex. As a rule translators harness archaic turns-of-phrase with a sprinkling of Latinisms to suggest 18th century writing, but few observe the dissonant notes at work in the original. Gáspár renders Dixon’s invitation with the non-formulaic, colloquial “Ülni sem kerül többe, mint állni” (Sitting doesn’t cost more than standing, Hu/Gáspár II/16). Of a consistently archaic phrasing, his translation compensates the loss of Latinisms with extra alliteration: “annyi kellemetes nőszemély dús testi tökéllyel a leghitványabb boncok martaléka lesz és tudományát egy kényelmetlen kolostorban rejti véka alá vagy valamilyen felelőtlen kéjenc karjában veszíti el asszonysága virágát” (so many pleasant females with rich bodily perfection to vilest bonzes fall prey and their knowledge in an uncomfortable monastery hide under a bushel, or in some reckless lecher’s arms lose their womanly bloom, Hu/Gáspár II/16). In the more recent translations there is little lexical archaism, the overall effect is one of heightened literariness. The stylistic misfit “unaccountable muskin” is translated by Szentkuthy with an obsolete pejorative noun as “szemtelen ficsúr” (arrogant vain young man, Hu/Szentkuthy 499), while the Revised text opts for a folksy-literary archaism, “felelőtlen golyhó” (reckless foolish man, Hu/Revised 384). Szentkuthy inflates the rhetoric and adds alliteration, to the extent that his text reads like the caricature of period style from a contemporary vantage point. The framing sentence starts with the mockpathetic phrase, “Beleit hasogatja a bánat” (his bowels are ripped by sorrow, Hu/Szentkuthy 499), and there is a vulgar innuendo in the description of “annyi kellemetes nőszemély bő keccsel és csekkel” (so many pleasant females with rich/broad charms and cheques), where the mirroring nouns “kecs” and “csekk” evoke the eclipsed “csecs[csel],” a coarse word for boobs; such patent breaches in style and register function as self-ironic narratorial intrusions. In his translation, the formulaic “Ülni-állni egyköltség” (Sitting-standing is sameexpense, Hu/Szentkuthy 499, preserved in Hu/Revised 384) sticks out. The Revised version corrects Szentkuthy’s dangling syntax, tones down the former’s idiosyncrasies and substitutes occasionally mannered turns-of-phrase and moderate alliteration, resulting in a general effect of obsolete, overblown literariness. In place of Szentkuthy’s Gargantuan humour ensuing from the stylistic collisions, one finds a milder humour that derives from the chasm between the euphemistic, clichéd form and the slippery content.

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It is revealing to gloss the difference in translation strategy in a phrase that disrupts the stylistic unity of a parody embedded in the Gothic (Walpole) pastiche, where the English Celtophile, Haines, speaks in characteristic mockSynge verbiage: Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland’s, is in this life. (…) His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope… (14.1018) Towards the end of this stage Irishry, which works as internal translation sprinkled with Gaelic, an ejaculation deflates the nested parody into bathos: “Dope is my only hope” displays the glaring anachronism “dope,” a word for drugs that is only documented with this meaning in OED from 1889. Gáspár blurs the boundary between the two pastiches by merging dialect with standard usage. He renders the anachronism, the trace of abuse in the original, with a jocose fake rhyme, “A tömény számomra az egyetlen römény” (Strong liquor [is] for me the only hope, Hu/Gáspár II/24), where “remény” (hope) is distorted to chime in with “tömény” (strong, undiluted liquor), the misplaced vowel adding a note of comically pretentious diction.17 Szentkuthy chose a playfully bombastic tone for the gothic parody, which mutates into mock-völkisch diction with exotic nonce interjections in the stage Irishry. His dispatching of the anachronism, “Tápszerem a kábszer” (My nutriment is drugs, Hu/Szentkuthy 511), is a breach of register that harnesses the internal repetition in two conspicuously contemporary and colloquial compounds – especially “kábszer,” the contraction of “kábítószer” (drug, literally, “dizzying substance”). One would be wrong to assume, however, that Szentkuthy had intuited what genetic studies confirm – that Joyce deliberately mocked his own schemata: his “Oxen” is brimming with extraneous anachronistic witticisms and ostentatious word-concoctions.18 This penchant for stylistic cross-breeding also characterizes Szentkuthy’s oeuvre: multilingual wordplay, temporally and spatially remote cultural associations lubri-

17

18

It is also possible to see in the morphing of the vowel e into ö a jocosely employed characteristic of southern Hungarian dialect (an insight I owe to Marianna Gula), in which case some form of dialectal substitution could also be said to occur. For a comparative analysis of Szentkuthy’s and the Revised “Oxen” see my “The Trials of Foreignization: Transposing Joyce’s ‘Farraginous Chronicle,’” in Parallaxing Joyce, eds. F. Ilmberger, P. Paparunas, M. Heusser, 239-266, and “From Mess to Message: On Transposing the ‘Oxen’ Coda into Hungarian”, MediAzioni 14 (2013): 1-32.

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cate his historical novels which stray the furthest possible from period pastiche.19 The Revised text captures neither the non-standard word order nor the exotic vocabulary to differentiate Haines’s idiolect from its mock-Gothic frame. The shock-sentence fades into the context: “Egyetlen remény e hűs edény” (the sole hope is this cool vessel, Hu/Revised 393) is a euphonic phrase that metonymically substitutes liquor with its recipient. By smoothing out the incongruity, the mark of “abuse” that Joyce planted in his text, this version strips the text of its perhaps most daring and subversive layer of self-parody, historicizing the episode in the face of Joyce’s manifest intention. Apart from slipping in private jokes, double entendres and turns-of-phrase taken from different, often later authors in the middle of a parody mimicking a given writer, “Oxen” also seems to ironize the very book that it is part of, as though prefiguring a constant practice of the Wake. Nested in a pastiche of 19th-century styles is a passage of stilted prose which, with its characteristic maladroitness, reads like a cameo of “Eumaeus,”20 where a drowsy Bloom stares at a bottle of Bass, then helps one of the company to a glass of it. One sentence of the passage reads: Eventually, however, both their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place. (14.1190-97, emphases mine) Skimming the scant cream of sense, the reader can identify a wealth of Eumaean mismanagements: determination in overdrive results in two one-eyed 19

20

For example, in his 1939 novel Black Renaissance composer Claudio Monteverdi digresses on music as follows: “Milyen szép ez a játék: a világi énekek, slágerek és tangók tele vannak beleszivárgott liturgikus elemekkel, viszont a misékben, kyriékben és agnusokban ott settenkednek az édeskés gassenhauerek” (Miklós Szentkuthy, Fekete reneszánsz, Budapest: Magvető, 1973, 191, emphases mine) – in English, “What splendid game: secular songs, hit tunes and tangos are full of liturgical elements that have trickled down into them, whereas sugary Tin Pan Alley melodies hang around in the masses, the Kyries and Agnus Deis”: Black Renaissance, trans. Tim Wilkinson (New York: Contra Mundum, 2018, 61, emphases mine). See Atherton, “The Oxen of the Sun,” 332.

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interlocutors and an awkward inflation of personal pronouns; an oxymoron, “involuntarily determined”; a travestied Dublinesque drinking phrase, “make a hole in a pint” (resurfacing here from 12.756), or the literal use of the verb “upset” for the beer. Ironically, it is Bloom who is pouring a drink, the only non-drinker in the company, who in “orthodox Samaritan fashion” (16.3) helps another man to the intoxicating beverage. The successive translations either play down or try to highlight the effect of cliché-ridden parapraxis. With regard to the Cyclopean overdetermination, Hungarian translations face a linguistic problem: double limbs and organs are referred to in the singular in standard Hungarian, “one’s eye / the eye of the two.” Gáspár adds a bureaucratic note, but irons out the Cyclopean touch and normalizes the phrase by substituting the turn-of-phrase “tekintetük találkozott” (their glance(s) met, Hu/Gáspár II/27) for the more physical “their eye(s) met.” The oxymoron is salvaged in “önkéntelenül elhatározta” ([he] involuntarily decided), while the transmogrified drinking phrase gets a pedantic flavour with “tetemes csökkenést idézett elő” (caused a sizable decrease, Hu/Gáspár II/28). The polished period is rounded off with a comically bureaucratic specification of simultaneities, but Bloom turns out to be pouring the drink for himself, not somebody else. Szentkuthy, who appears to have had less affinity for “Eumaeus” or “Ithaca” than for the other experimental chapters, enhances prolixity, at the same time playing with heavy-handed overdetermination of pronouns that results in a blurring of referents. He, too, misses Bloom helping another man to a drink: moreover, instead of the original oxymoron, “involuntarily determined,” he (mis)places a Hungarian idiom, “maga felé hajlik a keze” (“one’s hand bends toward oneself,” meaning, selfishly to pursue one’s interests) in the construct “akaratlanul is maga felé hajlott a keze” (involuntarily, his hand bent toward himself, Hu/Szentkuthy 517) – in line with another characteristic conceit in “Eumaeus,” of overlapping the literal and figurative meaning of dead metaphors, equally maladroit in the context. The travestied pub witticism is relatively lackluster: “jelentős űrt idézett elő benne” (caused a significant void in it). While somewhat uncomfortably physical, “szemük találkozott” (their eye(s) met, Hu/Szentkuthy 517) can still be read as normative. The Revised version further inflates verbosity (Gáspár’s 54 and Szentkuthy’s 65 words being pumped up to 73). From Szentkuthy’s version it salvages the syntactic backbone, as well as the overdetermination of pronouns; for the first, most comical infelicity it plays with “unanimously/mutually” – “kettejük tekintete egyaránt találkozott” (the-two-of-them’s gaze un-animously/both met, Hu/Revised 397), which inscribes the Hungarian numerals “egy” and “kettő,” “one” and “two.” However, as it replaces “eye” (which could connote oneeyedness) with the Hungarian cliché’s “gaze,” the literalized reading is lost.

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The translation teases out Joyce’s oxymoronic formulation into a more stilted phrase, “önkéntelenül is arra az elhatározásra jutott” (albeit unwittingly [he] came to the decision, 397), but the space-fillers between “involuntarily” and “determined” mitigate the lexical clash; the pub turn-of-phrase, “terjedelmes űrt idézett elő benne,” is given more berth with “voluminous” void (itself a sort of semantic clash). Apart from amassing impersonal phrases and significantly lengthening words – thus enhancing the red-tape effect – this translation also produces a comic side effect, an accumulation of e-syllables, itself a (mild) stylistic infelicity in Hungarian, where e is the most frequent vowel. As these textual examples show, it is difficult to find a consistent, or consistently abusive practice in the three translations. Firstly, Gáspár’s 1947 text appears to be far less “naturalizing” than one might expect. It “abusively” translates Joyce’s abusive anachronism “dope” with a self-reflexive, playfully strained wordplay; it closely approximates Joyce’s parapraxis in the Eumaeusstyle passage, cliché and maladroitness belonging to the devices most powerfully resisted by TL cultures’ expectation of “good form.” Szentkuthy’s retranslation is excessive throughout, occasionally exceeding the original; it enhances the text’s polyphony by placing extra anachronisms and dissonances (e.g., cheque), and setting off period pastiche against self-consciously contemporary diction and low colloquialisms. His “strong” translation, however, also disregards the particular distribution of voices and styles in the single parodies, so his added incongruities tend to be occasioned less by any trace of “abuse” in the original than by the homophonic and homographic possibilities of the TL. The Revised text mostly maintains stylistic homogeneity and continuity in the parodies and performs a work of fine-tuning in syntax and connectors; paring down Szentkuthy’s signature wordplays and voiceover, it occasionally erases important traces of the original’s abusive work, its bastardization of the anthology of English literature.21

2

Spluttering Splendors: the Idioms of the Coda in Translation

One of the most notoriously untranslatable parts of Ulysses is the “Oxen” Coda that Joyce himself described as a “frightful jumble of Pidgin English, nigger

21

Due to the limited scope of this essay, it inevitably glosses over the Revised text’s strategies of opening “portals of Hungarian allusive discovery” (Gula, “The spirit has been well caught,” 139), resorting to a combination of stylistically daring solutions and (lexical, cultural-literary) allusions, especially in places where these were unsatisfactorily dealt with by Szentkuthy: see Véry, “Az Ulyssest olvasva”; Gula, “Lost a Bob but Found a Tanner,” “Translation as Parallax,” as well as Gula’s essay in the present volume.

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English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken doggerel” (Letters I 140). This poly-cacophony relies on a continuous switching of dialects, codes, substandards and pidgins, often within the same phrase; the sources of the entries in the Oxen Notesheet 17, identified by Chrissie van Mierlo, range from a 1902 edition of a dictionary of London cant and slangs, Suffolk and American East Coast sea slang, to the parlances of the American frontier and of diverse immigrant groups, mostly pilfered from Bret Harte’s 1902 Tales of the West, especially his parody of J.F. Cooper, the source of much caricature Native American, Black American, and Chinese American speech.22 The Coda’s intertextual tapestry, as Sarah Davison claims, points at a transnational future of English, to be found “in metropolitan melting-pots like London, where the language is invigorated by interactions between communities of locals and outsiders, in the realm beyond England’s borders, the sea, coastal settlements, and, crucially, in America”; it “decentres and decolonizes English and remakes the language as a mode of liberation of race itself that traverses and so transcends the national.”23 Hungarian is particularly ill-suited to convey the Coda’s centrifugal diversity of idiolects: a landlocked language, it lacks historical dialects, having merely regional accents. Between the earlier two and the Revised translation one major cultural shift also played out: the receding and gradual loss of multilingualism in Hungary. Gáspár and Szentkuthy, like their readership, were still heirs of a multilingual Dual Monarchy, denizens of cities whose urban Hungarian was marked by German and Yiddish, as well as a variety of Mitteleuropean terms, the principal source of slangs; Szentkuthy uses such hybridized language in his own fiction. For today’s Hungarian reader, however, this language has the patina of early 20th-century urban lingo. Gáspár’s translation of the Coda employs contemporary Hungarian slangs and cant derived from German, Yiddish, Romani, as well as East-Central European languages; to a lesser extent than Joyce’s original, his version also deterritorializes the language, permeating its boundaries. In Szentkuthy’s translation, the Coda – which best fits his description of Joyce’s “directionless word-colonies resembling tumes-

22

23

Chrissie van Mierlo, “‘Oxen of the Sun’ Notesheet 17: Annotations and Commentary with a New List of Sources and Transcription, or Oxtail Soup: the ingredients,” Genetic Joyce Studies 14 (Spring 2014), http://www.geneticjoycestudies.org/GJS14/GJS14_Van_Mierlo.htm accessed 10 October 2019; Sarah Davison, “Oxtail Soup: Dialects of English in the Tailpiece of the ‘Oxen of the Sun’ episode of Ulysses,” Genetic Joyce Studies 14 (Spring 2014), http://www.geneticjoycestudies.org/articles/GJS14/GJS14_Davison accessed 10 October 2019. Davison, “Oxtail Soup,” 16.

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cent bacterial growths”24 – was certainly ideal ground to start his word-sporing machine and cover up semantic and contextual obscurities with a combination of recondite allusions, multilingual wordplay and a liberal helping of obscenities, in tune with the Coda’s drunken blather. His 1947 review of Gáspár’s work throws light on his own approach to the Coda: the one element he finds laudable in his predecessor’s “Oxen” is the rendition of “orchidized” with a portmanteau, “testikulált,” which amalgamates “testiculus” with “testált,” the past participle of “to leave by testament.”25 The Revised text strips away Szentkuthy’s idiosyncrasies and falls back on Hungarian slang and loan words from Romani, by now the closest “other” in Hungarian. With few exceptions, such as “feka” (racial slur for Blacks), the slang terms are not up to date but have been long naturalized in colloquial speech; what in Gáspár’s times must have seemed like a breach of stylistic decorum has today lost most of its disruptive potential. The varieties of Hungarian substandards employed by the successive translations can be seen well in the rendering of a passage where the late Patrick Dignam is mentioned in a medley of Hiberno-English and Black American English: “Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! … Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best” (14.1555-7). Joyce glossed this passage for Goyert as “child’s and nigger English… the English is quite unconvincing, and meant to be so”;26 the Dublin “mister” and Dignam’s arch-Irish name get ironically travestied into macaronic Black American English, derived from Bret Harte. Rekszkat! Szegény krapekek! … Az összes nigger rajkók közt Massa Pat volt a legkülönb. (Hu/ Gáspár II/36) (Requiescat! Poor guys! … Among all the Nigger kids Massa Pat was the best.) Gáspár’s translation plays on the phonetic distortion of requiescat; the children are referred to with the slang word “krapek,” a variant of “klapec” (guy, dude), a loan word from Slovak, while Dignam himself is called the most outstanding among “nigger rajkók”: a phrase that combines the offensive term with the Romani loan word “rajkó” ([Gypsy] child), a hybridization of idioms and minor substandards of the TL at the micro level. The inscription

24 25 26

Szentkuthy, “James Joyce,” 136. Ibid. 143. Alan M. Cohn, ed., “Joyce’s Notes on the End of ‘Oxen of the Sun,’” James Joyce Quarterly 4.3 (Spring 1967), 194-201: 199.

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of Romani on Black American English creates curious overlaps between the stereotyping of two communities with a long history of subalternship. Circumdidit in pacet. De nekem most erről ne cirkumdadogj… Az egész nacionálgaleriben VII Piás vere Dignam volt a legbecsületesebb fickó. (Hu/Szentkuthy 531) (In the whole [National Gallery + galeri: sl., gang] [Pius + Boozer] VII vere dignum/Dignam was the most honourable fellow.) Szentkuthy’s rendering is an example of a flamboyant linguistic conceit filling in a semantic obscurity (the use of dialectal forms). He conflates the formulae Requiescat in pacem, and Circumdederunt me gemitus mortis, both part of the liturgy of the Requiem; on the distorted Latin he then inscribes the Hungarian “didi” (slang for “boobs”) and “dadog” (stutter), causing a disseminative unpacking of meanings and enhancing the vulgar double entendre that dominates the passage. The second phrase performs an act of foreign-language substitution and portmanteau-ing. Instead of a dialectal form of the SL, we find snatches of latrine Latin: the name of numerous popes, Pius, is amalgamated with the Hungarian “boozer” (piás, from “pia,” booze), so the deceased Dignam is styled up as a pope of dipsomaniacs. Szentkuthy also fashions a gratuitous intratextual echo of “Wandering Rocks” where Father Conmee links Dignam’s name to the liturgy (“What was that boy’s name again? Dignam. Yes. Vere dignum et iustum est,” 10.3-4). “Darkies” is rendered with another portmanteau: the phonetic spelling of National Gallery hides “galeri,” Hungarian slang for “gang” resulting in an ironic attack on nation(hood). What for the English reader is a matter of internal translation becomes, for the Hungarian audience, a fake interlingual translation that can only be understood through Hungarian. The Revised text opts for Fényeskeggyék neki! Csóró kis purdék! … Minden csávók közül Pat gazda volt a legfrankóbb. (Hu/Revised 407) (Of all fellows master [farmer] Pat was the spiffiest.) This version approximates the original’s aural distortion of “Lord have mercy” and supplies a phrase from the liturgy of the dead, Lux aeterna luceat eis/ Az örök világosság fényeskedjék neki (May everlasting light shine upon [him]). The second sentence connotes Gypsy parlance, with two poignant loan-words from Romani: “csóró” (poor), and “purdé” ([Gypsy] child), thus rendering Hiberno-English with a minor version of the TL. The phrase continues in much the same accent: “frankó” (great, spiffing), a loanword from Italian via German

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and originally a postal term, now colloquial; the phrase is coloured by another loanword from Romani, “csávó” (“guy,” cognate of Scots “chavvy”). Both Hiberno-English and Black American English are assimilated to Gypsy Hungarian, also a minor form of the standard language; the translation sidesteps the effect of mixing two, geographically and culturally remote dialects or substandards. Closer to Mitteleuropa, there is a passage with elements of Yiddish, as the drunken company discuss Stephen Hand’s erroneous tip of a horse: “Vyfor you no me tell? Vell, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah” (14.1525). The teasing question emulates a caricature Yiddish accent and speech pattern, with “sheeny nachez” being an opprobrious term for “Jewish thing or behavior,” and “misha mishinnah” a “bad, violent, unprepared-for end or death.”27 Miért nem mondtad ezt nekem? Na hát, ha ez nem héber petite, misha mishinnah legyek. (Hu/ Gáspár II/35) (Why didn’t you tell me this? Well, if this isn’t a Hebrew petit(e), may I become misha mishinnah.) Gáspár does not attempt to render either the irregular word order, foreign phrasing, or phonetic spelling. The “petit(e)” suggests a re-gendering of “sheeny nachez,” since both Molly and Milly are mentioned in the context; on the other hand, it may also be a reference – if it is one of the many typos in the 1947 text – to “petit,” a printing term for small font and, by extrapolation, a small man, so it might hide a reference to Bloom. Szentkuthy heaps on language effects: Hogy nem bírtad megmondani? Oh grandbien, nonánemértem, ha ez nem egy jakhec de mojselesz, oh grandbien, itt legyek Misha Mishinnah. (Hu/Szentkuthy 530) (How come you didn’t tell me? Oh grandbien, oh-well-no-I-see, if this is not a jakhec [little Jew, Jewish child] de Mojselesz [of Moishe/Moisheles], may I become Misha Mishinnah on the spot.) The speech patterns function as a dialect marker of Jewish-Hungarian, a stock caricature accent in the literary tradition since the 19th century. In addition, there are added foreign links and conjunctions that suggest a faulty knowledge of the language: the nonce connector “nonánemértem” (oh-well-no-I-see), an 27

Alan M. Cohn, “Joyce’s Notes on the End of ‘Oxen of the Sun,’” 194.

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apparent mispronunciation, falls between “naná (hogy) értem” (of-course-Igot-it) and “nohát, nem értem” (oh-well-I-don’t-get-it), and resembles a cabaret figure’s incomprehension. The offensive “sheeny nachez” acquires a baroque touch: the phonetic spelling “de moiselesz” suggests the conspicuously Jewish (family) name Moise/Moisheles with an added marker of gentility, “de/von,” possibly a sarcastic hint at a spurious title, whereas the Yiddish loan-word “jakhec” (little Jew, Jewish child) can take on a vast array of colourings, from neutral “fellow” to sarcastic “arrogant dick.” The Revised version is alone in giving the phonetic spelling of the caricature (Swabian German/Yiddish) accent, as well as registering ungrammaticalities in verb conjunction, as if in mockery of a Jewish speaker’s faulty Hungarian: Hoty eszt ménem bírtá mekmondání? Mondok nékéd, há esz nem válámi bibsi vircsaft, csápjon átyon a Misha Mishinnah. (Hu/Revised 406) (I say to you, if this isn’t a Jewish business, may I be struck dead by the Misha Mishinnah.) The racial slur is rendered by the combination of two loan words, “bibsi” – the short form of “biboldó,” Romani for “unchristened,” i.e., Jew – and the German “Wirtschaft” (business). Whereas Szentkuthy used jocose coded language, “bibsi vircsaft” is part of the contemporary anti-Semitic repertoire; opting for current slang for racial slurs (while in general withholding from the use of contemporary slangs) suggests a conscious choice on the part of the revising team, of approximating the original’s carnival and comedy of ethnic, racial stereotyping, as well as potentially highlighting the effects of the continuous history of nativism that Ulysses exposes, since dated slang would have mitigated the passage’s political edge. By choosing two slang words of different origin, the Revised version also gestures at the internal hybridity of Hungarian slang and, implicitly, makes visible the mongrelization at the heart of the language.28 In my last example I wish to discuss a particular “abusive” practice, which can also reflect the overtones of the French cognate abusive – false, deceitful – 28

In comparison, the German translations show a progressive move towards Yiddish: Goyert’s “Warum haste mir das nicht gesagt? Kut, sag ich, wenn des nicht jüddisch ist, kut, tann will ich misha mishinnah sein” (G/Goyert 1930, 1956, 482) plays with a caricature Yiddish accent and reproduces the loan phrase “misha mishinnah,” while Wollschläger’s translation, harnessing linguistic proximity, blurs the boundaries between the two languages and employs further Yiddish words like M[a]loche (chicanery): “Weshalb haste mir nischt jesacht davon? Ja, also, sag ich, wenn das nicht die typisch jiddsche mloche is, ja, dann will ich ne misse-meschune haben” (G/Wollschläger 482).

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and which highlights the surplus of interventionist translation and the abundance that Berman speaks of in “great” translation:29 the inscription of domestic intertexts on the heteroglossic tapestry of the Coda, that may start further disseminative explosions and derailments in the translation.30 The sentence below, with its Latinisms and nonce derivatives, is the most high-falutin’ caricature of pretentious diction in the Coda: Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation? (14.1529) Megengedi-e a ragyogóan nagylelkű guberátor, hogy egy-egy pocsékul leégett nimolista, aki két kefekötőnél szomjasabb, fejezze be ezt a pompázatosan kezdődött zrít? (Hu/Gáspár II/35) (Will the splendidly generous cadger permit that one nastily broke nonentity or other, who is thirstier than two brushmakers, finish this splendidly started ruction?) Gáspár amalgamates contemporary (today mostly dated) slang with pretentious diction and (fake) Latinisms: the Hungarian sentence threads slang words, e.g., “zrí” (fracas) derived from Zrínyi Street (the location of a police headquarters in Budapest at the beginning of the 20th century), with hybridized nonce words, to approximate Joyce’s comic “stander/stooder.” “Guberátor,” with its deceptively Latinate suffix, hides a noun derived from “guberál” (scavenge; cadge); its proximity to the archaism “gubernátor” (governor) enhances the comic clash between respectable-looking form and unglamorous content. Similarly, “nimolista” is a hybrid of Latin suffix and a slang word, “nimolé” (insignificant person, nonentity); to this is added a variation on a domestic idiom, “iszik, mint a kefekötő” (“drink like a brushmaker,” approx., “drink like a fish”). Together these solutions simultaneously domesticate – because a TL idiom is introduced and domestic topography inscribed on the 29 30

Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction” (Palimpsestes 4, 1990), 5-6. While this essay is limited to discussing examples from “Oxen” in translation, the insertion of intertexts from TL literature and cultural memory in the Revised translation text, especially in rendering the echoes from Moore songs and the subtexts of “Cyclops,” is perspicaciously analyzed by Marianna Gula in “The spirit has been well caught,” 130-142. In his 1947 essay “James Joyce,” Szentkuthy concludes that, where the original plays on domestic literary allusions, in translation snippets of Hungarian literature should be employed for a comparable effect (144-45).

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translated phrase – and defamiliarize the available TL repertory; “zrí,” just as the Revised version’s “bibsi vircsaft,” are examples of Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s remainder, that “locus for diachrony-within-synchrony,” the trace of earlier linguistic forms in current usage, which Venuti singles out as a prime foreignizing/minoritizing strategy.31 Szentkuthy opts for enhancing the effect of pretentious diction by adding multilingual erudition terms: Megengedheti a legragyogóbb gagyogóbb mecénás, hogy egy lerobbant Lázár titáni tantalida szomja meg ne enyhülhessen e páratlan grandezzával előkészített italáldozat alkalmából? (Hu/Szentkuthy 530) (Can the most splendid babbling Maecenas tolerate that a broke Lazarus’ titanic Tantalus/tantalizing thirst be not quenched on the occasion of this libation prepared with matchless grandezza?) Joyce’s “stander” and “stooder” are styled up into a Maecenas and a Lazarus with a thirst that is both titanic and Tantalus-like; the loss of the Latin libation is compensated for by the insertion of Italian “grandezza”; alliteration and euphony are added to turn the sentence into a style event. Puzzlingly, an extraneous intertextual layer is imprinted: the epithet legragyogóbb (most splendid) is doubled by a silly complete rhyme, “gagyogóbb” (babbling, spattering). For Hungarian readers this translatorial abuse invokes the playful rhyme “gagyog/ s ragyog,” from Attila József’s emblematic 1937 poem Születésnapomra (For My Birthday). In a deceptively simple song form and with a series of insouciant rhymes belonging to the no-go zone of good versification, the poem evokes how the mutter-spluttering dean of studies expelled the poet from university in 1925, for publishing a poem judged both blasphemous and antipatriotic.32 The poem ends with a jocose non serviam, inscribed in the internal rhyme “taní-tani” (to teach): doomed never to become a schoolteacher, the lyric self promises to teach his whole nation, beyond high-school education – with all its self-irony, a proposal that brings to mind the forging of the uncreated conscience of one’s race. What at face value may seem an unjustified addition may – irrespective of the translator’s intention – create an interlingual and intertextual explosion of meanings and correspondences. József’s virtuoso use of amateurish form is tentatively linked to the aesthetic-political program of the 31 32

Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility (London: Routledge, 1995), 216. In Michael Castro’s translation: “‘You, as long as I have a word,/ won’t be teaching in this world,’/ mutters/ and splutters.” https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/hu/J%C3%B3zsef _Attila-1905/Sz%C3%BClet%C3%A9snapomra/en/54610-For_My_Birthday accessed 10 October 2019.

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Coda’s Pentecostal glossolalia and its emancipation of linguistic substandards, which carries out Stephen Dedalus’ project of defying history, “by the stylistic tour de force of trailing the entwining navelcords of English and Irish narrative literature, developing into an ecstatic conglomeration of liberated tongues.”33 Megengedi-e a mérhetetlenül pompázatos adományozó egy rendkívüli szegénységgel és lenyűgözően fenséges szomjjal küzdő kedvezményezettnek, hogy e pazar ünnepélyességgel megnyitott italáldozatot bevégezhesse? (Hu/Revised 406) (Will the immeasurably splendid donor allow a privilegee struggling with extraordinary poverty and an overwhelmingly sublime thirst to finish this libation inaugurated with brilliant ceremoniousness?) The Revised version has recourse to bombastic Hungarian wording with comic bureaucratic overtones, but it performs a thorough back-translation. Instead of the original’s Latinate amalgamations and multilingualism, the text remains within the boundaries of Hungarian; “stander/stooder” become received, if heavy-handed, legal terms. With its philosophical overtones “fenséges” (sublime) stands out as the only potentially “abusive” term. Gáspár’s Coda, with all its shortcomings characteristic of early translations, offers a linguistic amalgam which still comes across as fresh (many terms are still in use as colloquialisms) and irreverent, at a sharp angle to the age’s literary mainstream. This version (ab)uses a great variety of slang and cant, from a Central European mix of languages and Romani, showcasing the historical and geographical multiplicity of Hungarian and pointing at multilingual miscegenation as a source of energy. The occasional creative splicing of words from different registers and languages, and his local, motivated re-creative solutions suggest more than “a young explorer’s adolescent daredevilry”34 – it constitutes a conscious resistance to the “use-values” of contemporary TL literary culture. Szentkuthy’s “abusive” (re)creative solutions raise the question of ethics in translation: his practice of packaging extraneous, arcane allusions and further inscribing the text with multilingual intertexts is at the same time an appropriating, unethical trans-creative practice, and an ab-usive one in the Derridean sense – that is, one which inscribes and defies both the use-values which the original abuses, and those of TL culture. Szentkuthy’s approach, 33 34

Ida Klitgård, Fictions of Hybridity: Translating Style in James Joyce’s Ulysses (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2007), 37. Szentkuthy, “James Joyce,” 136.

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which favours creativity, contiguity, chance, homophony and homography and infuses the translation text with disseminative multilingual energy, nevertheless contributes to a unifying stylistic voiceover, which is recognizably his signature, and whose internal polyphony is more restricted than that of Joyce’s text – whereas one of the marks of the singularity of Ulysses, and of the Coda, is precisely its refusal of a dominant “signature” style. It would be tempting but misleading to conclude, on the basis of these few examples, that the Revised Coda pursues less an agenda of ab-imitative faithfulness.35 The passage’s polyphony, the colloquialisms and slang are not inscribed with internal translations and a multiplicity of languages, and the density of “abusive” translational solutions, while strictly motivated, is significantly lower than in Szentkuthy. In terms of the shifts in the host culture, it is worth mentioning that Szentkuthy’s Ulysses displays the arsenal of textual strategies, akin to deconstructive practice, that characterized literary experimentation in the 1970s-1990s, part of the novel’s afterlife in Hungarian. That afterlife subsided around the turn of millennium, with worldwide changes in literary trends, the gaining ground of documentary and testimonial modes of writing. This involved a de-intensification of textual work, and a movement towards more transparent and homogeneous textuality; in addition to the natural “aging” of a translation’s language, the former disseminative linguistic practice has slowly accrued a patina of its own. This may be a unique, possibly paradoxical feature of the Hungarian translations: that a carnivalesque, abusive, Wakefied, and unashamedly appropriating retranslation/trans-creation is followed by a scholarly re-retranslation/revision that, in terms of textual activity like multilingualism, heteroglossia, portmanteau-ing, or palimpsestic superinscriptions of literary history in allusions, tends to be homogenizing rather than productive of the “abundance” that Berman considers part of “great translation.”36 At the beginning of The Singularity of Literature, Attridge launches a claim for responsible reading without predetermined agenda and grid of “possible uses,” but that might “trust in the unpredictability of reading, its openness to 35

36

Ab-imitative fidelity, playing on Derrida’s gloss on Hegel in White Metaphor, would presuppose a “toughened exigency” and a refusal to privilege the signified over signifiers; such translation practice would by and large be oriented towards “supplying the lack” and justifying difference: Lewis, “The Measure of Translation Effects,” 270-271. This conceptualization of translation parallels Berman’s postulates for the ethics of translation, which links a translation practice that would favour the capture and transfer of meaning to the detriment of form, with unethical ethnocentrism: The Experience of the Foreign, trans. Stefan Heyvaert (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1992), 35. “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction,” 5.

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the future,” and be prepared to be challenged by the work.37 Translation as the closest, but also the most interventionist kind of reading, needs to constantly scrutinize its own choices for ethical responsibility and its resistance to the possible instrumentalizations. One guarantee of the text’s unpredictability is to keep in mind Fritz Senn’s caveat that the reader’s “obstructive mental absorption”38 is very often the point in the Ulysses text, and so to refrain from deciding undecidabilities; in certain cases, to choose trans-obscuring instead of trans-illumination. 37 38

The Singularity of Literature, 29. Fritz Senn, “Preliminary Reflections,” in Ida Klitgård, Fictions of Hybridity: Translating Style in James Joyce’s Ulysses, 9-12: 11.

Chapter 6

Translating Finger(tip) Jolanta Wawrzycka

Abstract This chapter discusses a few elements of the 1969 Polish translation of Ulysses and the author’s own ongoing translation. It tackles the issues of language register in passages from “Calypso” and “Oxen,” including polysemic and syntactic ambiguities, and it presents translatorial priorities such as attention to semantic and syntactical cruxes that defy translation, preservation of Joyce’s economy of expression, and attention to Joyce’s patterns of repetition, foundational to textual memory in the original. Repetitive elements frequently resist transfer into other languages and Wawrzycka’s ongoing Polish retranslation challenges some of the strictures of TL rules, siding with the source text wherever possible.

1

“The language of course was another thing” (U 6.667)

To date, Polish has only one full translation of Ulysses: Maciej Słomczyński’s canonical 1969 Ulisses. But as early as 1938, a fragment of “Calypso” translated by the poet Józef Czechowicz was published during the decade when avantgarde writers in Poland were responding to Joyce’s Ulysses that they read in the original, or in the German and French translations, as the records of the early Joyce reception in Poland indicate.1 A few new translations are rumoured to be underway, a welcome if belated development, considering that there are, for instance, five versions of Ulysses in Portuguese, four in Italian, or three in Hungarian and Dutch. I have been translating passages from Ulysses into Polish for years; I refer to the process as trans-semantification or literary re-languaging, because these terms come closer to name what I do as I supplant one lexical surface of the text with another, while also attending to the sound/rhythm of Joyce’s language or to cultural references (embedded in names, rhetorical 1 See my “The Reception of James Joyce in Poland,” in The Reception of James Joyce in Europe, eds. Geert Lernout and Wim Van Mierlo (London: Thoemmes Continuum 2004), Vol. 1, 219229, and “Bibliography of Polish Reception,” ibid. 298-303. Both cover the period from the 1930s through the beginning of 2000s. By now, they are in dire need of updating.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_008

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formations, stylistic repetitions, colloquialisms or invectives) in order to refoster them in Polish.2 This means “busting the normative boundaries” of my native language as I work to “carry across” and re-create in Polish the very literariness of Joyce’s text,3 as well as its foreignness (in line with the oldenday dicta of, for instance, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm von Humboldt, or Friedrich Schlegel, for whom translation meant bringing readers closer to the foreignness of the original). Seamus Heaney observed that translation is a “labour-intensive work, scriptorium-slow.”4 Indeed, well-known to all Joyce translators are those head-splitting moments of aargh when their own language won’t accommodate facets of the Joyce text, thus hindering their effort to bring the readerly experience of their un-Englished audience closer to that of the Englished one. Centuries’ worth of theoretical pronouncements about translation are, to quote Fritz Senn’s quip, “as useful to translators as ornithology is to birds.” Still, descriptive, quantifying or metaphorizing commentaries on translation frequently serve as a posteriori learning tools, even if they do not directly aid translators’ “scriptorium-slow” toils in the trenches of re-languaging the untranslatables. Nevertheless, some fruits of these toils presented here and throughout this book will, hopefully, add to the toolbox of future Joyce retranslators bent on wrenching out solutions to a host of forbidding Joycean aarghs.

2

“Fieldglasses” (U 15.538)

Translators face language not only along the “source vs. target language” axis, but also along the internal axes of “languages” within the translated work (one thinks of all the Englishes in “Cyclops” or “Oxen of the Sun”). “A language is revealed in all its distinctiveness only when it is brought into relationship with other languages,” postulates Bakhtin in the context of heteroglossia.5 2 Another apt term would be “polonization.” Krzysztof Bartnicki asserts that “polonizing” was, indeed, what he was doing while rendering Finnegans Wake into Polish as Finneganów tren (Kraków: Korporacja Ha!art, 2012). Such formations as “freudygodny błąd” (Ft/Bartnicki 411.31) for “freudful mistake” (FW 411.36) are not translations sensu stricto: they rely on brandnew lexes that polonize (italianize, etc.) Joyce’s units, something quite familiar to all translators of the Wake. For my review of Bartnicki’s translation, see James Joyce Quarterly 54.1-2 (Fall 2016-Winter 2017): 167-176. 3 Description adapted from my chapter “Translation,” in James Joyce in Context, ed. John McCourt (Cambridge, 2009), 125-36. 4 Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000), xxii. 5 Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas, 1981), 411.

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By extension, interlingual translation presents an extreme example of such heteroglossic dynamics. Works purged of what Bakhtin calls the “brute heteroglossia”6 for the sake of “single-imaged, ‘ennobled’ language” would present fewer problems in translation (e.g., ideological or didactic works, or what Joyce refers to as “improper,” “kinetic” art; P 205). But in works where “heteroglossia is revealed and actualized,” according to Bakhtin, “languages become implicated in each other and mutually animate each other,”7 and the question is: how are translators to proceed in rendering heteroglossia in target language? What, to echo Walter Benjamin, is their task?8 Benjamin’s notion that translation is a liberation of the language imprisoned in the text has been taken up by Jacques Derrida and topped by a metaphor of the text’s demand for survival,9 but none of them provide answers what to do in the face of having to wrench out signifying lexes/phrases from one language and transplant them into another. If, as Friedrich Schleiermacher proposed in his 1813 lecture, the translator “either leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him” (what Lawrence Venuti recast as the foreignizing/domesticating binary10), then the translatorial task appears to be deceptively simple in its communicative goal to mediate the cultural/social difference. Paul Bensimon states the obvious in asserting that translations and retranslations are historically marked artefacts, bound to both the translator’s individual act and to the cultural practice of the day.11 The “Retranslation Hypothesis” discussed in the Introduction postulates the timelessness of the 6 7 8

9 10 11

Ibid. 410. Ibid. For my polemical discussion of Benjamin’s influential essay, “The Task of the Translator” in the context of translating Joyce, see “Joyce en slave/Joyce Enclave: the Joyce of Maciej Słomczyński,” in Twenty-First Joyce, eds. Ellen Carol Jones and Morris Beja (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), esp. pp. 140-41. See Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Theories of Translation, eds. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 71-82. See Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 121-22. For Schleiermacher’s statement, see Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility (London, Routledge, 1995), 19-20. “Every translation is historical, any retranslation is too,” states Bensimon, adding that neither can be separated from “culture, ideology, literature, in a given society, at a given moment in history.” Both translating and retranslating is “an individual act” while it is also an act of “a cultural practice,” both “traversed” by the language of the time (1; my translation). See Paul Bensimon, “Présentation,” Palimpsestes 4 (1990): 1-3. See also Isabelle Desmidt, “(Re)translation Revisited,” Meta, Vol. 54, No. 4, (December 2009): 669-683; Desmidt elaborates on translation becoming “relative” in the face of changing social norms “which

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original text and the temporal value of its translations, a binary that oversimplifies the problematics of translating Joyce. I would counter that the “busting of the normative boundaries” of a given language can transport translators away from the constraints of their milieu or moment, which, paradoxically, can happen as translation labours to adhere to the revolutionary features of the original, particularly those that will be equally radical in the TL. Thus I would argue that, for instance, such a nonce word in Chamber Music as “enaisled” resists the mark of time; recreated as a nonce word in my translation through a calque formation (as “unawiony”12), it will retain the mark of a-temporality whatever practice prevails on the 21st-century translatorial scene (this, naturally, does not apply to all vocabulary or to slang/cant words whose register will inevitably mark the translation’s historical moment and, eventually, date it). Some of my discussion below will show that, bound as I am to my historical and cultural circumstance, I approach the Joyce text with the heightened and near-paralyzing awareness of the need to heed “Joyce” and the equally strong awareness of the need to bust the prescriptive norms of Polish. Because the latter cannot be done with impunity, in my process of polonizing Ulysses, I also work to “de-Joyce” untranslatabilities and mediate to recreate them, through different means, in Polish.13 Thus I became aware – and I would argue – that Joyce was involved in a similar process as he collaborated with his translators, a process that could be understood in terms of retranslation, given the degree to which Joyce was unfettering English from its own Englishness by translating it from the familiar into the foreign English of “changeably meaning vocables” (FW 118. 27). To see the Joyce text as written-through-translation or as already-translated recasts his involvement in the French Ulysse as the work of re-retranslation, or self-re-retranslation. Where Larbaud et al were translating Joyce, Joyce was already retranslating Joyce. Correspondence and critical readings on the subject presented in the Introduction underscore Joyce’s concern that the newly emerging Ulysse observe to the utmost the minutiae that

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makes it impossible to dissociate translation from its broader historical context” (670), and continues with a recap of the tenets of the “Retranslation Hypothesis” outlined in the Introduction to this volume. See Chamber Music/Muzyka intymna, trans. Jolanta Wawrzycka (Kraków: Ha!art, 2019), 47. For example, as is well known, the answer to Lenehan’s riddle (7.513; 587), “What opera resembles a railwayline?” (The Rose of Castille – “rows of cast steel”) relies on a wordplay irreproducible outside of English. Słomczyński rewrites it super-creatively into (in backtranslation): What opera reminds us the most about the eunuch? (102; 103) – and offers the answer: Rose of Cast(r)il, in Polish “Róża Kast(r)ylii,” a play on “castrato.” Clever. Very. In my “scriptorium,” I’m rummaging for an equally smart solution.

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made Ulysses revolutionary and unique. Which may be why Joyce (reportedly) declared that “there is nothing that cannot be translated” (JJ 632). In my hope to present the Polish readers with an aesthetic experience comparable to that of the English language readers, I can be accused of espousing “the paradigm of idealism” implied in “Retranslation Hypothesis.”14 Indeed, if I see my work through the rose-coloured glasses, labouring towards a translation that would transcend its own historical positioning, I’m also quite aware of the naïveté of this stance, noting André Topia’s proposition that it is the translation that remains unchanged, frozen and locked in time, while the original work continues evolving, subject of new perspectives brought about by socio-historical circumstances.15 But none of these pronouncements help at all as I re-language Ulysses. Rose-coloured glasses, for what they are worth, do.

3

“An official translation” (U 15.1626)

Because Słomczyński, as “Joe Alex,” was a popular detective fiction writer, some of the deliberations below have to do with Słomczyński’s translationas-authoring: indeed, there are places in Słomczyński’s text where interpretive departures from Joyce’s language, while not necessarily specious, are significant enough to suggest a license on his part to intervene as a fellow-writer (in a manner similar to, but not as extreme as, Szentkuthy’s16). My own text in

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See Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi and Amene Mohammadi, “Revisiting ‘Retranslation Hypothesis’: A Comparative Analysis of Stylistic Features in the Persian Retranslations of Pride and Prejudice,” Open Journal of Modern Linguistics Vol. 3, No. 3 (2013): 174-181, http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2013.33024 accessed 28 September 2019. The authors elaborate that the paradigm applies to multiple retranslations within a given language, each getting closer to the original (176). Their discussion provides a useful overview of the goals, motives and assumptions behind the “Retranslation Hypothesis.” Topia addresses the temporality of literary works and proposes that, in terms of the established distinction between the “eternity” of the original and the “deterioration” of translation, perhaps “it should be said that, paradoxically, it is the work that changes and translation that does not change. While the work continues to move imperceptibly according to the changes of perspective brought about by historical evolution, the translation is frozen in a locked time once and for all” (46; my translation). See André Topia, “Finnegans Wake: la traduction parasitée,” Palimpsestes 4 (1990): 45-61. Słomczyński once stated that “… yes, Joyce is Joyce, but I too can do with my own native language whatever I wish and, after all, one man’s masterpiece has to be within the reach of another man” (13-14; my translation). “Klucze odchłani” (“Keys to the Abyss”), Literatura na Świecie 5 (1973): 4-41. On Szentkuthy, see Erika Mihálycsa, “Horsey Women and Arse-temises: Wake-ing Ulysses in Translation,” in Joyce Studies in Italy 13 (2012): 79-92.

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Polish is produced, at first, as a near-literal translation, edited into a semi-final version and reshaped as retranslation only after I re-work my text through the lens of Słomczyński.17 Learning from his solutions helps: many of them are similar or reassuringly identical to mine. But some differences are quite striking and can be attributed to, for instance, the haste with which Słomczyński laboured, interspersed with periods of lull (when financial needs forced him to write more detective stories).18 The pioneering nature of his work at the time (1960s) when the Joycean scholarly apparatus was considerably slimmer, and in a place (communist Poland) where even those slim resources were not easily accessible, certainly account for some other differences. If, as writertranslator, he might have followed the creative urge to rewrite aspects of the source text, a tortured scholar-translator’s pedestrian aim would be to produce a text that is closer-to-the-dynamics-of-the-original. This somewhat forced dichotomy presupposes a bias, though it is not my intent to suggest superiority or inferiority of creative/writerly vs. scholarly solutions. In fact, creative solutions are very much the feature of a scholarly translation, one informed by familiarity with the Joyce scholarship, successful in re-creating the original’s language effects, and capable of offering the target language readers a comparable cognitive and aesthetic readerly experience. Departures, sometimes drastic, from Joyce’s (con)text may successfully stay within the Joycean register, in contrast to rewrites that are likely to go against the Joycean grain.19 I

17

18

19

Unlike, for instance, Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes, who were contracted to “correct” the existing Dutch Dubliners and found the challenge of retranslation-ascorrection much more taxing. See their chapter in this volume. See also their essay, “Why We Need a Third Dutch Translation of Ulysses,” in Scientia Traductionis, 12 (2012): 72-87, available at https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/scientia/article/view/1980-4237 .2012n12p72/23806 accessed 4 September 2019. Jadwiga Ćwiąkała, who worked with Słomczyński in the mid-1960s, offers a compelling account of the translation’s progress, noting that in late 1957 he would produce 10 pages a day without, at first, any good sense of the whole text. One-third of the Polish Ulisses emerged after only 50 days of work and, after Słomczyński finished the first draft in 1966, he recorded in his diary that the whole translation took “150 days spread over 9 years!”. “O polskim Ulissesie” (“On the Polish Ulysses”), in Wokół James’a Joyce’a (Around James Joyce), eds. Katarzyna Bazarnik and Finn Fordham (Kraków: Universitas, 1999), 175-184; my translation. The Joycean-in-spirit examples are presented elsewhere in this volume by Mina Đurić (e.g., “trtmrt”) and by Caetano Galindo (e.g., his solution to “Bloo… Me?”); they stand in sharp contrast to some rewrites by, for instance, Szentkuthy; see Mihálycsa, also in this volume. In a private correspondence Mihálycsa clarified that Szentkuthy’s rewrites, while over the top and having at times very little to do with the original’s semantics, do have quite a bit to do with the nature of Joycean textuality, portmanteaux, semiosis, and

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choose to dodge speculating on the exhausted notion of translation’s fidelity to, or departure from, the original; that territory has been toddled upon for centuries by practitioners, philosophers and theoreticians of translation to no appreciable gain. It may be worthwhile to recall a truism: in translation, nothing stays the same. My discussion of passages from my Polish translation of “Calypso” was first presented at the “ReTranslation Workshop” hosted by the Zurich James Joyce Foundation (October 2017). In this chapter, my commentary is contextualized by the two extant Polish translation listed at the opening of this chapter.

4

“The pointing of her finger” (U 4.321)

Much commented-upon marital maneuvering in “Calypso” has to do, appropriately, with hands, fingers and gestures engaged in a subtle game of subterfuge between spouses – acts of translation of a different kind.20 The language cooperates, and what appears trite or routine on the representational level is paralleled by seemingly trite and routine language formulations, that is, until a translator has to render them in another language. For instance, a relatively uncomplicated sentence like this: Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from the bed (4.321) transfers seemingly easily into Polish. I present it below first in Czechowicz’s, then in Słomczyński’s and finally in my own translation: Pl/Czechowicz (438): Patrząc, gdzie wskazuje jej wyciągnięty palec, wziął z łóżka za nogawicę brudne majtki

20

lateral proliferation of meaning. Incidentally, Szentkuthy’s solution to ‘Bloo… Me?’ is to replace “Bloo[d]” with “Leop…Én? Nem. Leo pápa” (“pope Leo,” Hu/Szentkuthy 183), and Słomczyński’s – with “Bl… Ja? Nie. Bliźni, oto krew baranka” (“Brother(s), behold blood of the lamb,” Pl/ Słomczyński 115), both on par, though differently, with Galindo’s solution. On the Blooms’ language and relationship as translatorial, see my “Memory and Marital Dynamics in Ulysses,” (Mediazioni 16), esp. pp. 2-3. http://mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.it accessed 27 July 2019. Having offered a few critical readings of the scene just as I was beginning to translate this episode made me hyper-aware of the challenges that this seemingly simple passage can present to translators (elsewhere in this volume, Rareș Moldovan also discusses this scene).

Translating Finger(tip)

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(looking where points her outstretched finger, he took from the bed by the leg her dirty/soiled drawers). Pl/Słomczyński (50): Idąc za jej wskazującym palcem, ujął nogawkę przybrudzonych, leżących na łóżku majtek. (following/going after her pointing finger, he took up the leg of her semidirty, lying on the bed drawers). Pl/Wawrzycka: Wiodąc wzrokiem za wzniesionym jej palcem, podniósł z łóżka nogawkę jej brudnych majtek. (following with his eyes her lifted finger, he took up from the bed the leg of her dirty/ soiled drawers). In Joyce’s phrasing, “the pointing of her finger,” it is the gerund that qualifies the scene, emphasizing the action of pointing. The meaning is affected by a bit of defamiliarization that I find significant given the carefully choreographed scene of Bloom stalling and Molly obfuscating. And it is that defamiliarization which, at least in Polish, is smoothed out in Czechowicz and in Słomczyński. A literal Polish version (Idąc/patrząc za wskazaniem jej palca/ following the pointing of her finger) would preserve Joyce’s gerund and the effect of estrangement, even at the risk of highlighting the redundancy (one follows a finger because a finger is pointing to something). My rhythmic and alliterative “Wiodąc wzrokiem za wzniesionym jej palcem” takes note of Joyce’s “Following the pointing of her finger.” Notably, there is a comma in all Polish versions, a dictate of Polish rules of punctuation. Bloom does not know what Molly’s finger is pointing at as he lifts her garter and a stocking and learns it is a book that Molly wants: – It must have fell down, she said. (…) (4.326) Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance (4.328) Pl/Czechowicz (438): – Widocznie spadła – powiedziała. (…) Na łóżku nie ma. Pewno się gdzieś zapodziała. Nachylił się i uniósł nieco frędzle. (– Apparently it fell off – she said. (…)

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Wawrzycka

It’s not on the bed. Looks like it got lost somewhere. He leaned over and slightly lifted the fringe). Pl/Słomczyński (50): – Musiała upaść, powiedziała. (…) Nie w łóżku. Musiała się zsunąć. Pochylił się u uniósł falbanę kapy. (– It must have fallen, she said. Not in the bed. It must have slid down. He leaned and lifted the frill of the bedspread). Pl/Wawrzycka: – Musiała spadnąć, powiedziała. (…) Nie w łóżku. Musiała spaść. Schylił się i uniósł falbankę (kapy – but see also the discussion of the bedding on p. 133 and 136). (–It must have fell off, she said. Not in the bed. It must have fallen off. He leaned and lifted the frill (of the bedspread). The urge here is to perform what Fritz Senn calls “grammatical rectification,”21 that is, to correct Molly’s “fell down.” But Molly may just be correct, if redundant, in saying what she means: “It must have felled down” because it got knocked down. Maybe homophony is to blame when Bloom hears “felleddown” as “fell-down” and corrects it to “slid down” (at the moment when he also worries about her pronunciation of voglio). Czechowicz corrects Molly’s error into standard usage, while Słomczyński opts for a skewed usage, “upaść,” a verb that refers to a person in motion who then stumbles and falls. Molly’s reference to the book as “fallen” is therefore a bit off (more on that below). But he matches Joyce well in having Bloom think “zsunąć” (slide down) and having the spouses use two different verbs as well. My own translation conveys Molly’s ungrammaticality through “spadnąć,” an incorrect form of “spaść” (to fall off); Bloom’s “spaść” appears almost as a reflex as he inwardly “rights” Molly’s lapsus.22 Of note here is Czechowicz’s complete erasure of this dynamics: 21

22

See Fritz Senn, “The Lure of Grammatical Rectification,” Scientia Traductionis 12 (2012), 7-19. Available at: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/scientia/article/view/1980-4237 .2012n12p7 accessed 4 September 2019. In my earlier solution presented at the 2018 James Joyce Symposium panel at the University of Antwerp, I proposed an error in pronunciation: another Polish word for “fall off” is “zlecieć”, which, if pronounced incorrectly, changes the second “-e-” into -i-: “zlecić.” To Molly’s “Musiała zlecić” Bloom’s reflex correction would be “Musiała zlecieć,” a subtler and less perceptible adjustment.

Translating Finger(tip)

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he thoroughly domesticates the exchange by having Molly speak correct Polish and putting into Bloom’s thoughts an idiomatic phrase that forgoes the notion of anything falling down (“Pewno się gdzieś zapodziała” – Looks like it got lost somewhere). In a curious reversal, Czechowicz’s Bloom, wondering about Molly’s voglio, thinks: “To dziwne, że ona należycie wymawia to słowo: voglio” (It’s strange [it’s a wonder] that she correctly pronounces this word: voglio, 438). The stumbles and misses here are truly instructive. The “valance” lifted by Bloom is a bit problematic to translate because this is not a customary piece of bed furnishing in the target culture. While it is rendered as a non-specific “fringe” (frędzle) by Czechowicz, Słomczyński navigates the obstacle by pointing to the frill of the bedspread (falbanę kapy) and, for clarity, I’m tempted to adopt his solution (hence my “kapy” in parenthesis; more on this below). In the next sentence, the narrative charitably takes Molly’s side and lexically confirms the book’s felled/fallen state: The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed chamberpot. (4.329) Pl/Czechowicz (438): Książka leżała porzucona, rozpłaszczywszy się na pomarańczowej okrągłości nocnego naczynia. (The book was laying discarded/abandoned, having sprawled [itself23] on the orange roundness of the night vessel). Pl/Słomczyński (50): Upuszczona książka leżała otwarta, wspierając się na wypukłości nocnika o pomarańczowej obwódce. (The dropped book was lying open, propping [itself] on the bulge of chamberpot with orange edging/rim). Pl/Wawrzycka: Książka, upuszczona, rozpostarła się o wypukłość nocnika z pomarańczowym greckim szlaczkiem. (The book, dropped, sprawled [itself] against the bulge of chamberpot with Greek orange border).

23

“Itself” in the brackets marks the Polish reflexive mode (się), a feature present in many other languages as well.

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Wawrzycka

Joyce’s “fallen,” set off by the commas, is quite emphatic, as if it were contradicting Bloom’s “slid down.” This somewhat peculiar phrasing presents a bit of a challenge to replicate in Polish where the context calls for different words to accommodate the English “fallen” (fallen [soldier] = poległy [żołnierz] or fallen angel = upadły [anioł]). The word also anticipates – as Bloom looks at the picture of Ruby, the (presumably) fallen woman in the fallen book he found sprawled against the chamber pot – the scene when, hours later, Molly, the “fallen” wife, will too sprawl against the vessel. Though in Polish “upuszczona”/“dropped” for Joyce’s “fallen” works very well in the context of a “fallen book,” it does not in reference to a “fallen woman”24 where the word would be “upadła.” Building on Słomczyński and reversing his word order, I reproduced Joyce’s effect of emphasizing “upuszczona/dropped” by off-setting it by commas. Besides its suggestiveness in the vicinity of “fallen” and “bulge,” the word “sprawled” denotes agency – it is the book that is doing the sprawling – where the Polish language cannot but turn it into a passive object laying propped against the chamber pot. The descriptive route of Czechowicz’s “leżała … rozpłaszczywszy się” (was lying … having sprawled [itself]) and Słomczyński’s “leżała … wspierając się” (was lying … propping [itself]) use participial forms to describe the book’s position. My “rozpostarła się” (spread out) for “sprawled” comes closest to Joyce’s phrasing semantically and, particularly, in terms of economy of expression. But, admittedly, I would not have come up with this solution if it weren’t for my analysis of the differences between my predecessors’ renditions: that they are different was the reason why I looked closer at the original phrasing. Joyce’s phrasing in the next sentence had to be slightly amended in my translation: whereas “bulge” travels well into Polish as “wypukłość,” Słomczyński preserves “orangekeyed” only in terms of colour (pomarańczowy = orange), sacrificing its implied Greekness. As a compromise, I inserted the word “Greek” to qualify the chamber pot’s border and to prefigure the Greek references that follow. And finally, the sentence where Molly is looking for a word in the book:

24

The phrase “fallen women” appears in Gerty’s thoughts: “She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers” (13.662); Molly fantasizes about playing one by going to the quays in the dark to “pick up a sailor off the sea thatd be hot on for it” (18.1411-12). In “Circe,” Bloom proclaims himself to Mrs Breen to be a rescuer of “fallen women” (15.402) as secretary of the Magdalen asylum taking a shortcut home through the nighttown. Appropriately, Słomczyński renders “fallen women” as “upadłe kobiety” (13.283 in the genitive as “upadłych kobiet”; 15.341). This particular repetition is reflected well in Słomczyński’s translation.

Translating Finger(tip)

135

She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin… (4.333-35) Pl/Czechowicz (438): Pociągnęła łyk herbaty z filiżanki, którą trzymała nie za uszko,* szybko otarła palce o prześcieradło i zaczęła wodzić szpilką po kartce… (She took a sip of tea from the cup she held not by earlet,* quickly wiped her fingers on the bedsheet and began to glide with a pin over the page…) Pl/Słomczyński (50): Przełknęła łyk herbaty z filiżanki trzymanej za ucho* i wytarłszy szybko końce palców w kołdrę, zaczęła przesuwać szpilką do włosów po tekście… (She swallowed a sip of tea from the cup held by the ear* and having wiped quickly the end of her fingers on the comforter, she began to move her hairpin on the text…) Pl/Wawrzycka: Przełknęła łyk herbaty z filiżanki trzymanej za nieuszko* i wytarłszy czubki palców bystro w koc, zaczęła wodzić po tekście szpilką do włosów… (She swallowed a sip of tea from the cup held by notearlet* and having wiped resolutely the tips of her fingers on the blanket, she began to glide on the text with a hairpin…) The asterisks flag the Polish idiom for a small handle of a teacup, a diminutive “uszko” (little ear; “earlet”) and a regular handle “ucho” (ear). Joyce’s “nothandle” tests the target language/culture, not because it is difficult to translate – a calque formation, “nieuszko” takes care of it – but because translation editors/publishers are likely to flag and normalize it.25 Czechowicz’s “nie za uszko” (not by earlet) does just that; Słomczyński has Molly hold the cup precisely by the handle, a clearly corrective re-write, though it might have been a copy-editor’s intervention. But even a simple word “smartly” can give translators a pause: its semantic field suggests speed/efficiency and style/intelligence. Both Czechowicz and Słomczyński offer “szybko” (quickly) where

25

Apparently, Joyce briefly considered a standard “not handle,” as his clearly handwritten note indicates (JJA, Vol. 17), 71.

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Wawrzycka

I chose “bystro” (quickly-cum-cleverly; resolutely) to reflect aspects of Molly’s character that will come to light in “Penelope.” I also took a second look at the bedding: Joyce’s Molly wipes her fingers on a “blanket”; Czechowicz’s – on a “bedsheet”; Słomczyński’s – on a “comforter/duvet” (though he uses “blanket”/“koc” [536] in “Penelope,” like Joyce [18.660]). My translation restores Joyce’s “blanket,” which means that I had to go back to the sentence where Bloom lifts the valance and to Słomczyński’s solution, “the frill of the bedspread.” If Molly wipes her fingers on the blanket, then a bedspread with a frill appears to be another piece of summer bedding. So, in retrospective self-retranslation, in addition to “blanket” for Molly’s fingertips, I decided to keep the non-specific “frill” (Joyce’s phrase, “He stooped and lifted the valance” now reads “Schylił się i uniósł falbankę”). My solutions, influenced by previous translations, highlight on the micro-level that even the transfer of something as simple as a “valance” or a “blanket” from the source to the target text can test translators. And so can Molly’s “fingertips”: in Czechowicz they are just “fingers” (palce) and in Słomczyński “ends of her fingers” (końce palców). I restore “fingertips” (czubki palców) not only for literal accuracy (tips = czubki), but also because all five appearances of “fingertips” in Ulysses are linked, if somewhat tenuously (or humorously), by eroticized context. In “Oxen of the Sun” for instance, Bloom recalls his first sales’ job as “a fullfledged traveller for the family firm,” armed with a ledger, trinkets, and “a quiverful of compliant smiles” with which to win a “housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips” (U 14.1050-54). In this mildly suggestive scene (“it” begs a second look), one envisions a timid young man vying for a sale and watching the tips of a woman’s digits in motion, with both sides invested in carrying on. Słomczyński has the housewife “counting it on her fingers” (“obliczającej to na palcach,” 321), not unlike Bloom’s father in his late years, doing “digital calculation of coins” (17.1928), or titillated Boylan observing a salesgirl’s reckoning fingers as he assesses her cleavage (10.334). In one thread, textual weavings of “fingers/digits” appear as a “roguish finger” (8.414) that could as well be grafted from Moore onto Boylan, the roguishness of whose finger Molly recalls well (18.587). It makes Boylan a different kind of the “onehandled adulterer” (7.1018; 1072), his digit proving “too titillating” for Molly, a different kind of “frisky” frump (7.1070). In a hilarious reference to fingertips in “Nausicaa,” we find Gerty reassure herself that the man for whom she reclines to keep his hands and face working “could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips” (U 13.694-95). One wonders what Bloom wipes them on (and, in retrospect, Molly’s morning wiping of her fingertips on a piece of bedding prefigures Bloom’s evening need to do so, smartly or not).

Translating Finger(tip)

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In Słomczyński’s “Nausicaa,” Joyce’s situational humour and word play disappear: honour “to the fingertips” gives way to the Polish idiom “od stóp do głów” (284; literally “from feet to heads”), flattening the comic effect. In this instance, forgoing idiomatic phrasing and taking a literal route works well: honour “po czubki palców” (“to the fingertips”) is just as funny in Polish as it is in English. Finally, in “Circe,” before Bello mentions gloves with scented “fingertips” that Bloom is to wear (15.3080), Zoe’s fingertips cause a visceral reaction in Bloom: “His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach” over his thigh (15.1296). In the context of her questions, “Has little mousey any tickles tonight?” and “How’s the nuts?” (15.1295; 1299), the word “skin” appears to have a rather localized meaning (we remember Bloom’s “Ow!” in “Nausicaa” amid the “very unpleasant” wetness; 13.979-81 – what does he wipe his fingertips on?). Słomczyński’s Zoe refers to “koniuszki” (“ends” in diminutive) of her fingers and Bloom’s “skin, alert” becomes “jego podrażniony naskórek” (“his irritated skin [as in “epidermis”]; 357). Incidentally, Zoe’s inquiry about the “the nuts” is a calque formation that yields “Jak tam orzeszki?,” the phrase that is entirely off in Polish because the Polish Zoe is asking about the nuts that one consumes as food (“orzeszki” is a diminutive of “orzechy,” “nuts”, where “jaja,” augmentative of “jajka,” “eggs,” is the slang for male genitalia). The continuation of the Bloom/Zoe exchange clarifies the nature of the “orzeszki/nuts” in question, though the Polish reader has to guess the nature of Zoe’s initial question. And in her question about the mousey having tickles, Słomczyński substitutes mouse for a cat (in masculine): in back translation, his “A czy mały kotek nie ma dzisiaj łaskotek?” reads as “And the little kitten has no tickles today?” Deliberate or not, Słomczyński’s play on cat/mouse recalls Bloom’s interaction with the “pussens” in the morning and his thought, “Curious mice never squeal” (4.28). The Polish translation as “Ciekawe, że myszy nigdy nie piszczą” (42; “curious, that mice never squeal”), is also off, because the comma and the subordinate clause erase what Fritz Senn has called “shortmind.”26 If/when my translation becomes publishable, I will likely have to put up a fight 26

For Senn, “shortmind” designates “a salient feature of Joyce’s interior monologue where a thought is seen emerging in its pre-grammatical, pre-syntactic, inchoative, groping, associative semi-shape. Translators tend to smooth out and change such a provisional assembly of thoughts in statu nascendi, an initial jumble, into neat, grammatical, punctuationcontrolled sentences. Some of the examples are discussed here as “impact sentences” (whether they are actual sentences or not).” See The Polylogue Project. “Shortmind,” Scientia Traductionis No. 12 (2012), 133-64, especially pp. 134-35, https://periodicos.ufsc.br/ index.php/scientia/article/view/1980-4237.2012n12p133/24030 accessed 1 October 2019. For a comment on this particular phrase, see also Fritz Senn, Portals of Recovery (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2017), 98-99.

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to retain my unpunctuated and un-subordinated “Ciekawe myszy nigdy nie piszczą,” a precise transfer from Joyce. Thus, following the pointing of Molly’s finger, I find myself working on multiple passages where Joyce’s recurring lexes help me assess whether the same word can re-appear in other context(s) in my Polish text, and the extent to which a diverging semantic range complicates or precludes that. This multifocal, accretive method ot translating has emerged as somewhat preferable to my initial chronological progression.

5

“Blown away” (14.1043)

In “Oxen,” as we saw, the word “fingertips” appears in a passage that marks Bloom’s “chewing the cud of reminiscence” (14.1041); appropriately to its focus on rumination, the episode contains elements from previous episodes, such as “hat,” or handkerchief” or, notably, the phrase “retrospective arrangement.” Here is the passage in question, with words in bold marking the phrases I discuss throughout the rest of this chapter: A score of years are blown away. He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!) already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas! a thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob’s pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist (14.1043-62)

Translating Finger(tip)

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The first sentence in this passage, “A score of years are blown away,” is missing from Słomczyński’s translation, owing to its absence from the copy of Ulysses used by Słomczyński.27 It has been restored by Gabler and it “complicates” my task because it is not an easy sentence to reproduce in Polish. Joyce’s opening indefinite article suggests that a unit “score of years” would require “is” rather than “are” to follow it. “A score” then, but “years” that “are blown away.”28 This somewhat wobbly usage (in the context of tired Bloom) is well placed in the chapter that, on one level, looks backwards into the vaults of English literary traditions as, on the other, it also anticipates this particular book’s future and wobblier chapter, “Eumaeus,” overcorrected by “Ithaca.” The phrase “retrospective arrangement” further emphasises the backward/forward pull and mirroring; it recurs seven times in Ulysses and this particular instance occupies a perfect middle position.29 Słomczyński offers “w retrospektywnym układzie” (321; “in a retrospective arrangement/layout/setup”). In terms of textual memory, out of seven instances of the phrase, Słomczyński’s Polish text “remembers” to repeat three that follow the “Oxen” episode: “Circe” –

harking back in a retrospective arrangement (15.443) spoglądając w przeszłość w retrospektywnym układzie (341) (looking into the past in a retrospective arrangement)

“Eumaeus” –

in a retrospective kind of arrangement (16.1401) w układzie retrospektywnym (454) (in retrospective arrangement – the word order is reversed in Polish)

27

28

29

The basis for Słomczyński’s translation was the Random House edition which does not contain this sentence. When he was revising the translation for subsequent re-editions, he still didn’t have the Gabler edition that restores it. I’m grateful to Katarzyna Bazarnik for this detail and for adding that, by the time she’d bought Gabler’s Ulysses for Słomczyński, “he was already too sick to think about further revisions” (private correspondence). My final translation of this sentence is still pending. Since I’m struggling to preserve Joyce’s present tense, I could opt for “Tuzin lat przelatuje” (“a dozen years flies by”), milder than “blow away” because Polish idioms for the passing of time use “fly” as their base. Standard stock expression such as “czas leci” (“time flies”) alters Joyce’s semantic field; another one, “lata lecą” (“years fly by”) does too, to a lesser degree; it could work, though Joyce’s heteroglossic “score” would be sacrificed. That the phrase is important to this particular passage can be gathered from Joyce’s insertion of “arrangement” back into the typescript (JAA 14, 188); the ms shows that it was there all along (JAA 14, 127).

140 “Ithaca” –

Wawrzycka

a retrospective arrangement (17.1907) w retrospektywnym porządku (512) (in retrospective order – “układ/arrangement” is replaced with “porządek/order”)

However, the three instances that precede “Oxen” are rendered very differently, as back translations show: “Hades” –

retrospective arrangement (6.150) i działające wstecz zarządzenia (70) (retroactive [-ly operating] regulations);

“W. Rocks” –

When you look back on it all now in a kind of retrospective arrangement (10.783) Kiedy spogląda się dziś wstecz na to wszystko w pewien uporządkowany sposób (186) (When one looks back today on all of this in a certain orderly manner)

and “Sirens” – Kernan, harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement (11.798) Kernan, powracając myślą w przeszłość (215) (Kernan, returning in his thought into the past [thinking back]). My solution, “retrospektywna konfiguracja” (retrospective configuration), with unavoidable declensional adjustments, fits all contexts well. Słomczyński’s four near-identical renditions suggest that he became aware of Joyce’s repetition as he progressed. Given the initial speed of his work, the earlier ones might have escaped him and ended up re-written to fit the context. As retranslator, I’m building on my predecessor’s successes and stumbles. Joyce’s “mirror within a mirror” becomes “zwierciadło w zwierciadle” in Słomczyński. To avoid declension of the second “lustro” (as “lustrze”), I opted for “lustro zawiera lustro” (“mirror contains mirror”; in Polish, both “zwierciadło” and “lustro” mean “mirror/looking glass”). My choice also reflects Joyce’s mirrored foot (trochee, amphibrach, trochee) and it rolls off the tongue easier than Słomczyński’s consonantal cluster. The phrase “he beholdeth himself” appears as in Słomczyński as “dostrzega siebie” (“he sees himself,” as in “catches a glimpse of himself,” in the present tense), a straightforward translation that does not acknowledge the word’s rather specific usage and/or biblical

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inflection. In fact, the biblical context proves helpful here: the English “And behold, a man named Joseph,” is in Polish “A oto mąż, imieniem Józef.” Deictic “oto” directs attention and/or reinforces the utterance the way “behold” does. Thus, my rendition of Joyce’s phrase reads: “oto ujrzał siebie” (“he beheld himself”). And what he sees – a young man on his way to school – includes a beautifully concise, rhythmic and alliterative phrasing, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise which is narrativized by Słomczyński as na szerokim pasku przewieszonym przez ramię ma torbę z książkami (321) (on a wide belt hanging over his shoulder he has a book satchel) though the three p words nicely echo Joyce’s alliteration (accompanied by the repetition of sz [/sh/] sounds in sze-, -szo- and -żk-). But the periphrastic solution here trans-splains (though not necessarily “mansplains”) the meaning of “bandolier,” although the word exists in Polish as “bandolet” and “rapeć.”30 My translation, adjectival (jak = like), manages to preserve Joyce’s rhythm and lexical economy in jego torba z książkami na wskroś jak bandolet (his book satchel crosswise like a bandolier) sacrificing Joyce’s alliteration for a degree of consonance (t/ks/k/sk/k/t) throughout this chiasmic, catalectic anapestic phrase. Bloom’s satchel contains a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s thought in Słomczyński, porządna pajda pszennego chleba o której nie zapomniała matka (321) (a solid thick-slice of wheat(en) bread about which [his] mother has not forgotten) 30

Indeed, in “Circe,” the phrase “in bandolier” (15.538) is translated as “na rapciach” (343), with “rapeć” in plural ablative.

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Given the context, “a mother’s thought” is an obstacle in Polish, as Słomczyński’s descriptive solution indicates. Unlike the possessive “mother’s milk” later in the chapter (14.1433; “mleko matki,” Pl/Słomczyński 330), the complexity of this particular instance of possessive mode cannot be rendered here as (otherwise perfectly correct) “myśl matki”/“mother’s thought” because the original connotes a more intricately complex forethought on the mother’s part. Słomczyński’s solution made me consider the alternatives and I arrived at “myśl troskliwej matki,” meaning “a thought of a circumspect mother.”31 I’d like to note Słomczyński’s rendition of “goodly hunk of wheaten loaf” as “porządna pajda pszennego chleba” (321) for its striking metrical fidelity and the alliterative p’s that correspond to Joyce’s play on internal vowels oo/u/ea/oa. It is definitely a steal. As we move by a year to the next image, Bloom sees himself “in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!),” rendered in Polish as “w swoim pierwszym meloniku (ach, to był dzień!),” which back translates as “in his first bowler (ah, that was a day!).” The specificity of that first adult head cover in Polish made me look for other bowler hats in Ulysses: while there are some 170 appearances of “hat,” variously qualified as high grade, straw, silk, Latin quarter, or sailor, there is not one “bowler” – with the exception of its nickname, “billycock hat” in “Circe” (15.538).32 Polish for “hat” is “kapelusz” and, with very few exceptions, Słomczyński uses “kapelusz” rather consistently.33 It becomes a base for Joyce’s 31

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“Troskliwej”, adjective in genitive, derives from a richly layered Polish feminine noun “troska,” nearly untranslatable into English as one lexical unit, because, depending on the context, it can mean “concern,” “attention,” “care,” “mindfulness,” “ministrations,” “preoccupation” (as in “interest in something”), “auspiciousness”, as well as “sadness,” “wariness,” or “circumspection.” For billycock hat, see https://joemasonspage.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/the-billy-cock -hat/ accessed 4 September 2019. It appears in the phrase “fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat” (15.538), translated quite literally by Słomczyński as “z lornetką na rapciach i w szarym meloniku” (343). Like in “Oxen,” the hat as “melonik” appears here in the vicinity of “bandolier” though, as discussed above, “bandolier”/“rapeć” appears only in “Circe” in the Polish text. There are occasional recourses to “czapka” (e.g., 36; “cap”) or “cylinder” (e.g., 72; “silk hat”). But, as can be expected, Joyce’s idiomatic hat does not translate; hence, Dedalus’s “As decent a little man as ever wore a hat,” 6.303) becomes “Najprzyzwoitszy człowiek z wszystkich, jacy kiedykolwiek chodzili po ziemi” (74; “The most decent man of all those, who had ever walked the earth”) and it is rather over-written; my own solution is still pending. For my discussion of “ha” in Polish as “kapelu” and in Russian as “шляпы-лю” (from “шляпы-люкс” = “hats de lux”; Ru/Hinkis-Horužij, 64), see The Polylogue Project, “Errors: Lots in Translation,” in Scientia Traductionis 12 (2012), 176, https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/scientia/issue/view/1951 accessed 4 September 2019.

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“ha” as “kapelu” three times: in “Calypso,” when Polish Bloom reads “kapelu” on the sweated legend (Pl/Słomczyński 44); in “Lotus Eaters” when he feels for the card (55); and when he recalls it in “Sirens” (217). This aspect of textual memory is preserved in Słomczyński. In presenting Bloom’s first hard hat, Joyce uses a seemingly minor graphic point, a mirroring effect that is irreproducible in translation: “hat-ah,” whose near-symmetry invites readers to recall instances of Bloom’s “ha” from earlier episodes in the book (4.70; 5.24, 11.876), though, of course, from much later in Bloom’s life. Both the “hat-ah” of the young trinket-canvasser and the steganographic “ha” of the older ad-canvasser appear in the context of women/fingertips: those of the housewife and Martha (“sitting all day typing”; 5.285).34 But these interrelations fall victim of re-languaging: “ha” and “hat-ah” become “kapelu” and “melonik-ach” in Polish. So, while I retained “kapelu,” to render “hat-ah” I focused on the visuality of the phrase and decided to repeat “hej” (hey) present in this passage,35 adding “na głowie swej/on his head,” thus echoing “swej” (his) with “hey.” My phrase reads: “w pierwszym kapeluszu na głowie swej (hej, to był dzień!),” meaning “in a first hat on the head of his (hey, that was a day).” Slightly stylized syntax and pronoun contraction mark a nod to an early-19th century inflection. Hat squarely on his head, Bloom’s attire also includes “handkerchief (not for show only),” in Polish, “chusteczka (nie tylko na pokaz)” (Pl/Słomczyński 321; “little handkerchief” in diminutive, normative Polish usage). That young Bloom carries it “not for show only,” begs a question about other purposes it might serve36 as he visits homes with housewives counting on fingertips and with shy budding virgins buying into his supplications and handkissing. Joyce’s heteroglossic “baisemoins” [sic, to the bargain; does “-o-” mark 34

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Here we also note Bloom “fingering” (5.275) Martha’s finger-typed letter (rendered as “mnąc,” “crimpling,” in Polish, with “fingering” present only by inference; Pl/Słomczyński 61). Bloom’s “ha” is steganographic: it conceals “in plain sight” the calling card and his secret identity – both connected with Martha. For steganography in Joyce, see my “Newspapers, Print, Language: Steganography in Joyce,” in Publishing in Joyce’s Ulysses, eds. William S. Brockman, Tekla Mecsnóber and Sabrina Alonso (Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2018), 57-76. Joyce’s double “hey, presto”, as “hej, presto” is a half-translation in Słomczyński, for it leaves “presto” unaddressed. Since we are in the presence of mirrors and magic, a loaner “hokus pokus” would serve this passage well, as would such Polish phrases as “cud nad cuda” (“miracle of miracles”) or “czary mary,” another phrase for “hokus pokus”; I’m vacillating between the three. Narratively, the attribution of “not for show only” is ambiguous: can it be read as the present-day Bloom’s thought? We remember from “Aeolus” that he dabs his nose with his “citronlemon” scented handkerchief (7.226); since he has it in his pocket, maybe concerns about the state of his fingertips after the fireworks can be laid to rest.

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Bloom’s malapropism?] is rendered by Słomczyński as a formulaic “ucałowania rączek” (hand-kissing), a stock phrase in languages throughout Europe. The expression is thoroughly domesticated in Polish, in contrast, for instance, to the German “Kussdiehand” that travelled into Hungarian as “kisztihand” (as Erika Mihálycsa informed me). The question then is, what to do with “baisemoins” in translation?37 Left as is in Polish, it would be a defamiliarizing readerly element on par with the original. In Francophone and Germanic languages, it is easier to bring this particular instance of plurilingualism closer to home. The shiny knick-knacks that accompany Bloom on those visits are, “alas! a thing now of the past!” – here Joyce’s swiftly rolling iambic phrase is rendered by Słomczyński somewhat shakily as “Niestety rzeczy te wyszły już dziś z użycia!” (or “alas, these things have gone out of use now,” 321), with no discernible effort to carry across Joyce’s parodistic vein. My effort is not much better, but it is trimmer in its literal phrasing, “Niestety! rzecz to dziś zaprzeszła” (“Alas, the thing is of the past now”), with amphibrach and three trochees to keep the rhythm. However, attracted to Joyce’s “alas/past,” I replicated it with “cóż/już” (meaning “alas/already”; ó=u) and settled on “Cóż, rzecz to zaprzeszła już” (“Alas, the thing is now already of the past”). The stylistic heterogeneity of this passage, while discernible in Słomczyński’s translation, suffers a bit, so the task at hand is to increase the stylistic embellishment. My strategies include rhythmic/rhyming solutions that suggest dated language and that defamiliarize normative usage. Słomczyński’s solution to Joyce’s unusual “oleaginous address” as “przymilne obejście” (“pleasing rapport,” 321) renders Bloom as kindly and complimentary in his rapport with women-clients; this common Polish phrase for a nice person mutes the smarmy subtext of “oleaginous.” Most of the Polish adjectives that correspond semantically to “oleaginous” tend to be too long or phonetically too noisy, but “umizgujące się” (courting/courtly in

37

A cursory run through other translations reveals that “baisemoins” has been translated in all texts I was able to check: It/De Angelis: “baciamano” (401); It/Terrinoni: “complimenti” (405); Po/Houaiss: “beia-mãos” (534); Po/Galindo: “beijamãos” (646); Sp/Subirat: “besamanos” (572); Mihálycsa adds that Hungarian translations may have opted for “kisztihand”; Gáspár has “betanult bók” (well-rehearsed compliment, vol. II/25), whereas Szentkuthy (512) and the Revised text (394) offer the domesticated “kiszámított kézcsók” (calculated hand-kisses). The two French translation retain Joyce’s word and normalise spelling: Fr/Morel has “baise-mains” (469) and Fr/Aubert – “baisemains” (596). Thus, none of the translations note the term’s heteroglossic and malapropic nature, a translatorial problematic that is at the centre of what Mina Đurić’s calls “immanent polyglossia” of Ulysses elsewhere in this volume.

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manner) “łaszące się” (fawning) could do to connote Bloom’s ingratiating approach to win his clients; my choice is pending. Before the image disappears, Bloom sees himself at his father’s home where a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating translated by Słomczyński busily as możecie być pewni że posiłek składający się z makaronu już się odgrzewa (321) (you can be sure that a meal consisting of macaroni/pasta is already reheating) Słomczyński normalizes Joyce’s sentence to sound pretty everyday-ish and puts an Italian food item on the stove of a Hungarian Jewish family in 19thcentury Ireland. The Polish word for “noodles” is “kluski”; the word resembles Yiddish: “kloese” and German “Klaise,” though they name dumplings rather than noodles.38 Unlike “noodles,” the word “aheating” resists Polish. Such older words as “wrzeć” or “warzyć się” for “gotować”/“cook” do not reflect the process of “reheating”/“odgrzewa (się)” adopted by Słomczyński. I would be tempted to use “kuchcić,” a domesticated Germanic derivation from “küchen,” which, I fear, would skew the register. But I’m also considering a different route for “aheating”: “czeka ciepłe”/“waits warmed up,” which would preserve the sense and substitute the stylizing prefix “a-” with the stylizing syntactic trick, yielding “danie z klusek, zapewniamy was, czeka ciepłe” (“a meal of noodles, we assure you, waits, warmed up”), where the standard Polish syntax would have “ciepłe danie z klusek, zapewniamy was, czeka” (“a warm [-ed up] meal of noodles, we assure you, waits”). If one wants to insist that there is an internal rhyme in “-ea-in-” in “aheating,” then my solution reproduces it in “cze-cie-.”

38

Given the background of the Virag/Bloom family, I was curious how the Hungarian translations handled the heating of the noodles. Erika Mihálycsa wrote that Gáspár (1947) has “metélt,” the noodles eaten in soup (vol. II, 25); Szentkuthy, on the other hand (1974, 513) offers “főtt tészta,” the generic term meaning “boiled noodles,” eaten mostly as a side-dish – the wording taken over by the Revised version (394), too. As a curiosity, Hungarian has the loan word “nudli,” a cognate of “noodles” (and the Czech Knedle) derived from the same German “Nudeln / Knödel,” with an urban, German-Hungarian/JewishHungarian ring, but it means dumplings rather than noodles. “Nudli” might have worked as an anachronism and cultural translation in the passage, with its taste of Mitteleuropa; at best it could have stressed the common etymology, and foreignness, of noodles and “nudli.”

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The end of Bloom’s vision has “the young knighterrant” who recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist which enters Polish as cofa się, kurczy do rozmiarów maleńkiej plamki pośród mgły (backs away, shrinks to the size of a very little spot in the fog/mist). In translation, the phrase is narrativized to some degree and it stumbles metrically, belying Joyce’s mellifluous “dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist.” One could also point out a lexical dissonance in the first word, “cofa się” (backs away/off), a physical act of moving backwards, where “recede” marks a fading/waning. Or one could protest the conflation of two words (“shrivels” and “dwindles”) into one (“kurczy [się],” meaning “shrinks”); or the rendition of “speck” as “plamka” that in Polish denotes a spot left on a surface by a substance, where “pyłek,” diminutive of “pył,” would do more justice to Joyce’s meaning (“speck of dust” in Polish is “pyłek kurzu”). Given all these factors, I settled for “zanika, kurczy się, maleje do rozmiaru pyłku pośród mgły” (“fades [away], shrinks, diminishes to the size of a [small] speck amid the fog/mist”). But I cannot stress enough that my solutions have benefited immensely from a close-study of Słomczyński’s achievement. Many aspects of my translation are based on a retrospective kind of arrangement.

6

“I knew there was something on my mind” (U 13.1044)

I have highlighted only a handful of translatorial priorities that guide me as I wrestle language- and culture-specific straitjackets. To the extent that Polish allows it, I work to overcome semantic and syntactical cruxes familiar to every (Joyce) translator faced with the TL rules and norms: many of them defy foreignization and require that clauses/sentences be shackled by commas or rewritten all together. Joyce’s superb economy of expression and rhythmic resonance are frequently a casualty of narrative/interpretive transsplaining or verbose overdetermination. Patterns of repetition, foundational to textual memory in the original, can expose textual amnesia of the trans-

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lation if repetitive elements are overlooked – though, granted, many of them resist transfer into another language in a consistent manner and require recontextualization. Retranslation is much better positioned to remedy this, serving as an arbiter of textual memory. Finally, the Sennian dictum of “grammatical rectification” keeps in check my impulse to fix Joyce’s “faulty” grammar; again, retranslations tend to handle this more consciously, either by replicating Joyce’s “errors” directly, or by rendering them through some other means (flawed diction, malapropisms, etc). Given these parameters, as much as I strive to adhere to the Joyce text while finding semantic, idiomatic or graphic correspondences in the target language, I also resist some of the strictures of Polish language rules, in favour of replicating the acts of rule-bending in Joyce, which is to say that, faced with the choice of conforming to the target culture or the source text, I side with the latter wherever possible. To what effect? Some of the writerly/creative departures from Joyce in Słomczyński are truly instructive and, rose-coloured glasses on, my hope is not so much to bring Joyce into Polish again but to “stretch” Polish enough to accommodate Joyce’s unprecedented need for plasticity in (handling) language. On a grand, semantic/signifying level, my trans-semantification might not necessarily be a corrective to Słomczyński’s translation. But it will be so on the localized, microscopic level where I work on salvaging the mesh of signifying units that inform larger patterns designed by Joyce, hoping that they will be noticeable and rewarding to the Polish reader.

Acknowledgements This work, and the editorial work on the volume, were made possible in part by the Fall 2018 Radford University Faculty Professional Development Leave. I’m also grateful to Erika Mihálycsa and Katarzyna Bazarnik for astute commentaries on earlier versions of this chapter.

Chapter 7

The Fabulous Artificer, the Architect, and the Roadmender: On Retranslating Aloys Skoumal’s Czech Ulysses David Vichnar

Abstract In 2012, on the 90th anniversary of its publication by Sylvia Beach, the appropriately named Argo Press – a prominent publisher of world fiction – republished Aloys Skoumal’s translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses (Odysseus in Czech). Published in 1976 by Odeon and accompanied by his afterword and annotations, Skoumal’s lifelong work is the crowning achievement of a fruitful career. Skoumal translated not only Dubliners and A Portrait, but also e.g. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, and Carroll’s Alice books. Skoumal’s Odysseus’ faithful rendering of the many obscurities of the original’s labyrinthine intentions continues to impress. Still, in 2012, it was felt that “over the years Skoumal’s freeway has shown a few potholes in need of mending,” as Martin Pokorný, the translation editor, has put it.

I Both Aloys Skoumal’s Odysseus from 1976 and its 2012 re-edition, form part of a much wider tradition of Czeching out Joyce. The twists and turns of this story replicate the tortuous development of Central Europe’s cultural exchange with the “West” in the course of the 20th century: an early flourishing in the avantgarde 1920s and 1930s, then, following the seven-year Nazi caesura, the forty communist years of marginality and, at best, sporadic clandestinity, followed by a revival in the post-1989 newly gained “capitalism with a human face.” The tale has been told already,1 and here is not the place to retell it, only to sketch the features most relevant for the subject at hand.

1 Most coherently, in Bohuslav Mánek’s useful overview of “The Czech and Slovak Reception of James Joyce,” The Reception of James Joyce in Europe, eds. Geert Lernout & Wim van Mierlo (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), 187-98.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_009

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Despite the relative marginality of Anglo-American modernism in the predominantly expressionist and surrealist Czech avant-garde, Joyce was introduced quite early by means of two important translations, both published in 1930: a deluxe four-volume hardbound translation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (by Stanislava Jílovská) and a Ulysses translated by Ladislav Vymětal and Jarmila Fastrová.2 This was only the third full-length Ulysses translation into any language after the German (1927) and the French (1929) editions. Both works came out with Václav Petr, a publisher of writers both domestic and foreign, specialising in young Czech poetry; neither had commentary or critical apparatus, and so their impact was at best limited. Also, the sheer fact that the three-volume Odysseus was rather mechanically divided up between the two translators (Vymětal translated the first volume from “Telemachus” to “Sirens,” and the third from “Circe” onwards, while Fastrová took up the middle tome, “Wandering Rocks” through “Oxen”), bespeaks the rushed approach to translating Joyce’s opus magnum. In his 1976 “Translator’s note” on his own Odysseus, Skoumal would diplomatically assert that the 1930 translation, “although pioneering and no doubt of merit, and intuitively correct in a few places,” is still “far from complying with today’s standards of literary translation and ignorant of the vast body of Joyce scholarship” (Cz/Skoumal 530). Writing forty years later, Skoumal’s biographer Dagmar Blümlová is less diplomatic in evaluating Vymětal and Fastrová’s translation, attributing to its conception nothing less than the cultural policy of the Czechoslovak state: One cannot resist the impression that this translation project, on all counts unfortunate, was initiated not by some hankering after the bestselling yields of scandalous reading matter, but a state-run, Britainoriented interest designed to make visible Czech culture in a matter similar to the project of Karel Čapek’s nomination for the Nobel prize in literature, a goal which all major contemporary representatives of Czech culture obediently joined their forces to attain.3 Still, as will be shown below, the “intuition” of Vymětal and Fastrová’s translation praised by Skoumal should not be dismissed so easily, and perhaps could have been taken into account when revising Skoumal’s own work in the 21st century. 2 James Joyce, Odysseus & Portret mladého umělce, in 4 volumes, trans. Jarmila Fastrová, Stanislava Jílovská, & Ladislav Vymětal (Prague: Václav Petr, 1930). 3 Dagmar Blümlová, Aloys Skoumal – Ironik v české pasti (České Budějovice, 2005), 427, my translation.

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An equally ambitious but more successful project was undertaken by Maria Weatherallová and Vladimír Procházka under the guidance and supervision of Adolf Hoffmeister, tackling the task of translating “Anna Livia Plurabelle,” which was brought out by avant-garde publisher Jan Fromek in 1932, the firstever translation of this Finnegans Wake chapter into any language. This work appeared with at least some critical apparatus: Hoffmeister’s own piece entitled “Translation from a New into a New Language,” combining a memoir of his multilingual conversations with Joyce in his Paris flat with a disquisition on the language of “Work in Progress” and offering a valuable peek into his laboratory. Hoffmeister, himself an active figure on the Czech avant-garde scene – journalist, playwright, poet, painter, and most famously caricaturist – met and caricatured Joyce several times in Paris in 1928. His admiration for the great experimenter was coloured by his scepticism regarding the value of “Work in Progress” as an avant-garde project, or in the famous conclusion to one of his Joyce articles: “Someone could rise up and ask, ‘Is Joyce modern?’ Hard to say – he’s alone.”4 Still, his postscript to the Czech “Fragment from ‘Work in Progress’” provides compelling insight into how this Renaissance man conceived of the almost impossible task of translating a whole Wake episode. Just one example: when tackling the sentence, “It’s that irrawaddyng I’ve stoke in my aars” (FW 214.9), Hoffmeister records the following commentary he attributes directly to Joyce: Irrawaddyng comes from wadding (=Watte, “vata” in Czech). With the prefix “irra-” common in Ireland. But mainly of course Irrawaddy is a river in India. Stoke is a verb of abrupt motion. It’s taken from the vocabulary of railway workers, the pole with which the stoker feeds the wagon boiler is contained in this word with an accent on fierceness which splits the ear and brings about an acoustic breadth within the skull, expressed with the doubled aa in aars for ears, but again reminiscent of a river.5 Hoffmeister’s collective comes up with the Czech translation, “To je ta oravata dvina, co jsem si narazila do uží,” with Hoffmeister commenting: Oravata comes from vata with the prefix “ora-” common in Slovakia. Orava is also a river in Slovakia, just as the word vinna (=guilty) has produced a translation with the Russian river Dvina. Narazila is a verb of 4 Adolf Hoffmeister, Kalendář (Praha: 1930), 62, my translation. 5 Hoffmeister, “Překlad z nové do nové řeči,” Anna Livia Plurabella – Fragment díla v zrodu, 2nd edition (Liberec: Dauphin, 1996), 83, my translation.

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abrupt motion. It is taken from the vocabulary of railway workers and related to nárazník (=fender) etc. In this word there’s fierceness which splits the ear and brings about the change from the clear uší (=ears) into the deaf uží, in which word there flows the river Uzh on which stands the city of Uzhhorod.6 Clearly, for Hoffmeister & co., to translate was also to domesticate, and so an Indian and an Italian river of Joyce’s original become transmuted into two that flow within a stone’s throw from each other in Central and East Slovakia, and whose waters meet in the Danube. A domestication not too far from the “stately” intentions of Vymětal and Fastrová’s Odysseus, and one from which even Skoumal himself never strayed too far. As was to be the case with Skoumal’s opus magnum, the impact of “Anna Livia Plurabelle” on the Czech cultural scene was curtailed by the conditions of its publication: a deluxe bibliophilic edition of 300 copies for subscribers only. Joyce, thus, was part of the 1930s intellectual landscape, and this despite the Francophone orientation of the Czechoslovak avant-garde. In the 19481989 period, dominated by the ruling communist party’s doctrine of socialist realism and proletarian art, Joyce was seldom translated and published, and if at all, then as an illustrative example of the “decadent” bourgeois experimentalism. With the notable exception of Zdeněk Urbánek’s translation of the “HCE” Finnegans Wake passages, published in Světová literatura (World Literature) magazine during the mid-60’s thaw,7 Hoffmeister’s effort is still the only extant Finnegans Wake fragment in Czech.8

II Skoumal’s Odysseus was published after many delays in 1976 by Odeon in a generous print run of 7,000 hardbound copies. Despite this, it was promptly repressed by the communist regime, reserved for sale only to Party members 6 Hoffmeister, “Překlad,” 83, my translation. 7 Zdeněk Urbánek, “A dále tedy,” Světová literature (1966, No.1): 199-202. 8 Which is all the more unfortunate given that in the late 1990s, Tomáš Hrách, a talented young translator of Beckett’s trilogy, announced the intention of producing, over the course of ten years, a full Czech version of Finnegans Wake. An intention backed up by Hrách’s masterful translation of the Wake passages quoted in the Czech translation of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon (Harold Bloom, Kánon západní literatury, trans. Ladislav Nagy & Martin Pokorný [Praha: Prostor, 2000], 439-46). That intention was thwarted by his premature tragic death in June 2000, aged 33.

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and/or medical experts in the field of psychiatry. As the editors of the 2002 encyclopaedia of Czech literature have put it, “Skoumal’s epochal translation of Joyce’s Ulysses practically didn’t reach distribution – in vain did eager readers queue in front of bookshops.”9 Even in libraries, Mánek records, it was “only available with special permission.”10 It was not until after 1989 that Skoumal’s translation was reprinted and entered into wider cultural circulation. The fate of his crowning achievement thus uncannily reflected that of its creator – Skoumal’s life and career, distinguished and noteworthy, was also relegated to involuntary “silence” and “exile.” In a letter to his friend, Catholic writer Jaroslav Durych, from 14 April 1926, Skoumal’s account of Dublin after his trip has also something of the Joycean Hassliebe about it: “Dublin is a city of beggars, a city of poverty, dirt, dust, a city of ruined houses, a city of people who despite their humiliation have something noble (dare I say royal) about them.”11 Skoumal undertook the trip on a stipend as part of his studies at the newly established English Department at Charles University and motivated by his interest in none other than Cardinal Newman. During the trip he discovered Swift (“a titan,” his Gulliver “the first work of relativism”) and Joyce. Immediately after his return to Prague, recalls Skoumal, “I bought a copy of the 8th Parisian edition of Ulysses at the foreignlanguage bookshop of Mr Pommeret on Veleslavín Street” (Cz/Skoumal, 530). That Joyce’s Ulysses, in 1926 still banned in both Britain and America, should be not only freely available but also affordable for purchase by a university student, attests further to the spirit of liberalism that marked the “first republic” of Czechoslovakia. Skoumal himself made the best of it. Although he did not finish his academic studies, they won him involvement with the Prague Linguistic Circle (and a lifelong friendship with René Wellek) and set him on the path of translation. Skoumal’s heyday came during the brief second democratic flourish after WWII: in May 1945, he was appointed cultural attaché at the ministry of information of the exile government in London. In June 1947, he revisited Dublin and organised The Czechoslovak Art Exhibition, the first display of Czechoslovak Cubism and Surrealism in Ireland. He met Éamon de Valera, with whom he discussed parallels between Czech and Irish national revivals and he examined “Joyce’s manuscripts and correspondence” that he found with “a former

9 10 11

Česká literatura od počátků k dnešku, eds. Lehár, Stich, Janáčková & Holý (Praha: 2002) 848, my translation. Mánek, “The Czech and Slovak Reception,” 195. Aloys Skoumal v průsečíku cest české kultury 20. století, ed. Dagmar Blümlová (Jihočeská univerzita České Budějovice, 2004) 53, my translation.

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classmate of Joyce’s.”12 In September 1947, Skoumal met T.S. Eliot in London and invited him to Prague for the following year’s 600th anniversary of his alma mater. In March 1949, he organised Dylan Thomas’ visit to Prague and his speech at the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union Congress. On 31 July 1950, however, Skoumal was dismissed from his position as cultural attaché and forced to return home. The communist regime, highly suspicious of his Catholic orientation, Anglophone expertise, and Western connections, prevented Skoumal from holding any public office, relegated him to the post of a University Library worker, and following his heart attack in 1957, had him prematurely pensioned. A blessing in disguise for Skoumal: he now had all the time he needed to devote the last three decades of his life to translating his beloved “Irish fellows.”13 As he makes clear in his “Afterword,” Joyce’s Ulysses for Skoumal is firmly embedded in the 1910s-20s avant-garde traditions of Cubism, Dadaism and (incipient) Surrealism. His multi-lingual competence enabled Skoumal to use the four extant Slavic translations – in addition to Vymětal and Fastrová’s, these were Zlatko Gorjan’s 1957 Croatian translation, the Slovenian translation by Janez Gradišnik from 1967, and Maciej Słomczyński’s 1969 Polish translation – as well as Miklós Szentkuthy’s 1974 Hungarian translation. He shows familiarity with standard Anglo-American Joyce criticism and theory, especially Jungian archetypal criticism and Freudian psychoanalysis. Most interesting in Skoumal’s critical take on Ulysses is his foregrounding of its Central European motifs and overtones: The critics of the four Slavic translations of Ulysses were quick to remark on the twofold character of the environment, mixed out of Irish and Austro-Hungarian features as the author experienced them in Trieste. […] Going furthest in generalising the shared Irish-Slavic was the critic of the Croatian translation I. Vidan: according to him, the “Cyclops” episode at Barney Kiernan’s is sure to recall to the reader the endless Schweikian palavering in the pubs of the late-Hapsburg Central Europe. (Cz/Skoumal 527) The translation itself is a virtuoso performance approximating as nearly as possible both the letter and the spirit of Joyce’s original. 12 13

Aloys Skoumal, “Irsko v mém srdci,” Spiritus iratus Aloys Skoumal – Výbor z díla, ed. Dagmar Blühmlová (Brno: Torst, 2016) 60. This account is based on, and indebted to, Martina Halamová-Jiroušková, “Aloys Skoumal a Anglie,” Aloys Skoumal v průsečíku cest, 52-63.

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Skoumal preserves the first-and-last letter parallelism of Joyce’s text by matching “Stately – Yes” with “Otylý – Ano.” His translation of the “speaking names” of Joyce’s characters is also fortunate, whereas Vymětal and Fastrová rather inexplicably and inorganically leave them intact. Buck/“Tur” Mulligan’s nickname for Stephen, “Kinch” (U 1.8) – which, as Skoumal comments, combines both an old English word for a “child” with the Gaelic word for “blade” – is rendered as “Čabalák” (Cz/Skoumal 11), a highly unusual slang word meaning “scarecrow,” “scraggy person” (appropriate for Stephen’s appearance), whose sound also echoes “čepel” or “blade.” Skoumal’s domestication of foreign names goes so far as to Czechify “Mr Best” of “Scylla and Charybdis” as “Pan Nej” – literally, “Mr Most” (Cz/Skoumal 149). Another famous crux and a cause of headache to many translators of Ulysses is the crucial motif of “met him pike hoses” (U 8.112), the combined effect of Molly’s mispronunciation and Leopold’s mishearing of metempsychosis. Skoumal solves this very successfully as “hnětem si kozy” (Cz/Skoumal 121), literally “we’re kneading our tits,” an even more explicitly sexual paronomasia. There are instances of untranslatability, where some punning dimensions of Joyce’s original necessarily get lost, as in the famous case of the vaguely offensive inscription on the postcard sent to the unfortunate Mr Breen: “U. p: up” (U 8.258). This Skoumal renders as “Ťut’u. Ťululum” (Cz/Skoumal 126), combining baby-talk for “there there” with an archaic word for “nincompoop” – the pun on “peeing up” is clearly lost, but most crucially, the effect of indeterminacy and vague effrontery is preserved – even many Dubliners in Joyce’s original are only dimly aware of what the inscription may mean. To take but two more examples still from the “Lestrygonians” episode: when Bloom’s hungry mind performs the marvellous biblical pun, “Sandwich? Ham and his descendants mustered and bred there” (U 8.742), the homophony between processed meat and the infamous descendant of Noah, not to mention the “musteredmustard” and “bred-bread” lexical pairings, is simply impossible to recreate in a phonetically stable and uniform language like Czech. What Skoumal has is, “Chleba se šunkou. Ham a jeho pokolení rozdělené a rozplozené” (Cz/Skoumal 135), where the homophony becomes at least expounded by rendering “sandwich” as “bread and ham,” building a bridge toward the next sentence with the biblical parody preserving the English spelling of the accursed son (the Czech transcription, incidentally, is “Chám,” pronounced as /xa:m/), and the morphologically parallel “rozdělené a rozplozené” (lit. “divided up and procreated”) – a vague approximation, with much of the fun of the word game lost, but at least Skoumal is signalling to the Czech reader the free-associative perambulations of Bloom’s Anglophone mind.

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The other instance is the notorious “POST NO BILLS. POST 110 PILLS” (U 8.101) inscription, confusing even to Bloom himself, not to mention the scores of Ulysses translators. Skoumal has “LEPENÍ JE TRESTNÉ. LÉČENÍ JE ČESTNÉ” (Cz/Skoumal 121) – literally, “Sticking is penal. Healing is noble” – where it is evident that Skoumal “gets the joke” and produces two sentences very similar in the letter and different in spirit. The defect of Skoumal’s version, however, is that the second defective sentence has not been produced by mere erasure (as in Joyce’s original) but by processes much more complex – for one thing, “léčení”/“healing” adds an accent (marking length) over the first “e” in “lepení”/“sticking” – which goes against the staged process of erasure. But as stated above, examples such as these verge on untranslatability. Skoumal’s afterword mentions his particular fondness for tackling “the innumerable problems posed by Joyce’s style […], the text teeming with such stylistic figures as onomatopoeia, alliteration, inner rhymes and other musical and rhythmical means” (Cz/Skoumal 530). Alliteration in particular presents a strong suit of Skoumal’s translation, which becomes especially prominent in his renderings of the Old- and Middle-English pastiche in the early “Oxen of the Sun” episode. Thus “Before born bliss babe had. W ithin womb won he worship” (U 14.60) becomes “Když se rodilo robě rozmarně vedlo sobě. Už v životě je s žhavou žádostivostí žehnali” (Cz/Skoumal 293). (Being born babe capriciously comported itself. Already in womb/life they blessed it with ardent appetence). In addition to well-rendered alliteration, two things deserve comment here: Skoumal’s first sentence indulges in the additional décor of rhyme (robě-sobě), since rhyme is the additional mark of poeticity in Czech. And in the second sentence Skoumal uses the word “život” (meaning “life” in modern Czech) in the original sense of “belly, womb” (which the word still preserves in some Slavic languages such as Russian), in an instance of etymological metonymy. Translation doesn’t get better than this. Very apposite also is Skoumal’s alliterative rendering of the famous “Sinbad the Sailor” (U 17.2321-6) sequence of Bloom’s sheep-counting at the end of “Ithaca”: “Sinbád Plavec a Pinbád Savec a Činbád Čpavec a Dinbád Dravec a Džinbád Džkavec a Hinbád Hravec a Chinbád Chcavec a Rinbád Rvavec a Řinbád Řvavec a Šinbád Štvanec a Vinbád Vrabec a Zinbád Zhlavec a Žinbád

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Žhavec” (Cz/Skoumal 493), i.e. Sinbad the swimmer, the mammal, the stinker, the predator, the sobber, the player, the pisser, the wrestler, the screamer, the outcast, the sparrow, the glower and, well, the “yailer” and “phtailer” of Joyce’s nonsensical conclusion – all perfectly correct (if quite unusual) Czech words created with the male substantive affix “-ec” analogous to Joyce’s “-or/-er,” alphabetically arranged as a little bonus to Joyce’s higgledy-piggledy original. But as Skoumal himself points out, in one notable case, alliteration was consciously abandoned: in the instance of the emotionally coloured alliterative epithet of Joyce’s “dear dirty Dublin” (U 7.921). Skoumal forsakes alliteration in favour of a single-word variant, “špinavoučký” (Cz/Skoumal 115), a neologism in which the Czech for “dirty” (špinavý) is equipped with an affix of diminution “-oučký,” conveying a sense of endearment. Skoumal argues that by means of such “faithfulness in infidelity” he hopes to be “closer to the spirit of the work” rather than through a “literalness” (Cz/Skoumal 531) that would make for clunky Czech. A last remark on Skoumal’s translation of import for the following discussion of its 21st-century upgrade: the Czech of Skoumal’s text, in keeping with Joyce’s original, is highly artificial, though it departs from it in terms of an oftentimes archaic lexicon. The alienating effect of Skoumal’s archaic translation was what personally stunned me the most in early youth and has been repeatedly reconfirmed by many of my Czech Joyce students who came to Ulysses via Skoumal’s translation. Just one early example (though most of the above would do as well): right after “Kinch,” Buck Mulligan addresses Stephen as “you fearful Jesuit” (U 1.8), a rather straightforward mockery of Stephen’s emotional state and Catholic upbringing. Skoumal’s rendering is “ty jezovitský strašpytle” (Cz/Skoumal 11), which does two things: it reverses the two words, turning a noun “Jesuit” into an adjective and in place of the standard “jezuitský” for “Jesuit,” it uses the archaic “jezovitský” (popular in the late 18th and early 19th century, and derogatory even then). Second, it transforms “fearful” into a noun “strašpytel,” a highly literary composite meaning “spookbag.” While this is not a mistake, in its archaic peculiarity it most certainly departs from the inconspicuous vocabulary of Joyce’s original. There are three possible reasons for this shift. First, it is quite likely the consequence of time: the translation took a long time and its delayed publication carried within itself anachronism simply by spanning almost half a century, making it already “old” when it saw the light of day. A second reason is Skoumal’s own literary preference (after all, his other claims to translational fame are Swift and Sterne): for Skoumal, Joyce had never strayed too far from the great tradition of Irish satire. Finally, perhaps Skoumal’s excursions into the unwonted and extraordinary was a way of approximating Joyce’s Hiberno-

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English. In a language as minor, compact and uniform as Czech, it is difficult to express regional diversity. So instead of symptoms of locality, Skoumal might have chosen to convey diachronic obscurity, which brought about the very striking and poetic, if also archaic and at times abstruse idiom in “his” Odysseus. Still, in today’s estimation, Skoumal’s translation has a secure place in Czech literature as a literary event and artefact in ways similar to translations of Shakespeare and is regarded as a milestone in modern Czech literary translation.

III So, hardly surprisingly, when in 2012 the literary scholar and translator Martin Pokorný embarked on re-editing Skoumal’s translation, the project was a far cry from a revision, much less a retranslation, for reasons hopefully obvious by now. Rather, Pokorný’s project was targeted at the few “potholes” that have appeared in Skoumal’s “magnificent freeway.” As Pokorný made clear in an article for the prominent Czech literary review Souvislosti, thanks to many years of hard work, Skoumal built a magnificent freeway; for the new edition, Argo has enabled me to sweep it clean and fix a few potholes – and surely no-one should be under the illusion that the road-mender is a collaborator of the architect. Under some adverse circumstances, the translator managed to solve an incredible number of enigmas and evade a whole series of traps; if a few details escaped him here or there, there is no reason to pinpoint them separately.14 There are two reasons Pokorný believes his effort to be defendable, perhaps even necessary: At the time of the publication of Skoumal’s translation, the Czech version could not undergo the editorial work of the kind a labyrinthine text like Ulysses requires: Odeon definitely employed language editors, but the only person competent to decide on content-based details was the translator himself. Also, Skoumal’s effort will remain the only authoritative Czech version for at least a few decades, and rightly so. My – and I stress, very minor – revisions should be understood as retroactive fulfilment of

14

Martin Pokorný, “Otylý, statný…,” Souvislosti (No. 1, 2012): 15, my translation.

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the editorial care unavailable in the situation of the mid-1970s, but one which Skoumal’s work deserves for its further influence.15 Changes to the 1976 edition affect its production as a book. The new edition features upgraded typesetting: first and foremost, a more generous layout of the “Circe” episode, now far more closely resembling the theatre/film script of Joyce’s original. Another change is the suppression of Skoumal’s explanatory notes – this in order to reflect the internet age, in which fact-checking and research into the nitty-gritty of 1904 Dublin becomes far more convenient than in Skoumal’s age, and also in order to “combat the disrepute of Ulysses as a novel-with-notes” (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný 593). Instead, Pokorný offers a brief chapter-by-chapter guide with a few clues to its aesthetic specificities and the mutual interlinks and parallels. Pokorný’s editorial revisions are of two types. The “non-controversial” ones pertain to the necessary updates and amendments based on the changes in the text of Joyce’s original itself so as to reflect the Gabler edition of Ulysses, published long after Skoumal’s work, which had been based on the Bodley Head edition. So accordingly, in perhaps the most famous instance, Skoumal’s translation says: “Umění být dědečkem, zamručel pan Nej. L’art d’être grand… – Vlastní představa sebe je člověku obdařenému tou zvláštností, jako je genialita, měřítkem veškeré hmotné i duševní zkušenosti” (Cz/Skoumal 153). for what he is translating is the Bodley Head version: – The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L’art d’être grand… – His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of all experience, material and moral.16 Pokorný’s edition Gablerises this on the basis of U 9.425-33 with its famous insertion, “Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added, another image? Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all men,” to read (with the Gabler insertion in bold):

15 16

Martin Pokorný, “Poznámka k úpravám překladu,” in Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný 593; my translation. James Joyce, Ulysses (London: Bodley Head, 1960), 188.

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– Umění být dědečkem, zamručel pan Best. L’art d’être grandp… – Copak v ní neuvidí znovuzrozen jiný obraz, obohacený o vzpomínku na vlastní mladost? Víš vůbec, o čem mluvíš? Láska, ano. To slovo, které každý zná. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus… Obraz sebe sama je člověku obdařenému tou zvláštností, jíž je genialita, měřítkem veškeré hmotné i duševní zkušenosti. (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný, 160) Also, Skoumal’s over-domesticated “pan Nej/Mr Best” metamorphoses back into “pan Best.” The “content-based” and “stylistic” edits are, by Pokorný’s own admission, more difficult to define: “in a book as manifold and complex as Ulysses,” he asserts, “one can only act in an ad-hoc fashion” and so “there is no overall theoretical framework with which to legitimise my approach; from a scientific viewpoint this version is an ‘impure’ text.” He continues that the main criterion is “to help – to the best of my judgment – the contemporary reader insofar as this help could have been reached by a minor change which did not counter the spirit of the original translation.”17 Minor changes mostly concern the word order in Skoumal’s brilliantly inventive but again largely archaic syntax (Czech, as a fusional language, having a far looser word order than the analytic English) and updating some of his archaic spelling of foreign words. Pokorný does a good job mending these syntactical potholes, with the one exception of changing Skoumal’s “metempsychosis” to “metempsychóza,” (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný, 56), which may be correct modern Czech but ruins the above-mentioned homophony with “hnětem si kozy” – a case, fortunately rare enough, where Pokorný inorganically updates Skoumal’s archaism without amending its textual function accordingly. More successful is his emendation of “Ťut’u. Ťululum” to “P.i.: pi” (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný, 130), where the urological overtones are closer to Joyce’s original than Skoumal’s inventive but obscure “Ťut’u. Ťululum.” Perhaps the reverence with which Pokorný approached Skoumal’s text prevented him from mending some of the other (though few) inadequacies of the translation. To come back to Joyce’s “POST NO BILLS,” Pokorný, in order to improve Skoumal’s LEPENÍ JE TRESTNÉ. LÉČENÍ JE ČESTNÉ (Cz/Skoumal 121)

17

Pokorný, “Poznámka k úpravám překladu,” 593, my translation.

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(Sticking is penal. Healing is noble) only needed to look into Vymětal to find: “LEPENÍ PLAKÁTŮ ZAKÁZÁNO. LUPENÍ AKÁTŮ ZAVÁZÁNO,” (Cz/Vymětal 209) literally “Sticking of posters forbidden. Leaves of acacia bound-up” – a more elegant solution, closer to the operation of erasure (“plakátů”) performed by Joyce’s original. More successful is Pokorný’s modest but relevant interference with Skoumal’s text on the level of content. An early example is “world without end,” one of the leitmotifs of Stephen’s fearfully Jesuit mind. This phrase from the King James Bible appears in liturgical Czech as “na věky věků” (a literal rendering of the Latin in saecula saeculorum), and so this is Skoumal’s equivalent. But Pokorný is of the opinion that for Stephen these words take on a literal meaning, hence his change to “nekonečný svět”/“the infinite world” (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný, 29) and his commentary: The biblical and liturgical eternity, for which [Stephen] aspired in his adolescence, changes in Ulysses into a literal “world without end,” a boundless world over whose space and time Stephen ruminates in the third-episode monologue […]. The literal translation of “world without end” Skoumal would not accept readily, if ever, and so I cannot console myself that all of my edits could expect the original translator’s implicit assent. But every translation preserves the intertextual ties of the original only to a limited degree and cannot, in my opinion, override the main plotline; this is why I consider my editorial interference justified and necessary.18 It is at points like this that editorial practice goes hand in hand with nothing short of a theory of literary meaning and interpretation. In addition, Pokorný’s road-mending ended up affecting the following three stretches of Skoumal’s freeway. One of them is the monstrously long sentence at the beginning of “Oxen of the Sun” – the Latinate beginnings of Joyce’s prenatal linguistic evolution were “normalised” and “naturalised” in Skoumal’s rendering and were in need of exoticisation and alienation. In the first fullfledged paragraph of “Oxen,” after the triple threefold invocations, Skoumal 18

Pokorný, “Otylý, statný…,” 16, my translation.

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goes so far as to rewrite Joyce’s 15-line meandering question “For who is there who anything of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour… ever irrevocably enjoined?” (U 14.17-32) as a declarative sentence, suppressing the original’s concluding question mark and making it far more orderly reading than Joyce’s original: Kdopak na důležité věci jen trochu pozorný si neuvědomuje, že vnější lesk… neodvolatelně ukládá. (Cz/Skoumal, 292) (Who of important things at least somewhat mindful is unaware that exterior splendour…irrevocably enjoins.) Pokorný redresses this to read: Kdopak na důležité věci jen trochu pozorný nevědomým, že vnější lesk… neodvolatelně ukládá by byl? (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný, 301) (Who of important things at least somewhat mindful unaware that exterior splendour… irrevocably enjoins, would be?). Pokorný’s version outjoyces Joyce’s original by separating the adjective “apprehended” from its verbal copula “would be” by no fewer than the fifteen original lines. The second major emendation is in the impersonal catechism of the “Ithaca” episode, where Pokorný decided to reinforce the presence of foreign words: however more “at home” in English than in Czech the Latin language may be, the plethora of foreign (pseudo-)scientific words is one of this episode’s crucial aesthetic effects. In addition, the 21st-century Czech has become far more susceptible to foreign influences than it used to be in 1976, which needs to be reflected. Most clearly, this can be illustrated on the basis of the first four Ithacan Q&A’s (U 11.1-27): Where Skoumal’s translation has “po souběžných drahách” for “parallel courses,” Pokorný restores “po paralelních drahách”; where Skoumal has “produmali” for “deliberate,” Pokorný has the foreign “prodiskutovali”; where Skoumal translates Joyce’s “a continental to an insular manner of life” as “pevninský než ostrovní životní styl,” Pokorný anglicises this as “kontinentální než insulární životní styl”; and where Skoumal paraphrases the fourth question regarding Bloom’s and Stephen’s “divergent views” as “Rozcházely se v některých bodech jejich názory?” (Cz/Skoumal 438) (“Were their opinions upon some points divided?”), Pokorný remains closer to the original by having, “Byly jejich názory v některých bodech divergentní?” (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný, 503-04) (Were their views on some points divergent?). The point here being that “divergentní” has far more learned and scientific

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connotations in Czech than it has in English, and so Skoumal’s version reads as more naturalised. Finally, “Eumaeus” is perhaps the one blind spot of Skoumal’s translation: his tendency throughout to “comb” the dishevelled syntax and “improve” the “bad” writing of this episode goes against this episode’s poetics. To illustrate these in detail would be rather dry and technical, so let me take just two examples from the opposite ends of the chapter. When toward the end of the first paragraph, Bloom endeavours to “hail a fourwheeler by emitting a kind of whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice,” his endeavour fails, and there is “no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch” (U 16.28083) – a grotesquely over-precise piece of data conveyed through some clumsily overwritten syntax. Skoumal’s version has: “drožka […] nehnula se ani o coul” (Cz/Skoumal 403), literally (and far more straightforwardly) “didn’t budge an inch.” Pokorný rightly emends this to read “drožka […] nezavdala zdání hnout se ani o kousek milimetru,” literally (and more faithfully and clumsily) “didn’t occasion any semblance of moving a bit of millimetre” (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný, 467). At the beginning of the last paragraph, as Stephen and Bloom disappear from another fourwheeler driver’s view, Joyce writes a clunky, complex sentence full of interpolations and asides: “The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black, one full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, to be married by father Maher.” (U 16.1885-8) Here is Skoumal’s rendering: Kočí neřekl ani slovo, at’ dobré, špatné či nijaké. Usazen na kárce jen pozoroval ty postavy, obě temné, jednu tělnatou, druhou hubenou – jak kráčejí k železničnímu mostu dát se oddat od otce Mahera. (Cz/Skoumal 438) (The driver didn’t say a word, good, bad or whatever. Seated on his lowbacked car, he just watched the two figures, both black, one full, one lean – as they walked towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father Maher.) Skoumal tames the unruly “Eumaean” syntax by introducing punctuation (a full stop and a dash) where Joyce has none. It remains for Pokorný to let it roam freely again:

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Kočí neřekl ani slovo, at’ dobré, špatné či nijaké, pouze obě postavy, usazen na svojí kárce, pozoroval, obě temné, jednu tělnatou, druhou hubenou, jak kráčejí k železničnímu mostu dát se oddat od otce Mahera. (Cz/Skoumal-Pokorný, 501) (The driver didn’t say a word, good, bad or whatever, but both figures, seated on his lowbacked car, he merely watched, both black, one full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father Maher.) The bold font phrases – music-hall song excerpts – remain the same in both renditions, and quite literal to Joyce’s original.

IV These few “potholes” on his otherwise marvellous “freeway” show that Skoumal’s failings as translator – lay in his refusal to follow the original into places where its faithful rendering would require of him to use turns of phrase and expressions resembling a bad translation. Or, in other words, it is as if the vulgarity and heresy of the original were more acceptable to Skoumal than the graver danger of Joyce writing “bad prose.” Pokorný comments: “Vulgarities and heresies Skoumal mediates with no holds barred, but clumsy amateurish syntax is quite anathema even in places where the artistic intentions of the original clearly demand it.”19 Which is less an idiosyncrasy of Skoumal’s style than a symptom of the limits of the Czech translation school, which despite its broad scope bears some fairly clear delineation across language groups. This would be subject matter for another discussion altogether: in this context, suffice it to say that this practical approach reflects Skoumal’s own 1976 critical assessment of Ulysses: When published and suppressed in 1922, the novel became mere sensation. After the intervening fifty years however, which has seen many books far more drastic and raw […], the reader appreciates its other qualities: firstly, Joyce’s formal experimentation, particularly clear in his employment of stream of consciousness, and only secondly his denial of conventional constraints. (Cz/Skoumal 530) In its fortes (major) and shortcomings (minor), Skoumal’s translation forms part of the long and winding tradition of the Czech reception of Joyce’s writing 19

Pokorný, “Otylý, statný…,” 17, my translation.

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sketched out in the present essay. A tradition to which Pokorný’s re-edition of Skoumal’s work is an important and welcome addition if it is to continue in the 21st century.

Acknowledgements This work was supported by the European Regional Development FundProject “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734). The author also expresses his thanks to Martin Pokorný for his generous help and valuable insight.

Chapter 8

Immanent Polyglossia of Ulysses: South Slavic Context Born Retranslated Mina М. Đurić

Abstract Immanent polyglossia in Ulysses poses challenges to translators. This chapter raises the question about the retranslations of Ulysses into South Slavic languages – Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Slovenian – by analysing how translators approach the elements of those languages present in Joyce’s text. Taking a phrase from the “Cyclops” episode as a starting point, this chapter delineates the main characteristics of the process of translavication, that is, re-rendering or retranslating into South Slavic languages of the Slavic-inflected terms used by Joyce. Aspects of translation history and cultural connections between Joyce’s text and the South Slavic languages come to the forefront as the paradigm of modernization of the 20th century novel and they highlight the centrality of translations and retranslations of Ulysses in this process.

If Ulysses is a multilingual novel, with creatively incorporated words of other languages, is each of its translations multilingual in the same way? If the translation of Ulysses by itself presents features of heterolingualism,1 can we then speak of its retranslation in terms of trans-heterolingualism as well? What happens to polyglossia, immanent in a text such as Ulysses, if through subsequent (re)translations polyglossic elements re-appear as a mere repetition in the target language?2 Joyce scholarship has identified certain South Slavic elements in the “Cyclops” episode3 that render the novel immanently polyglossic. 1 As defined by Rainier Grutman, the term refers to the “presence in the text of foreign idioms in any form, as well as varieties (social, regional, or chronological) of the main language” (my translation). See Des langues qui résonnent: l  ̀hétérolinguisme au XIX siècle québécois (SaintLaurent, Québec: Fides, 1997), 37. 2 See also Sharon Deane-Cox, Retranslation: Translation, Literature and Reinterpretation (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 194. 3 See Tekla Mecsnóber, “James Joyce and ‘Eastern Europe’: An Introduction,” in Joycean Unions: Post-Millennial Essays from East to West, eds. R. Brandon Kershner and Tekla Mecsnóber (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2013), 32-33. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_010

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The question that arises is whether these elements are to remain in their original form or whether they should be retranslated – or rendered differently – in the South Slavic languages. Considering that Joyce incorporates foreign words for an artistic or poetic effect, what is it that appears in a retranslation – or in translavication, as I will name the process of translating Slavic elements from Joyce’s text into Slavic texts – as a form of trans-repetition? Following Derrida’s question – “How many languages can be lodged in two words by Joyce, lodged or inscribed, kept or burned, celebrated or violated?”4 – I will start by focusing on an example of the parodied titles of the delegates in the “Cyclops” episode5 – “Goosepond Přhklštř Kratchinabritchisitch” (U 12.565-566) – where some elements of Slavic languages have already been identified in consonant clusters.6 A number of questions arise: how is this example, already full of echoes of (South) Slavic languages and cultures,7 translated into South Slavic languages?8 What are the features of the translavication process? And what is created in the retranslation process?

4 Jacques Derrida, “Two Words for Joyce,” in Post-Structuralist Joyce: Essays from the French, eds. Derek Attridge and Daniel Ferrer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 145. 5 About registers in episodes see Fritz Senn, “‘Ithaca’: Portrait of the Chapter as a Long List,” in Joyce’s “Ithaca,” ed. Andrew Gibson, European Joyce Studies 6 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1996), 31. 6 Mecsnóber, “James Joyce and ‘Eastern Europe,’” 32-33. 7 On possible contacts between Joyce and South Slavic cultures see Ivo Vidan, “Joyce and the South Slaves,” in Atti del Third International James Joyce Symposium, Trieste 14-18 giugno 1971 (Trieste: Università degli Studi, Facoltà di Magistero, 1974): 116-123; John McCourt, The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2000), 142-145. 8 About the reception of Joyce’s works and their translations in South Slavic context see Svetozar Koljević, “The Reception and Translation of James Joyce in Serbo-Croat,” in Literary Interrelations (Ireland, England and the World). Volume 1, Reception and Translation, eds. Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1987): 91-99; Jerneja Petrič, “How Adequately Can Joyce Be Translated? Ulysses and its Slovene Translation,” in Literary Interrelations (Ireland, England and the World). Volume 1: 101-107; Aleš Pogačnik, “Letter,” James Joyce Quarterly 30, 2 (1993): 361-362; Aleš Pogačnik and Tomo Virk, “The Reception of James Joyce in Slovenia,” in The Reception of James Joyce in Europe. Volume I: Germany, Northern and East Central Europe, eds. Geert Lernout and Wim Van Mierlo (London, New York: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004): 162-177; Sonja Bašić, “The Reception of James Joyce in Croatia,” in The Reception of James Joyce in Europe. Vol. I: 178-186; Kalina Filipova, “The Reception of James Joyce in Bulgaria,” in The Reception of James Joyce in Europe. Vol. I: 236-243; Irena Grubica, “Ulysses in Croatian,” in Joyce and/in Translation, eds. Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi (Roma: Bulzoni, 2007): 107-117; Sandra Josipović, “The Reception of James Joyce’s Work in Twentieth-Century Serbia,” in Censorship across Borders: The Reception of English Literature in Twentieth-Century Europe, eds. Catherine O’Leary and Alberto Lázaro (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011): 93-104.

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“Goosepond” (U 12.565)

In the first word of Joyce’s phrase – “Goosepond” (U 12.565), the words of (Proto-)Slavic origin can be easily recognized: “gospodin” (sir/gentleman)9 or “Gospod” (Lord, God).10 By virtue of the homography and homophony of “Gos-” and “Goose-”/“guska” (goose), together with their semantic distance/dissonance, the element of parody is clear. There are other places in Ulysses where the words cited above are found in a similar context. At the end of “Proteus,” the idea of metempsychosis and constant Protean transformations of matter appear in the example: “God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain” (U 3.477-479; emphasis added).11 This example opens up a possibility to connect “God” and “goose” by intratextual allusion, especially if we consider that the Slavic spelling of the words “gospodin” and “Gospod” echoes aurally and visually the English word “goose” in “Goosepond.” The pronunciation of the double “о” in “Goosepond” also evokes the word “guz” (buttock/backside) in some Slavic languages, the meaning of which is recorded in the Serbian Dictionary as “clunis” (buttock).12 Referring to a person, the word is an offensive low colloquialism, with strong grotesque overtones.13 In effect, “guz” in relation to a person suggests poltroonism and other unprincipled features that are in stark contrast to the title “gospodin.” The Bulgarian translation harnesses these features of the word “guz” – Bulgarian “гъз” (buttock) – by rendering Joyce’s “Goosepond” as “гъзподин” (Bu/Vasileva 393; emphasis added) and doing so in a lower case, thus comically highlighting double-entendre and humiliation by way of typography. The same typographical strategy is present in the Slovenian translation where we find “gosjipod” (Sl/Gradišnik 364; emphasis added). 9 10

11 12

13

Slavic words are written in the forms in which they appear in contemporary Serbian language. See Henry Leeming, “Лѣпогласъ иже сѫщеявитъ: James Joyce’s Slavonic Optophones,” The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 55, No. 3 (July 1977): 290; Don Gifford and Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses. Second edition, revised and enlarged (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1989), 335; Mecsnóber, “James Joyce and ‘Eastern Europe,’” 32. See Gifford and Seidman, Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses, 65. Cf. Вук Стефановић Караџић, Српски рјечник истолкован њемачким и латинским ријечма [Serbian Dictionary, Explained by German and Latin Words], ed. Павле Ивић (Просвета: Београд, 1969), 114. For a discussion on levels of vulgarity through the Italian translations of the word “bottom” from “il sedere” in 1960 (De Angelis) to “il culo” in 2012 (Terrinoni), and the reception of those words in public discourse, see Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi, “Reforeignising the Foreign: The Italian Retranslation of James Joyce’s Ulysses,” Scientia Traductionis, No. 12 (2012): 43.

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Joyce further engages in variations on these examples in Finnegans Wake, where the first part of the word “Goosepond” becomes an aurally independent “Gus” in “Sdrats ye, Gus Paudheen” (FW 332.32), identified as a play on the Russian greeting – “Здравствуйте, господин” (Hello, sir).14 In Joyce’s creative self-retranslation15 of the Slavic material, “Goosepond” is transformed not only into “Gus Paudheen” but also into “Gus, poteen” (FW 125.22). Henry Leeming’s analysis of the phrase “(kak, pfooi, bosh and fiety, much earny, Gus, poteen? Sez you!)” (FW 125.22-23) – and his commentary that: “This is nothing other than Russian kak vy poživajete, moj černyj gospodin? ‘How are you, my black sir?’ transmuted to suggest the businesslike Shaun’s contempt for the unsuccessful artist Shem = Gus = Joyce whose rubbish hardly earns him enough to keep him in drink”16 – underscores the importance of Joyce’s selfretranslation of the words of Slavic origin. In the Wakean phrases, “Gus,” traceable to the “gospodin” and “Gospod” of Ulysses, functions independently from “Paudheen” and “poteen” and the reappearances of the Slavic material have a poetic function in their repetitiveness and heterolingual nature. But their repetition does not guarantee the same context. When “Paudheen” appears later in the Wake (FW 600.32), the previously implicit Slavic/Russian context has been replaced by vaguely Irish material in the passage, where “Paudheen” echoes “Páidín” as well as a diminutive of “Pádraig” (Patrick).17 The appearance of the word “poteen” as “poteen and tea” (FW 56.26) and as “subdominal poteen at prime cost” (FW 451.1) does not reflect the Slavic/Russian context either: McHugh’s annotations identify it as “illicit whiskey.”18 What this example illustrates is a rather apparent dynamics of the Wakean language: meanings proliferate, overlap and/or clash as a result of different semantic fields, 14

15

16

17 18

See L.H. Scott, “‘Sdrats ye, Gus Paudheen!’: Notes from a Survey-in-Progress of Slavs and Slavicisms in Finnegans Wake,” in Studies presented to Professor Roman Jakobson by his Students, ed. Charles E. Gribble (Cambridge: Slavica Publishing, 1968), 289-298; Bernd Engelhart, “Breeder to Sweatoslaves,” Form und Funktion des Slawischen Wortmaterials in Joyce’s Work in Progress (Ein Beitrag zur Genese und Genetik von Finnegans Wake) (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2002), 27-28; Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake. Тhird edition (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 332. Cf. Senn’s observation that “Joyce’s works are already translating themselves,” Fritz Senn, in Erika Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka, “‘I am a Far-Fetcher by Constitution:’ Conversation with Fritz Senn,” Scientia Traductionis, No. 12 (2012): 207. Leeming, “Лѣпогласъ иже сѫщеявитъ: James Joyce’s Slavonic Optophones,” 308. On transferring some other words from the Slavic context of the “Cyclops” episode to Finnegans Wake see Fritz Senn, Jolanta Wawrzycka and Veronika Kovács, “Spectral Shakespeare in Ulysses Translation,” in Shakespearean Joyce/Joycean Shakespeare, ed. John McCourt (Roma: Editoriale Anicia, 2016): 146-148. McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, 600. Ibid. 56, 451.

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overtones, and languages that the Joycean text brings together by way of homophony, homography, chance, etc. In this reading, the word “Gus” as rooted in “Gos-/Gospod/goose/Goosepond,” becomes “tainted” with all these other meanings, contexts, and languages. A case in point is the translation of the phrase “kak, pfooi, bosh and fiety, much earny, Gus, poteen?” (FW 125.22) into Serbian: “šta, fuj, ima, fuj to, moj črni, Gus, podine?” (Fb/Stojaković 127). The first part “kak, pfooi, bosh and fiety” does not rely on the Russianism proposed by Leeming. Instead, the translation proceeds on the basis of the sound of cognates in Serbian and the context which they might include: “šta, fuj, ima, fuj to” backtranslates as “what, phew, has, phew that.” In the second part of the Serbian phrase – “moj črni, Gus, podine?” (or “my black sir?”) – the translation emphasizes the Slavic nature of the words and renders “poteen” in vocative (gus-podine = sir). Therefore, it could be said that the existing Slavic material of Ulysses is retranslated into the Serbian Finnegans Wake. The difference is that, instead of the ungrammaticality of “Gus, poteen?” which has facilitated the heteroglossic chaining of words in Joyce, the process of translavication imposed a grammatical order on at least one part of the phrase (“Gus, podine” = gospodine = sir) and indicates translatorial awareness of the Slavic origin of the word. The compound “Goosepond,” read outside the Slavic context, may or may not appear as parodic. However, to the Slavic ear, the second part of this compound produces a comical effect on the sound/aural level. Read in the framework of Joyce’s allusions to Slavic languages, the word “Goosepond” takes on parodic overtones by virtue of its last nasalised vowel. Such vowels as “ѫ” (“ǫ,” pronounced like nasalised “o”) were a feature of the vowel system of the ProtoSlavic language.19 This nasal, for example, was present in the Old Slavic word “пѫть” (transliteration: pǫt’), meaning “put” (road) and pronounced “pont.” Thus the “n” in Joyce’s “Goosepond” (U 12.565; emphasis added) resonates not only with the Old Slavic “пѫть” (road) but, as presented above, also with the vulgarized “guspond” (Serbian transcription for Joyce’s “Goosepond”). As a result, the element of nasality reduces the pathos of the word to which Joyce alludes (“Gospond”).20 The parodic dimensions of the word “Goosepond” both aurally and semantically, prompt a question as to how this term has been treated in the South Slavic translations of Ulysses. If the Slavic material of 19 20

Предраг, Пипер, Увод у славистику. 1 [Introduction to Slavic Studies. 1] (Београд: Завод за уџбенике, 2009), 85. About the consonant “n” in some forms of Slavic words and its function in Joyce’s texts see Engelhart, “Breeder to Sweatoslaves,” Form und Funktion des Slawischen Wortmaterials in Joyce Work in Progress (Ein Beitrag zur Genese und Genetik von Finnegans Wake), 26-27.

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Ulysses is to be re-rendered as Slavic, in this case as “gospodin” or “Gospod,” the elements of what would appear to a South Slavic reader as Joyce’s parody would be inevitably lost. Do the Slavic renditions of this example keep the original’s immanent polyglossia? How is the Slavic context recreated in retranslations-translavications of Joyce’s “translations” (appropriations) of this Slavic element? In his 1957 translation of Ulysses, Zlatko Gorjan found numerous solutions that marked a significant post-war modernistic turning point in the history of South Slavic translations. By rendering Joyce’s “Goosepond” as “Patipatašon” (Cr/Gorjan 376), he reproduced the parody in the first word in a process that could be understood as an example of the translation’s immanent heteroglossia, i.e., as an example of how a translation incorporates wider cultural frames and various discourses in order to preserve the implied polyglossia. That is, he met the challenge of translavication that may also be understood as a kind of trans-semantification and re-languaging, defined by Wawrzycka as the process of reflecting “the complex cultural references” to be “carried across” “from one lexical/semantic system into another.”21 In Gorjan’s translation of “Goosepond,” there are two names – Pat and Patachon, the comic characters from a silent movie, familiar under these names and its variations in Germany, France and in Slavic countries, especially in Russia, and also appearing in other traditions under changed appellatives.22 In his translation of “Goosepond” as “Patipatašon,” Gorjan managed to activate the latent elements of parody and retained Joyce’s allusions to the Slavic context. His translation of this word comprises comical disproportion between two entities, as his palimpsestic layering of meaning (“gospodin”/sir, gentleman – “guz”/buttock; “Gospod”/God – “guska”/goose; “Pat”/Pat – “Patašon”/Patachon) contains an allusion to the comical element of the reeling or waddling movement implied in the image of goose on the pond or on the road23 and the pairing of Pat/Patachon whose different heights are a stock-image of low comedy.

21

22

23

See Jolanta W. Wawrzycka, “‘Tell Us in Plain Words’: Textual Implications of ReLanguaging Joyce,” in Joyce and/in Translation, eds. Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi (Roma: Bulzoni, 2007): 39-51, esp. pp. 44-45. For example, in the United Kingdom as Long and Short, in the United States as Ole and Axel, in Hungary as Zoro and Huru etc. See Сергей Юткевич, ed., Кино: Энциклопедический словарь (Москва: Советская энциклопедия, 1986), 115. Cf. Serafimov’s, Gradišnik’s and Paljetak’s translations of Joyce’s “Goosepond” (U 12.565): “Гусковир” (transliteration: Guskovir) or “swirling (of a) goose” (Ma/Serafimov 380); “gosjipod” or “goose’s floor” suggesting “gospod” or “gentleman, God” (Sl/Gradišnik 364); and “Gusjipod” or “goose’s floor” (Cr/Paljetak 309).

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Even though in Gorjan’s translation the parody is primarily achieved through emphasis on meaning arising from multilingual context, as well as through artistic and cultural allusions, the transfer of comical elements based on aural effects is also present, as exemplified by the element of nasality in the name “Patipatašon” (Cr/Gorjan 376; emphasis added). In Gorjan’s Latinate “Patipatašon” (Cr/Gorjan 376) we hear a layer of the Slavic words for “sir/gentleman” (“gospodin”) and “God” (“Gospod”) in “Goosepond” thanks to the double “Pat” that resonates with “Pater” and thus keeps the immanent polyglossia of Joyce’s “Goosepond.” In addition, translavication in this instance widens the artistic context by alluding to the cinema (silent movie characters) and montage, both of paramount importance to Joyce.24 In Zoran Paunović’s 2001 Serbian translation of Ulysses, “Goosepond” is translated as “Gospuding” (326), a compound made up of an abbreviation for “gospodin” and inscribing “Gos’-” and “puding” (pudding). Paunović emphasizes the elements of titling in this passage of “Cyclops,” so his parody extends to the alternation of titles: instead of “Gospod” or “gospodin” we have “Gos’” – a type of oral contraction or ellipsis, an apostrophe that, on a micro-level, corresponds to the character of the episode. Therefore, by interpreting one part of “Cyclops,” the first segment of Paunović’s translation of this word reflects the feature of immanent polyglossia through the use of an idiomatic elision. The second part of “Goosepond” is rendered as “-puding” and keeps the element of nasality. Even if it is a bit surprising, the selection of the word “-puding” does not appear accidental. On the one hand, it alludes to food consumption and excretion which are set in a parodic relation to the high mimetic layer in Joyce’s word “Goosepond.” On the other hand, Paunović’s choice seems to correspond to the earlier mentions of “pudding” in Joyce’s text. For instance, in “Lestrygonians” Bloom comments on the “underfed” appearance of one of the Dedalus daughters and thinks: “Proof of the pudding” (U 8.42-43) – in Paunović’s translation, “Dokaz postojanja pudinga” (Se/Paunović 163; “Proof of the existence of the pudding”). But in the “Cyclops” episode, Paunović’s evocation of “pudding” in “Gospuding” is satirically related to a wealthier, higher-class titled gentleman, able to afford pudding which would have been perceived as a foreign delicacy.

24

Cf. Sergei Eisenstein, Selected Writings. Volume 2. Towards a Theory of Montage, eds. Richard Taylor and Michael Glenny (London: British Film Institute, 1991): 296-326.

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“Přhklštř” (U 12.565)

The second word in the name of the delegate, “Přhklštř” (U 12.565) is marked by the diacritical signs that mark characteristics of West and South Slavic languages.25 It has remained an unusual and a foreign word in most of the South Slavic translations, with only a few changes, regarding the removal of the diacritics or breaking the consonant cluster:26 Croatian: Slovenian: Macedonian: Bulgarian: Serbian:

Prhklеstr (Cr/Gorjan 376) Prhklštr (Cr/Paljetak 309) Prhklstr (Sl/Gradišnik 364) Прхклестр (Ма/Serafimov 380) (transliteration: Prhklestr) Прклстр (Bu/Vasileva 393) (transliteration: Prklstr) Trtmrt (Se/Paunović 326).

As this list illustrates, only Paunović decided to translate Joyce’s “Přhklštř” using a different kind of consonant cluster, “Trtmrt.” This syllabic-metric, rhymed compound “trt-mrt” is used colloquially to comic effect. Karadžić’s Serbian Dictionary explains “trt, mrt” in German and Latin: “in der Erzählung, um das verlegene Stammeln des überwiesenen (Diebs […]) anzudeuten, interjectio de confusione criminis convicti.”27 The expression came into the literary critics’ purview after it appeared in the translation of a Shakespeare verse into Serbian: the great romantic poet, Laza Kostić, given to language experiments, used “trt-mrt” for “juggle with” in his 1884 translation of Hamlet: “How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with,” (IV.v.148),28 uttered by Laertes, asking about Polonius’ death. In Kostić’s translation the verse reads: “Сад нема си трт-мрт! Казуј му смрт!”29 (“Now you cannot zigzag! Tell about his death”). As some of

25

26 27 28 29

Mecsnóber, “James Joyce and ‘Eastern Europe,’” 32-33; Tekla Mecsnóber, “Diacritic Aspirations and Servile Letters: Alphabets and National Identities in Joyce’s Europe,” in Doubtful Points: Joyce and Punctuation, eds. Elizabeth M. Bonapfel and Tim Conley (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2014), 167-188. Note that Joyce used double diacritical marks in Finnegans Wake – “profèššionally” (FW 124.10). Cf. Mecsnóber, “Diacritic Aspirations and Servile Letters,” 167-188. Стефановић Караџић, Српски рјечник истолкован њемачким и латинским ријечма [Serbian Dictionary, Explained by German and Latin Words], 831. William Shakespeare, The Plays of Shakespeare. Volume III, ed. Howard Staunton (London: Routledge, Warne & Routledge, 1860), 380. Виљем Шекспир, Хамлет: краљевић дански. С енглеског превео Лаза Костић [Hamlet: Prince of Denmark. From the English translated by Laza Kostić] (Београд: Издање И. Ђ. Ђурђевића, 192? [sic]), 149, emphasis added.

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the interpreters noticed, “trt-mrt” indicates that Kostić recognized the phrase as Laertes’ attempt to stop the king’s equivocation.30 During the 20th century, the use of this translation of Shakespeare’s verse caused a huge polemic among literary critics and university professors in Serbia who were mostly hostile to Kostić’s extreme translation and what they perceived as its vulgarity (though many also defended Kostić’s choices).31 Paunović, an academic, historian of English literature and translator, chose this funny, but meta-textually charged expression with full awareness of Kostić’s work. In terms of the poetics of translation in the Serbian cultural and academic environment, Paunović inspired and marked some of the most important moments in the history of translation. This example shows that, on a micro-level, through the translation of Ulysses, a dialogue was initiated between texts that make up the tradition of the translation of English literature in a target culture. Paunović, by incorporating the word that carries a strong polemical context and the history of the comments on that context, insists that the possibility of discussion regarding certain historic realities should be transferred to a metatextual and metapoetic level through intertextual translation. He exemplified this by showing that his translation of Ulysses interprets Kostić’s translation of Hamlet, not unlike Joyce’s use of Shakespeare’s works. Joyce’s (South) Slavic delegate in the crowd described in “Cyclops” brings with him the way of translating Shakespeare and through this process, two more aspects of low and high mimeticism are activated in the word “Trtmrt”: “mrt-” can be understood as the root of the adjective “mrtav” (dead), whereas “trt,” in its onomatopoeic dimensions, describes the sound of flatulence. Paunović used “Trtrrrt” at the end of “Sirens” and his choice differs not only from that of the original “Prrprr. Must be the bur. Fff! Oo. Rrpr” (U 11.1286-1288), but also from the other South Slavic translations: Serbian: Croatian: Slovenian: Macedonian:

30

31

Trrrrt. Mora da je od bur. Pffft. Auh. Trtrrrt (Se/Paunović 310) Prprprak. To čini samo geak. Tff. Oo. Rrprr (Cr/Gorjan 357) Prrprr. Mora da je od burg. Fff! Oo. Rrpr (Cr/Paljetak 294) Prrprr. To bo od bur. Fff. Oo. Rrpr (Sl/Gradišnik 345) Пррпрр. Мора да е… Ефф. Оо. Ррпр (Ma/Serafimov 360); (transliteration: Prrprr. Mora da e… Eff. Oo. Rrpr)

See for instance, Вујадин Милановић, Лаза Костић – преводилац и критичар Шекспира [Laza Kostić as Shakespeare’s Translator and Critic] (Бања Лука: Књижевни атеље, 1999), 75. Ibid. 73-75.

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Bulgarian:

Пръъъцц. По-скоро е от бургунда. Пфууу. Оооох. Пръъъ (Bu/Vasileva 373); (transliteration: Prăăăcc. Po-skoro e ot burgunda. Pfuuu. Ooooh. Prăăă).

Paunović’s choice could also be interpreted as a kind of “interior translation,”32 and prompts a question: how are English onomatopoeic words translated into other language systems?33 His choice also shows that the selection of the onomatopoeia at the end of “Sirens” is poetically significant in the translation of consonant clusters, recognized as an allusion to the South Slavic context of the phrase in the “Cyclops” episode. The delegate’s title, “Gospuding Trtmrt” (Se/Paunović 326), comprises the history of the questions about the (im)possibility of equivocation about the truth of Polonius’ death that Laertes confronts the king with, and which is actualized in Paunović’s “Cyclops” at the moment of execution attended by the foreign delegates. On the other hand, the onomatopoeia (with the allusion to Robert Emmet’s epitaph) at the end of “Sirens” also reappears in the Serbian “Cyclops” as “Trtmrt.” In this context, the elements of the immanent polyglossia become the basis of intra- and intertextual translation that requires readers to “understand retrospectively”34 and to consider occurrences of repetitions/retranslations inside the very novel. The translation, in this case of translavication, shows the possibilities of the extensive readings of Ulysses in the history of translating English literature into another culture, as well as a look back on the previous achievements in translation.

3

“Kratchinabritchisitch” (U 12.566)

The third word in the delegate’s name, “Kratchinabritchisitch” (U 12.566), opens many questions for translation, too. Its ending suggests a Slavic sur-

32

33

34

“Interior translation,” as defined by Mihálycsa, refers to “removing the layer of arcania that call for a reading as back-translation.” See Erika Mihálycsa, “‘Making Both Ends Meet’: ‘Eumaeus’ Meta-Murphied in Translation,” Scientia Traductionis, No. 12 (2012): 93. Here the term is used loosely to refer to Paunović’s re-using of the same colloquialism in a different part of his translation. Cf. Derek Attridge, “Language as Imitation: Jakobson, Joyce, and the Art of Onomatopoeia,” MLN, Comparative Literature, Vol. 99, No. 5 (December 1984): 11161140. Fritz Senn in Mihálycsa and Wawrzycka, “‘I am a Far-Fetcher by Constitution,’” 207.

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name and some previous studies pointed out the echoes of such names in Joyce’s works.35 Here is how the name fared in translation: Croatian: Bulgarian: Macedonian: Slovenian: Serbian:

Kračinabričisič (Cr/Gorjan 376) Kradinabrzinič (Cr/Paljetak 309) Кратчинабритчисич (Bu/Vasileva 393) (transliteration: Kratchinabritchisich) Крачинабричишич (Ma/Serafimov 380) (transliteration: Krachinabrichishich) Kradinabrisič (Sl/Gradišnik 364) Kraćimubrčić (Se/Paunović 326).

While Gorjan decided that the transfer should be relevant, firstly, to the sound (“Kračinabričisič,” as is the case in Vasileva’s translation, “Кратчинабритчисич,” almost identical with Serafimov’s “Крачинабричишич”), Gradišnik and Paljetak decided that, while preserving the sound, they should also allude to the meaning connoted in the Slavic sounds: Gradišnik’s “Kradinabrisič” suggests “kradi na čisto” (steal cleanly), while Paljetak’s “Kradinabrzinič” integrates the meaning “kradi na brzinu” (steal quickly).36 Adapting the name even more to the form of common Serbian surnames, Paunović opts for a palindromic “-ić” in the word “Kraćimubrčić” which preserves the sound of Joyce’s word and suggests a comic meaning “kraći mu je brk” (his moustache is shorter). The choice of Gradišnik’s, Paljetak’s and Paunović’s translations to integrate the meaning of stealing and thieving into “Kradinabrisič” and “Kradinabrzinič,” and of the small moustache in “Kraćimubrčić,” contributes to the creation of negative perception of moral dishonesty and semantically charged negative physical looks, (along with the collective cultural knowledge inscribed in a small or thin moustache as an unfavourable trait). If the words “breech” (U 12.1340) or “breach” (U 12.1342) used later in “Cyclops” could also be prefigured in Joyce’s “-britch-” in a delegate’s name “Kratchinabritchisitch,” then they can also be seen as echoing from the Slavic context. And while in Macedonian, Serafimov’s “Крачинабричишич” (380) and “бечвите” (407) manage to keep connections “-britch-”/“breech” through “-брич-” (transliteration: “-brich-” meaning “razor”) and “бечвите” (transliteration: “bechvite” meaning “trouser”), Paunović’s Serbian translation does not preserve the 35 36

Leeming, “Лѣпогласъ иже сѫщеявитъ: James Joyce’s Slavonic Optophones,” 289; Mecsnóber, “James Joyce and ‘Eastern Europe,’” 31-33. Cf. with Gradišnik’s and Paljetak’s translations of this example another title/nickname in Finnegans Wake: “Paudheen Steel-the-Poghue” (FW 600.32).

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sound connection “-britch-”/“breech”/“breach.”37 But this connection is recognized in Paunović’s translation in the transfer of “breech” (U 12.1340) as “tur” (behind; Se/Paunović 347), which echoes, as presented above, not only the meaning of “guz” (buttock) from “Goosepond,” but also the connection between the word “trt” in Paunović’s “Trtrrrt” (310) and “Trtmrt” (326) borrowed from Kostić’s translation of Shakespeare. Therefore, the sound aspect of the immanent polyglossic segment – “Goosepond Přhklštř Kratchinabritchisitch” (U 12.565-566) – underscores the merit of multi-layered lexical onomatopoeia in English and Slavic languages, as implied by the original and some of the translations. In the multilingual context of “Cyclops,” the South Slavic material is incorporated in the exclamations of toasts: “hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah […] evviva” (U 12.600-601; italics in the original). The fourth word, “zivio,” appears to be South Slavic38 but, to be properly written, it needs a diacritic sign – “živio” (/zhivio/). How do the South Slavic translators render it? In Croatian, Gorjan, and Paljetak – and in Slovenian, Gradišnik – resolved to transcribe the exclamations according to the way they are pronounced by using the matching letters from the Latin alphabet (emphasized in bold): “živio! činčin! polla kronija!” (Cr/Gorjan 377), “živio, činčin, polla kronia” (Cr/Paljetak 310), and “živio, činčin, polla kronia” (Sl/Gradišnik 365). However, other words in this sequence are not transcribed according to their pronunciation, which could indicate the translators’ decision to leave the words without Slavic echoes looking as peculiar or foreign as “zivio” looks in Joyce’s original.39 In Vasileva’s translation, almost everything is adapted to the Bulgarian spelling and pronunciation: “хох, банзай, ельен, живио, чинчин, пола крониа, хипхип, вив, Аллах […] еввива” (Bu/Vasileva 394). Serafimov decided to domesticate foreign Slavic elements of Joyce’s text:40 “hoch, banzai, eljen, да живее, chinchin, polla kronia, hippip, vive, Allah […] evviva” (Ma/Serafimov 381; emphasis added). Paunović, on the other hand, by choosing to leave Joyce’s text

37

38 39

40

See analysis of this problem in the French, Italian, German, Hungarian and Polish translation in Senn, Wawrzycka and Kovács, “Spectral Shakespeare in Ulysses Translation,” 144146. Cf. Vidan, “Joyce and the South Slaves,” 122; Gifford and Seidman, Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses, 336. Cf. Зоран Пауновић, “Кроз Џојсово Финеганово бдење, са Зораном Пауновићем разговарала Соња Јанков” [“Through Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, A Conversation with Zoran Paunović led by Sonja Jankov”], Књижевни магазин [Literary Magazine], 158-162 (2014): 8-9, 11. About this problem see Ira Torresi, “Domesticating or Foreignizing Foreignization? Joyce Translation as a Test for Venuti’s Theories,” Papers on Joyce, No. 13 (2007): 99-112.

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unaltered (“hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah […] evviva”; Se/Paunović 327) and adding an explanatory note regarding the meaning of these exclamations in different languages, left the foreign (even South Slavic) parts of Joyce’s text somewhat foreign.41 In this case, the (un)realized process of full translavication shows how the South Slavic segment of “Cyclops” remains slightly foreign in South Slavic translation, being a mark of the exclusive, difficult and different point in the original text, with a similar effect in translation as that in the original: as (un)understandable to the South Slavic readers as Joyce’s text is to the English.42 The active past participle form functioning as an exclamation in “zivio” (U 12.600) appears in its variations – “Cheevio” or “zivios” in Finnegans Wake: “Gives fair day. Cheroot. Cheevio!” (FW 321.35) and “you! you, strike your flag!: (what screech of shippings! what low of dampfbulls!): from Livland, hoks zivios, from Lettland, skall vives!” (FW 547.35-548.1).43 In the Serbian translation of Book III, “zivios” (FW 548.1) is at the same time domesticated by the use of the letter “ž,” and reforeignized44 by “-s,” the mark of the English plural: “iz Livlenda, uzvici živios, iz Letlenda, alal vera!” (Fb/Stojaković 141; emphasis added). Intertextual realities of (re)translations and translavication show that the (re)translation can come across an expression from one text (“zivio”; U 12.600) and incorporate it into another with elements of different languages (“Cheevio!”; FW 321.35 and “zivios”; FW 548.1). South Slavic (re)translations of the immanent polyglossia of Joyce’s texts present translavication as a process of “transtextual reading.”45 Such a process, while aspiring to preserve the element of polyglossic texts, comprises and challenges lexical and grammatical norms of many languages, including the Slavic ones, “at the risk of busting [their] normative boundaries.”46 As a multilingual text, Joyce’s Ulysses is highly responsive to translation that cannot but rewrite it. This dynamics is implicit and metatextual, and repre41

42 43

44 45 46

Пауновић, “Кроз Џојсово Финеганово бдење, са Зораном Пауновићем разговарала Соња Јанков” [“Through Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, A Conversation with Zoran Paunović led by Sonja Jankov”], 8, 11. Ibid. 8-9, 11. See Petr Skrabanek, “355.11 Slavansky Slavar, R. Slavyanskii Slovar (Slavonic Dictionary),” A Wake Newslitter, Vol. IX, No. 4 (August 1972): 66; Leeming, “Лѣпогласъ иже сѫщеявитъ: James Joyce’s Slavonic Optophones,” 290; McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, 321, 548; C. George Sandulescu, ed., A Lexicon of “Small” Languages in Finnegans Wake. Joyce Lexicography. Volume Five (Bucharest: Contemporary Literature Press, 2012). Cf. Torresi, “Domesticating or Foreignizing Foreignization?,” 99-112. Patrick O’Neill, Polyglot Joyce: Fiction of Translation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 220-228. Jolanta Wawrzycka, “Translation,” in James Joyce in Context, ed. John McCourt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 127.

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sents a special kind of world literature: one could say that Ulysses is born in (re)translations – a text written for/in the (re)translations.47 It is also an exclusive kind of “translation” of other languages that are in a creative relationship with Joyce’s text as a whole, with its reception and with its challenge of rendering it in the languages it contains. The process of translavication shows that Joyce’s word in a South Slavic reiteration “is achievable not by any single language but only by the totality of their intentions supplementing one another.”48 Rejoycing in the immanent Slavic polyglossia of Ulysses in South Slavic (re)translations is an inevitable part of the broader discussion about the shifts in poetic, linguistic and cultural paradigms brought about by translations and retranslations, as translators change the creative architectonics in their respective cultures by fostering new translatorial traditions and systems of (re)translations. 47

48

See Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 3-4. The title of the chapter was partially inspired by the title of this book. Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 257.

Chapter 9

“Probably not a bit like it really” (U 4.99): Ulysses in Two Turkish Translations Armağan Ekici

Abstract In the present essay, the author-translator summarizes his motivations, goals and methods for the retranslation of Ulysses into Turkish (2012), comparing it to Nevzat Erkmen’s previous, 1996 translation. The primary goal for retranslation was to make the Turkish readers realise the richness, humanity and humour of the book. Partially due to the translation strategies of Erkmen, Ulysses is still known to most Turkish readers as cold and unreadable, written in an impenetrably experimental and erudite language. By retranslating, Ekici wanted to recreate his own joy of reading the original. The two Turkish translations are compared in a series of case studies of syntactic and lexical indeterminacies, slips, errors, and sound effects; Ekici focuses particularly on the translational challenges pointed out by Fritz Senn, who warns that translators often fall under “the lure of grammatical rectification” and flatten out some of the essential strangeness and richness of Joyce’s text. His concluding speculations consider what future retranslations of Ulysses can productively focus on.

Joyce’s major works arrived late into Turkish. Murat Belge, after publishing a translation of an extract from “Penelope” in 1965,1 translated A Portrait in 1966, and Dubliners in 1987. The first full translation of Ulysses by Nevzat Erkmen was published in 1996. Being a late translation, it does not suffer from the hardships faced by the first generation of translators of Ulysses. Erkmen lists, amongst others, Blamires, Thornton, Gilbert, Budgen, Kenner, Nicholson and Ellmann as his sources2 – it is a translation informed by decades of Joyce

1 “James Joyce – Ulysses’den Seçmeler,” trans. Murat Belge, Yeni Dergi 1 No. 8 (1965): 91-95. This is a translation of the beginning and the end of “Penelope” (18.1-120 and 18.1533-1609). 2 This list is in a fax message Erkmen sent to Murat Belge and published in his booklet about the translation in progress. See James Joyce, Ulysses: Telemachus, Calypso, Work in Progress (Istanbul: Söz Yayın, 1994), 143.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_011

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scholarship, produced with the awareness of the larger themes and the symbolic structures. Erkmen published his own Ulysses Dictionary as a separate book, the only set of annotations to Ulysses in Turkish.3

1

The Why and the How of the Turkish Retranslation of Ulysses

1.1 The Why My retranslation of Ulysses was completed in 2012. One undertakes such an effort for a mixture of personal and impersonal motives. On the personal side, I felt that I had to take on a challenge of a truly large scale. The main impersonal motive was to pass on my enthusiasm for Ulysses. I felt that it was not reaching its readership in Turkish: it was seen as an unreadable, cold, erudite book, partly because of the translation strategies of Erkmen – whereas to me, Ulysses is a book full of joy, life, music and humour; after more than 10 years of studying and reading it, I was impressed by its richness, especially in the form of the unabridged audiobook from Naxos.4 I wanted to render it as I saw it in my native language. I had no illusions about making Ulysses popular, but I felt that it was not reaching readers who could tackle similarly challenging books. There was a readership for Tutunamayanlar (The Disconnected) by Oğuz Atay,5 Tres Tristes Tigres by Cabrera Infante,6 and La Vie mode d’emploi by Georges Perec7 – all “difficult” novels influenced by Ulysses to various degrees. I wanted the readers of such books to enjoy Ulysses as well. I think the most important difference between the two translations is one of register. Nevzat Erkmen approaches Ulysses as a dictionary-and-puzzle man: he used to be the captain of the Turkish team that competed in the World Puzzle Championships, and he also wrote puzzle books; he is the author of the only rhyming dictionary of Turkish. He enjoys using rhymes and his extensive vocabulary, including many words from Ottoman Turkish that fell into

3 Nevzat Erkmen, Ulysses Sözlüğü (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2006, 2nd printing, 2008). 4 James Joyce, Ulysses, read by Jim Norton with Marcella Riordan (Naxos Audiobooks, 2004). 5 Oğuz Atay, Tutunamayanlar (Istanbul: Sinan Yayınları, 1972, 4th printing: İletişim Yayınları, 1985). Translated as Oğuz Atay, The Disconnected. Trans. Sevin Seydi (London: Olric Press, 2017). 6 Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Kapanda Üç Kaplan, trans. Seniha Akar (Istanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınevi, 1991). 7 Georges Perec, Yaşam Kullanma Kılavuzu, trans. İsmail Yerguz (Istanbul: Mitos Yayınları, 1993).

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disuse with the language reform in the last century.8 This might be partly generational: Erkmen, born in 1931, was exposed to Ottoman Turkish when he was growing up, and his use of Ottoman Turkish words very often makes the book less readable than the original. When Ulysses uses archaic language, the expectation is that the translator will attempt archaisms too; Erkmen, however, translates the contemporary colloquial language of Joyce’s characters with a heavy dose of Ottoman Turkish. His love of wordplay and rhymes affects and even compromises the meaning of the ST in multiple places. In “Telemachus,” Mulligan calls Stephen “jesuit” four times and alliterates on the word twice: “jejune jesuit” (1.45) and “jesuit jibes” (1.500). In two of the four cases, Erkmen does not use the word “jesuit” at all; instead, he prefers to rhyme it with unusual words, so that Joyce’s “jejune jesuit” becomes “yavan kakavan” – 8 A Central Asian language, Turkish was heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic from the 11th century onwards. By the 17th century, literary and formal Turkish had absorbed so many Persian and Arabic words to become unintelligible for uneducated native Turkish speakers; the use of Persian/Arabic script created further problems with ambiguous spelling of Turkic words. By the start of the 20th century, the wish to reform the language and alphabet became one of the major aspects of the process of modernization which started in the 18th century, similarly to developments fuelled by nation-building in countries like Ireland and Greece. With the foundation of the Republic in 1923, a version of language reform was rigorously implemented. Language was one of Atatürk’s hobbies; he even wrote a geometry textbook where he invented “pure Turkish” words for Arabic and Persian geometric terms, many of which are still in use. The alphabet was replaced by a specific form of Latin script with added diacritics, which helped literacy enormously; however, in it the spelling of Persian and Arabic loan words became problematic. The vocabulary changed as well: starting from the 1930s, a government office was tasked with replacing Arabic and Persian words; they found old Turkic words, or invented new “pure Turkish” words using Turkic rules (more or less correctly), which were then implemented in schools, newspapers and the state broadcaster. After a long process of debate, backlash, success, failure, hibernation, re-awakening, ridicule, and praise of the reform, written Turkish indeed changed from the 1960s onwards, and became closer to spoken Turkish, with many of the invented/resurrected words finding favour with the public and a large part of Turkish authors. For my generation, using a “new” word like “duygu” (a forgotten Turkic word resurrected in the 1930s to replace Arabic “his” to mean “sentiment”) became more natural; we did not even realize it was a “new” word, as it became a common girls’ name. In some cases new and old words gained slight nuances that allowed the survival of both (for example, “duygu” and “his” – mostly interchangeable – have different meanings in their negatives: “duygusuz” is “insensitive,” while “hissiz” is “numb”). On the other hand, many older words disappeared from common usage, and the reform made pre-1950s Turkish literature difficult to understand; today older texts need a form of translation or additional effort from the reader. From the 1980s onwards, some of the older words started gaining currency again, either because they were found poetic and evocative by the progressive writers, or as a political signal of rejecting the language reform by the conservative writers: see Geoffrey Lewis’s polemical monograph, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

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a “bland, haughty person” (T/Erkmen 32). However, Stephen’s Jesuit training and Mulligan reminding him of this four times in a single morning, is important and, as translator, I could not leave it out. Thus I chose to recreate the alliteration of Joyce’s phrase by trying to approximate the meaning of “jejune” and “jibes” (“cizvit cücüğü” and “cizvit cinslikleri,” T/Ekici 10, 22: “cizvit” is Jesuit; “cücük” can indicate a chicklet, baby animal, the inner part of an onion, a small cucumber, and it is a belittling insult; “cinslikler” is a slang word for idiosyncratic and annoying behaviour). Erkmen, by emphasizing his own strengths, was perhaps being more of a writer-translator; I tried to replicate the games I saw in the text in my understanding of Turkish. There is a paradox here in terms of translators’ “invisibility”: even when the translators try to be “invisible,” they still have to fall back on the resources of their own mind, and they end up producing “visible” differences in their texts. 1.2 The How I decided to use Jeri Johnson’s edition of Ulysses as my source text:9 this edition gives a facsimile of the 1922 text, provides the errata prepared by Joyce in the appendices, and includes most of the textual corrections coming from the Gabler edition in the annotations. Working all these back into the facsimile manually will produce a new “corrected text.” It will be a text with the typography and punctuation of the 1922 edition and Gabler’s substantial corrections. Johnson did not correct all incidentals (like punctuation and minor typos); I made use of the Gabler edition, the Rosenbach Manuscript10 and Gaskell and Hart’s Ulysses: A Review of Three Texts11 to resolve some of these differences. Johnson does not change single prepositions like “on/by the mild morning air” (1.3) either. The present-day translator cannot avoid facing issues raised by current textual and genetic Joyce studies. Like Erkmen, I made extensive use of current Joyce scholarship, reading everything that piqued my interest during the four years I spent on the translation. I continuously referred to Jeri Johnson’s annotations, Gifford,12 9 10

11 12

James Joyce, Ulysses: The 1922 Text, edited with an introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, repr. 2008). James Joyce, Ulysses: A Facsimile of the Manuscript, with a critical introduction by Harry Levin and a bibliographical preface by Clive Driver (New York: Octagon Books in association with the Philip H. & A.S.W. Rosenbach Foundation, 1975). Philip Gaskell and Clive Hart, Ulysses: A Review of Three Texts: Proposals for Alterations to the Texts of 1922, 1961, and 1984 (Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1989). Don Gifford and Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses, 2nd ed. revised and enlarged by Don Gifford (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).

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Blamires,13 the two French translations, Wollschläger’s German translation, and the two Dutch translations available at the time, by Vandenbergh, and Claes & Nys. Especially helpful for me were Dent’s Colloquial Language in Ulysses14 and Bowen’s Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce.15 Schutte’s Index of Recurrent Elements in James Joyce’s Ulysses was particularly useful in verifying the internal consistency.16 Two articles by John Noel Turner and Marc A. Mamigonian were instrumental in rendering the chaotic start and end of “Oxen of the Sun.”17 I feel that there is a main body of Joyce scholarship (the Gilbert– Ellmann–Kenner–Gunn–Hart lineage) that we should all be aware of, but there is so much more. For instance, Andrew Gibson’s Joyce’s Revenge was an eye-opener for me about the political implications of Joyce’s writing,18 which spared me from flattening the intentional awkwardness of the language of “Eumaeus”; after reading this book, I went back and tried to reinstate, or find analogous solutions to, some of the “Irish bulls and puns” awkwardness of this episode. Another book, Occult Joyce, by fellow translator Enrico Terrinoni, was helpful in understanding the occult references throughout the book.19 The 21st century translator has the Internet. We have access to resources like JSTOR, the books digitalized by Google, newspaper archives, second-hand book sellers all over the world; we have sites with Ulysses concordances, we have the JoyceImages site which is very helpful in getting a feel of the period.20 We have the means to conduct research which would have required impossible amounts of time and money for earlier generations of translators. The fact that my version of Ulysses is an Internet-assisted translation that renders the

13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20

Harry Blamires, The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 1996, repr. 2000). R.W. Dent, Colloquial Language in Ulysses: A Reference Tool (Newark: Associated University Presses, 1994). Zack Bowen, Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce: Early Poetry through Ulysses (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974). William M. Schutte, Index of Recurrent Elements in James Joyce’s Ulysses (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982). Marc A. Mamigonian and John Noel Turner, “A Parallel Paraphrase of the Opening of ‘Oxen of the Sun’,” James Joyce Quarterly 39 No. 2 (2002): 337-345; John Noel Turner, “A Commentary on the Closing of ‘Oxen of the Sun’,” James Joyce Quarterly 35 No.1 (1997): 83-111. Andrew Gibson, Joyce’s Revenge: History, Politics and Aesthetics in Ulysses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Enrico Terrinoni, Occult Joyce: The Hidden in Ulysses (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007). Aida Yared, JoyceImages, https://joyceimages.com/ accessed 12 August 2019.

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language of the period more accurately in Turkish thanks to the Internet, is the second difference between the two Turkish translations. For example, when I could not fully understand phrases like “posing for the ensemble” (16.1447) or “granting the last favours” (15.3425-26), and had the inkling that they must be clichés of the time with sexual undertones, I could verify their nuances by googling the phrases and finding their actual usage in old newspapers or books not unlike Sweets of Sin. And, indeed, “posing for the ensemble” means posing nude to art students, “granting the last favours” is to have sex with a man.21 My general strategy for the translation was to convey the main action of Ulysses first, asking myself what is happening to the characters, and how their actions and feelings would be expressed in the analogous registers of Turkish. Establishing this basis, I then attempted to imitate the textual games in Joyce with analogous games in Turkish, within the limitations of a translation without annotations.22 The consequence of this strategy was to choose a base register of standard, colloquial Turkish that would be analogous to the base register of colloquial English as it was spoken in Dublin in 1904. This meant that the daily speech of the characters would be rendered in the equivalent daily speech forms of modern Turkish. This, ironically, makes Stephen and Mulligan speak “normally,” but the true Englishman Haines speaks in a somewhat affected Turkish. Unless there is a very specific joke like “He died of a Tuesday,” the Hiberno-English phrases are usually lost or only approximated by other means: “Where were you at all at all?” (15.290) is rendered as “Nerelere gittin de bu hale geldin?” (T/Ekici 421). This does not have the repetition of “at all at all,” but while sounding like a worried Turkish mother, Ellen Bloom also comes close to one of the

21

22

A search in Google Books returns the following snippet for “posing for the ensemble,” from a book titled Frank Leslie’s Budget: Humor, Satire, Tales of Adventure (1892): “I have often assisted at posing for the ensemble, but it was always supposed, when it was a female, that I was an artist. The males don’t care, but, with few exceptions, the women are particular as to who sees them naked. A painter is hardly a human being to his model, and so without reserve she will stand naked before a painter.” “Granting the last favours” comes up in Memoirs of Count Grammont, edited by Sir Walter Scott (1876): “she had done all that was necessary to inflame the king’s passions, without exposing her virtue by granting the last favours; but the eagerness of a passionate lover, blessed with favourable opportunities, is difficult to withstand, and still more difficult to vanquish.” Issuing the translation without footnotes and annotations was a choice. I felt that if the book was unleashed on the world without footnotes in 1922, then we should have enough dexterity to tackle it in Turkish in 2012, having the Internet and Erkmen’s annotations at our disposal if necessary.

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typical Hiberno-English semantic clashes in “Eumaeus”: “Where in the world did you go to come into this state?” While I rendered colloquial English with colloquial Turkish, I knew that I should not transform the world of 1904 into the world of 2012. To create that effect, I used the old Turkish names of the imperial measures and monetary values to convey the feeling that this is all happening in old Dublin, where cars were few and silk hats many. Once this was established, I had to deal with the stylistic parodies. I looked for analogous registers in Turkish (a pompous newspaper article, sports reporting, bad puns, bad novels in the vein of Sweets of Sin, nationalistic propaganda, legal text, political speech, soldiers swearing, occult writing, masonic ritual, girls’ magazine, anti-Semitic language, blackface jokes, Gypsy slang, folk idioms…) and I used the colours and phrases of such texts in rendering such parodies. I tried to keep the ribaldry on the same level as the original, but that was not always possible: for example, Molly’s “O, rocks!” (4.343) has a sexual undertone (O, testicles!), but I could not find a colloquial Turkish phrase where a woman would express her distaste and surprise, whilst echoing “testicles.” Thus, my Molly says “Aman üstüme iyilik sağlık!” (Oh, let there be health on me!, T/Ekici 68). It is something a Turkish lady would say in response to nonsense (my grandmother used to say it a lot); Erkmen’s solution is similar: “Laf ola beri gele” (a rhyming idiom to express that the words just heard are nonsense: literally, “let it be a word and come closer,” T/Erkmen 94). However, I pull no punches when the text is clearly explicit, as in the case of Mulligan’s ribaldries, the swearing of the soldiers or Molly’s thoughts in “Penelope.” Erkmen is not prudish either, but he might have missed or ignored some of the sexual connotations (like “French letter” in the sense of “condom,” or “spunk” in the sense of “sperm”). Comparison of such sexual connotations between the two translations is interesting. “French letter” is used four times in the text, twice about the condom in Bloom’s pocketbook (13.877 and 18.1235) and twice as a pun on French literature (“French letters,” 9.1101 and 14.363). Erkmen translated these as “prezervatif” (condom, T/Erkmen 418), “Fransızca mektup” (letter written in French, T/Erkmen 831) and twice as “Fransız edebiyatı” (French literature, T/Erkmen 255 and 441). I opted for “prezo” for both mentions of Bloom’s condom (“prezo” is a relatively recent slang shortening of “prezervatif,” condom, T/Ekici 357 and 740). In my translation, the first pun on “French letters” is “Fransızların edebi ve edepsiz sanatları” (“the literary and indecent arts of the French,” T/Ekici 210; “edebiyat,” “literature” is cognate with “edep,” “good manners” in Turkish), and the second pun is “Fransız edebiyatı fakültesinin kaputu” (the caput of the faculty of French literature, T/Ekici 760; “kaput” means condom, overcoat,

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motorcap etc. in Turkish usage, but also retaining the Italian root of capo, “head”). “Spunk” in the sense of “sperm” is used four times in Ulysses (15.3494, 18.154, 18.168, 18.1512): I translated this as “döl” (sperm, T/Ekici 531, 712, 712, 747) four times; Erkmen translated the first as “kafayağı” (“head oil,” slang for sperm, T/Erkmen 599), second as “mecal” (power, endurance; Erkmen clarifies this by adding “şayet hepsi boşalmamışsa,” meaning “if it was not completely ejaculated,” T/Erkmen 800), the third one as “Poldy daha bir yürekli” (Poldy is somewhat more courageous, T/Erkmen 801), and the last one as “kafasuyu” (“head water,” another slang word for sperm, T/Erkmen 838). Finally, when Molly thinks “not that I care two straws now who he does it with or knew before that way” (18.53-54), I interpret the verb “knew” in the Biblical sense and use the same formula as found in the Turkish Bible: “hiç umurumda değil oysa kimle yapmışmış ya da kimi önceden o şekilde bilmişmiş” (whereas I don’t care at all who he does with or knew before that way, T/Ekici 709).23 The verb “bilmek” generally means “to know” in the cognitive sense, i.e. to know a subject or to know the answer to a question; Turkish Bible translations going back to 1827 use this verb “bilmek” for sexual intercourse (e.g. Genesis 4:1). Erkmen chooses the word “tanımak,” which means “to know (to be acquainted with, having met before)” in this context, and leaves out “that way”: “sanki benden önce kiminle yaptığı kimi tanıdığı pek umurumdaydı” (as if I cared a lot about with whom he did it or whom he knew before me, T/Erkmen 797). The famously problematic episode is “Oxen of the Sun.” The first solution that comes to mind – to parody the development of Turkish writing over the centuries – was not viable for a number of reasons. Over time, literary Turkish changed more substantially than literary English did; the Turkish folk poetry of the Middle Ages is mostly understandable today, but for centuries courtly and intellectual literary writing was peppered with ornate, poetic phrases borrowed from (or sometimes directly invented by Turks in) Persian and Arabic. Most of this was abandoned around the middle of the 20th century during the language reform, and a new, more austere literary language was born, much closer to actual spoken Turkish. As a result, the Turkish literature of the 17th century is considerably more opaque for the modern reader than 17th century English is; it is also a genuine specialism that requires years of training – I 23

Kitabı Mukaddes: Eski ve Yeni Ahit, (“Tevrat” ve “İncil”), İbranî, Kildanî ve Yunanî dillerinden son tashih edilmiş tercümedir (The Holy Bible: The Old and New Testaments (“Torah” and “Evangelium”), Latest corrected translation from the languages of Hebrew, Chaldean and Greek) (Istanbul: Kitabı Mukaddes Şirketi, 1941). See also Note 25.

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simply did not possess the knowledge to pull the feat of recreating old Turkish throughout the centuries. Even if I could, I feel that this analogy would not be productive: one can never approximate the gesture of parodying Laurence Sterne using the language of his contemporaries in Turkish literature, and yet, in a book like Ulysses, the allusion to Sterne should be retained. Thus, my strategy for “Oxen” was to use archaisms that produce a text on a similar level of readability as the English text, and, where possible, to use the modern Turkish translations of the parodied English texts. In my translation, Sterne parodies read like the translation of Sterne by Nihal Yeğinobalı.24 Ulysses is a deeply intertextual book and I wanted my translation to reflect this. For the references to the classics, I quoted the available Turkish translations that are seen as “canonical.” For the references to the Bible, I used the 1941 edition of the Turkish Bible; this is the translation where you will find the language and the style used by Turkish authors when they quote the Bible.25 For the allusions to Shakespeare, I used the translations of Sabahattin Eyuboğlu.26 His translation is the one that most Turkish people would quote as Hamlet: for example, Oğuz Atay’s 1971 The Disconnected has, thanks to the influence of Ulysses, many references to Hamlet, and these are clearly in the wording of Eyuboğlu’s 1965 translation. When Bloom misquotes Hamlet, I misquote Eyuboğlu’s translation. If Eyuboğlu did not translate a given play, I used

24 25

26

Laurence Sterne, Duygu Yolculuğu (A Sentimental Journey), trans. Nihal Yeğinobalı (Istanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları, 1999). I used the 1941 text (Kitabı Mukaddes) – the first Turkish version of the Bible after the language reform, and the main text used by most modern Turkish authors in the 20th century – for all references except for the phrase “to vanities, to vanities of vanities and to all that is vanity (17.1099-1100),” for which I found the phrasing of the 1885 Ottoman Turkish version more biblical and literary: “bâtıllara, bâtılların bâtılına ve bâtıl olan herşeye,” T/Ekici 672. Both the 1885 and 1941 Turkish Bibles are part of a lineage of Bible translations that go back to 1665, when a Polish convert to Islam, Ali Ufkî Bey/Wojciech Bobowski, produced the first complete translation on a commission by John Comenius and the state of The Netherlands. The history of the Turkish Bible translations mirrors the transformation of Turkish from a vernacular that is mostly comprehensible to this day, as illustrated by Ali Ufkî, through gradual classicizing with Arabic and Persian words, to renewed simplification and modernization in the 1941 and later versions. The adventure of the Turkish Bible also illustrates the complex cultural relations between Turkish and Greek, Armenian and Hebrew. See Bruce G. Privratsky, A History of Turkish Bible Translations: Annotated chronology with historical notes and suggestions for further research: https://historyofturkishbible.wordpress.com/ accessed 5 August 2019. For facsimiles and transcriptions of various editions of the Ottoman Bibles, starting from the manuscripts of Ali Ufkî, see http://osmanlicakelam.net/ accessed 5 August 2019. For example, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, trans. Sabahattin Eyuboğlu (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1965; Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2008).

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the translations published in the same series of classics. Similarly, I used Azra Erhat’s translation for Homer.27 These choices put my work in the lineage of the translation movement initiated by the education minister Hasan Âli Yücel in 1940. Under Yücel, the ministry initiated new translations of Western and Eastern classics and published a translation journal.28 Many works translated by this movement, to which Sabahattin Eyuboğlu and Azra Erhat belonged, are still in print. In terms of intertextuality, I placed my translation in conversation with more current texts that relate to Joyce and Ulysses. I kept a small number of references to Murat Belge’s translation of A Portrait to show that this Ulysses hails from the same universe of translated Joyce, at the cost of accepting Belge’s awkward solution for “artificer” (“düzenci,” which connotes “schemer,” “plotter” or “a proponent of the status quo”). Orhan Pamuk has a wink to Ulysses in The Black Book: “İstanbul kahveyle doluydu; her iki yüz metrede bir kahveye girerek insan bütün şehri baştan aşağı yürüyebilirdi” (“Istanbul was full of coffeehouses; one could walk the entire city from one end to the other by entering a coffeehouse every two hundred meters”).29 I pay the debt back and close the circle by echoing Pamuk’s Turkish wording in the corresponding sentence in my translation: “Bütün Dublin’i bir bara rastlamadan baştan aşağı yürümece, güzel bir bulmaca olurdu” (“To walk entire Dublin from one end to the other without passing a pub, would be a good puzzle”; T/Ekici 62). I like to imagine Joyce grinning mischievously and punishingly at his translators as he writes “How will you pun? You punish me?” (11.890-891).30 When the text is clearly alliterating or rhyming/eye-rhyming (Sweets of Sin, Dear

27 28

29 30

Homeros, Odysseia, trans. Azra Erhat and A. Kadir (İstanbul: Sander Yayınları, 1970; 20th printing, Can Yayınları, 2007). The first issue of the journal Tercüme Dergisi (Journal of Translation) is an interesting document that includes the manifesto and first examples chosen for translation by this movement: https://archive.org/details/MEBTercmeSayy11940 accessed 12 August 2018. A 1941 text by Hasan Âli Yücel defending translation is still published in the introduction of the series of classics published under the title “Hasan Âli Yücel Klasikler Serisi” by İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları. Orhan Pamuk, Kara Kitap (Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1990), 206. For this passage Erkmen has “Beni nasıl cez? Cezalandıracaksın?” (T/Erkmen 324), contracting and dividing the phrase “Beni nasıl cezalandıracaksın?”/”How will you punish me?” without a pun, using the the meaningless “cez.” I translated “Bana ne ce? Ne ceza vereceksin?” (T/Ekici 272), translating the full sentence as “Bana ne ceza vereceksin?”/“What punishment will you give to me?” – and approximating a pun if we read “ne ce” as one word, “nece,” which means “what language,” and follow the mental association “Bana nece (konuşacaksın)?” which means, “What language will you speak to me?”

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Dirty Dublin, Turko the Terrible, Sinbad the Sailor, dun for a nun, in a hurry to bury…), the wordplay is part of the main sense of the book: I have to find solutions and alliterate or pun as well. If Lenehan is spewing stale palindromes, I have to find the corresponding stale palindromes in Turkish. His “able was I ere I saw Elba” (7.683) had to be substituted as “Anastas mum satsana,” the one palindrome everybody knows in Turkish, meaning “Anastas, why don’t you sell some candles” (T/Ekici 136). When Joyce’s text is deliberately in error, mine must be in error too: I have a version of the proofs where the publishers marked in red my solutions to “nothandle” (4.333, “yokkulp,” a nonce word created as yok + kulp, “not existing + handle,” T/Ekici 67), “Nother dying” (3.199, “Amen ölüyor” instead of “Annen ölüyor,” explained below) and “must have fell down” (4.326, similarly ungrammatical “düşmüştüydü,” explained below) as possible typing errors for me to doublecheck. In “Sirens,” when Joyce treats words as notes and patterns in musical exercises, inverting and varying them, I imitated the same features in Turkish. I paid attention to rhyme and meter in the poems and tried to make the lyrics of Love’s Old Sweet Song singable in Turkish. I tried to pay attention to word games extending over sentences, for example in symbolic usages relevant to the whole episode (“gravely” repeated in “Hades,” or “Ay,” with a hint of “eye,” repeated in “Cyclops”), or the deliberately stumbling language in “Eumaeus.” However, as shown in the examples in the second section, translators of a book like Ulysses have limits to what they can notice and what they can render (while transmitting the main sense). I think that one needs to translate structurally significant words and phrases like U. P., Throwaway, Sceptre, etc. My U. P. follows the explanation of J.J. O’Molloy that “he is not compos mentis” (12.1043); in Turkish, Mr. Breen gets a postcard that says “7.N.,” which could imply that he has gone mad if it is read aloud as “yedin” (“you have eaten”: the idiom “you have eaten the head” means, you have gone mad; there are other sayings with “you have eaten,” for instance, “you have eaten the shit,” meaning, “you are in a bind, you’ve had it”). Sometimes, Turkish cooperates with the translator in search of such word games, as with the eye-rhyme in “in a hurry to bury” (6.322): we have a familiar, rhyming safety slogan, “acele giden ecele gider” (who goes [drives] in a hurry, goes to [meets] the fated moment of death”). My Turkish Bloom is in character when he reverses this familiar saying in his mind: “Ecele gitmiş, hâlâ acele gidiyor” (has met his maker, but still riding in a hurry, T/Ekici 98). Similarly, Turkish can accommodate the passage “Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her” (11.706-7). I interpret this passage as a musical figure, similar to a piano exercise where the same pattern is repeated on different notes of the scale, the vowels i-e-a-o forming an analogue to musical pitches.

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I just repeat it with selected Turkish vowels: “Kızı tepmek tapmak topmak tüpmek” (T/Ekici 268). Luckily, the Turkish verbs “tepmek” (“to kick”; its derivative, “tepişmek,” means “to romp about,” with a similar sexual connotation “to romp”) and “tapmak” (to adore, to worship) help in replicating the erotic connotations. Originally, I found it more rhythmical not to, but today I feel that perhaps it would have been more appropriate to repeat “her” as well (kızı tepmek kıza tapmak…): it would have had the bonus of coming very close to the meters of classical Turkish poetry and mirroring the four dactyls of the original. On the other hand, Turkish, an agglutinating language, cannot accommodate the two monosyllabic paragraphs in “Sirens” (“Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went,” 11.822; and “Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink,” 11.847).31 Since Turkish grammar is based on suffixes, very little can be said with monosyllables that are plain nouns and imperatives, with no markers for tenses or declension. Joyce can use the monosyllabic “pad” to indicate the blotting pad, but this is “kurutma kâğıdı,” “drying paper” in Turkish (we have “pad” as a loan word, “ped,” but it only means a hygienic pad). Thus, to prepare the reader for what will come, and to explain what Pat is doing, I initially sacrificed the effect in the first paragraph by translating grammatically in polysyllables: “Kel Pat kendisine işaret edilince yaklaştı. Bir kalem ve mürekkep lütfen. Gitti” (T/Ekici 271). In the second paragraph, trusting that the reader will remember what Pat was asked for, I replicated the effect, dispensed with grammar and used only words with one or two syllables: “Kel sağır Pat tut gel hokka pek düz kâât” (Bald deaf Pat hold come pot quite flat paper, T/Ekici 271), also contracting the two syllables of “kâğıt” to the spoken “kâât” (in effect one long syllable) to approximate the monosyllables.32

2

A Comparison of the Two Translations

In May 2010, a group of Joyce translation scholars convened for a workshop at the Zürich Joyce Foundation to study how translators and retranslators had taken on some aspects of the fundamental linguistic and stylistic strangeness of Ulysses.33 In this section, I will use selected passages from this project to compare the two Turkish translations. 31 32 33

Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 in this volume also discuss “Pat.” For a discussion of the same passage in translation into an agglutinating language see also Marianna Gula’s essay in this volume. The results of the workshop were published in the 2012 issue of Scientia Traductionis, available at https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/scientia/issue/view/1951. See especially The Polylogue Project: “Shortmind,” Scientia Traductionis No. 12 (2012): 133-164, eds. Erika

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But first, some general remarks about the features of Turkish. Turkish is extensively agglutinative: the grammar of tenses and persons is formed by adding suffixes to the verb root – thus “I should have known” becomes a single word, “bilmeliydim” (bil + meli + ydi + m = know + should + past tense + I). This forces the translator to resolve some of the ambiguities presented by English: if some words are missing in a sentence in English, they might correspond to some syllables missing from a word in Turkish, which cannot always be taken out. That is, mentally completing an incomplete English sentence, then translating it back into Turkish, and taking elements out to imitate the incompleteness, will frequently lead to a more complete version than what one started with, adding information to the original and reducing its ambiguity. For example, judging from the context of Bloom’s thought about ham and eggs (“No good eggs with this drouth,” 4.43), the ambiguous “want pure fresh water” (4.44) must be resolved to something like “(The chickens) want pure fresh water (to lay good eggs).” Erkmen resolves the undecidability as “(I) want pure fresh water” and translates “Şöyle temiz güzel bir su içeyim (Let me drink some clean beautiful water)” (T/Erkmen 86). In contrast, I followed the egg route and used another possibility in Turkish to say “is necessary” by translating “Temiz, taze su lazım” (Clean, fresh water is necessary, T/Ekici 60). In both cases, the ambiguous, telegraphic sentence fragment is resolved into a grammatical Turkish sentence with a clear subject. Both solutions add information to the original (in my case, “want” becomes “it is necessary”). It is not really possible to keep the ambiguity of “I want / they want / it want(s)” in Turkish: if we leave “want” as it is, the result is still a clear, grammatical sentence in the imperative, misleading the reader completely. In my solution, I expect the reader to mentally complete the sentence with “for good eggs,” thus I approximate the original’s incompleteness in another way. English is a subject-verb-object language (“Joyce wrote Ulysses”); Turkish is subject-object-verb (“Joyce Ulysses’i yazdı/wrote”), so one of the basic tasks of English-to-Turkish translation is to rearrange the word order. The translator has to weigh grammatically correct constructions against the rhetorical effects of the word order, which can be very significant in Ulysses. Turkish word order is flexible to a certain degree and can be changed for emphasis or poetic effect. The “inverted” forms like “Yazdı/wrote Joyce Ulysses’i,” “Ulysses’i yazdı Joyce,” “Joyce yazdı Ulysses’i” would be acceptable in poetry but may sound

Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka; and “Errors: Lots in Translation,” ibid. 165-204. See also Fritz Senn, “The Lure of Grammatical Rectification,” Scientia Traductionis No. 12 (2012): 719; Erika Mihálycsa, “‘Making Both Ends Meet’: ‘Eumaeus’ Meta-Murphied in Translation,” ibid. 88-126.

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strange in prose. Since the Turkish verb already includes the person, it is possible to eclipse the subject: thus “Ulysses’i yazdı (he/she/it wrote Ulysses)” is also grammatically correct. Turkish has no gendered pronouns: there is only “o” for “he,” “she” and “it.” This is another factor that forces translators to resolve ambiguities in English: if a long passage full of “he-said-and-she-said” were to be translated “correctly,” it would be all “o… dedi,” leaving the reader in the dark as to who said what. Translators frequently resolve such ambiguities by solutions like “the man said,” “the woman said,” etc. This problem of resolving the pronouns is one of the toughest minefields in translating Ulysses: the translator needs to identify each “he” and “she,” then find the correct expression in Turkish. A Turkish Molly would not refer to Bloom in her mind as “the man”: if we resolve a “he” as Bloom, then we need to find a form that a Turkish woman would use when referring to her husband, for instance, “bizimki” (our one). But it is not always a single “he” that she is thinking of; perhaps her lovers are fusing in the mind of Molly into a general masculine type. The translator’s choice to assign the “he” to a specific person might be compromising that ambiguity. I chose to underline Bloom’s dislike for Boylan by translating the instances of “he” referring to Boylan as “o herif” (that dastard) – but this strategy forces the translator to take a call on some of the ambiguous “he” referring to Bloom. For example, if we read “Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet him” (4.92) with the emphasis on “him,” it sounds like “Well, meet Boylan, that is worse”; but if read with a shrug and the emphasis on “meet,” it sounds like “Well, meet the robber, so what?” I think Bloom thinks of Boylan, but can we be sure? Ι resolve it as “Bir de o herifle karşılaşmak var” (But think of meeting that dastard, T/Ekici 61), where Erkmen has “Tanışın, öyleyse” (Introduce yourselves to each other, then, T/Erkmen 87). To summarize, Turkish grammar forces the translator to resolve some of the ambiguities of Ulysses to translate it readably. Yet, it is still possible to reflect Joyce’s effects to some degree, as we will see in the examples below. Phosphorus it must be done with. (8.21) Fosfor kullanmışlardır. (T/Erkmen 187; Phosphorus they must have used.) Fosforla yapmışlardır kesin. (T/Ekici 148; With phosphorus they did it surely.) Nectar imagine it drinking electricity: food of the gods. (8.927) Nektar, elektrik içmek gibi bir şey olmalı. Tanrı aşı. (T/Erkmen 214; Nectar, must be something like drinking electricity. God’s grub.)

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Nektar, elektrik içmek gibidir herhalde: tanrıların gıdası. (T/Ekici 172; Nectar, is probably like drinking electricity: food of the gods.) In these examples, the English sentences are not grammatical; in what Fritz Senn calls “shortmind,”34 they are pre-grammatical, pre-syntactic manifestations of Bloom’s thoughts which follow Bloom’s mental processes, starting with the object, and resulting in an incomplete, fragmentary sentence. The translator has to mentally invert the first clause, and complete the second to decide on the sense to be translated. One can regularize the second sentence with solutions like “Nectar (, I) imagine (that) it (must be like) drinking electricity,” or “Nectar. Imagine it. Drinking electricity.” In both examples, the Turkish word order (object before verb) helps to keep the foreshortening of Bloom’s “shortmind”: both translations start with “phosphorus” and “nectar.” Yet, in both translations the Turkish sentences are grammatical, sometimes helping the reader with additional commas, and in the case of nectar, Erkmen also replaces the colon with a full stop. We did not have the courage to re-create the incompleteness of “Nectar imagine it drinking electricity”; we both resolved it into more complete sentences meaning “Nectar, must be like drinking electricity.” Erkmen’s “Tanrı aşı” (God’s food) is one of the examples of his vocabulary-oriented strategy: he prefers to use the less common word “aş” for food, an old, folksy term, perhaps similar to “grub,” creating a contrast (the gods having simple, folksy food) that is not present in the original. Now begging letters he sends his son with. (11.648) Bugünlerdeyse mektup yazarak para göndermesini isteyen oğluyla dertte başı. (T/Erkmen 316; And nowadays he is in trouble with his son who keeps sending him letters asking for money.) Şimdi para dilenmek için mektup yazıp oğluyla göndert. (T/Ekici 266; Now to beg money writes letters and se- with his son.) Erkmen mistranslates the sense – it is the son who sends letters to the father – while also forming a grammatical sentence. My approximation, “Now to beg money writing letters and send with his son,” tries to recreate the incompleteness by clipping the last two syllables of “göndertiyor,” thus leaving out the conjugation of the verb (“göndert,” or “send over,” is an imperative, and does

34

Fritz Senn, Portals of Recovery, eds. Erika Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka (Roma: Bulzoni, 2017), 53.

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not make sense in the context). I expect the reader to mentally add the last syllables and make the sentence grammatical as “Now to beg money (he is) writing letters and send(ing) with his son.” I trust that the start of the sentence will give sufficient context to the reader to work out the missing syllables. Yet, the sentence is also more grammatical than the original; my sentence with the missing syllables has regular syntax. In Martha’s letter to Bloom, there is a small mistake that reverberates throughout the book: the confusion between “world” and “word.” The translator needs to find a similar mistake that could be made in a letter written in Turkish: I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word? (5.245) Sana yaramaz çocuk deyişimin nedeni öbür dünyayı, şey lafı sevmediğimden dolayı. O sözcüğün hakiki manasını açıklar mısın lütfen bana? (T/Erkmen 109; The reason I called you naughty boy is because I did not like the other world, I mean, word. Could you please explain the real meaning of that word to me?) Sana küçük yaramaz diyorum çünkü aleminden çıkan o diğer kelimeden hoşlanmadım. Lütfen bana o kelimenin gerçek anlamını söyle. (T/Ekici 80; I call you little rascal because I did not like that other word that came out of your world. Please tell me the real meaning of that word.) I follow the punctuation in the Johnson edition (perhaps mistakenly in this example: if you look carefully it might be a botched question mark and not a full stop). Erkmen’s solution backtranslates as “that other world, I mean word,” as if Martha made an error in speaking and corrected immediately, but in Turkish there is no reason for her to confuse “world” (dünya) with “word” (laf). I forced a pun by using an old word for “world/universe” (âlem) that I can link to “pen” (kalem). My Martha says: “I do not like that other word that came from your world (pen).” Not ideal, but it tells the reader that something is happening here. Bloom recalls this phrase four times later (6.1002, 8.328, 11.871, 13.1263). Erkmen uses “öbür dünya”/“other world” and I use “aleminden” (from your world/universe) consistently in these repetitions (T/Erkmen 149, 197, 323, 429; T/Ekici 116, 156, 272, 367). In “Calypso,” Molly makes a plausible grammar mistake (“have fell” instead of “have fallen”). Bloom remembers this later in “Eumaeus” and men-

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tally apologizes to Lindley Murray, author of the famous grammar book of the time: – It must have fell down, she said. He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. (4.326) – Yere düşmüştür herhalde, dedi kadın. Mr. Bloom bir orayı bir burayı yokladı. Voglio e non vorrei. Acaba bu sözcüğü doğru telaffuz ediyor mu: Voglio. Yatakta değil. (T/Erkmen 94) (– It must have fallen to the ground, said the woman. Mr Bloom felt once here once there. Voglio e non vorrei. I wonder if she pronounces this word right: Voglio. Not in the bed.) – Düşmüştüydü herhalde, dedi kadın. Adam elleriyle orayı burayı yokladı. Voglio e non vorrei. Acaba doğru telaffuz ediyor mu: voglio. Yatakta yok. (T/Ekici 67) (– It must have fell down, said the woman. The man felt here and there with his hands. Voglio e non vorrei. I wonder if she pronounces right: voglio. Not in the bed.) In Erkmen, Molly does not make a mistake, and Bloom does not quote her verbatim later in “Eumaeus,” therefore Lindsay (not Lindley) Murray is apologised to but it is not clear why. My Molly makes a plausible grammatical mistake: in düş-müş-tü-ydü, “-tü” and “-ydü” are actually the same suffix used redundantly. Turkish has two suffixes for the past tense: “-di” for events known directly to the speaker, and “-miş” for events known by hearsay and other forms of indirectness. They are variously combined to form the equivalents of “should have,” “had been,” etc. in Turkish: “di + di,” “miş + di,” “miş + miş” are all grammatical; “miş + di + di,” the form Molly uses in my translation, is not. It is, however, a relatively common mistake; sometimes people consciously use the duplication ironically as well. If Molly were to be correct, she would have said “düşmüştür” (must have fallen down) or “düşmüştü” (had fallen down). Both translations are blind to the link between “fell-felt,” and the possible double meaning of “let Molly and Boylan not do it in the bed,” linking the seduction aria of Don Giovanni to the upcoming affair of Molly and Boylan in the Blooms’ marital bed. The phrase “Yatakta olmasın” could have introduced that ambiguity because, if pronounced as a question, it means “is it not in the bed?” and if pronounced as a statement, it means “let it not happen in the bed.” Finally, Erkmen normalized capitalization after the colon (“Voglio”), and

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both translators resolved “he” to “Mr. Bloom” or “the man” (adam) and “she” to “the woman” (kadın). One of the interesting textual points in Ulysses is the spelling mistake in the telegram Stephen receives in Paris, which makes it a curiosity for Stephen. The mistake is clearly present in the Rosenbach manuscript, but it was corrected in the initial editions, and reinstated only later in the Gabler edition: – Nother dying come home father. (3.199) – Annen ölüyor çabuk gel baban. (T/Erkmen 73) – Amen ölüyor eve gel baban. (T/Ekici 47) Erkmen has “Your mother dying.” I reinstate a plausible mistake by replacing “nn” with “m,” resulting in the word “amen,” which is recognizable to the Turkish reader as the Christian equivalent of the Turkish prayer word “âmin.” This is a difficult mistake to keep in the published text; I had to explain it several times during the editing process. Translators tend to produce a readable and correct-sounding text; in “Eumaeus,” however, the text is intentionally awkward and the translators have to follow. The style is tired, maladroit and confused; the voices of Bloom and the narrator intermingle; there are many mixed metaphors, many sentences that go off in unexpected directions, and the challenges of the episode also include many examples of the specific usages of prepositions typical to HibernoEnglish: Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. (16.1603) Her ne hal ise lehteki ve aleyhteki hususları tarttıkta, saat bire yaklaşmakta olduğuna, yatıp uyuma vakti çoktan gelmiş de geçmekteydi bile. (T/Erkmen 700; Whatever it was upon weighing factors in the pro and con, the clock approaching one, the time to lie down and sleep had arrived long time ago and was even passing.) Her neyse, artısıyla eksisiyle değerlendirsek, zaten de artık bire geliyordu, artık yatağa çekilmenin zamanı geldi de geçiyordu. (T/Ekici 630; Whatever it is, if we evaluate with its pluses and minuses, it was approaching one anyway, the time to retire to bed had already come and was passing.)

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In my rendition, the comma after “Anyhow” (Her ne ise) comes from the Johnson edition. Both translations use different strategies to recreate the stumbling, collapsing construction; Erkmen uses the obsolete conjugation “tarttıkta” for “weighing” and omits the equivalent of “as it was” to leave the second phrase hanging (expecting the reader to mentally complete it to “olduğuna göre”). My “değerlendirsek” is also slightly awkward: it should be more properly the aorist conditional “değerlendirirsek,” “if we were to evaluate”; most readers will mentally correct this missing syllable unconsciously, but a careful reader will see that the verb is wrong, since “değerlendirsek” actually means “I wish that we would evaluate.” For “high time,” we both use the same colloquial Turkish phrase that indicates urgency and being late (“The time has not only come but already gone”). I leave out the word “saat” (clock, the time) as in the original. This is possible in colloquial Turkish but adds to the general instability. I link this to the previous phrase by using the verb “come” twice (“geliyordu/geldi”) in the spirit of Eumaean mixed metaphors. “Eumaeus” includes many sentences with dangling metaphors and seemingly unintended clashes of words, closely related in meaning but fulfilling unrelated functions in close proximity to each other in the text: Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. (16.1141) Çapanoğlunun aptes suyuna benzeyen bir fincan kahve bozuntusunu yudumlar ve bu ahvali umumiyeye dair hulâsayı dinler iken, Stephen nazarlarını belli bir noktaya temerküz ettirmeden dikmiş bulunuyor idi. (T/Erkmen 687; As he was sipping a cup of so-called coffee which resembled the ablution water of Çapanoğlu and listening to this summary of the general affairs, Stephen had fixed his gazes without concentrating them on a single point.) Güya bir fincan kahve olacak o yenilip yutulmaz şeyin başında, hayatın bu genel özetini dinlerken, Stephen boşluğa dalıp gitmişti. (T/Ekici 618; Over that uneatable unswallowable thing which was supposed to be a cup of coffee, as he was listening to this general summary of life, Stephen’s gaze was lost in the emptiness.) Erkmen uses an old folk idiom for weak, undrinkable soup or tea (literally “the water used by Çapanoğlu for his ablutions”). I have another idiomatic solution: “Over that uneatable and unswallowable thing which is supposed to be coffee,” with the alliterating “yenilmez yutulmaz”/“uneatable unswallowable.” Erkmen

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then returns to his Ottoman prose parody mode: “ahvali umumiye” (general affairs, general conditions), “hulâsa” (summary), “nazar” (gaze), “temerküz” (to concentrate), all old words and phrases of Arabic origin, and uses the separately spelt “idi” (equivalent to the suffix “-di” in modern Turkish). These are all archaisms that do not fit the context, in my opinion. Finally, neither Erkmen nor I included the Eumaean “in general/in particular” opposition; the solutions we present also erase the awkward epithet of “untastable apology” completely. In the following sentence, Bloom’s speech wanders through clichés, awkard constructions and clashing metaphors like “embracing a platform,” “lyric platform as a walk of life,” mixing space and time: Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a walk of life for any lengthy space of time. (16.1841) Antrparantez şunu da düşündü ki, şu mülevves para yüzünden ilânihaye bir sahne ozanı hayatını sürdürmeye de mecbur değildi. (T/Erkmen 707; In brackets he also thought thus, he was not obliged to live the life of a stage bard eternally because of that dirty money.) Antrparantez şunu da ekledi, tabii ki cukka uğruna kendine hayat yolu olarak sahne sanatını öyle uzun bir müddet boyunca seçmesi şart değildi ama… (T/Ekici 636; In brackets he added that as well, of course it was not necessarily required to choose for himself as a way of life the stage arts for such a long stretch of time for the sake of unjust gain but…) It is remarkable that neither translator can resist using “antrparantez,” a Frenchism frequently heard in middlebrow Turkish; it really fits Bloom trying to impress Stephen by using foreign words. We are both charitable to Bloom and don’t make him commit the common error of “antiparantez.” The biblical “Filthy lucre” (Titus 1:11) is translated as “dirty money” (“mülevves para” in Erkmen) and “unjust gain” (“cukka” in my rendition). The key difference between the two strategies is visible in my choice of the current slang term (“cukka” is used in political rhetoric to speak disparagingly about monetary gain), versus Erkmen’s archaisms (“mülevves para,” or “dirty money,” with the disused “mülevves”). Both translations have the stumbling syntax in Turkish, but neither attempts the Eumaean jokes of “platform… as a walk of life,” “space of time” and “embracing a platform.”

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At the end of the chapter, a horse, at the end of his tether, responds to all that has gone before by adding his own turds of mixed metaphors to Stephen’s and Bloom’s conversation: The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking globes of turds. (16.1874) At, tabiri caizse tahammülünün son noktasına ulaşıp durdu ve, kabarık azametli kuyruğunu yükseklere kaldırıp, süpürgelerin az sonra süpürüp parlatacağı zemine hissesine düşen dumanı üstünde üç adet ters küresi bıraktı. (T/Erkmen 708; The horse, if the expression can be justified, reached the last point of its endurance and halted and, lifting his fluffy magnificent tail to the higher realms, dropped to the ground which was soon going to be brushed and to be polished by the brushes its own share of still smoking three units of turd globes.) Yuları, tabiri caizse, kaptırmış halde olan at, durdu, ve tüylü kuyruğunu gururla kaldırarak birazdan bir fırçanın gelip fırçalayıp parlatacağı zemine üç adet dumanı tüten pislik küresi ile kendi katkı payını ekledi. (T/Ekici 637; The horse, who was in a situation of having lost its tether, if the expression can be justified, grasped, halted, and proudly lifting his feathered tail, added to the ground which was soon to be brushed and polished by a brush that will come, his share of contribution of three globes of still smoking turd.) It is really difficult to end the sentence with “turds” in Turkish unless one accepts to sound extremely poetic (or to break the sentence). In Erkmen it is the third word from the end (“ters”), in my case the seventh (“pislik”). Both of us are attentive to the awkward “quota” and the duplicated “brush.” I also keep “added his quota.” Erkmen translates the “at the end of his tether” dangling metaphor directly as “reached the last point of his endurance.” I can not duplicate this particular dangling metaphor, but to imitate Joyce’s game, I use a common Turkish idiom with a horse’s tether: “yuları kaptırmak,” “to let somebody else grasp the tether,” which means to lose control. In my solution, the horse, so to speak, has lost control of his situation (lost the tether). Both translations keep the jumbling of the temporal order: the cleaning of the turds are mentioned before the turds appear.

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One of the most challenging parts in Ulysses is the use of Hiberno-English. Sentences that are typically Hiberno-English can be translated in the correct sense into Turkish, but there is no means within Turkish that can give the feeling of the sentence being specifically in Hiberno-English rather than standard English in the original; and, when a phrase means something different in Hiberno-English compared to standard English, it is very easy for the translator to miss this nuance, or lose the double meaning completely: Is there Gaelic on you? (1.427) Galce bilir misin? (T/Erkmen 43) Siz Gaelce anlar mısınız teyze? (T/Ekici 20) He is in my father. I am in his son. (9.390) O benim babamdadır. Ben de onun oğlunda. (T/Erkmen 234) Ο benim babamın içinde. Ben onun oğlundayım. (T/Ekici 190) There is no way of identifying the Hiberno-English effect in the two translations; we both normalize “Is there Gaelic on you.” Erkmen’s questions backtranslates as “Do you know Gaelic?” and mine as “Do you understand Gaelic, ma’am?” Also, we both literally translate the fathers and sons. These examples demonstrate the difficulty in rendering the Hiberno-English peculiarities in another language; if we had translated the second sentence with the correct Hiberno-English sense, we would have broken the reverberation of being inside the father/the son, which is closely related to Stephen’s argument about Shakespeare. Both Turkish translations of Ulysses are “21st century translations” in the sense of being informed by Joyce scholarship and the textual properties of the novel. Both are sensitive to the text’s grammatical ambiguities and indeterminacies and try to respond to them with various solutions, sometimes strongly diverging in these attempts. They clearly differ in the chosen register: Nevzat Erkmen’s translation uses a much higher dose of Ottoman Turkish, further enriched by neologisms and folk language, showing a clear preference for the wideness of vocabulary; my translation aims to imitate the effects of the colloquial language, slang and parodies in Ulysses using modern, colloquial Turkish and slang as the base register. One of the paradoxes of translation is that the original texts are timeless, yet translations grow old: in 50 years’ time my attempt to render Ulysses using current colloquial language and slang will start to age, too. There will come a point when somebody says: “I have to retell the story in today’s language.” In

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the meantime, Joyceans are hard at work. They keep finding new meanings, new ambiguities and further richness. I can imagine that the future translators will take these into account, and, perhaps, counteract some of Erkmen’s and my normalizing touches with more radical choices, imitating more closely the strangeness of Joyce’s language.

Chapter 10

Translating Creativity, Creating Translation: the Third Brazilian Ulysses Caetano Waldrigues Galindo

Abstract This chapter centres on three translations of Ulysses into Brazilian Portuguese. The author, translator of the third and the latest Brazilian Ulisses, offers a well-illustrated discussion of the processes that went into creating his 2012 version (that follows 1966 and 2005 ones). Galindo’s interest in “creativity” in translation is not limited to just creative solutions to textual conundrums but to a more particular view of “creativity” as “creation” or adding/making “more.” As translator, the author sees his task not only in terms of “writing anew,” but also “creating new writing.”

The Portuguese language has five translations of Ulysses.1 Three of them are Brazilian, mine being the most recent. I cannot truly evaluate the results of the two European translations, since the “linguistic gap” between the two versions of Portuguese is significant and, more importantly, it is asymmetrical, with Brazilians being less exposed to, and less able to understand the finer points of European usage. Nevertheless, our three translations merit a closer study. Why did Brazil translate Ulysses first, and why do we have more versions? Why such an interest? When asked about it, I sometimes say something about our “baroque” nature, our love of rhetoric, playfulness and linguistic invention. But did Ulysses really bring out this kind of creativity in our translations?

… In 1964 there was still no complete translation of Ulysses in Portuguese. Enter Antônio Houaiss, a diplomat forced into early retirement by the military dictatorship, a man who would have conceived, by the end of that century, the best dictionary the Portuguese language has ever known, the man who

1 For the list of Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese translations, see Abbreviations.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_012

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would become the first translator of Ulysses into Portuguese and, definitely, the stone that created all the ripples to come. His translation was published in 1966 as the literary event of the year, but also represented one definite take on Joyce’s work. Augusto de Campos, an important translator, poet and critic who had been offered the opportunity to translate the book, characterized much of what would be the critical doubts about Houaiss’s work by calling his solutions “arcadic,” underlining that they tended to “inflate” the text with a sort of “erudition which does not correspond to the original.”2 There’s no denying the creativity of Houaiss’s translation, but it might have come at some cost. The irony is that the tendency to “elevate” Joyce’s register can be as much a fruit of the translator’s background and personal style as a result of the position that Joyce occupied in the Brazilian cultural system of the 1960s, in a movement spearheaded by the Campos brothers (Augusto and Haroldo) themselves. Joyce was considered as an author “for the few,” a prose writer read and defended by a new generation of iconoclastic poets who, by association, had him unwittingly branded an “elite” writer. In a 1975 book jacket written-up for the third printing of Houaiss’s translation, Augusto de Campos chose to underscore the radical and “subversive” character of Houaiss’s work.3 For almost forty years his translation was the only version of Ulysses in Brazil, so almost two generations were literarily raised on such a diet. That first Ulisses could not be ignored, and it wasn’t. Any second translation had to be read as a “reaction,” and had even to be written as such. That translation appeared in 2005. The profile of the second translator, Bernardina da Silveira Pinheiro, could hardly be more different from that of Houaiss’s. What she shared with her predecessor is the fact that she was, and still remains, someone with a marginal involvement in literary translation as a regular activity. Her first translation was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1992), followed by only one other book: Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (2002).4 Born in 1922, she is only seven years younger than Houaiss. But Pinheiro was, to begin with, a qualified Joycean, someone who studied with Richard Ellmann. Even more importantly, she was to publish her translation of Ulysses in 2005, thirty-nine years after Houaiss’s, being able to count on a whole new slew of critical texts, books and online resources. She also worked from the Gabler

2 Quirino, Maria Teresa. Retratos de tradutores de James Joyce como agentes da tradução literária no Brasil: um estudo de caso. Doctoral Dissertation (Universidade de São Paulo, 2012), 176. 3 Ibid. 4 See Um retrato do artista quando jovem (São Paulo: Siciliano, 1992) and Uma viagem sentimental através da França e da Itália (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2002).

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edition, and produced a different book, with a translator’s “Introduction” and hundreds of notes: the first big contribution to provide the Brazilian readership with a deeper critical access to Joyce’s novel. All those features generated a new version of Ulysses. But the sheer “belatedness” of her position may never be underestimated. As an editorial policy as well as an artistic declaration, she had to establish herself, if not necessarily as an “anti” Houaiss, at least as a valid alternative. Her “Introduction” allows us to understand her criteria in her own words. One thing she underscores is her interest in the musicality of Joyce’s prose. The examples she gives in the introduction as instances of such a “musical” solution may also illuminate decisions that can sometimes come across as “simplifications,” even at the cost of closing doors and hindering possible readings, all of which can be seen as affecting her “creativity.” My translation came to be finally published in 2012. But having started my work in 2002, I was already immersed in it when Pinheiro’s translation appeared. I also come from a different background. I was born seven years after the publication of the first Brazilian Ulisses, and when my own Ulysses was published, it was my 25th translation. The work was initially part of a doctoral thesis that was finalized in 2006, and from then on, I have published about Joyce, translated A Portrait,5 Dubliners,6 Giacomo Joyce and Finn’s Hotel,7 as well as written the first companion to Ulysses in Portuguese.8 I have never met my predecessors, although I’ve exchanged some very nice e-mails with Pinheiro. I was in a privileged position to respond to two diametrically different texts. But the manner in which this series of conscious or unavoidable reactions ended up resulting in different solutions and different notions of “creativity” can only be assessed through a close analysis of examples. In what follows I look for “creative” solutions to obstacles generated by Joyce’s own creativity, and I also sound the possibility of an answer to how the three-translations navigate them. Did Ulysses really appeal to Brazilian translators because of the creative possibilities it unleashed? And how did they deal with them? I’ll be interested in the plain notion of creativity, of course, but also in a more specific view of creativity as the need to effectively create, make more; not only writing anew, but creating new writing.

5 6 7 8

Um retrato do artista quando jovem (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, Penguin), 2016. Dublinenses (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras / Penguin), 2016. Finn’s Hotel (with Giacomo Joyce) (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, Penguin), 2014. Galindo, Caetano W., Sim, eu digo sim: uma visita guiada ao Ulysses de James Joyce (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, Penguin, 2016.)

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For my discussion, I chose the same excerpts that Pinheiro analyses in her “Introduction,” added examples selected by the author of the first major work dedicated to both translations in Brazil,9 and included my own examples that are thematically related or technically relevant.

… Some things may already be apparent from a comparison of the first lines: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of leather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned (U 1.1-4) They appear in three markedly different translations: Sobranceiro, fornido, Buck Mulligan vinha do alto da escada, com um vaso de barbear, sobre o qual se cruzavam um espelho e uma navalha. Seu roupão amarelo, desatado, se enfunava por trás à doce brisa da manhã. Elevou o vaso e entoou (Po/Houaiss 9) Majestoso, o gorducho Buck Mulligan apareceu no topo da escada, trazendo na mão uma tigela com espuma sobre a qual repousavam, cruzados, um espelho e uma navalha de barba. Um penhoar amarelo, desamarrado, flutuando suavemente atrás dele no ar fresco da manhã. Ele ergueu a tigela e entoou (Po/Pinheiro 4) Solene, o roliço Buck Mulligan surgiu no alto da escada, portando uma vasilha de espuma em que cruzados repousavam espelho e navalha. Um roupão amarelo, com cíngulo solto, era delicadamente sustentado atrás dele pelo doce ar da manhã. Elevou a vasilha e entoou: (Po/Galindo 97) Houaiss reads Joyce’s “stately” as an adjective, creating a syntagm of the kind [Adj + Adj] + Noun, foregoing treating it as an adverb and parsing it as Adv + [Adj + Noun]. His choice of lexicon is also of note: “stately” may not be one of the most common words in English, and “plump” is a very homely term. The same cannot be said of the Portuguese words chosen for the opening: “Sobranceiro” is more associated with 19th century poetry, and “fornido,” at least in the 9 Quirino, Retratos de tradutores.

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vernacular of my region, is a little twee: I can only employ it between inverted commas. Those first words, in Pinheiro, do not pertain to an older and more “elevated” register; she parses the phrase as an adjective that modifies the whole syntagm (and therefore operates somewhat as an adverb) and she employs common words (“gorducho” for “plump” would be something like “chubby”). She leaves out the the initial “S,” and choses to go for a much more definite translation of “plump,” a polemical adjective, definitely coloured by Stephen’s opinions and ill-will regarding Mulligan. But above all she signals from word one her position and her attitude, antipodal to Houaiss. My translation opts again for the adjective-as-possible-adverb with “solene,” but qualifies Mulligan with an adjective less committed to the idea of “fat.” But the three versions diverge in many other ways, including punctuation: the first two translations have 50% more commas than the original, something that already spells some alteration, some manipulation of the text necessitated by the target language, in directions not necessarily typical of Joyce’s procedures. Houaiss describes the “bowl of lather” as a “shaving bowl,” which is much more direct than the original, explaining what was only implied. Pinheiro hits a happy note when she calls the “bowl” a “tigela” (specifically a “kitchen bowl”) although once more we can say this is adding specificity to the text already in its first lines. Buck Mulligan’s “dressinggown” has created dissonance. While it is a “roupão” (robe) for Houaiss and for me, Pinheiro opts for a femininesounding “penhoar.”10 And Houaiss adds even more information when for Joyce’s “sustained” he employs the verb “enfunar,” almost always connected to sails and sailing, to render what was a perfectly prosaic description of a scene. If I see Houaiss and Pinheiro perhaps adding unwanted semes in the first paragraph, my translation could be accused of the same sort of transgression. I opted to translate “ungirdled” by “com cíngulo solto,” employing a very rare word, “cíngulo,” whose context is always liturgical. It can be argued that Joyce’s compound is simpler and more direct. It can also be argued that I am already giving information about the parody of the mass that, nevertheless, is about to begin on the very next line. One last point to be made is the choice of the book’s first verb, “came.” Both Pinheiro and I agree in choosing verbs (“apareceu,” “surgiu”) that roughly mean “to come up,” and we also translate them using the Portuguese pretérito perfeito, or past tense. But Houaiss, in a choice that is much harder to defend, not only chose a verb “vinha,” (came?) that denotes movement, but employed the 10

The Brazilian spelling for a peignoir, which is how it would be written in the beginning of the 20th century.

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pretérito imperfeito, or past imperfect, which either denotes something that used to happen in the past or something that is seen as a process, happening while other things take place. Although it may be hard to impress the centrality of such a choice on an English speaker, the point is one of focus. While the latter two translations focus on something that is happening right after Mulligan came from the stairhead, the first one seems to describe the prolonged action of his “coming forth.” On the whole, we do see in action the precepts we might have expected. Houaiss is aiming higher, in terms of language register; Pinheiro is trying to make it “democratic” and I’m guided by a certain will to keep the alterations to a minimum, holding for as long as I can the uncertainty about who is doing what, while trying to keep some of Joyce’s rhythm and the beauty of his words: some of the flow that I felt had been lost in both previous translations. But important as it surely is to consider those first words in a writer so concerned with the impact of his openings and closings, this paragraph also serves to foreshadow another kind of problem, much more closely related to the question of creativity in translation. It has to do with Malachi Mulligan’s nickname, Buck. And it serves here as an introduction to an entire field of questions related to moments involving the materiality of the original and forcing the translator to think about his or her translation, of course, but also to think about Translation, period. Those instances can be viewed as a trap for translators or as a golden opportunity. Not only do we not have any transparent reading of Buck in Portuguese, condemning the nickname to either be altered11 or remain opaque, but the text itself will comment on its meaning a few lines ahead. Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. (U 1.42) For this, Houaiss gives us “Ágil e ensolarado como um cabrito mesmo” (Po/Houaiss 10), which translates the word “buck” as “cabrito” (goatling, kid) and erases the pun. Pinheiro has “Saltitante e radioso como o próprio cervo” (Po/Pinheiro 5). She hits a more correct note by choosing “cervo” (deer), but, again, the reader doesn’t even know there was a play on Buck’s name. I risked it with “Ágil e radiante como um buque de Guerra” (Po/Galindo 98), trying to keep some homophony between “buck” and “buque”, and thus creating that rara avis of a translingual wordplay. But “buque” (ship) is no 11

In my translation, for instance, Blazes Boylan becomes “Rojão” (Rocket), Bantam Lyons is “Garnizé” (literally “bantam”) and Hoppy Hollohan is “Deixa-que-eu-chuto” (“Let me kick it,” a crude and oldish way of referring to a lame person), but the Buck remains the Buck.

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translation for Buck. Although Mulligan could have compared himself to a war ship, he did not.12 To keep the pun and the effect it has on the image the reader will make of the character, or to translate “words.” That was the choice faced by the three translators. And the solutions already point to a different poetics of creativity. Different prices paid. Different notions of what is relevant in the process of translating creativity. The problem with passing the Buck is not that different from another complex pun, when Stephen quotes what may have been the motto of Frederick III, but in that context is a confession of his debts toward Russell, whose penname was A.E. A.E.I.O.U. (U 9.213) There is no way to keep the Austrian allusion, the perfect vowel sequence and the semantics (A.E. I Owe You). Faced with that dilemma, Houaiss gives up (Po/Houaiss 248), and “explains” the pun in one of more than twenty footnotes he employs. Pinheiro also gives up (Po/Pinheiro 214), in that she simply leaves the vowels there, with no explanation. Therefore, if Houaiss chooses the erudite resource of the footnote, Pinheiro hides the problem by eliding the difficulty and, at the same time, creating an impenetrable enigma. My version again chooses the path of playfulness (Po/Galindo 344), even at the cost of some fidelity. I kept the “A.E.I.O.U.” as is but followed it with the phrase “A.E. e/ou eu, ai. Eia” (or something like “A.E. and/or me, alas. Whoa”) which comments on what Stephen may have thought, suggests that the thought is somehow connected to his conundrum in relation to Russell, and tries to have Stephen mess around with vowel sounds, creating, from the curious penname of his “friend,” a valid sentence fully made of vowels. Once more: is this sentence in Joyce’s Ulysses? Of course not. And when do we lose more in translation? When we lose some line-by-line fidelity? Or when we leave the reader lost as to the illocutionary effect of those words? This sort of conundrum may sometimes be approached through creativity as effective creation of new text.

… A second example analysed in Pinheiro’s “Introduction,” the very dense pun on the name of Shakespeare’s wife, is another fertile passage. 12

On a side note, the expression “buque de Guerra” (warship) is connected to a Mexican song, La Adelita, which, although some years older than the action, was already in existence in 1922 and adds some curious extra resonance to the choice.

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If others have their will Ann hath a way (U 9.257-6) Pinheiro is unquestionably right to identify such an example as a crucial difficulty. Here is her solution: “Se as outras têm sua vontade, Ann tem sua veneta” (Po/Pinheiro 215), or something like “If others have their will, Ann has her whim,” with an alliteration not unlike the one accidentally generated by this impromptu translation. Her solution emphasizes sound play on the face of a non-reproduceable pun. But if a pun has a meaning when it appears in the speech of a character (Stephen, in this instance, and a drunken Stephen at that) it also has an effect: it means something about that person, the image they want to project, etc. And there is no such effect if the translation doesn’t recreate the pun, which alters both the locutionary and the illocutionary acts, or the meaning and the effect. Houaiss once more employs a footnote (Po/Houaiss 249), this time choosing to translate the meaning of the sentence literally: “Se outros têm sua vontade, Ann tem seu caminho,” or “If others [curiously masculine] have their desire, Ann has her way” [translated as “path”]. He thus gave up and, to use a theatrical metaphor, broke his fourth wall. Pinheiro gave up and lost some of the playfulness of the original. My version has “Se com outras conjugou-se seu cônjuge a esposa posava após à espera” (Po/Galindo 346). This would translate back into English as something like “If with others [in feminine] her mate has mated, the wife lay waiting afterwards.” Again, no mention of the proper names but, once more, the attempt to rescue the “effect” of wordplay, in this case a paronomastic play with the words “cônjuge” and “esposa” (wife) – the attempt to value the existence of wordplay in the text as relevant information. A little further on, another such dilemma: – Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back? Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper. (U 9.275-6) The verb “to pipe” appears right after the name Piper. And then (in what must be Stephen’s inner monologue), an inner tongue twister in silence. Houaiss translates it as follows: – Piper! – o senhor Best pipocou. – Piper está de volta? Peter Piper picou um pito da pica de pico de picante pimenta. (Po/ Houaiss 250) (– Piper! – Mr. Best popped. – Is Piper back? Peter Piper chopped a puff the dick of the sting of hot pepper.)

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We see a portmanteau construction employing the verb “pipocar” (meaning “to come up abruptly,” literally “to popcorn,” and not, curiously, “to pop corn”). And on the next line we find a series of p-words, a series that begins and ends somewhat as retranslation or reproduction: “Peter piper…. hot pepper.” But no allusion to any tongue twisters. Pinheiro proposes the following: – Piper! – piou o Sr. Best. – Piper voltou? Peter Piper patati patatá pegou um pingo de pó de pimenta. (Po/Pinheiro 216) (– Piper! – tweeted Mr. Best. – Piper’s back? Peter Piper yadda yadda caught a drop of powdered pepper.) Here the pun is exchanged for an alliteration: “piou,” or “chirped” is the past form of “piar,” “to chirp,” a felicitous translation of Joyce’s “piped.” And while a tongue twister in the next sentence is missing as well, it is creatively substituted by the alliterative “patati patatá,” a childish way of saying and “so on and so forth.” Why do I insist that the tongue twister be recreated in translation? Because the name Piper makes Stephen think of the line “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,” which he then manages to bungle. Not recognizing this chain of “thought” – a figment of Stephen’s interior monologue – is denying the reader some access to the causality it embodies. And there is indeed a tongue-twister with a “Peter” in Brazilian Portuguese: “o peito do pé de Pedro é preto” (Peter’s foot’s instep is black). And I tried to use it, also getting it wrong in the way. – Piper! O senhor Best apitou. O Piper pôs os pés por cá? O peito do pé de Predo é Pedro é peto é petro é preto. (Po/Galindo 346) To justify to the Brazilian reader why Stephen should think about a nursery rhyme tongue twister on Peter Piper (which, to a Brazilian ear does not trigger any association with Pedro), I had to create my way out of it. I did it by translating “Is Piper back?” as “O Piper pôs os pés por cá?, which means “Did Piper set foot here?” a phrase that in Portuguese would kindle Stephen’s tongue-twisting memories by its sequence of closely occurring p-words.

… Any sequence of such ouroboros-like moments, when the original looks at its own language, should include the famous “slips” committed by Martha in

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her letter to Bloom. What Pinheiro says in her “Introduction” about the appearance of a “world” where there should be a “word” (U 5.245) is baffling, for she explicitly declares her choice to translate “world” as “planeta” (planet).13 She makes a conscious effort to translate the meaning of the slip: “…não gosto daquele outro planeta. Por favor me diga qual é o sentido verdadeiro daquela palavra?” (…I do not like that other planet/world. Please tell the real/true meaning of that other word). But since there is no pressing similarity between “palavra” and “planeta,” the slippage is rather tenuous and seems to rely on the rhythm of the three-syllable words and on some overlap in sound. The reader of the original can understand that Martha made a mistake. Pinheiro’s reader can only think that Martha was actively trying to say something different, with no clear indication of what that could be. Houaiss aims high, as per usual (Po/Houaiss 102),14 and goes with “não gosto desse outro nume” (I don’t like that other numen), which not only chooses a very highbrow reference (prompting a question whether this word choice would qualify a as valid slip for Martha), but also counts on the reader understanding a double wordplay, for it will have to be understood first that she intended to write “nome” (name), not the most common way to say “word.” My version (Po/Galindo 193) has “não gosto daquele outro termo emundo” (I don’t like that other filthy expression), which has an error in that she doesn’t write “imundo,” the proper spelling, but “emundo,” which could be parsed as “e mundo” (and world).15 So her phrase must effectively be read as meaning both things at once, and can be justified as a true slip of the pen. The second instance is subtler. For when Martha writes: “before my patience are exhausted” (U 5.254), she may be thinking of “patients.” This reading is in line with the hypothesis that sees Nurse Callan as a possible Martha Clifford. And it must be clear that no translator should choose one possible reading of a puzzle and foist it upon the readers. The ideal should be to keep all doors 13

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“There are occasions in which Joyce will substitute one word for another to show a certain character’s relative ignorance, as in world for word, where I substituted ‘palaver’ for ‘planeta.’” See Po/Pinheiro xvi; my translation. Rather bizarrely, Martha’s letter has been entirely corrected in recent editions of Houaiss’s translation, with the word “nome” (name) appearing now instead of “nume” (numen), and with the supposed typos corrected in “minha paciência estejam esgotadas”, which now reads “minha paciência esteja esgotada” (my patience is exhausted). And will be, when Bloom later remembers it (“I don’t like that other world;” U 8.1002) parsed as “não gosto daquele outro termo, e mundo, ela escreveu” (“I don’t like that other expression, and world, she wrote;” Po/Galindo 245). It will also appear in “Circe” (U 15.4202), when the mother says “I pray for you in my other world” which becomes “Eu rezo por você no meu outro lugar e mundo” (“I pray for you in my other place and world;” Po/Galindo 833), another case in which the “echo” is not necessarily obligatory, but possible.

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open. But there is at the very least a possibility that the reading with “patients” is relevant. Both Houaiss and Pinheiro reproduce the grammatical error with a double mistake: antes que minha paciência estejam esgotadas (Po/Houaiss 102) (before my patience are exhausted) antes que minha paciência fiquem exaustas (Po/Pinheiro 90) (before my patience become exhausted) That is, both the verb and the adjective are plural, though the word “paciência” is singular. And, in Pinheiro, there is also the fact that “exaustas” in Brazilian Portuguese means strictly “very tired” and is not used to speak of abstract qualities. My version goes like this: Antes que eu fique empaciente (Po/Galindo 194) Once more going for a very possible mistake (she writes “empaciente” rather than “impaciente”16 or “impatient”), I tried to have the word “paciente” (“patient,” with both meanings) built into the syntagm “em paciente” (in patient). Now it’s up to the reader to decide how to read this: the door remains open. And, perhaps more importantly, Martha still comes out as a person with no great intimacy with words, who inadvertently may commit revealing mistakes. A different sort of problem occurs when the original not only sets its punning references on the stone of proper names but makes it unavoidable to employ the very letters of those names, their graphic materiality. That happens, for instance, when Bloom reads the leaflet he receives in the street, and for a moment thinks he is reading his own name: Bloo… Me? No. Blood of the lamb. (U 8.8-9) As is the case with many other languages, there is no word for “blood” beginning with the very same letters as Bloom’s name in Portuguese. As a matter

16

As a matter of fact, both mistakes are the same, for vowel reduction in unstressed positions makes e/i and o/u sound the same in most Brazilian vernaculars.

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of fact, there are no words beginning with bloo- in the entire language. Facing this conundrum, and the need to make it possible that the reader understands Bloom’s momentary mistake (or little joke?), once more the translations differ. Bloo-san… Eu? Não. Sangue do Anho. (Po/Houaiss 196-197) (Bloo-san… Me? No. Blood of the Lamb) Houaiss uses the archaic word for “lamb,” “anho,” in contrast to the regular “cordeiro,” traditional though it be in the Portuguese Mass and Bible. But, to the point: once more he seems to leave it to the reader to realize that what is being read is a translation, merely setting side by side the “original” and the “translated” syllables. If we’ve seen something related to theatrical fourth wall breaking above, this one is even more complicated, because it’s indeed Bloom who breaks the wall, running his eyes by the English word and “translating” in his mind for the benefit of the Brazilian reader. A non-solution. Bloo… Eu? Não. Sangue do Cordeiro. (Po/Pinheiro 171) (Bloo… Me? No. Blood of the Lamb) Pinheiro leaves Joyce’s “Bloo…” untouched. If we could speculate that both translators rely on the fact that their projected reader does indeed know English enough to “get” the translingual reference, at least Pinheiro may be said to be more elegant, since she simply defers to this supposed capability, without cluttering the text with what (to someone with no English, or not enough) should only look like nonsense. Blo… Eu? Não. Bloco Jovem do Sangue do Cordeiro. (Po/Galindo 290) In my solution, chopping off one of the “o’s” of Bloom’s reading, opens up the possibilities for puns and misreadings in Portuguese. But what could effectively be in a pamphlet, written in Portuguese, announcing the coming of a pentecostal preacher? I came to think of the word “bloco,” which can mean something like “bloc,” as in “alliance,” a group of people, and as such has been used by certain religious communities. But the word has many possible meanings, and so it was necessary to add the adjective “jovem” (young) to make it clear that the reference was to one such religious fraternity… Thus we have

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“Young Bloc of the Blood of the Lamb,” a conceivable name for one of these groups, being the explanation for Bloom’s “slip of the eye.”

… Yet another kind of creativity is necessary to deal with specificities of the English language, and with its own possibilities of wordplay and word creation. In no other situation does this become clearer than when we deal with Joyce’s agglutinative (unhyphenated) compounds, at least when translating into Portuguese. Those compounds have some graphic novelty, but at the same time they feel perfectly natural to a native speaker/reader. Where the original, for instance, describes a horse as follows: because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger (U 16.1784-85), Houaiss’s translation opts for: porque palpavelmente era um quadrupateiro, um quadrilsaculejeiro, um nigrinadegadeiro, um rabissacudideiro, um cabispenduradeiro. (Po/ Houaiss 794) There is no denying the freshness of the vocabulary created for this sentence. None of Houaiss’s adjectives is registered in any dictionary. But those words are not necessarily portmanteau words, neither in English nor in Portuguese. They are regular compounds, created through normal productive mechanisms of both languages. It is true, though, that in Houaiss’s “quadru-” and “cabis-” one may more aptly see truncations of the words “quadrúpede” (quadruped) and “cabisbaixo” (crestfallen), in a process curiously absent from the formation of the English compounds. It’s not to say that a translator may never employ a resource not used in the original in the exact same piece of text. But this example shows something that is constant in the first Brazilian Ulisses, a certain high-brow attitude towards creativity and invention. After all, those five adjectives, in the English original, may not appear in a given dictionary, but are transparent creations, modelled upon the first one to be presented: an easily comprehensible description of the way certain horses, and breeds of horses, tend to move. This cannot be said of the Brazilian creations. They are not transparent, not “common” and not as easily understood. And whereas a “blackbuttocker,” placed dead centre on the list, creates an amusing contrast, “nigrinadegadeiro” does

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not: it employs a Latin radical (niger) in its genitive form (nigri-), necessary to create such compounds. I’m not sure most readers will even be able to parse the compound in its relevant bits, since “nádega” (buttock) becomes almost unrecognizable when morphed into agentive verb form and fused to that prefix. Moreover, horses are not even said to have “nádegas” in Portuguese. No English speaker would ever be accused of being an avant-garde writer if he called someone or some animal a “headhanger.” But “cabispenduradeiro” is a word that is out of reach for most radical inventors in Brazilian letters. But Pinheiro’s solution goes in a different direction: porque era palpavelmente um cavalo de andar descoordenado, de ancas desiguais, de posterior escuro, um oscilador-de-cauda, um cabeçapendente pondo pra frente sua pata de trás (Po/Pinheiro 685) She glosses Joyce’s first adjective, “fourwalker,” with “descoordenado,” or “[a horse with] an uncoordinated gait”; translates the second descriptively as “de ancas desiguais” to mean “with uneven hips”; translates the third employing “posterior” as synonym for “buttocks,” but one that is indeed used in reference to horses; creates a hyphenated compound, “um oscilador-de-cauda”17 to translate “taildangler”; and, lastly, for “headhanger,” goes for an unhyphenated compound “cabeçapendente” that sounds a bit like an Anglicism to Brazilians. One of the characteristics of Joyce’s list, or any list, is its monotony, its repetition of the same morphological procedure, with unexpected results: creativity hidden under apparent repetition. If Houaiss raises the bar and makes the list sound like something that might come from some radical 19th century poet, Pinheiro makes it look not much like a list, though she manages to keep the enumerative quality of the passage. My attempt is not necessarily more felicitous. um andadeiro, um abaloso, um retardatário, um rabofrouxo, um cabeçapensa que metia os cascos pelas mãos (Po/Galindo 937-938) For the first three adjectives, I went with one-word translations: a “walker,” a “shaker” (with a word explicitly and exclusively related to horse riding), and a “lagger” (retardatário) for Joyce’s “blackbuttocker.”18 Bur for the last two, “a 17 18

Including the preposition “de” whose necessity is precisely the problem when we try to agglutinate names and adjectives in Portuguese. My meaning relies on Gifford’s reading of the adjective as meaning that a “black buttocker” refers to “a horse that is always being overtaken” in a horse race. Don Gifford, with R.J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 561.

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taildangler, a headhanger,” I also created compounds, the first quite satisfactory, to my ears (“rabofrouxo” is “a floptail”), but the second, “cabeçapensa” is just as strange as Pinheiro’s, if not more so, because although “penso”, as an adjective, means “hanging,” it has to be feminine here (pensa) because of the word “cabeça”, and so unavoidably reads like the third person form of the verb “to think” (pensar), which makes for some unfortunate misreadings in which “cabeçapensa” would be parsed as “headthinks.” Just to make the best, and the most, of this small example, it is also worth noticing that all three translators kept Bloom’s wonderfully off-centre word “palpably” as the adverb to modify Bloom’s visual impression, simply transposing it to “palpavelmente,” a rather unwieldy and longish word that is all the more adequate to the rhetoric of “Eumaeus.” But the description of the horse ends with the mention that the animal was “putting its hind foot foremost.” And the first two translators decided to “transpose” the meaning quite literally: pondo sua pata traseira à frente (Po/Houaiss 794) pondo pra frente sua pata de trás (Po/Pinheiro 685) Both sentences mean roughly the same, translating directly the original at face value, and incurring the same “imprecision” by describing a horse putting a hind foot “forward,” but not “foremost,” the word that triggers the reference to the expression “to put one’s best foot foremost,” which it belies, showing all the awkwardness of that particular horse. None of those readings allow the Brazilian reader to look for this underlying reference, though. My solution, “que metia os cascos pelas mãos” (Po/Galindo 938) means “who put its hooves where its hands should be,” and references a popular saying, “meter os pés pelas mãos” about someone who is awkward and ungainly – “puts feet in hands” – only exchanging the “feet” for the horse’s “hooves.” Once again, the option is for creativity in the original sense of creation. By translating, I am creating something different than what is in the original, in search of a comparable effect. I am trying to create something that can do the same things as the original, even though it may require new means.

… Yet another way of dealing with fourth walls, creativity, and the paradoxes of translation created by Joyce’s wordplay lies in the use of literary quotations and allusions. For if a cultured reader of English should be expected to recognize

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an allusion to Polonius and to his famous “there’s the rub” when the narrator of “Eumaeus” writes either “there was the rub” (U 16.11) or “That was the rub” (U 16.530), how can a translation allude to Hamlet when there is not even one canonical translation of the play in Brazil? It’s easier to recognize a disguised quotation of Hamlet’s more famous soliloquies, though some lesser references will unavoidably get lost. But can the translator “compensate” and, once more, create small “nods” to the knowledge of Brazilian literature his or her reader is expected to have? When in translating Bloom’s “She’s lame!” (U 13.771), Pinheiro opts for “Ela é aleijada” (Po/Pinheiro 403), she is going for a darker reading of the text, since “aleijada” usually would mean “crippled.” In contrast, both Houaiss and I chose to translate it as “Ela é coxa!” (Po/Houaiss 475; Po/Galindo 580). And herein lies the rub: “coxo/coxa” is not the most common way to translate “lame.” That would have been easily rendered in Portuguese through the use of “manco/manca,” the more homely word both in the 1960’s and now. What I was aiming to do here (and I have to think this was also what motivated Houaiss’s choice) is to point the reader to one of the most famous scenes in Brazilian literature, when in Machado de Assis’s Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, the main character, Brás, after discovering his beloved Eugênia is also lame, asks himself: “Por que bonita, se coxa? Por que coxa, se bonita?” (“Why pretty, if lame? Why lame, if pretty?”).19 In this case, one word, “coxa,” is actually capable of linking both scenes. And such layering of an original reference comes at virtually no cost here, since “coxa” is indeed a proper translation, and was quite a common word in the beginning of the 20th century, but it also gives the reader of the translation a taste of the constant weaving of past literature through the text of Ulysses. It creates the same effect. Whenever I could, I tried to do this, even when it meant incurring some small “mistranslations.” For instance, when translating “Slander, the viper” (U 15.1770), where both my predecessors used “víbora,” a straight translation of “viper,” I decided not only to change the animal to a “panther,” but to put a demonstrative pronoun instead of the definite article, which left me with “a calúnia, aquela pantera”, or “Slander, that panther” (Po/Galindo 736). This created a direct reference to one of the best known sonnets in the language,

19

See Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, trans. Gregory Rabassa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 64. Originally published in 1881 as Memórias pósthumas de Brás Cubas, the novel has also been translated into English by William L. Grossman as Epitaph of a Small Winner (1951; reprinted by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). The Portuguese text is available online at http://www.machadodeassis.net/hiperTx_romances/obras/brascubas .htm accessed 13 July 2019.

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Augusto dos Anjos’s Versos Íntimos, where one can find the line “Somente a ingratidão – esta pantera” (“Only ungratefulness – that panther”).20 Will the reader notice? And is the gain bigger than the possible loss?

… In no other chapter is adding material in order to avoid the loss of meaning/effect a bigger issue to me than in “Oxen of the Sun,” where I decided that the only way to actively respond to Joyce’s challenge (and to actually replicate the textual effect in my tradition and on my readers) was not simply to translate his paragraphs with the adequate patina of each paraphrased style (something beautifully done by Houaiss, for instance). I thought I had to create a full-blown list of Portuguese-Brazilian equivalents to the authors, styles, genres and periods that Joyce had emulated, with all the limitations that come from a much shorter literary history. Then I had to translate the original trying to create pastiches of true historical Portuguese texts, from the trovadores of the 13th century, through Camões and Brazilian Romanticism, to end with a collage of all types of jargons.21 So when the original gives us a clear reference to the alliterative poetry that inaugurates English language literature in: Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship (U 14.60)22 and if Houaiss writes Não nado neném nídulo tinha. Verso ventre vencia veneração (Po/ Houaiss 497) (Not born baby small nest had. Towards womb won worship) Pinheiro chooses: Neném não nascido foi mimado. Vivendo no ventre veneração recebeu (Po/Pinheiro 424) (Baby not born was pampered. Living in the womb worship received)

20

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A facsimile of the first edition of “Versos Íntimos” in Eu, Augusto dos Anjos’s only book of poems, is available at https://digital.bbm.usp.br/view/?45000019982&bbm/7656#page/ 164/mode/2up accessed 13 July 2019. For a fuller account of the process, cf. Galindo, C.W., “The Oxen of Joyce,” in Papers on Joyce 13 (2007): 103-126. Chapter 11 in this volume also discusses this phrase.

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Both translators are replicating the alliteration, with the difference that Houaiss goes for a much more archaic vocabulary, undoubtedly justifiable here. My translation, on the other hand, has Gaio o menino na madre. Pois era sobejo amado. Pois era sobejo amado. Na madr’era, pequenino. (Po/Galindo 604) Which does translate the general meaning of the text (“happy the boy in the womb. For he was much loved. Since he was much loved, he was in the womb very small”) but especially translates the procedure. For if Joyce evoked the first poetry of his language, what the translation tries to do here is to quote a structure, a pattern of repetition in four-line stanzas which is characteristic of the first poems written in Portugal. I am re-enacting Joyce’s experiment in a new context (a different literary tradition). The same goes for “Me nantee saltee” (U 14.1466), which is some sort of Pidgin for “I have no money.” Houaiss renders it as “Comigo nem uma xepa” (with me not even scraps, 548), which is good and slangy. Pinheiro opts for “Não tenho nenhuma grana” (I have no dough, 465) where only the last word is slang and the spoken informal language. My choice was “M câ ê rícu” (I am not rich, 660), not in Portuguese, but in a very thick Cape Verdian Creole pastiche, a culturally inclusive procedure designed to leave the Brazilian reader facing the same type of accessibility and, also, the same type of opacity.

… By going wide in one direction, and by choosing what could have been seen as elitism, the first Brazilian translation may have anticipated the need for a second translation (something that can be said of all first translations). But it may have consigned the novel to a more restricted pocket, keeping it distant from the interests of mainstream prose writers and readers and helping (inadvertently) to postpone that second translation whose need was at same time obviated by its existence. And when the response came, after almost four decades, it came as a sort of opposition. As a third translator, I was unquestionably in a position where my role was profoundly determined by the earlier work. Even if I hadn’t read a single line of those first Brazilian translators (which was definitely not the case), my actions would have not only been determined by Houaiss and Pinheiro, but they would have been set in motion by them. Different as their translations are, they helped me define my own position, especially in terms of creativity in translation, which will always be an issue, especially when dealing with a work such as Ulysses. But creativ-

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ity, in my position, was definitely the mother of all invention, and had to be so, so that my Ulysses had something new and original to add. For if indeed there is no mystery behind the abundance of Brazilian translations of Ulysses, what one cannot deny is that there is the constant struggle of a culture to deal with Joyce’s novel in a permanent, critical and active dialogue of readings and translations that help keeping Joyce’s novel alive, precisely because they have to deal with one another, as well as with the whole tradition and culture that generates them.

Chapter 11

Translators’ Creativity in the Dutch and Spanish (Re)translations of “Oxen of the Sun”: (Re)translation the Bakhtinian Way Kris Peeters and Guillermo Sanz Gallego

Abstract This paper aims to assess the translators’ creativity in the “Oxen of the Sun” episode in Joyce’s Ulysses, by comparing translations and retranslations into Dutch and Spanish. According to the “Retranslation Hypothesis” inspired by Berman and put forth by Chesterman, first translations are more “target-oriented,” whereas retranslations are said to be more “source-oriented.” Drawing on a Bakhtin-inspired conceptual framework that considers translation to be a form of dialogical writing and combining the explicitation and conventionalization hypotheses with the “Retranslation Hypothesis” and Theo Hermans’ idea that the translator’s voice is heard especially in instances of self-referential use of language such as double-voiced discourse and heteroglossia, we would like to test the hypothesis that retranslations of the “Oxen” episode are less explicitating than first translations, and therefore give more room to the author’s voice as well as the translator’s voice and creativity.

1

Introduction

Throughout the years James Joyce’s Ulysses has been translated and retranslated into numerous languages. The canonical character of Joyce’s work, together with the number of translations and retranslations published provide scholars in Translation Studies with an extremely interesting framework to test a number of hypotheses. In this sense, the parallels that can be drawn between the Dutch and Spanish translations and retranslations in terms of publication dates are remarkable. Accordingly, the contrast between both languages – the one Germanic, the other Romance – seems quite appealing to analyze whether some of these theories within TS are applicable to asymmetrical language pairs. In particular, the article focuses on the “Oxen of the Sun” episode of Joyce’s Ulysses, while aiming at assessing the translator’s creativity. The methodology

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_013

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applied for the study combines a Bakhtin-inspired conceptual framework that considers translation to be a form of dialogical interaction between the voice of the author and that of the translator with the “explicitation hypothesis”1 and the “Retranslation Hypothesis,”2 in order to investigate the combined hypothesis that retranslations of the “Oxen” episode are less explicitating than earlier translations, and therefore give more room to creative dialogical interaction between the voices at play. Therefore, a number of passages will be analyzed while paying special attention to instances of hybrid, “doublevoiced” discourse,3 such as pastiche or parody and free indirect speech, and to heterologic and heteroglossic4 language variety. As such, our paper offers a close reading of the various translations and retranslations and focuses on the (re)translator’s creativity and on the various ways in which the (re)translator’s voice may alter the author’s voice and, ultimately, the target reader’s experience, either by reducing ambiguity by means of explicitation, simplification and dialectical (either/or) forms of discourse, or by enhancing the source text material’s linguistic hybridity, turning the translator’s voice into a creative engagement with the original’s dialogical (both/and) meaning potential.

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The Quintessential Cliché: Untranslatability and the Issue of Equivalence and Form

It has been argued that translation as a form of enunciation is comparable to indirect discourse.5 Translations’ enunciative structure resembles what

1 See Shoshana Blum-Kulka, “Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation,” in Interlingual and Intercultural Communication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition, eds. Juliane House, Shoshana Blum-Kulka (Tübingen: Narr, 1986), 1735; Kinga Klaudy, “Explicitation,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 80-84. 2 See Antoine Berman, “La retraduction comme espace de la traduction,” Palimpsestes 4 (1990): 1-7; and Andrew Chesterman, “A causal model for translation studies,” in Intercultural Faultlines. Research Models in Translation Studies I: Textual and Cognitive Aspects. ed. Maeve Olohan (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2000), 15-27. 3 Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse in the novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination. Four essays, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 259-422; Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 4 Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel.” 5 Amongst others by Brian Mossop, “The translator as rapporteur: a concept for training and self-improvement,” Meta 28, 3 (1983): 244-278; Brian Mossop, “What is a Translating Translator doing?” Target 10, 2 (1998): 231-266; Barbara Folkart, Le conflit des énonciations. Traduction et discours rapporté (Québec: Éditions Balzac, 1991); Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov, La

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Oswald Ducrot,6 inspired by Bakhtin, coined as “polyphony,” that is, the presence of several “voices” or consciences in an utterance, as is the case with indirect and free indirect discourse, or also with pastiche and parody. Translation, put briefly, is the reformulation, in another language and by another writer (the translator), of what was written in a previous utterance or text by a first writer (the author). Such a definition, however obvious, also carries the heavy weight of an ageold debate. Behind the notion of “reformulating” a previous text there is, of course, the question of how to re-formulate, hence the tenacious specter of equivalence, or its near-synonym, fidelity or faithfulness. Equivalence or faithfulness is arguably the main reason why Ulysses and the “Oxen” episode in particular has a reputation of being untranslatable, both in academia and in literary criticism in the press and Internet blogs and fora – notwithstanding the obvious fact that the book is translatable, since it has been done (and sometimes done over) in more than thirty languages. But this is not about what is objectively possible or impossible (that is, for a translation to be the same as the original); it is about our common beliefs and expectations of what translations should do (which is to be as much the same as possible, that is, to be “equivalent,” “faithful,” “adequate”). However, although we generally agree that translations should be equivalent renderings, we don’t agree, despite decades of debate,7 on what equivalence actually means. However prominent in Translation Studies, the equivalence-paradigm is highly problematic8 as the metaphor of equivalence is a generic receptacle for just about any translation philosophy, which will always claim true equivalence (or faithfulness).9 If it is true that it is impossible for translations to be the same as

6 7

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tierce main. Le discours rapporté dans les traductions françaises de Fielding au XVIIIe siècle (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2006); Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov, “When two become one. Reported Discourse Viewed through a Translatological Perspective,” in Translation Effects. Selected Papers of the CETRA Research Seminar in Translation Studies 2009, ed. Omid Azadibougar (2010); Theo Hermans, The conference of the tongues (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2007); Cecilia Alvstad, “Voices in translation,” in A Handbook of Translation Studies, eds. Luc Van Doorslaer and Yves Gambier, vol. 4 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2013): 207-210. Oswald Ducrot, Le dire et le dit (Paris: Minuit, 1984). For a useful overview of the discussion on equivalence, see Monika Krein-Kühle, “Translation and Equivalence,” in Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach, ed. Juliane House (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 15-35. See Basil Hatim, Teaching and Researching Translation (London: Routledge, 2014); Theo Hermans, Translation in Systems: Descriptive and System-Oriented Approaches Explained (Manchester: St. Jerome, 1999). On the controversy between the Dutch translators Claes/Nys and Bindervoet/Henkes, where each side publicly scorched the other while claiming true faithfulness, see Kris Peeters,

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the source text, then asking of translations that they be “equivalent” has to mean that we want them to be as much impossible as is possible. Such an expectation can only be built on a hypothetical illusion, on the figment of perfect equivalence that interposes itself between the source and the target texts as a tertium comparationis.10 The result of those contradictory expectations is often that we focus on translation losses, whereas in fact the translation gains are immense. Due to translations, the potential readership of Ulysses increases by a factor 6.5, to some 3 billion. Without translations, outside of the English-reading world, Ulysses would be but a dead object, just a material book; instead, it is a text that is very much alive in many languages and cultures. In that respect, translations are in fact far more important than the original. At the heart of the debate on Joyce’s (un)translatability there is a second issue, which is style. Whereas equivalence is related mainly to content or meaning, the notion of style primarily points to form. Therefore, form is the second reason why Joyce is often said to be untranslatable. Yet, as different languages, quite obviously, use different forms, it is impossible to bring the source text form to the target audience. And once again our focus is all too often on translation losses and much less on the other 95 or so percent of translation that creates a living Joyce in over thirty languages. All of this brings us to the following key question. Why not start out, if we want to positively assess the translator’s creativity, from what is actually obvious, from what we do agree on and is not built on a hypothetical illusion? Whereas scholars have traditionally understood translations as derivative writings or as a “second-order representation,”11 we propose to look at (re)translations the other way around, by starting out from the idea that they are by definition non-equivalent and that their form is by definition no rendering of the original’s form. As we will now argue, such a view can be grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism.

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“Ulysses, Ulysses, Ulixes: ‘wat de hel’? Over kabaal, Bakhtin en Ulysses 2.0” (“Ulysses, Ulysses, Ulixes: ‘what the hell’? On squabble, Bakhtin and Ulysses 2.0”), Filter. Tijdschrift over vertalen (Filter. Journal on translation) 20, 1 (2013): 48-51. See Noelia Ramón García, “Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies Interconnected: The Corpus-based Approach,” Linguistica Antverpiensa New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 1 (2002): 393-406; Jennifer Wehrmeyer, “Introducing Grounded Theory into Translation Studies,” Southern African Linguistic and Applied Language Studies 32, 3 (2014): 373-387. See Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation (London/New York: Routledge, 2005), esp. 7, 70, 184, 290.

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225

Dialogism, Non-equivalence and Material Cast into Form: (Re)translation the Other Way Around

Bakhtinian thought can indeed offer useful insights into the issues we discussed, most notably into the problems of equivalence and form.12 The basic idea of dialogism arguably is that language is by definition hybrid and interindividual. Any utterance (or text) is by definition a mixture of voices, or discourses, that interact and intermingle. Any new utterance or text is a newly created event of language, a new and unique form; that form, however, is always built on existing language material available in a given language community. That language material consists of a variety of co-existing and intersecting discourses or voices, along the lines of two complementary kinds of language mixture. Heteroglossia (raznojazyčie) on the one hand is the blend on the border of different languages (as, for instance, in the French word “un black”). On the other hand, heterology (raznorečie)13 refers to language variety occurring within a language, whether it be social, professional, regional or historical (neologisms and archaisms). That hybrid wealth of language material is what Bakhtin hypostatizes as “the other’s voice” or “the other’s word.” When cast into a newly created form, that language material changes: when reused, it is no longer form, but material to another newly created form, which is the result of another dialogue of incorporating and incorporated voices, and occurs in another enunciative setting and another context. In Bakhtin’s world of interacting voices, therefore, there is no such thing as two equivalent utterances or texts, and there is no such thing as a form being reused but remaining identical to itself. Accordingly, any form is new, while using existing linguistic material, the other’s voice, in all of its hybridity. That new form, however, may show or not show the other’s voice that it has incorporated. When the form does show the other’s voice, Bakhtin refers to it as dialogical or “double-voiced” (examples would be irony, pastiche, free indirect discourse, some examples of internal

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Within the limited space of this paper, it is not possible to explain Bakhtinian dialogism in detail. Rather, we shall limit ourselves to some useful aspects. For a more detailed overview of Bakhtin’s ideas and how these are useful in developing a Bakhtinian conceptual framework for translation and retranslation, see Peeters, “Traduction, retraduction et dialogisme,” esp. 630-639. We are referring to Todorov’s translations: Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin. The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 56; Emerson translates this as “other-languagedness” (inojazychie) and “heteroglossia” (raznorechie) respectively: Caryl Emerson, “Editor’s Preface,” in Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, xxxiii.

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focalization or italics).14 When the other’s voice, however, is obliterated or replaced with a single voice, the form shows the monological discourse that Bakhtin describes as “the accepted literary language,” that is, a standardized, conventionalized system of language that exists only in highbrow literature and related discourse genres.15 As translation is discourse and, in a way, all discourse is translation since it involves the creation of a new form that incorporates the other’s voice, it takes only one step to see translation as a form of dialogism. The process of translation can, indeed, be described as a dialogical interaction between the translator’s voice that creates a new form, and the other’s voice, the author’s voice, that is present in a translation – no longer as form, however, but as linguistic and literary material that has been incorporated and cast into another, creative, non-equivalent, non-derivative form.16

4

Monological versus Dialogical Translation: Explicitation and Conventionalization versus Retranslation

That new form, as we just saw, can be of two different types. On the one hand, discourse, including translation, can be monological or single-voiced, and no longer show the linguistic otherness of the material it is made of. That would be in line with the so-called explicitation and conventionalization hypotheses in Translation Studies.17 In brief, it is argued that translations, in order to achieve their prime goal, which is target culture readability, explicitate meaning and standardize or conventionalize language. In Bakhtinian terms, this would mean that translations prioritize and explicitate the content part of the source material as it is incorporated in the translation’s new form, and, also, 14 15 16 17

See Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, esp. 185-186, 194, 199, 265. Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 273. See also, 366-382. Kris Peeters, “Traduction, retraduction et dialogisme,” Meta 61, 3 (2016): 629-649, esp. 632635. See Blum-Kulka, “Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation”; Mona Baker, “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications,” in Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, eds. Mona Baker, Gill Francis, Elena Tognini-Bonelli (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1993), 233-250; Klaudy, “Explicitation”; Tiina Puurtinen, “Explicitation of Clausal Relations. A Corpus-based Analysis of Clause Connectives in Translated and Non-translated Finnish Children’s Literature,” in Translation Universals. Do They Exist?, eds. Anna Mauranen, Pekka Kujamäki (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2004), 165-176; Viktor Becher, “Towards a More Rigorous Treatment of the Explicitation Hypothesis in Translation Studies,” Trans-kom 3, 1 (2010): 1-25; Elisabet Murtisari, “Explicitation in Translation Studies: The journey of an elusive concept,” The international journal for translation and interpreting research 8, 2 (2016): 64-81.

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reduce heteroglossia and heterology by replacing them with the conventionalized literary language that is customary in the target culture. On the other hand, however, the form of a translation can also be dialogical or doublevoiced. It can show both the translator’s voice and the hybrid linguistic material it has incorporated, the author’s voice, allowing for the target culture reader to perceive its otherness. That would be more in line with yet another hypothesis in Translation Studies, the “Retranslation Hypothesis.” First translations are said to be target-oriented; they flatten out the author’s voice in order to assure a smooth integration of the foreign into the target culture context. Put otherwise, first translations would indeed explicitate and conventionalize the source material they are trying to bring across. Later translations, on the other hand, are reputedly more “source-oriented”: published at a moment when the source text has gained canonical status, they can rely on criticism as well as on the earlier translations, and therefore “tend to be closer to the original than earlier [translations]”:18 retranslations (claim to) restore the source text material in a richer way, which is (maintained to be) more faithful to the original.19 From a Bakhtinian stance, however, a reformulation of the “Retranslation Hypothesis” would be in order. According to that reformulation, which we now put forward as a new, combined hypothesis, retranslations might well be, not more faithful or “closer” to the original or more source-oriented, but rather, more dialogical. Whereas first or early translations are likely to explicitate and conventionalize and are, therefore, monological (or dialectic: they separate the voices in what was hybrid, in an either-or logic that subjugates the other’s voice to the single-voiced hierarchical system of officially recognized literary language), retranslations are likely not to explicitate meaning or conventionalize language. On the contrary – although social, ideological and institutional target contexts obviously play a determining role and therefore counter-examples are surely to be found – retranslations tend to make voices overlap, in a hybrid both-and logic; they show more of the other’s voice, more heteroglossia and heterology, as it is incorporated and integrated in the translator’s voice. That is not more source-oriented but more dialogical (no longer dialectic): it is a more profound, hybrid integration of voices, the author’s voice through the translator’s voice, in a both-source-and-target logic. One of the main reasons why retranslations are likely to be dialogical in form as well (double- or even multi-voiced), 18 19

Chesterman, “A causal model for translation studies,” 23. See Kaisa Koskinen, Outi Paloposki, “Retranslation,” in A Handbook of Translation Studies, eds. Yves Gambier, Luc Van Doorslaer (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2010), 294298.

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is precisely that they are re-translations: they occur at a moment in time when the source text has already been translated in the same target language. Just as first translators do, retranslators, too, incorporate the source text material into a newly created form. However, the form of the earlier translation(s) also becomes material to the retranslators, who have to incorporate the source text material into another form. In other words, retranslations are the result of a dialogical interaction with more than just the source text material: they also develop a dialogical interaction with the earlier translation(s) that become(s) material as well, and a material that is itself a certain way of putting the source text material into form. That is why retranslations are the result of a doubly dialogical interaction: they put into form the source text’s material while taking on a polemical stance with regard to the earlier translations’ form. Retranslations explicitate and conventionalize less than first translations did, and introduce more heterology than first translations did, in order to make that difference which is their reason for existence.

5

Monological versus Dialogical Translation in the Dutch and Spanish (Re)translations of “Oxen of the Sun”

Starting from that hypothesis, explicitation on the one hand (which is related to the content present in the source text material), and standardization and conventionalization versus heteroglossia and heterology (which are related to the source text material’s form, or language) on the other hand, are the two features we are looking at in the three Dutch and three Spanish translations and retranslations of the “Oxen” episode. The Dutch translations were carried out by John Vandenbergh (1969), Paul Claes and Mon Nys (1994), and Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes (2012). The Spanish translations are the work of José Salas Subirat (1945), José María Valverde (1976), and Francisco García Tortosa and María Luisa Venegas Lagüéns (1999). Our question is, how does the creative form of these subsequent translations change over time, as compared to the (increasingly complex and dialogical) material that they have incorporated? That is, which elements of that material, comprising the author’s voice together with the previous translators’ voices, have been prioritized, and how was that done? Bearing in mind the diachronic character of our hypothesis and the evolution from first translations, over retranslations, to reretranslations, the analysis has been structured according to this order. Thus the analysis of each passage is introduced as follows: first, the selected passage of the source text is presented; then the first translations in Dutch and Spanish are discussed; then both retranslations; and finally, both re-retranslations.

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As the type of close reading that is required to track down voices in dialogical interaction with each other is quite meticulous and space is limited, we will discuss three illustrative examples in detail, taken from the beginning, the middle and the end of the fourteenth chapter of Ulysses. Example 1: Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship. (U 14.60)20 Our first example is the beginning of the third parody within “Oxen of the Sun,” in which Joyce intended to reproduce the style of Anglo-Saxon alliterative prose. The source material in this example that the translators had to cast into a new created form, is extremely rich. It comprises not only prosodic elements such as rhythm and alliteration, but also other formal elements, that is, syntactic structure and word choice, as well as content.21 As we have argued, it is impossible for any translator, however gifted and experienced he or she may be, to cast all of that into another form: as there is neither equivalence nor identity of form in translation, creativity is needed and priorities need to be set. First translations: Boreling voor geboorte gelukzalige gevoel bezat. Won waardering wijlend in schoot. (Du/Vandenbergh 446) El bebé aún no nacido tenía felicidad. Dentro del vientre ya era objeto de culto. (Sp/Subirat 406) In the first Dutch translation, priority was given to content, which is, as we expected, sometimes explicitated: “bliss had” was translated as “gelukzalige 20 21

Chapter 10 in this volume also discusses this phrase. Arguably, these elements are, with regard to content: before birth – babe – bliss – in womb – to win – worship; at the level of syntax: two short sentences – the use of a verbal adjective in “before born” – the absence of the article in the first sentence – the postposition of subject and verb in the first sentence – the anteposition of the object in the second sentence – the verb-subject inversion in the second sentence; with regard to lexis: the adjective “born” – the use of “babe” instead of “baby” – the choice of the word “bliss;” and finally, as far as rhythm and prosody goes: a quadruple alliteration on -b- in the four initial words of the first sentence, and on -w- in the second sentence – the parallelism of two short sentences starting with an anapest (ᴗ ᴗ — | — — — || ᴗ ᴗ — | — ᴗ | — ᴗ |.

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gevoel bezat” (blessed feeling possessed). As far as language (standardization versus heterology) goes, Joyce’s imitation of Anglo-Saxon alliterative prose has become standard Dutch, except for the absence of articles and a single archaic word “wijlend” (whilst). There is also a standardizing syntactic structure in the first sentence, which starts with the subject “Boreling” (babe). Content seems to have been the first Spanish translator’s main concern as well. In this sense, a reference has been explicitated: “won he worship” was rendered as “ya era objeto de culto” (was already a matter of worship). Salas Subirat’s translation does not display any alliteration or marked rhythm. Instead, in terms of language and heterology, the reader observes a prose style in contemporary standard Spanish that does not bear any resemblance to the syntactic and prosodic features of the source text. Retranslations: In buik geborgen was boreling blij. Beschuttende schoot schonk hem bescherming. (Du/Claes-Nys 408) Aún no nacido niño nadaba en ventura. En vientre obtuvo veneración. (Sp/Valverde 389) The second Dutch translators have translated the two basic elements of content, “babe” and “womb,” by reusing Vandenbergh’s translation, while adding even more explicitation on several occasions: “before born” has become the alliterative “In buik geborgen” (in belly secure) and “within womb won he worship” was translated – because of the alliteration, no doubt – as “beschuttende schoot schonk hem bescherming” (sheltering womb gave him protection). As a result, the idea of security, shelter or protection, which is implicit in the source text material, is three times explicitated. On the other hand, rhythm and prosody have received more attention: Claes and Nys create a parallelism of two sentences of equal length (10 syllables each), and alliterate on two consonants only – [b] and [s] – as is the case in the source text material. As for heteroglossia or heterology, however, there is none except for the omission of articles. This is a clearly explicitating and, also, clearly conventionalizing translation. The same pattern also occurs in the Spanish translations. The second translation seems more alliterative than the first one, mainly due to the repetition of the bilabial consonant [b]. It is probably Valverde’s prosodic concern that has produced the explicitation in the first part of the excerpt, “nadaba en ventura” (he swam in bliss). As regards heterology, Valverde has attempted to in-

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clude features of Old Spanish, by means of an inversion (“aún no nacido niño”) and omissions of the articles before two nouns (“niño,” and “vientre”). However, these remain syntactic adaptations; at the lexical level, the word choice is modern Spanish. Re-retranslations: Prenataal pop plezier had. Schoot hem schut en schatting schonk. (Du/Bindervoet-Henkes 454) Ant nascencia el ninho dicha aue. Adientro del uientre veneración él retouo. (Sp/Tortosa 443) The above-mentioned forms within the two former Dutch translations, together with the source text, become material to Bindervoet and Henkes’ reretranslation that goes much further in incorporating the other’s voice into the form they created. The syntax is much closer to the source text material and that results in hybrid, heteroglossic, “English Dutch.” Prosody and rhythm have also received more attention: the two parallel sentences are now shorter (7 syllables each) and show a parallel sequence of metrical foot starting with an anapest, while the alliterations also coincide with the sentences. But what is most noticeable is the specific use of heterology. The most striking word, surely, is “pop” (doll) as a translation for “babe.” According to the 2018 Oxford English Dictionary, “doll, rag doll” is indeed a second, archaic meaning of the word “babe.” While introducing that historical heterology, Bindervoet and Henkes also discard a peculiar connotation in the earlier translations: although “boreling” (that Claes and Nys had themselves reused from the first translation) has the advantage of alliterating with “buik” (belly) and “geborgen” (secure), the word refers to a child that is already born. Furthermore, by using “pop”, the re-retranslators even add meaning to the source text material: “pop” in Dutch also refers to a chrysalis (or pupa, from the Latin pupa, doll). This reference to the butterfly’s stage of metamorphosis before it becomes adult (imago) certainly adds a meaningful connotation in the given context of stylistic reproduction of the birth and stages of development of the English language. There is yet a second example of heterology, an archaism as well, which is the word “schut” (shelter) in the second sentence. That particular word is not in the source material if by that one understands the source text. It is, however, to be found in the previous translation, which also is a source material to the retranslators, as part of the triple explicitation we discussed above. Keeping that element from the previous translation, yet transforming

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it into a heterologic form, is an overtly polemical choice: “schut,” as well as “pop,” are dialogical statements of difference with regard to the earlier translation.22 And what is more, these differences point to the two key elements of the hypothesis we suggested, that is, explicitation and heterology. The third translation into Spanish shows the same pattern as the third Dutch translation. As regards prosodic elements, Tortosa and Venegas have adapted the source material to the Spanish literary tradition, in which, as they point out, alliteration and rhythm are not characteristic features.23 Nonetheless, their translation does incorporate a marked rhythm and a series of assonant elements, such as the repetition of the diphthong (-ie-), and the combination of consonants within the initial section of the second sentence (-ientr-). In terms of heterology, Tortosa and Venegas intended to reproduce in parallel the evolution of the Spanish language and different literary styles, as they mention in their prologue. In this case, the style of Aelfric (955-1022) is rendered as that of Alfonso X of Castile (or Alfonso the Wise; 1221-1284), of which the translators claim that it would definitely be understood by a learned Spanish reader. This recreation is noticeable at the lexical level (“ant nascencia,” “ninho,” “dicha”), as well as at the syntactic level. Example 2: To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows no pity. The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children. (U 14.845) This is an interesting example that relates to Hugh Kenner’s “Uncle Charles Principle,” which “entails writing about someone much as that someone would choose to be written about.”24 This phenomenon is in fact what Bakhtin refers to as “multi-voiced discourse”:25 the extradiegetic narrator speaks in his own

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As is the very title of Bindervoet and Henkes’ translation: Ulixes, which is the (neo-)Latin variant of “Ulysses” as it is found in Dutch medieval literature, in Hendrik van Veldeke’s Eneide (ca.1180) and in Jacob Van Maerlant’s Historie van Troyen (History of Troy) (1200). Tortosa and Venegas discuss this aspect in the Introduction to their translation (Introduction, CLXXVIII). Hugh Kenner, Joyce’s Voices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 21. See Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 324-360 and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 185205.

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voice – which in this case already is multi-voiced since it is a stylistic parody of 18th-century essayistic writing – but allows for the character’s voices to influence the form (the language) the narration of the event takes; the narrator incorporates words that either Bloom or the general public would have spoken (taken into account the overall 18th-century essayistic style of the passage, that is),26 as if a conversation had taken place or, perhaps, did indeed take place in Bloom’s mind. On the one hand, Bloom’s reference to the “impudent mocks” he has “borne with” emphasizes his irritated mood and disdain towards the mockers, as do the scornful terms “sparks” and “overgrown children,” which are the words he didn’t speak out as he has “borne with” the mockers. On the other hand, there are the words that are “commonly” expressed on such occasions by those who would defend the “young sparks,” had Bloom expressed his disdain: whereas Bloom might have said to them (but didn’t) that they were acting “as overgrown children,” the voice of someone defending them might have said that “it is true” – that phrase, in the present tense and in direct speech, is a remnant of the dialogue of voices that occurred in Bloom’s mind – that “that age knows no pity” and that they are “young sparks” “full of extravagancies,” but that at their age a few extravagancies should be forgiven. If Bloom has “borne with,” it is precisely because these voices have crossed his mind and he didn’t feel like having that conversation. First translations: Om terug te komen tot Mr Bloom die dadelijk na zijn binnenkomst enkele onbeschaamde spotternijen had opgemerkt die hij echter verdragen had als de vruchten van die leeftijd die men er meestal van beschuldigt geen genade te kennen. Die jonge zwierbollen, het is waar, waren al even overmoedig als opgeschoten bengels. (Du/Vandenbergh 472) Para volver al señor Bloom, que, después de su primera entrada, había sido consciente de algunas burlas impúdicas, las que él, sin embargo, había sobrellevado como los frutos de esa edad a la que comúnmente se

26

Sensu stricto, one may consider this passage not to be an example of the Uncle Charles Principle, since Bloom would or could not have used an 18th-century vocabulary to write about himself. However, if one takes into account the general frame of 18th-century essayistic style adopted by the narrator’s voice, these words could, within that frame, indeed be (an 18th-century) Bloom’s words and not (only) the narrator’s.

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acusa de no conocer la piedad. Los jóvenes petimetres, es verdad, estaban tan llenos de extravagancias como niños grandullones. (Sp/Subirat 427-8) In the first Dutch translation, that struggle of voices both between the narrator’s and Bloom’s voices, as well as the interior dialogue within Bloom’s mind, has been cast into a homogeneous form that mostly discards heterology, both narratorial heterology (“To revert to,” for instance, was translated by the standard Dutch “Om terug te komen tot”) and the idiosyncratic specificity that Bloom’s irritated voice would take in such a general 18th-century stylistic setting (“the young sparks” have become “zwierbollen,” that is, “partygoers,” or “merrymakers,” which is too modern a word for Bloom in this particular stylistic setting). Furthermore, these partygoers are “overmoedig” (overconfident) instead of “full of extravagancies.” As the apologetic euphemism “extravagancies” refers to the “impudent mocks” for which it provides an excuse, this explicitating translation gives another ring altogether to the voices present: instead of multi-voiced discourse, the Dutch reader encounters a single-voiced narrator. In his translation, Subirat does not manage either to reproduce Bloom’s words as they are reused by the narrator. The option “burlas impúdicas” is an accurate rendering of the source text material in terms of content. Yet, the term “burla” emphasizes the derisory character of the situation, which does not seem to be Bloom’s main concern. Similarly, the references to the mockers as “petimetres” (fops), and “niños grandullones” (big boys) are acceptable options to render “sparks” and “overgrown children.” However, these terms do not manage to highlight Bloom’s disdainful mood in the scene. As a result, unlike the source text, Salas Subirat’s translation remains monological. Retranslations: Om weder te keren tot Dhr. Bloom, die dadelijk na zijn aankomst enkele onbeschaamde spotternijen had opgevangen, welke hij echter had verdragen als de voortbrengselen van een leeftijd die men gemeenlijk ervan beschuldigt geen genade te kennen. De jeugdige pronkers waren waarlijk al even uitgelaten als uit de kluiten gewassen kinderen. (Du/Claes-Nys 432) Pero volvamos al señor Bloom, que, tras de su primera entrada, había sido consciente de algunas desvergonzadas burlas, las cuales, sin embargo, había soportado como frutos de esa edad a la que suele comúnmente acusarse de no conocer piedad. Los jóvenes pisaverdes, es cierto,

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estaban tan llenos de extravagancia como niños demasiado crecidos. (Sp/Valverde 407) The second Dutch translation is quite similar to the first. Most of the text is identical or shows synonyms and near-synonyms as compared to Vandenbergh’s translation. There are, however, three noticeable differences. First, some (prudent) heterology has been introduced in the translation’s form: “To revert to” was translated with the archaic “Om weder te keren tot,” “commonly” was translated with the archaic “gemeenlijk.” This heterology, however, remains transparent to the modern reader and does not affect the syntax, which remains conventionalized. Secondly, although other words were chosen, the explicitation we identified in the first translation is present in this translation as well: Bloom’s “entry” is translated as an “arrival” (aankomst); “full of extravagancies” has now become “uitgelaten” (elated, playful), a term that stresses the childishness of the young sparks. As a result of that word choice, as well as of the translation of the direct speech “it is true” with an adverb “waarlijk” (truly), the dialogue of conflicting voices has disappeared. Instead, the translation shows the monological voice of an apologetic narrator who is himself euphemizing what Bloom has “borne with.” Valverde’s translation bears close resemblances to that of Salas Subirat, up to a point where entire sentences were incorporated from the material offered by the first translation, so that one could almost consider this to be a case of non-retranslation. In this version, the “overgrown children” are explicitated as “niños demasiados crecidos.” As for the “Uncle Charles Principle,” the word choice is quite similar to what appeared in the former Spanish translation: the translator’s options are correct if one focuses on content, but the translator does not render Bloom’s word choice: Valverde’s text is no more dialogical than Salas Subirat’s. Re-retranslations: Om weder te rug te keren tot mijnheer Bloom die zich, na zijn eerste entree, bewust geweest was van een aantal impertinente spotternijen die hij evenwel had ondergaan als zijnde de voortbrengselen van die leeftijd die er gemeenlijk van wordt beticht dat zij geen deernis kent. De jonge lichtmissen zaten, voorzeker, even zo vol buitensporigheden als waren zij onregelmatig opgeschoten kinderen. (Du/Bindervoet-Henkes 481) Volviendo a Mr. Bloom que, tras su primera aparición, había advertido ciertas chanzas impúdicas con las que no obstante él había tenido pa-

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ciencia por ser fruto de la edad a la que normalmente se le carga no conocer la compasión. Las jóvenes lumbreras, es verdad, rebosaban de extravagancias como si de zagalones se tratara. (Sp/Tortosa and Venegas 469) Bindervoet and Henkes’ re-retranslation, finally, shows an acute awareness of the original text’s stylistic features, most noticeably the heterologic and heteroglossic hybridity of the source material and it goes much further in revealing other voices (the author’s voice as a mixture of the voices of the narrator and the characters) to the Dutch readers. While re-using the heterologic forms that Claes and Nys had introduced (“weder” and “gemeenlijk”), Bindervoet and Henkes demonstrate their creativity in order to introduce not only heterology, but also heteroglossia: Bloom’s “entry” is rendered, not with standard words as “binnenkomst” (entry) or “aankomst” (arrival), but with “entrée,” which is phonetically close to “entry” with which it shares a common French etymology (“entrée,” OED, 2018). The same goes for “impertinent” which was translated by the heteroglossic Dutch (Dutch-English-French) word “impertinente.” There is more historical heterology as well: “pity” was translated with the ancient variant “deernis” (commiseration) and our “young sparks” are now “lichtmissen” (rakes), which is an archaism as well (and a fairly rare word in Dutch that would not be immediately clear to many readers). As for “full of extravagancies,” Bindervoet and Henkes have opted for “vol buitensporigheden,” which is a term that could very well serve as an apologetic euphemism for their mocks. In brief, the re-retranslation manages to show more of the author’s voice and of the original’s dialogism, precisely because it is more creative in giving shape to the intensely dialogical interaction between both source and target voices. Unlike the two former Spanish translations, Tortosa and Venegas did render the accurate register for Bloom’s disdain. The choice of “chanzas” instead of “burlas” softens the derisory reference as Bloom would do in this situation. In the same way, “lumbreras” (genius) seems a very appropriate rendering for the context: the ironic reference emphasizes Bloom’s disdain toward the mockers. Accordingly, Tortosa and Venegas manage to reproduce Joyce’s dialogical text. Example 3: Where you slep las nigh? […] ’Tis sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam, two days teetee. Bowing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do. Gum, I’m jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. (U 14.1441, 1507)

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The third example for the analysis is drawn from the end of the chapter, where Joyce reproduces what he described to Budgen as “a frightful jumble of Pidgin English, nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken doggerel” (L I, 140). Once again, this source text material contains a series of challenges for the translator: Joyce reproduces spoken language as in a phonetic transcription of a dialogue at a bar (“Where you slep las nigh?,” “’Tis sure,” “What say?,” “I shee you, shir,” “And been to barber he have”), as well as incomplete sentences with instances of low register, such as taboo language, and slang. First translations: Waar heb je venacht gepit? […] ’t Is zo. Wà zeg u? In de klandestiene. Zat. Ikke sjie je wel, meheer. Bantam, twee dagen aan de blauwe knoop. Zuipt alleen maar bordeaux. Hij zeit wat! Mot je hem zien, zeg, Gossiemijne, sodemieter nog an toe. Is bij de barbier geweest. Te zat om te kunnen praten. Met een vent van de spoorwegen. (Du/Vandenbergh 492, 494) ¿Dónde dormiste anoche? […] Seguramente. ¿Qué decir? En la taberna. Borracho. Yo lo feo, señor Bantam, dos días titi. Traga más nada que vino clarete. ¡Demonio! Dale una pasada, por favor. Además, estoy deslastrado. Y había estado en lo del barbero. Demasiado lleno para hablar. Con un plato del hotel. (Sp/Subirat 444, 445) The first Dutch translator reproduces some of these deviations from standard language, although he often resorts to informal standard language: “full” for instance is rendered by the standard informal word “zat” (drunk), whereas “bowing nowt but” is standardized in “Zuipt alleen maar” (boozes nothing but). Language deviations or errors are mostly either of a phonetic nature (“venacht” for “vannacht,” “zeg u” for “zegt u”), or truncations (“wà” for “wat,” “mot” for “moet”), so that deviations remain transparent. Further, Vandenbergh explicitates on two occasions: “claretwine” (the British appellation for “claret,” the cheap Bordeaux wine produced in the Middle Ages, lighter in color) becomes “bordeaux” which is a cultural adaptation, and the ambiguous “Too full for words” (too drunk to speak, but also so drunk that words cannot express) is explicitated as “Te zat om te kunnen praten” (Too drunk to be able to speak). Salas Subirat prioritizes content over form and opts for a neutral register. This version does not contain any terms that can be considered taboo or slang.

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Also, this translation contains some misreadings, such as “con un plato del hotel” as translation for “with a railway bloke,” and “titi” (young girl) as a translation for “teetee” (sober). The translation of the imperative “do” as “por favor” is also questionable and problematic in such a context. As a result, the Spanish reader misses the reproduction of the conversation at the bar as in the source text material. Retranslations: Waar heb je venacht getukt? […] Zo is het. Wablief? In de hompenkroeg. Teut. Ikke sjie je wel sjitten, meneer. Bantam, al twee dagen droog. Buist alleen maar tafelwijn. Loop heen! Kijk ‘em zitten. Gomme, heb ik ooit. En geschoren istie. Te zat om iets te zeggen. Met een knul van de spoorwegen. (Du/Claes-Nys 451, 453) ¿Dónde durm anoch? […] Faltaría más. ¿Qué dice? En la taberna. Con una mona. Yyya lo vveo, shsheñor. Bantam, dos días abstemio. Sin tragar más que clarete. Ni hablar. Échale el ojo, venga. Coño, estoy acojonado. Y hasta se ha ido a pelar. Demasiado lleno para hablar. Con un maricón de ferroviario. (Sp/Valverde 421, 423) As compared to the first Dutch translation, Claes and Nys show a similar attitude towards the source text material, often by using a synonym or nearsynonym that also belongs to an informal yet standard register, as to keep deviations from the standard language transparent. Both explicitations we discussed remain present, although the formulation has changed: the culturespecific meaning of “claretwine” is explicitated into “tafelwijn” (table-wine) and the ambiguity of “too full for words” disappears as the expression is explicitated as “Te zat om iets te zeggen” (Too drunk to say anything). There is yet one third example of explicitation, in the sentence “Ik sjie je wel sjitten, meneer” (I shee you shitting, shir), that allows for the thick tongue alliteration to be successfully maintained. Valverde’s text combines instances of neutral register (“faltaría más,” “¿Qué dice?,” “En la taberna”) with others in slang (“Ni hablar,” “Échale el ojo, venga,” “Coño, estoy acojonado”). The translation of the first sentence “Where you slep las nigh?” as “¿Dónde durm anoch?” does not seem to suggest a phonetic transcription of a conversation in Spanish at a bar. Instead, the choice seems awkward for the Spanish reader, since it does not manage to recreate utterances that would be customary in such a context.

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Re-retranslations: Waar hebbie vannach leggen pitten? […] Tiszo, krek. Wat zeggie d’rvan? In de hompekeet. Sop. Ik sjie je, basjerool. Bantam, twee dagen van de blauwe knoop. Nix anders zoepen als rooie wijn. Gweg! Moejenemsien. Gommenikke, krijg nou wat! En gespoeld en geschoren issie inderdaad. Te zat voor woorden. Met een gozer van de spoorwegen. (Du/BindervoetHenkes 502, 504) ¿Dónde dormihte anoshe? […] Sí, pos claro. ¿Qué te paice? En el tascucio. Trompa. Yaa veeo, zeñó. Gallito, dos días sin una gota. Soplando na más que clarete. ¡Amos quita! Echa un vistazo, venga. Hostilinas, estoy jodido. Y hasta ha ido al barbero. Demasiado cargao pa hablar. Con un tío del ferrocarril. (Sp/Tortosa and Venegas 489, 491) Bindervoet and Henkes add much more contemporary slang to the mix by introducing several words (“basjerool” for “basserool,” “gozer”) from the so-called “Bargoens,” an early twentieth-century slang that is a mixture of Yiddish with Roma, German and Dutch influences and that was spoken by people living in the margins of society: travelling merchants, vagabonds, thieves and thugs. On the other hand, they also go much further in creating phonetic and syntactic deviations from the standard language, often by means of a sequence of words taken together as a single unit of sounds, exactly as in the source text material. There are many examples: “hebbie” (for “heeft hij,” “has he”), “Tiszo” (“Het is zo,” reproducing Joyce’s “’Tis sure”), “Gweg!” (“Ga weg!,” “Go away / Get lost”) or “Moejenemsien” (“Moet je hem zien,” “Look at him”). Explicitations, on the other hand, are nowhere to be found: “too full for words” is translated wordfor-word as “te zat voor woorden” which preserves ambiguity; “claretwine” is translated as “rooie wijn” (red wine), without further explicitation of origin or quality. Tortosa and Venegas also provide an accurate distinction of register with terms such as “tascucio” (speakeasy), “trompa” (tight), “soplando” (bowing), and “jodido” (jiggered). Additionally, they reproduce spoken Spanish with terms that suggest the phonetic transcription of a conversation that would be common in such a context, such as “dormihte” (slep), “anoshe” (las nigh), “sí, pos claro” (’tis sure), “qué te paice” (what say), “zeñó” (shir), “amos quita” (have a glint, do), and “demasiado cargao pa hablar” (too full for words). This version remains accessible for the common Spanish reader and maintains both the content and the formal aspects of the source text material.

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Conclusions: Explicitation and Heterology in the Spanish and Dutch “Oxen” Retranslations

In brief, these examples – and there are many more – do indeed confirm our hypothesis, although not entirely: the first translations clearly prioritize content and show instances of explicitation. Heterology, on the other hand, if present, is rare and inconsistently applied. The second translations, which are retranslations, also show instances of explicitation and conventionalization but remedy a certain number of misreadings and inconsistencies of the first translations (especially in the case of Salas Subirat). In the Valverde translation, little or no emphasis was put on prosodic elements, whereas Claes and Nys clearly prioritized prosody as well as content. In terms of heterology, both retranslations offer more of the other’s voice, albeit prudently, by limiting heterology either to word choice in an overall conventionalizing syntax (Claes and Nys), or to syntactic heterology mainly by reproducing some excerpts in “old” Spanish (Valverde). The latest re-retranslations, finally, go much further in showing heterology, either by adapting the historical evolution of language and literature as well as social register to Spanish conventions (Tortosa and Venegas), or by introducing more historical and contemporary heterology, or even heteroglossia, as in Bindervoet and Henkes’ translation. At the lexical level, the Dutch reretranslators introduce many words with an overtly French etymological overtone in instances where Joyce’s imitation of historical English is also permeated with French. But heterology and heteroglossia extend to syntax as well; the translators introduce many imitations of Joyce’s syntax that result in nonidiomatic English-Dutch expressions and structures. On the other hand, there is no explicitation, unless it was incorporated from the earlier translations, and there is a deeper dialogical integration of the other’s voice (both the author’s and the previous translators’, the latter by polemic) which results in both heterology (syntactical as well as lexical) and heteroglossia (influences from English and from French). Both in the Dutch and in the Spanish “Oxen” translations, many other examples can be found of what can be described as a pattern over time, from first translations, over retranslations, to the recent re-retranslations. That general pattern is one of communicating vessels: as time progresses, these translations explicitate less, and the less they explicitate, the more they allow for heterology and the more the other’s voice shines through. The evolution that characterizes retranslation as, to use Berman’s title phrase, “un espace de la traduction,” does indeed seem to lead away from monological forms that prioritize content and standardize language, to an overtly dialogical interaction

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with the source text material that shows its linguistic hybridity in the form it creates; it thus turns the translator’s voice into a creative engagement with the dialogical meaning potential of the author’s voice. In that respect, we hope that we have been able to show that a Bakhtinian approach that focuses on the specific interaction between the voice(s) of the author (narrator, character) and the translator’s voice as it casts that source text material into a newly created form, although it calls for detailed and time-consuming analysis, is indeed a productive methodology to lay bare the creativity of the translator. It is in fine the translator’s creativity that gives new life to a literary and linguistic material – Joyce’s Ulysses – that would otherwise be, to the Spanish or the Dutch reader, but a dead object.

Chapter 12

Hot Form and Hot Potato: “Grahamising” the Romanian Translation of Ulysses Rareș Moldovan

Abstract When in 1984 the first Romanian translation of Ulysses – by noted poet and translator Mircea Ivănescu – was published, it was an epochal achievement. Hailed for its literary and poetic quality as well as for its technical prowess, the translation became a gold standard in Romanian literary culture. The aura endures, deservedly for the most part, although the translation itself has only sporadically been subjected to close investigation. This chapter examines parts of “Calypso” and “Oxen of the Sun” from the author’s/(re)translator’s perspective, with a view towards illuminating some of the micro-processes that can make or break a translation, while offering this translator’s solutions as well.

Perhaps translators should not write about works they’re (re)translating, at least while in the process. If this be a valid injunction, here it shall be overlooked. Should the retranslator also overlook the previous translation and work in voluntary blindness, in an anxious pocket of unknowing? Or peek underhandedly at its solutions, and by gazing dilute their own? Glancing repeatedly at a previous translation feels as uncomfortable as re-translating with the sensation that the revenant of the old artificer-translator is now looking over your shoulder while you work. For the purposes of this paper, I have allowed myself a limited exposure. In “Oxen of the Sun,” Joyce mentions the illicit operation called “grahamising” (14.1516) – after the name of an English statesman – which consists of opening letters addressed to others and learning their secrets,1 a metaphor I find apt for my endeavour here. On the same page I encountered – and quickly borrowed – the other metaphor in the title: “hot form” (14.1516). The mare

1 Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2008), 446.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_014

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Sceptre was tipped in the grahamised telegram to be “on hot form” for the Gold Cup race. To be “on hot form” is the principle of hope for all translators in the races they run, although with some, the hot form mare often transforms into the night-mare of having to handle, with ungloved hands, a considerable number of “hot potatoes.” Arguably, no other novel has more of them than Ulysses, with the exception of the Wake, of course, which might as well be, in its entirety, the ideal hot form of the “hot potato.” A very brief note to begin with: Ulysses was first published in Romanian in 1984, although sections of it had been translated in the mid to late sixties.2 Mircea Ivănescu, a noted poet and translator authored the Romanian version, which was hailed then and now as a towering achievement, a landmark in translation. It is also reasonable to assume that it influenced Romanian writers in the final years of the 80s and after the revolution of 1989,3 an epoch in which Romanian literature struggled under ideological pressures and censorship while it turbulently and hungrily appropriated and produced late modernisms, neo-modernisms, post-modernisms. I consider this an interesting area of research, but remote from my purpose here. In the following pages, I remain, as Fritz Senn put it, “stuck with minutiae, close-ups, and I delight in little touches.”4 Not being a Joycean scholar but merely a translator, I feel constrained to this, while relishing this particular micro-focal form of attention that one uses when translating. Let us grahamise, then. The first letter one sees is always an initial. The initial contortion to keep the initial initial of “Calypso” – the famous cross-section, cross-narrative, cross-gender, deictic M – is worked by Ivănescu into a comparative adverb in a rather quirky inversion: “Mai cu plăcere domnul Leopold Bloom mânca” (Ro/Ivănescu I/63), whose retranslation into English is difficult, as it would fail to capture some of the subtler notes I mention below. The translation works, and while the inversion for emphasis is certainly the foreground intention, “It is with great pleasure, i.e. relish, that Mr. Leopold Bloom ate,” pushing the Romanian comparative closer to the boundary of the

2 See especially Arleen Ionescu, Romanian Joyce: From Hostility to Hospitality (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014) and Elena Păcurar, “Feasting on the Text: The Ulysses Centenary in Romanian Periodicals,” in Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai, Philologia, 4 (2018), 119-28. 3 Also discussed by Ionescu, see Romanian Joyce, 221-37, with the salient examples being the poet Mircea Cărtărescu and the novelist Adrian Oțoiu. I think research would be welcome in this area of how major translations impacted Romanian literature at the time. 4 Fritz Senn, Portals of Recovery, eds. Erika Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2017), 27.

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superlative (utmost pleasure), there are two other possible secondary connotations. One has to do with the rhythm of the sentence, which in Romanian is reminiscent, especially with its initial adverb “mai,” of the liturgic rhythm of prayers in the Orthodox mass. The word order and the adverbial emphasis give a ritual ring to the sentence, although the rite of phantasmal ingurgitation that Joyce describes is viscerally profane. The other connotation comes from a colloquial phrase in Romanian that also uses the inversion with an initial “mai”: “mai de voie mai de nevoie,” which means willy-nilly. The meaning is faint, granted, but the ghostly echo of the absent opposite of pleasure can perhaps be heard. It’s one of those cases in which translation unfolds itself – even if unintentionally – into a spectrum of possible suggestions, beyond a simpler original, “Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish.” For the ensuing exhibited innards menu, the Romanian translation defaults partially to the indigenous palate, from more proletarian dishes to the delicacies of the rich, domesticating and foregoing accuracy in places, sometimes coming up with odd solutions.5 I’ll forgo dipping in the gourmet discussion here – although the use of “crutoane” (croutons) for “fried with crustcrumbs” is really bizarre – and merely note, en passant, a constant tendency in the Romanian translation to smooth over the more modernist asperities of the Joycean text to a neutralized, lukewarm literary idiom and to the representation logic of a generically realist prose. For instance, “kidneys were in his mind” (4.6) Ivănescu translates as “Rinichii îi erau acum în gând” (Ro/Ivănescu I/63), “Kidneys were now in his thought,” although the equivalent “minte” (mind) would have been perfectly adequate, and my choice for translating it: “Rinichii-i erau în minte” [“Kidneys were in his mind”]. The uncalled-for insertion of “acum” (now), not in the original, dispels the modernist punch of the terse English sentence “Kidneys were in his mind,” which reassembles the material-spiritual, organ-whole, body-mind compound in almost cubist fashion. To this point, Arleen Ionescu and Laurent Milesi note that the Romanian translation often suffers from “a tendency towards making the original explicit,”6 to which I would add that an associated symptom is to provide a relatively close equivalent in early 20th century “literary” language (“thought” for “mind,” for instance). To give another example of this from elsewhere in the

5 As shown by Ionescu, Romanian Joyce, 183-4. While Ionescu is generally right, she does produce a little culinary confusion of her own when she mentions “ciorba de potroace” as a tripe soup made of poultry innards. Tripe soup is made exclusively from the lining of a cow’s stomach, whereas “ciorba de potroace” is precisely made of giblets, just soured. 6 Arleen Ionescu and Laurent Milesi, “The ‘Experience’ of Ulysses in Romanian,” in Papers on Joyce 14 (2008), 85-124: 90.

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novel, in “Hades” (7.33): “– What way is he taking us? Mr. Power asked through both windows,” is translated as “întrebă dl. Power când spre o fereastră când spre alta” (Ro/Ivănescu I/103; “Mr. Power asked [looking] now out of one window then out the other”). Joyce collapses the time of the real-world action into an impossible gesture, which also concentrates the impulsive curiosity of the character; Ivănescu strings it out sequentially, as one would do in realist prose. Paradoxically, pulling the translation back to period Romanian renders it often imprecise, just as unpacking it in a more realist diction does away with part of its radical unfamiliarity. I have simply followed Joyce here and translate with a straight “prin ambele ferestre” (“through both windows”), which retains the unfamiliar, defamiliarizing note of the original. Skipping a few pages, we rendezvous with Bloom and Molly in the bedroom (4.300-81), in a game of reading and misreading, of the inquisitive and the unsaid, of the shown and the inapparent or the vanished. It is a game of pointing, also discussed by Jolanta Wawrzycka elsewhere in this volume: Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole. – No: that book. Other stocking. Her petticoat. – It must have fell down, she said. (4.321-6) Molly’s pointing has an earlier equivalent in Bloom (“Mr. Bloom pointed quickly.” 4.171), but whereas his gesture, albeit quick, is immediately clear in direction and purpose – he points to the kidney whose form had previously been in his “mind” – Molly’s pointing is equivocal, point-less, diffuse and diffused in “the general direction of.” The end of her pointing is therefore replaced by Bloom’s foci of attention and the objects of subconscious fetishist attraction: drawers, garter, stocking, petticoat, the disposable layers of intimate garment that surround her body in their careless disarray. The scene is, of course, haunted by the future presence of Boylan in this very bed. The passage does not seem to pose difficulties for the translator, straightforward as it looks. Yet from its very first words, the translation makes manifest the difficulties it encounters. “Following the pointing” cannot be translated as such in Romanian; a faithful rendition would sound awkward. One solution is to switch the object from the action (“pointing”) to the agent (“finger”), which is what Ivănescu does: “Urmărind degetul ei care arăta ceva” (Ro/Ivănescu I/74), “Following her finger, which pointed at something,” unfortunately dragging the sentence to rather jarring periphrastic lengths. While “arăta ceva”

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manages to convey the ambiguity of Molly’s target from Bloom’s perspective – she is pointing at an absence, a vanished object, with a ghostly misreading in her mind – the price in translation is the unnecessary circumlocution. The other would be to switch to an adverb of place/direction: “Urmărind încotro arăta degetul ei” (“Following where her finger pointed”), which is more concise and overall better in Romanian, and the way I choose to translate it. Minor oddities pepper the passage, such as the squeamishness of “cam murdar” (“rather soiled”) for Joyce’s straightforward “soiled,” which I translate as “mânjiți” (soiled, dirtied), a word that can oscillate between physical stain and moral taint. Ionescu7 and Ionescu and Milesi8 have discussed the tendency to “tame” sexual language in the Romanian translations of Joyce, some of which is due to censorship restrictions at the time, and some – the example above perhaps included – to Ivănescu being more restrained about the mouth. Unless the adverbial modifier is intended as a sarcastic appraisal by Bloom – which is plausible though not in tune with his character – to what in the original is a statement of fact. To give a few more examples, not far down the line, “smartly” in “having wiped her fingers smartly” (4.334) is translated as “grijulie” (careful), which is somehow unexplainable and changes the particular note in Molly’s behaviour in the scene. As does translating “swallowed” in “She swallowed a draught of tea” (4.333) with “sorbi,” which can be either “she sipped” or “she slurped.” My conjecture is that the sense of “smartly” indicates the quickness of motion, so that the appropriate Romanian translation would be “iute,” whereas “swallowed” can be dispatched easily with its direct equivalent “a înghiți” (“Înghiți o gură de ceai”). In the line with which Molly qualifies the absence of “that book,” the object of her pointing, after Bloom’s fumbling about the sheets – “It must have fell down, she said” – the small grammatical “mistake” foreshadows the larger misreading still to come in the passage.9 It also represents a challenge for the translator since it cannot be rendered by an equivalent ungrammatical structure in Romanian without a considerable stretch. Ivănescu is undoubtedly aware of this and compensates nicely by using a cacophony:10 “Trebuie c-a căzut pe jos” (Ro/Ivănescu I/74), “It must have fallen down.” As Erika Mihálycsa notes:

7 8 9

10

Romanian Joyce, 169-79. “The Experience of Ulysses,” 104-6. See the excellent interpretation in Fritz Senn, Erika Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka (eds), “The Polylogue Project. Errors: Lots in Translation” in Scientia Traductionis 12 (2012) 165-204: 177. As pointed out by Elena Păcurar in “The Polylogue Project. Errors,” 179-80.

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One of the infelicities sanctioned by current linguistic and stylistic norm in Romance languages, particularly in Romanian, is cacophony; however, until the second half of the 19th century, when most of the Romanian classics were published, overt cacophony resulting from the combination of prepositions and pronouns or nouns was rather common. The Romanian “Oxen” harnesses marginal effects of language resulting from such parapraxis.11 It’s a diagnostic that fits this particular transposition: the harnessing of “marginal effects.” One thing, however, that the Romanian translation cannot harness from the misspoken “fell” is its teleological homophony that carries into the following passage and is completed a few lines later: He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed chamberpot. […] She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin till she reached the word. (6.327-35) Between fell – felt – fallen, the verb is mis-reconstructed (although, as it were, in a silent “correction” by Bloom) and spliced with another – a conjunction in Bloom’s affective sphere (felt fallen) that irradiates beyond the fallen book and the tentative feeling about. The ambivalence of “felt” (set up euphonically by the “mistake” of “fell”) is lost in translation: Romanian uses two separate verbs – “a simți” and “a pipăi” – the latter for the tactile action. One could use “simți” for the second only with a considerable stretch of the imagination. I have, in fact, used neither to translate the sentence, but would go with “Atinse ici-colo” (“[He] touched here and there,” except that in Romanian the subject pronoun is elided and understood from the context). In the background, the form of the verb being identical to the past participle, as in English, although in Romanian it is the feminine plural form; this preserves a faint trace of “feel.” As in what Fritz Senn calls “a Janus sentence,”12 “felt” in its median position is a Janus verb, but it is double-fronting on its own, containing in virtual 11

12

Erika Mihálycsa, “The Trials of Foreignization: Transposing Joyce’s ‘Farraginous Chronicle,’” in Parallaxing Joyce, eds. Penelope Paparunas, Frances Ilmberger, Martin Heusser (Tübingen: Günter Narr Verlag, 2017) 247-274: 259. “What I call, especially in ‘Penelope’, Janus sentences are those that face forward and backward.” In Portals of Recovery, 44.

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superimposition a state of affect and an action. In Romanian, the first virtuality vanishes as expression collapses to a univocally tactile meaning of to “feel.” Lost also is the affective radiance of “here and there,” of feeling here and there, in which one can also detect “neither here nor there,” not a bad approximation of how Bloom feels at that point. The “here and there” segues into “voglio e non vorrei,” Bloom’s own mistake, which he will correct later,13 but it also segues into another double-entendre that unfortunately loses its ambiguity in the Romanian text: “not in the bed.” Once again Ivănescu chooses to be explicit and translates the sentence with “Nu-i în pat” (Ro/Ivănescu I/74), “It” – i.e. the book – “isn’t in the bed,” although the simpler “Nu în pat” (an exact translation of “not in the bed” and my choice) retains the double meaning, in the play between “wonder if she pronounces that right” (the “I’d want” in the Italian original) – “not in the bed,” and “the book is not in the bed.” A bizarre oversight can be found nearby: Joyce’s notword nothandle is completely ignored and transformed into “pe care o ținea de toartă” (Ro/Ivănescu I/74), “which she held by the handle.” It is as if the translator couldn’t be bothered with this quirky turn of phrase that jolts the realistic flow. It’s all part of Molly’s “prestidigitation,” from the finger pointing to the finger wiping, but perhaps there is more. The gesture is itself shattered, from finger pointing to finger wiping. “Nothandle” is a cue to that very intention: Molly holds the cup by nothandle and immediately she wipes her fingers on the blanket; has she set the cup down or is she wiping the fingers of her other hand? We don’t know; Joyce is capturing shards of images hidden by the illusive fluency of the sentence, although the Romanian can be equally unfamiliar by just translating it literally: “ținută de netoartă.” There is another such fracture between the last word of this passage – “the word” – and the following question: – Met him what? he asked – Here, she said. What does that mean? He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail. – Metempsychosis? – Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home? (4.336-40) Hugh Kenner asks wittily about Bloom’s question: “What does that respond to? A murmur the translator has not transcribed or a no-murmur? (When a cup

13

See also Păcurar, “The Polylogue Project: Errors,” 178.

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can be held by a nothandle, may an answer also be given to a no-question?)”14 It is plausible that Molly murmurs the word – I’d imagine she utters it rather loudly, pace Kenner – as she is pointing at it with the hairpin, transmuting it into a blooming sequence that will reverberate in Bloom’s mind for the rest of the day (although it isn’t until “Lotus Eaters” that we get the full phrase): “met him pike hoses” (5.112).15 Is it the correct sequence, though, is it the correct mistake? Or is it perhaps a misreading within a mistake? Amanda Sigler notes the dynamic function of the misreading and the poietic potential of the mistake:16 When Bloom repeats Molly’s pronunciation error in ‘Lestrygonians’ […] he inaugurates a string of many instances in which these ‘mistaken’ words surface in his mind as he walks through Dublin. Molly’s reading error not only generates dialogue between her and her husband at the beginning of the day but also serves as a continuous point of return for Bloom.17 Is it Molly’s error, though? Kenner rightfully doubts it, reminding us that when Molly recalls it in “Penelope” (18.565) it is just “that word met something with hoses in it.” For Kenner, Ulysses, “the master of lies” has “a stake in thinking Molly less astute than she is.”18 I wonder whether that’s the right misreading. It seems conceivable that “met him” is Bloom’s input (whereas Molly just recalls the “met” at the beginning and the something “hoses” at the end). “Met him,” therefore, is Bloom’s anxiety, Boylan’s revenant visiting even before Molly actually “meets” him that afternoon. The point, obviously, is not to reconstruct an irretrievable utterance but to orient its trailing coda towards the issue of its translation. “Met him pike hoses” is a hotspot for translations of Ulysses, one of those singularities everybody

14 15

16

17 18

Hugh Kenner, Ulysses, revised edition (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 82. Jolanta Wawrzycka discusses polyglottally the spectrum of renditions of the “unusual polysyllable of foreign origin” in “Tell Us in Plain Words: Textual Implications of Relanguaging Joyce,” in Joyce and/in Translation, Joyce Studies in Italy, 10 (Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 2007): 31-2. “Errors are unsettling, irritating and therefore dynamic.” Fritz Senn, “Joyce’s Erroneous Cosmos” in Errears and Erroriboose: Joyce and Error, ed. Matthew Creasy, European Joyce Studies 20 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011), 24. Amanda Sigler, “Archival Errors: Ulysses in the Little Review,” in Errears and Erroriboose: Joyce and Error, 77. Kenner, Ulysses, 82.

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rushes to gaze at in this “obstacle course.”19 As Wawrzycka notes, despite the obstacles, “most [translations] manage to preserve at least some phonetic echoes of “metempsychosis.”20 The Romanian transposition is, however, problematic: “mă-tu-n-pisoză.” Ionescu and Milesi pick up on the possible allusions of the “meaningless” phrase,21 and I think they get the particular Romanian obscenity wrong, although they identify its parts in disguise correctly (“mă-ta” – your mother – in “mă-tu” and “pizdă” – cunt – in “pisoză”). The Romanian expression conflating the two is elliptic, brutal, and, with a pun, desti(natio)nal. Well-aware perhaps that censorship would never allow a rendering too close to the sum of its parts, Ivănescu contorts its limbs, turning the “a” into a “u” (incidentally “tu” is “you,” the second person singular, corresponding perhaps to “him”) and coins the nonce word “pisoză,” possibly by contamination with “pisoi” (kitten), as Ionescu and Milesi think.22 It’s still awkward, contrived, and I disagree with the assertion that “a native ear would […] pick up a burlesque distortion of metempsihoză.”23 A Joyce-trained ear perhaps, but a regular Romanian ear, I very much doubt it. The vowel shift is too drastic, and the lack of the “ps” cluster and the “h,” which is pronounced in Romanian, make the word all but unrecognisable. Worse still, the disguised obscenity introduces a note that is too extreme, albeit veiled, not only for the moment (in which it seems completely unwarranted), but for Bloom’s character tout court. There is one other sentence in this paragraph that is perhaps of particular interest, because in the original it returns an echo of Bloom’s “him” (and possibly entrenches the masculine pronoun in his mind): “Who’s he when he’s at home?” (4.340).24 Sam Slote annotates a subtle possible meaning to the question, as an “accurate paraphrase of Pythagoras’s definition of metempsychosis from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: ‘All things are always changing/ But nothing dies. The spirit comes and goes,/ Is housed wherever it wills’ […].”25 Slote also notes the derisive connotation of the phrase in Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang. The first meaning, arcane, uncertain, dependent on interpretation,

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

“Reading Ulysses is an obstacle course.” Fritz Senn, “Joyce’s Erroneous Cosmos,” 41. Aye, and in translation its obstacles create spectacles of erroring successfully. Wawrzycka, “Tell Us in Plain Words,” 31. Ionescu and Milesi, “The Experience of Ulysses,” 108. Also, perhaps, by a similarity of “pisoză” to “dizeuză” (pronounced “dizöză”), a singer of popular songs. Ionescu and Milesi, “The Experience of Ulysses,” 108. See also Wawrzycka, “Tell Us in Plain Words,” 29-30, for a series of translations of Molly’s question. James Joyce, Ulysses. Based on the 1939 Odyssey Press Edition. With annotations by Sam Slote (Richmond: Alma Classics, 2012), 584.

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would necessarily be lost in translation, as it is escapes most readers of the original. The second is to some extent retrievable in the phrase that Ivănescu uses – “Cine-i ăsta și ce vrea?” (Ro/Ivănescu I/74) – which is at once colloquial and haughty. The him – he connection is replaced in the Romanian version by tu – ăsta (you – this one), which loses the Molly-Bloom soft focus on Boylan. My solution runs along the same lines, as “Ăla, cine ești și ce poftești?” (“Who are you and what do you want?”), which is a Romanian colloquialism, and another version would be to transpose it into the third person “Cine este, ce poftește?”, to match the original, although in this case we lose the internal rhyme. Prying open the translation at this point, where a semblance of realist representation flows seemingly unencumbered by too many Joycean tricks, one gets a sense of the appropriateness and plasticity of the transposition, but also of the various points at which it fails to pick up on meanings that it should strive harder to render. What happens, though, if we leap across the episodes and land on terrain that is considerably more uncertain? So treacherous and shifting that no translation should perhaps be expected to go there. In the Coda to “Oxen of the Sun,” in the racket of pure voice and purer noise, excising a passage – which also contains our “grahamising” metaphor and part of our title – is bound to yield interesting finds: ’Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir, Bantam, two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do. Gum, I’m jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he’d like? Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some H20 for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam’s flowers. Gemini. He’s going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden’s a maddening back. O, lust, our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S’elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There’s a great big holy friar. Vyfor you

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no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I viI get misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen. (14.1507-27) John Noel Turner, whose excellent elucidation of the “Coda” I use to determine most meanings here, calls the passage “odd and cryptic,” having to do with Lenehan’s failure to bet on the winner in the Gold Cup, and with a mise en scène in which “[f]our characters are involved: Lenehan and an unnamed interlocutor stand at a distance spying on Bantam Lyons, who is talking to an unnamed railwayman.”26 It should be stated from the very beginning that without exegesis of this meticulous archaeological kind, albeit not without its inevitable uncertainties and leaps of faith, translators would be lost, so that many punctual failures to understand what is going on are only natural. In Turner’s reading, the fragment begins with the identification of Lyons by Lenehan and the interlocutor’s missing, unheard question (“Where?”), which in his turn Lenehan does not seem to hear so that he asks “What say?” Turner assigns this question to the interlocutor, but then it makes less sense for Lenehan to answer it with “in the speakeasy” (i.e. Lyons is in the bar). Ivănescu translates this well: “E,-ți spun eu. Ce tot spui? Colo-n bar” (Ro/Ivănescu II/101), “It’s him, I tell you. What’s that you’re saying? There in the bar,” until he stumbles against “tight” (i.e. “drunk”), which he translates inexplicably as “chiar că” (“’tis” or “true”). The whole Bantam drunk situation is completely missed, and replaced by a series of misreadings, one more amusing than the other. First, Ivănescu fails to identify Bantam as the character in question and he takes the word to be the common noun “bantam.” Although Bantam is named twice more in the passage, and not at the beginning of a sentence where the capital letter might create confusion, the translator seems unaware of this. What then does Bantam become in the Romanian version? He first changes gender: “Bantam” is translated as “gagică” (Ro/Ivănescu II/101), which would be “gal,” “chick,” but really “hot babe,” since Bantam grows exclamatory appreciative appendages and becomes “ce mai gagică” (“what a gal/chick/babe”). How Ivănescu arrived at this “solution” can perhaps be reconstructed from the partial synonymy of “bantam” (small fowl) and “chick,” from there to the equivalence of “chick” to the Romanian “puicuță” (“chick” as “gal”), and the partial synonymy of “puicuță” and “gagică,” “chick” and “gal.” The second meaning of “bantam” – “spirited” or “aggressive” – might account for the appreciative tone of the syntagm “what a.” Another misreading in the same sentence is that of “teetee”; “two days teetee” is translated, bafflingly, as “două 26

John Noel Turner, “A Commentary on the closing of ‘Oxen of the Sun,’” James Joyce Quarterly 35.1 (Fall 1997) 83-111: 90.

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zile-ntr-un chef” (Ro/Ivănescu II/101), “two days a-partying.” I am at a loss to explain it, unless it is determined retroactively by the next sentence: “Bowsing nowt but claretwine.” The mistake is strange, however, since Gifford and Seidman’s Ulysses Annotated, which Ivănescu consulted, clearly annotates “teetee” as “slang for teetotal.”27 The translation completely reverses the meaning and we lose the idea of Bantam’s fall from teetotal grace after a mere two days, just as we lose the whole of Bantam, although in the very next line he’s referenced as “he” (“And been to barber he have,” 14.1509, translated correctly). A word of warning to accompany the following retranslation of this passage: what I offer are provisional solutions, drafts, since my translation of “Oxen of the Sun” is still very much a work in progress. I would go with: “Iaște, precis. Ce zici? În crâșmă. Făcut. Te șciu io veșine. Bantam de alaltăieri pe sec. Îi dă/aghesmuiește numa cu vin.” This version attempts to stay closer to the original, leaning here and there on slight regional notes (as in “veșine,” a distinctive Moldavian pronunciation of “vecine” (neighbour) that can be at the same time the muddled speech of the drunken man, mocked by one of the speakers.) “Îi dă numa cu vin” (“He guzzles wine only”) is a faint echo of a wellknown line in a Romanian play by I.L. Caragiale,28 which has entered common speech; whereas “a aghesmui” is a verb whose first, ecclesiastical meaning is to “sprinkle with holy water,” but which in slang means “to get drunk.” Either version would be fine, I believe, for the ambiguous Joycean use of “bowse.” The sense that Bantam is the constant focus of observation and derision throughout this moment (perhaps a Bloom substitute), with lines returning to him and his sorry state, possible fainting and eventual departure, all the time weaving in the other story (that of the winning horse Throwaway as the cause), that is, the entire complicated pattern underneath the noise is, I would say, important for Joyce here, but nowhere to be found in the Romanian translation. Thus, an equally confusing moment follows, with “Garn! Have a glint, do” (14.1508) – go on, take a look at Bantam29 – rendered as “Breau! Mai ia una, haide” (Ro/Ivănescu II/101). “Breau” doesn’t exist in Romanian; it’s a funny “drunken” conflation of “vreau” (I want) and “beau” (I drink), whereas the next

27 28

29

Gifford and Seidman, 445. In his 1884 comedy O scrisoare pierdută (A Lost Letter), Caragiale has a minor character, the “Inebriated Citizen,” recount a night of drunkenness as follows: “ne-am abătut pe la o țuică… una, două, trei… pe urmă dă-i cu bere, dă-i cu vin, dă-i cu vin, dă-i cu bere” (“we detoured for a schnapps… one, two, three… then guzzle beer, guzzle wine, guzzle wine, guzzle beer.” See, for instance, I.L. Caragiale, Teatru (București: Litera Internațional, 2010), 89. Cf. Turner, “Commentary,” 90.

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sentence is “Have another one [i.e. a pint], do.” Despite the apt Joycean spirit of the “breau” pun, which should be appreciated, this is still a mistranslation. In retranslating, I follow the meaning and go for “I-aruncă mata un ochi aici” (“Take a look, go on”). More inspired is Ivănescu’s translation of “too full for words”: “dă pe de lături” (“spilling by the sides”), capturing the sense of the man (he is turned back into a man by Ivănescu as well) being too full of the drink. Skipping ahead a couple of lines to Lenehan’s “wheeze” from “Aeolus” – “What opera is like a railwayline?” (7.588), the returning pun on the title of Rose of Castile – rows of cast steel, whose partial revenant is due to the fact that Bantam is with “a railway bloke” (14.1510). The pun is indeed “lost in translation”30 here, with the translation merely saying “what a cast,” but, since the joke is incomplete, it’s less of an issue. To compensate, I have two rescued puns on the title of the same opera in Romanian, Trandafirul din Castilia (I cannot use “roza” – “rose” – if the puns are to exist at all, but “trandafir” is the more common translation of “rose” in Romanian. The more natural-sounding of the two puns, and the one I am leaning towards, involves, however, a change of Lenehan’s playful question. In the Romanian version it would become “Ce operă e ca o croitoreasă leneșă?” (“What opera is like a lazy seamstress?”), “Trândav firul din Castilia” (“The Sloth/Idle Thread of Castille”). Thus, the fragment at the end of “Oxen,” as an afterthought, would be “Trandafirul din Castilia. Trândav firul” (“sloth/idle thread”) for “Rose of Castille. Rows of cast.” On the whole, Ivănescu’s translation alternates accurate renditions with misreadings, some of which can be explained while others remain impenetrable. For instance, one does get the sense that at a certain point the man in question (Bantam, in the original) starts to “holler” a song, the famous “Colleen Bawn,” although Ivănescu just replaces that with “O iubito” (“O darling”). Immediately, though, he misses the point of the line “Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand” (“Shut his mouth with a firm hand”) as a reaction to the whole lotta hollering. He instead translates it with a view towards the coming story of the dodgy dealings around the Gold Cup: “Aici trebuie o mână fermă să le strice aranjamentul” (Ro/Ivănescu II/101), “A firm hand is needed here to mess up their arrangement,” although the phrase “Dutch oven” as “boxing slang for mouth”31 is there in Ulysses Annotated. It doesn’t take much to arrive at a better version: “Să-i vâre careva pumnul în fleancă” (“Someone shut his gob with a fist”). The next misstep stems not from the translator but from a pesky typographical error that still dots certain editions of the novel: a mere period, a dot 30 31

Ionescu and Milesi, 108. Gifford and Seidman, 445.

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which confuses the identity of a character, a dot between Stephen and Hand: “The Ruffin cly the nab of Stephen. Hand as give me the jady coppaleen.” As Slote explains, “[t]he full stop between Stephen and Hand is a mistake (introduced in the 1932 printing of the Odyssey Press edition.)”32 Ivănescu does as well as can be hoped on the dot: “Tunie dracu-n ceafa lui Stephen. Cu mâna lui mi-a dat-o mârțoagă” (Ro/Ivănescu II/101), “Devil bugger Stephen’s nape. Twas his hand that gave me the nag.” I particularly like that slangy “tunie,” which is a colloquial abbreviation of “futu-ne,” “bugger us” with the coinciding meanings of “fuck (me)” but also “fuck that.” While it departs from the more archaic tone of the original (cly, nab etc.), the character’s frustration about being given the wrong horse to bet on detonates in the text. In my version, I’d probably hold closer to the register and try to juggle the archaic and the regional, something along the lines of “Se vârî Pârdalnicu-n ceafa lui Stephen Hand de-mi dădu gloaba șnapană” (“The Ruffin/Devil stole himself into the nape of Stephen Hand as gave me the crooked nag”). The rest of the Sceptre/Throwaway mishap flows accurately in the Romanian version, with Ivănescu stumbling only at the difficult pun “Tell a cram, that” (14.1517), for which he chooses the uninspired and inaccurate “Ai cui spune” (Ro/Ivănescu II/101), literally “[like] there’s somebody you could tell this to,” but with the sense of “as if anyone would listen.” One could conceivably pun on “telegramă” in Romanian, but it would be somewhat of a stretch: “’Te la cramă și zi așa ceva” (“Go to the winery and say something like that”), although it could be integrated with the drinking context of the fragment and with the very next line, “Gospeltrue.” Ivănescu also uses a more colloquial phrase for “criminal diversion?” (14. 17178): “[V]ro manevră de a lor?” (“A sleight of hand from them?”); this obscures part of the legal context of Stephen Hand’s grahamising and telegramming which might “land him in chokeechokee,” but by and large the core meaning of the micro-story survives. Finally, I would like to take a look at the closing part of the passage, in which there is a more substantial loss of meaning. Although the Romanian version correctly translates the line “O, lust, our refuge and our strength” (14.1520), “O, luxură, limanul și puterea noastră” (Ro/Ivănescu II/101), with a high register

32

Ulysses, with annotations by Sam Slote, 763. A note: the original for the Romanian translation of 1984 is given as Shakespeare and Co., Paris, 1928. That would be, according to Jeri Johnson, the third impression of the 1926 second edition. See “Appendix B” in James Joyce, Ulysses. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Jeri Johnson (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 742. The Romanian mention of the edition on which Ivănescu based his translation would therefore be inaccurate if the full stop was not added until 1932.

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“luxură” for “lust” rather than the earthier “poftă,” which would perhaps be more appropriate, Ivănescu seems to ignore the fact that from this point onwards a mock prayer33 is being recited, either by Stephen34 or Mulligan. The blasphemous prayer weaves in with the other voices and, more poignantly, with a shift of “focus” from the “decamping” Bantam Lyons (missing in action in Ivănescu’s translation, as we saw) to the “old man Leo,” who now becomes the target of boisterous derision, as a Jew. Leo is Bloom, of course, but it is also interesting to note that the one who established the prayer used by Joyce was pope Leo XIII,35 which creates an aura of ambivalence around the line “No fake, old man Leo” (14.1524). The context, as reconstructed by Turner runs thus: “Evidently, word of Bloom’s ‘Cyclops’ fiasco has spread far and wide. That is, the railwayman now thinks the rumor that Bloom made a bundle on Throwaway is confirmed as true. Lyons’ friend from the railway then launches an anti-Semitic complaint against Bloom, who has hoarded his racing knowledge. It is voiced in a mock Yiddish accent.”36 The Yiddish mockery is absent in the final Romanian version – incidentally, rendering a Yiddish accent phonetically in Romanian is also quite challenging – although there are remnants of Ivănescu having tried, such as “Te ce” (Ro/Ivănescu II/102) for “Vyfor” instead of the phonetically correct “De ce?” (Why?). I continue that, ungrammatically as in the original: “Te ce nu spui tu la mine?” – (“Vy you no tell me?”). One can wonder whether these excisions were due to censorship intervention or to the translator realising that it was never going to be accepted as such, had he gone all the way. The whole sentence “Vel, I ses, if that ain’t a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah” (14.1526) is translated in a very odd contracted form as “Dacă nici asta n-o fi, atunci ce” (Ro/Ivănescu II/102), “If that ain’t it, then what is,” which might lead one to infer that something was hacked out in editing and the scar healed badly, although outside of checking the manuscript there is no way of knowing. Bloom is therefore not called a “sheeny” in the Romanian translation, nor is he accused of imparting a selfish “sheeny nachez” (“reward”37 or “delight”) unto his friends. Equally, the phallic jokes included in the prayer – “John Thomas” and “yerd,” respectively a euphemism and a slang term38 for penis – are missing, with Ivănescu keeping the proper name in the former case and using the proper phrase in the prayer

33 34 35 36 37 38

See Gifford and Seidman, Ulysses Annotated, 96. Turner, “Commentary,” 91. Gifford and Seidman, Ulysses Annotated, 96. Turner, “Commentary,” 92. Slote, Ulysses, 763. Both Gifford (446) and Slote (763) mention this connotation.

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(“pentru rugăciunile,” “for the prayers”) in the latter. Obviously, in retranslation this would have to be restored, and it shouldn’t be too difficult: “Pfăi, ’ce eu, dacă asta nu-i răsplată de jidan, pff, să moară mama și eu cu ea” (“Vel, I says, if that ain’t a sheeny’s retribution, let my mother die and I with her”). Equally, there are plenty of phallic euphemisms and slang words in Romanian, so an adequate one should be forthcoming. Overall, the translation of the Coda does passably well, given the amount of noise, ambiguity, allusion, punning in the original, with certain losses of narrative coherence, expressiveness and precision that the retranslation will strive to address and strain to re-dress. It is difficult – and well beyond the scope of this chapter – to attempt a more comprehensive diagnosis from the scattered shards considered here, for which I have attempted to offer a new form in retranslation. It could be argued they are symptomatic for the 1984 Romanian version: although Ivănescu’s translation is not lacking in plasticity, flair, euphony or literary amplitude, it is strewn with imprecisions of various origins and is moulded by a more general drive to attune the text to the translator’s chimera of a Romanian “literary” discourse. Addressing as many as these issues as possible is the current task of the (re)translator.

Acknowledgements This work was made possible by a fellowship offered jointly by Translation House Looren and the Zürich James Joyce Foundation (September 2017) and by the invitation to participate in the ReTranslation Workshop at the Joyce Foundation in Zurich (October 2017). For both I am extremely grateful.

Chapter 13

(Re-)reforegnising the Foreign: Notes on the Italian Retranslations of James Joyce’s Ulysses Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi

Abstract The authors discuss the “disruptive potential” of Ulysses to the literary polysystem in terms of its generative and re-generative influence on cultural environment of the target language. Translation contributes to linguistic innovation through new writings that include retranslations. Bollettieri Bosinelli and Torresi’s discussion of the Italian translations of Ulysses traces the differences between the seminal 1960 translation by De Angelis and the recent retranslations by Celati and Terrinoni. What sounded colloquial enough in De Angelis’s foreignized translation needs to be “reforeignized” for 21st century Italian readers. While some instances of retranslation attempt to domesticate the original, micro-domestication on the idiomatic level might be actually essential for the macro-foreignization processes to become visible.

1

Introduction

When the first version of this paper came out in 2012 in Scientia Traductionis,1 only Enrico Terrinoni’s retranslation of Ulysses had been published. At the time, Terrinoni’s was the only full retranslation of the book on the Italian market after Giulio De Angelis’s, which had been published in 1960 and updated so as to include the amendments of the Gabler edition in 1988.2 Gianni Celati’s

1 See Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi, “Reforeignising the Foreign: the Italian Retranslations of James Joyce’s Ulysses,” in James Joyce & Tradução II, eds. Erika Mihálycsa and Jolanta Wawrzycka, Scientia Traductionis n.12 (2012): 36-44, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5007/ 1980-4237.2012n12p36 accessed 30 June 2019. 2 Famously, an earlier retranslation (Bona Flecchia’s Ulisse, Florence: Shakespeare and Co., 1995) was withdrawn from the market due to copyright infringement. For the discussion of Flecchia’s translation, see Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli, “Who is she when she is not at home?,” in A Collideorscape of Joyce: Festschrift for Fritz Senn, eds. Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1998), 444-460.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_015

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retranslation came out in 2013, and although excerpts had already been published in Italian newspapers, Rosa Maria and I thought that we should wait for the full version before venturing a critical analysis. In the following years, we were both taken by other projects (sometimes jointly) and postponed this endeavour until there was no time left for Rosa Maria to work on it. I am therefore immensely grateful for a chance to update this article, because it is a way for me to work “with” Rosa Maria again. I integrated the existing essay with examples from, and reflections on, Celati’s retranslation, making it as Rosa Maria and I had planned it from the very start. The rest, however, is still pretty much as we jointly planned it (besides a few bibliographical updates), so that her voice can still be heard.

2

A Few Remarks about Terminology

Although this seemingly obscure language might be familiar to those who have ever dealt with James Joyce’s works, perhaps we should start by explaining the meaning of the first half of our title, “(re)reforeignizing the foreign.” There is no need to argue that Joyce’s English sounds and looks foreign even to native users.3 Similarly, it has already been argued that Joyce’s Ulysses, in particular, was conceived and promoted as a subversive, deviant and alienating work from the very start – in other words, that Ulysses was treated, as well as designed by its author, to be a “foreigner” in the English-language literary tradition of its time.4 Such inherent foreignness poses interesting translation problems, as well as opportunities, since it requires a treatment different from the one that, according to Lawrence Venuti, is usually preferred by the publishing industry and market, i.e., domestication – bringing the original closer to the linguistic standards and literary canon of the recipient culture.5

3 See Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli, “Transcreative Joyce,” in The James Joyce Translation Dossier, ed. Jolanta Wawrzycka, Scientia Traductionis n. 8 (2010), 178-181, DOI: https://doi .org/10.5007/1980-4237.2010n8p190 accessed 30 June 2019. 4 See for instance Ira Torresi, “The polysystem and the postcolonial: The wondrous adventures of James Joyce and his Ulysses across book markets,” Translation Studies 6:2, eds. Angela Kershaw and Gabriela Saldanha (London/New York: Routledge, 2013), 217-231. 5 Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), The Scandals of Translation. Towards an Ethics of Difference (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), and “Strategies of Translation,” in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation, ed. Mona Baker (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 240-244. For an application of Venuti’s theories to Joyce in general, see Serenella Zanotti, “The Translator’s Visibility: The Italian Translations of Finnegans Wake,” in the Recent Trends in Joyce Studies dossier, ed.

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What we intend to explore in this paper is the notion of re-foreignization: that is to say, restoring Ulysses to its legitimate foreignness in a recipient culture that differs not only geographically, but also diachronically, from the culture it was originally intended for. We will do so with reference to the two new Italian translations of Ulysses – the first one completed by Enrico Terrinoni in collaboration with Carlo Bigazzi, and the other by Gianni Celati. Our chapter is divided into two parts: in the first we discuss the notion of retranslation and the problems connected with it. In the second part we will present specific examples of how the foreignizing potential of Ulysses was brought to life again in Terrinoni’s and Celati’s translations.

3

Why Retranslate at All?

On January 1st, 2012, the copyright on the 1922 edition of Ulysses, formerly held by the James Joyce Estate, expired in Europe, with all the effects so aptly described by Robert Spoo in his plenary lecture at the 2012 International James Joyce Symposium in Dublin.6 As a direct consequence, there was a widespread rush to publish new translations of the novel in (and out of) the old continent. This, in turn, stirred a renewed interest in Joyce all over the world, resulting in new translations and editions of all of his works. This wealth of new translations stimulates reflections on why, apart from the feeling of liberation and for commercial reasons, classics like Ulysses tend to be retranslated over and over again. One reason might be that, if translation is a way of reading the original (as Fritz Senn has convincingly argued over the years),7 then each new translation sheds new light on the same text, thus perpetually expanding and deepening the knowledge held by the scholars’ and

Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli, mediAzioni n. 2 (Forlì: Dept. SITLeC of the University of Bologna, 2006), http://mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.it/index.php/no2-anno2006/48-dossierno2 -anno2006/116-the-translators-visibility-the-italian-translations-of-finnegans-wake.html accessed 30 June 2019. For a discussion of the foreignization/domestication issue in translating Modernism, see M. Teresa Caneda-Cabrera, “The Untranslatability of Modernism,” in Modernism, eds. Ástráður Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2007), 675-692. For foreignization/domestication in the translation of Ulysses, see Ira Torresi, “Domesticating or foreignizing foreignization? Joyce translation as a test for Venuti’s theories,” Papers on Joyce n. 13 (Seville: Spanish James Joyce Society, 2007), 99-112. 6 Robert Spoo, “The public domains,” https://vimeo.com/44010043 accessed 30 June 2019. See also Spoo’s book, Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 7 See for instance Fritz Senn, Joyce’s Dislocutions: Essays on Reading as Translation, ed. John Paul Riquelme (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).

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readers’ communities. This is how Enrico Terrinoni frames his translation of Ulysses: Translation is one of the myriad impossible possibilities allowed by literary communication. To (re)translate an “open text” like Ulysses does not just mean to change its nature by turning it into something else, but it is also a way of reshaping our own perception of the possible world created by the book in past readings. To translate the untranslatable is an attempt to locate and identify the fading profile of new identities.8 Retranslation is a form of re-reading, and additionally, it provides the reader with a new key (or new keys) not available in previous translations. This holds even more true for readers who cannot directly access the original because they do not know the language and therefore can only adopt the reading keys provided by the various translations. Actually, it might be argued – as Sam Slote has done – that foreign readers, when they can access multiple translations in their own language, are at an advantage compared with English speakers who tend to read just the original (of course, the wealth of critical material published in English as well as in other languages can count as re-reading, too, but that is another story): [O]ne problem English readers have with Ulysses is that they have just the one text to read, but non-native speakers can have their choice of translations. The public domain is not just an Irish one: we can now all have our different Joyces.9 But apart from an academic or literary interest in developing new insight into the original text, there are several other reasons why a text can or should be retranslated, as Serenella Zanotti has argued in a study on the retranslation of audiovisual material.10 Such reasons range from changes in the norms of translation, to changes in the target culture or in the needs of the target audience, 8

9

10

Enrico Terrinoni, “Translating Ulysses in the Era of Public Joyce: A Return to Interpretation,” in Bridging Cultures: Intercultural Mediation in Literature, Linguistics and the Arts, eds. Ciara Hogan, Nadine Rentel and Stephanie Schwerter (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2012), 113-124. Sam Slote, “The Irish International Joyce.” Available at https://www.academia.edu/ 19130744/The_Irish_International_Joyce accessed 5 January 2019. In this passage, Slote quotes Robbert-Jan Henkes. Serenella Zanotti, “The retranslation of audiovisual texts: focus on redubbing,” in Minding the gap: Studies in linguistic and cultural exchange for RMBB, eds. Raffaella Baccolini, Delia Chiaro, Christopher Rundle and Sam Whitsitt (Bologna: Bologna University Press, 2011), 145-157: 147.

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down to ideological and political factors. It is also important to notice that new translations do not erase previous ones, but are supplementary to them, and old translations remain part of the memory of the receiving culture and literary canon. The reasons summarised by Zanotti foreshadow a more specific one, which applies to the retranslation of classics like Ulysses. If a classic and/or its firstever translation are left unchallenged by other translations that can function as critical (re)readings, they run the risk of being perceived as unchanging literary monuments cast in stone, of “be[ing] approached with a mixture of awe and reverence that could act to obscure their subversive origins,” as André Lefevere writes with reference to Catullus.11 And, as we have already pointed out in this paper, the “subversive origins” of Ulysses can hardly be doubted. Ulysses has a disruptive potential that is generative and regenerative not only of the literary polysystem but also, starting from there, of the cultural environment at large. But such disruptive and generative potential can only be preserved and kept active through innovation, in the form of new writings or rewritings (including retranslations) that make the work relevant and disruptive again for today’s readers and their cultures.12 The examples in the following section might better illustrate how a foreign (in all senses) classic like Ulysses can be re-foreignized for the Italian readership by using a language and extratextual allusions that are more functional in the light of the linguistic and cultural evolution that has naturally occurred on the Italian scene since the publication of the first Italian translation (I/De Angelis, 1960).13

4

Bottoms, Trams, and Jalap: Reforeignization Made Real

A first possible advantage of a retranslator vis-à-vis the original translator is that s/he works on already broken ground, and therefore can more easily – if s/he so wishes – dare to detach him/herself more from the original, using the 11 12 13

André Lefevere, Translating literature: practice and theory in a comparative literature context (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1992), 92. Cf. Lefevere: “The literary system is supposed to have an impact on the environment by means of the works it produces, or the rewritings thereof” (1992: 23; our emphasis). Considering that the new translations by Celati and Terrinoni were carried out on the 1922 edition of Ulysses, we have not compared them with the Gabler edition of the original and the 1988 Italian post-Gabler revision by De Angelis. Instead, page references for the 1922 edition of Ulysses, as reproduced by Oxford University Press in 1993 (U 1922), and page numbers for the De Angelis 1960 translation (I/De Angelis) refer to the 1971 I Meridiani edition (James Joyce, Ulisse, trans. Giulio De Angelis, Milan: Mondadori).

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first translation as a sort of springboard to land more closely to a grammar, a syntax and lexical usages that are more peculiar to the current target language (i.e., “sound more natural” in it). This domestication of the linguistic surface might pave the way for a readier acceptance of the foreign content of the passage in question, or of the novel in general. An instance of this kind of surface domestication that actually serves the purposes of foreignization is the new rendering of Buck Mulligan’s slang in “Telemachus.” In example 1, De Angelis’s translation appears to follow more closely the grammatical and syntactic structure of the original, while Terrinoni and Celati feel free to rewrite Mulligan’s line in a way that sounds more appropriate for a naturally occurring conversation: ex. 1:

Lend us a loan of (U 1922, 5)14 Mollaci in prestito (I/De Angelis 7) (give us [low register] a loan of) Prestami (I/Terrinoni 34, I/Celati 7) (lend me)

In the following example, the two new translators choose different paths. Terrinoni updates De Angelis’s collocation “piantare baccano” rewriting the whole sentence without a verb, in a credible imitation of spoken colloquial Italian. His lexical choice for the rather neutral English “noise” [“casino”], locally lowers the register – etymologically, a “casino” is a brothel, but the term is now metonymically used for any noisy, crowded place (similarly to its synonym, “bordello”). Celati, conversely, keeps De Angelis’s “baccano,” and tries to defuse its old-fashioned flavour by using a neutral “far(e),” a more literal “make,” instead of the old “piantare”: ex. 2:

If he makes any noise here (U 1922, 7) Se fa tanto di piantare baccano qui (I/De Angelis 11) (if he does as much as make noise here)

14

As Fritz Senn aptly commented (personal communication, 2012), the complete sentence, “Lend us a loan of your noserag,” is “actually a classical trope, here with an Irish inflection, a ‘figura etymologica.’ [It therefore] strains upwards rather than towards the vernacular.” Here we group the example together with the others under the general definition of “slang,” because it both contributes to characterize Mulligan’s vivid style of speech and is translated as if it were actually an instance of slang (at least by De Angelis).

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Qualche altro casino qua dentro (I/Terrinoni 37) (any other mess in here) Se si mette a far baccano (I/Celati 11) (if he starts to make noise) Below, in example 3 from the same scene, De Angelis had chosen to render the non-marked verb “give” with a marked “appioppare,” which was both lowregister and pejorative. In this case Terrinoni updates the verb with the more contemporary reflexive “beccarsi,” which is, however, equally low-register and carries a similarly negative connotation. One can “appioppare” – give – only something that is unwanted by the receiver; and one “si becca” – gets – only something that is unwanted, such as a cold or, as Mulligan’s threat goes, a beating. Celati seems to revert to the original non-marking of the verb (he actually does without the verb altogether) but preserves the colour of Joyce’s “ragging,” translating it as “sgrugnata,” a non-standard, low-register colloquial Italian word that comes from “grugno,” literally a “pig’s snout” and metonymically, “(human) face”: ex. 3:

a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe (U 1922, 7) una lezione peggio di quella che hanno appioppata a Clive Kempthorpe (I/De Angelis 11) (a lesson worse than that they gave [pejorative, old colloquial] Clive Kempthorpe) una bella lezione, peggio di quella che s’è beccato Clive Kempthorpe (I/Terrinoni 37) (quite a lesson, worse than the one Clive Kempthorpe got for himself) una sgrugnata peggio di quella a Clive Kempthorpe (I/Celati 11) (a face-smashing [colloquial] worse than Clive Kempthorpe’s)

In other places of the same dialogue between Mulligan and Stephen, De Angelis seems to be influenced by lexical suggestions that Terrinoni and Celati ignore. In the following example, in order to preserve the idiomaticity of the original, De Angelis follows the suggestion of the word “nose” and uses an Italian idiom that revolves around its Italian equivalent “naso,” but has a different meaning from the idiom used by Joyce and might even lead to a different characterization of Stephen, since it indicates a disapproving facial expression

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(wringing one’s nose) that possibly betrays not so much a feeling of resentment as one of annoyed snobbish superiority. Terrinoni, on the other hand, rewrites the sentence choosing to ignore its idiomaticity, but preserving its colloquial flavour. Celati simply takes out any allusion to noses, neutralizing the question into standard Italian: ex. 4:

What have you up your nose against me? (U 1922, 7) Che cos’è che ti fa torcere il naso contro di me? (I/De Angelis 11) (What is it that makes you wring your nose against me?) Che ti ho fatto? (I/Terrinoni 37) (What have I done to you?) Cos’hai contro di me? (I/Celati 11) (What do you have against me?)

In example 5, conversely, while De Angelis pursues the same verb-preposition sequence of the English phrasal verb, both Terrinoni and Celati choose an Italian idiom that, in addition to sounding more natural in contemporary Italian, makes up for the lost idiom in the previous example: ex. 5:

Cough it up (U 1922, 7) Sputa fuori (I/De Angelis 11) (Spit it out) Sputa il rospo (I/Terrinoni 37, I/Celati 11) (“Spit the toad” [idiomatic: get it off your chest])

Examples 1-5 seem to confirm that retranslation does respond to the need of bringing the work back in line with the target readership’s expectations, once the previous translations have lost their grip on the receiving culture and language. This, however, does not necessarily mean that such instances of retranslation are an attempt to domesticate the original, quite the opposite: micro-domestication might be necessary to make the macroforeignization processes emerge. In the case of “Telemachus” in particular, the lively dialogue between Mulligan and Stephen acts as a counterpoint to the more experimental language used elsewhere. One might even argue that erasing the variation between standard and non-standard usage through-

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out the novel (i.e., having all parts of the book sound odd to contemporary readers) would not quite serve the purpose of fully revealing the disruptive potential of Joyce’s writing. Updating Mulligan’s colloquial language in such a way that it sounds more familiar than the Italian used by De Angelis (which had all too naturally grown obsolete after 50-odd years), turns out to be functional to the purpose of expressing such potential again – in other words, it is a practical application of the principle of “reforeignizing the foreign.” Similarly to what happens with linguistic features, retranslation is often needed to make extratextual references as transparent and plausible as the author meant them, even in the face of a changing material world. Example 6 is a case in point. It is extracted from the “HELLO, CENTRAL!” fake piece of news in “Aeolus,” reporting a blackout that blocks traffic: ex. 6:

eight lines tramcars with motionless trolleys (U 1922, 142) otto linee tranvai con trolley immobili (I/De Angelis 203) le otto linee, tram con gli archetti immobili (I/Terrinoni 166) le otto linee dei tramway con la motrice immobile (I/Celati 204)

The word “trolley” used by De Angelis (in both pre-and post-Gabler editions) was a loan from English that at that time mainly indicated the bars that connected an electric tram to the wires overhead. The word still retains this technical meaning in current Italian, but it has gained an additional, and far more popular, usage – a suitcase on wheels – that would override this specific meaning if the word were to be used in a current translation. Today, De Angelis’s sentence would be primarily interpreted as “eight lines tramcars with motionless suitcases [on them?].” It is therefore clear that Terrinoni’s solution of changing “trolleys” into its literal Italian synonym “archetti” seems more functional because it prevents contemporary readers from wondering about the role of suitcases in that passage (and perhaps losing sight of the other “oddities” in the “Aeolus” episode). Celati’s choice of “motrice” (power car) goes further down this domesticating line, as it substitutes a technical word with one that has a different referent but is far more widely known, or even easier to imagine for those who have never taken a tram. On the other hand, Celati makes up for this choice with a distinctly foreignizing “tramway,” which is not used in current Italian.

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A similar translation strategy that is influenced by the changes in the recipient language and culture can be observed in the constrained translation of the term “jalap”: ex. 7:

made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus (U 1922, 7) ha fatto il gruzzolo vendendo scialappa agli Zulu (I/De Angelis 10) ha fatto i soldi vendendo gialappa agli zulù (I/Terrinoni 36)

Whereas in 1960 De Angelis had a choice between two equally correct and possible spellings of the word (“gialappa” and “scialappa”), the spelling he chose is now virtually excluded by the visibility obtained by the other form thanks to a group of extremely popular TV and radio commentators called “Gialappa’s Band” (or just “la Gialappa’s”). The group’s Wikipedia page reports that the name was coined during the 1986 Mexico world championship, the first series of soccer games they commented for a radio show, in connection with the bout of intestinal problems suffered by several players, which they jocularly blamed on a Mexican laxative plant, jalap (gialappa). This detail about the meaning of the group’s name might not be universally known to all consumers of Italian popular culture, but the spelling is – and this would make in itself the alternative spelling for the same referent, “scialappa,” virtually impossible today, while it was perfectly functional in De Angelis’s times. Celati’s translation avoids the conundrum by replacing jalap with “castor oil,” a different referent with the same function: ha fatto il grano vendendo olio di ricino agli Zulù (I/Celati 10) (he made a fortune [colloquial] selling castor oil to Zulus) The influence of media language can similarly be traced in another specific translation choice made by Terrinoni (and this time, Celati follows suit). In Molly’s monologue, we often find what goes under the euphemistic definition of “explicit language,” an area whose boundaries inevitably move or blur with time and changing norms of politeness. One is faced, then, with the problem of preserving the unconventional nature of the original, even at the cost of detaching oneself from formal equivalence strictly intended. In the following example, we will only focus on the rendering of the word “bottom”: ex. 8:

any man thatd kiss a womans bottom Id throw my hat at him (U 1922, 727)

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se un uomo è capace di baciare il sedere di una donna non ne darei 2 soldi (I/De Angelis 1040) chiunque bacia il culo a una donna mi fa cascare le braccia (I/Terrinoni 736) a un uomo così capace di baciare un culo di donna non darei due soldi (I/Celati 980) De Angelis’s translation reads “sedere,” lexically similar since it is the semipolite way of alluding to a bottom; today, it sounds and looks completely devoid of any shade of vulgarity. Terrinoni’s and Celati’s translations, on the other hand, feature “culo,” literally “arse” – a formally stronger, more vulgar word than in the original. Whereas its usage in 1960 would have been frankly out of the question, the word is no longer taboo in the Italian media discourse of 2012/13 (and even less so in private discourse), which neutralizes much of its perceived vulgarity, while it aptly recreates the essence of Molly’s voice for a contemporary readership. One should also bear in mind that “bottom” is important in the “Penelope” episode, as is made clear by Joyce himself in a letter to Frank Budgen: Penelope is the clou of the book. The first sentence contains 2500 words. There are eight sentences in the episode. It begins and ends with the female word yes. It turns like the huge earth ball slowly surely and evenly round and round spinning, its four cardinal points being the female breasts, arse, womb and cunt expressed by the words because, bottom (in all senses bottom button, bottom of the class, bottom of the sea, bottom of his heart) woman, yes. though probably more obscene than any preceding episode it seems to me to be perfectly sane full of amoral fertilisable untrustworthy engaging shrewd limited prudent indifferent Weib. (LI 170)

5

Conclusion

It can be argued that Ulysses lends itself particularly well to transcreation, since it is an open work not only in Umberto Eco’s sense in his theory of the opera aperta (unlimited semiosis, generation of multiple meanings),15 but also 15

Umberto Eco, Opera aperta (Milan: Bompiani, 1962).

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in the sense of a work open to new and re-newed relationships with readers (and translators among them) – as Paola Pugliatti and Romana Zacchi call it, “an inexhaustible text.”16 It has earned the name that Brook Thomas gave it in the title of his 1982 study: “A book of many happy returns,”17 paraphrasing what one says to a beloved person to celebrate an anniversary and wish her or him long life. It seems to us that each new translation is in fact a way to wish long life to a beloved text, and the wish really works only if the translator is inspired by true affection. Just as Italo Calvino writes, “It is no use reading classics out of a sense of duty or respect, we should only read them for love”18 – a statement that is all the more valid if one replaces “reading” with “translating.” Without any kind of affection towards Ulysses, it would be very hard to embrace the plurality of meanings embedded in Joyce’s text, and the challenge of translating it. Joyce’s sarcastic words in the ALP chapter of Finnegans Wake come to mind: “howmulty plurators made eachone in person? Latin me that my Trinity scholard!” (FW 225.25-26). We are convinced that no scholar, whether from Trinity or elsewhere, will ever be able to disclose all the possible interpretations of Ulysses. As Terrinoni writes: Ulysses is, if I am allowed the adjective, a “plural” text, plural as the universe, according to Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. It is even more plural when it gets translated. It becomes plural in the sense that Borges meant when he said that an original text can sometimes be unfaithful to its translation. Though translation is in many ways akin to a love affair, one must admit that there is little room for faithfulness or unfaithfulness when we are asked to radically modify the cultural and linguistic horizon of a literary text. Translation is always rewriting, and a work like Ulysses gives us the opportunity to test this very plurivocity of the language, used in interconnection with the multiculturality of the universe described by Joyce in so much detail. […] [Translating] is, to employ Stephen Dedalus’s famous metaphor in “Nestor” – the second episode of 16

17 18

Paola Pugliatti and Romana Zacchi, Terribilia Meditans: La coerenza del monologo interiore in Ulysses (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1983), 5. The definition is taken from the dedication to “the readers of Ulysses: not the hasty readers […] but the Patient Readers, whose reading time […] is all the time that can be devoted to reading. Those Readers, in short, who contributed to make Ulysses an inexhaustible text” (our translation). Brook Thomas, James Joyce’s Ulysses: A book of many happy returns (Baton Rouge/London: Louisiana State University Press, 1982). Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics? Trans. Martin McLaughlin (London: Penguin, 2009), 6.

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Ulysses – like standing on a “pier,” a “disappointed bridge,” casting a nottoo-cold eye at distant shores in order to re-imagine possible encounters, and wait for new social and communicative exchanges with the Other.19 We therefore believe we should all be most grateful to the translators who have accepted or will accept the challenge of translating Joyce, because they give us the opportunity of re-thinking our own identity as readers, as well as the new identities that are re-shaping the world around us. 19

Enrico Terrinoni, “Translating Ulysses in the Era of Public Joyce,” 120-123.

Chapter 14

Dublinezen, or: the Dutch Dubliners Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes

Abstract In 2016, a new Dutch translation of Joyce’s Dubliners appeared, Dublinezen. The translators, having had the experience of translating the entire corpus of Joyce’s published works, from Finnegans Wake (2002) up to the poems, the play and the essays (collected in Varia, 2018), explain how their translational choices were influenced by all kinds of different scholarship, old and recent, as well as recourse to the earlier versions as printed in the James Joyce Archive, if only for a better insight in the developing stylistics of Joyce’s prose. They stress the importance of flinging wide the nets of research and curiosity, and among the contributors to their translation appear names such as Harald Beck, Vincent Deane, Robert Scholes, Hans Walter Gabler, Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, Elizabeth M. Bonapfel, and countless dictionary and internet sources. Their tale is also a cautionary one, about the politics of retranslation, with at least one clear-cut moral: never agree to revise an existing translation.

In 2003 the publisher of our Finnegans Wake translation, Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep, intended to bring out the eighth edition of Rein Bloem’s translation of Dubliners, which had originally appeared in 1968 at another publishing house, De Bezige Bij. The successive editions had been somewhat revised by the translator, but the publisher asked us, as fledgling Joyceans (our translation of the Wake having just been published, in 2002), if we were prepared “to have a quick, fresh look at it,” with the enticing prospect of “a big bag of books” as a royal fee. We yielded with a sigh but we soon noticed that “having a quick, fresh look at it” would be far from sufficient. The big shocker was that this translation, despite the revisions, was very faulty and in the course of thirty-five years could have gone from one edition to the other without any massive uproar or substantial scrutiny from readers, critics, fellowtranslators or even the Dutch Joyceans that came and went before us. In fact, we were stunned. We encountered all the mistakes in the translator’s book, the most glaring one being the translation of “uncrowned king” with “gekroonde koning,” the “crowned king,” which really is the opposite of what it should be.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_016

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These kinds of blunders belong to the lesser grade of evil “in the queer world of verbal transmigration,” owing to human frailty, stupidity, ignorance, time pressure, lack of editorial competence or “misguided knowledge” and therefore more or less “excusable” as Nabokov taught us.1 But there was more: multiple Anglicisms (e.g. “I’m surprised,” almost literally transferred as “I am surprised,” whereas in normal Dutch usage we would say something like “it surprises me,” or “I am stunned”); neglecting or even downright disrupting of typically Joycean typographical features (the cutting up of paragraphs; “perverted commas” instead of Joyce’s favoured dashes); misunderstanding of Anglo-Irish and other backgrounds, which could have been prevented by a simple look into recent or even older scholarship (e.g. the translation of “Margaret,” in Byron’s poem, with “my wife” while Byron’s niece was meant); inconsistency in the translation of key words, like Joyce’s ultimate characterization of Dublin, “paralysis.” And then there were the interventions we deemed necessary to get closer to the Joycean original (“two poor women” was translated as “two poorly dressed women,” while “twee arme vrouwen” (“two poor women”) would have done the trick; “she was dead” as the more verbose “zij was gestorven,” i.e. “she had passed away,” while in Dutch we have the almost verbatim equivalent in “zij was dood”). All in all, this translation of Dubliners was no more than a watered-down version of the original English. Curiously enough, many of the mistakes we could see at a glance had already been picked up many years before. In a 1978 article, the critic Kees Helsloot took Rein Bloem to task for the great many mistakes (not typos, but real errors in translation) that Bloem committed in the first edition (1968) and that had been left untouched in the second (1971).2 Helsloot listed 63 of them and almost all of them spot-on – but O wonder, in the third edition of Dubliners, which came out in the same year as Helsloot’s essay, not one of these was corrected, and the whole translation stayed just as it was, up until the seventh edition of 1997. High time, finally, for a thorough revision, the publisher deemed. And so did we. Our mistake was that we agreed to do just that, in all our naïveté, revising it, whereas we should have opted for a complete retranslation. Never agree to brush up an existing translation. For it’s not only the words that may be in need of better equivalents; often it is the tone and the texture of the entire translation that is bound to differ from your own views of the book, all translators bringing their own implicit interpretation of the text when they 1 Vladimir Nabokov, “The Art of Translation,” in: Lectures on Russian Literature, Harcourt, 1981, 315. 2 Kees Helsloot, “’n Ruikertje,” in: Tirade 22, 1978, 278-294.

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start. It’s not the words that breathe the spirit of the author in his work, it’s the sentences and their music. Revising someone else’s translation means rearranging each and every sentence, effectively resulting in a retranslation of the entire book, with the extra hurdle of having first to fight your way past a distracting and irritating old text in your native language. It was much more work than if we had started afresh in the first place. Our self-imposed plight was exacerbated by the fact that the previous translator was still alive, although, being aphasic, he wasn’t able to explain his scruples about our suggestions. Flourishing his contract, he just demanded that the publisher reversed the lion’s share of our emendations and changes, leaving only a few howlers to be corrected, and at the same time adding an extra share of fairly incomprehensible new solutions. In the first sentence of the first story, “The Sisters” (“There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke”), for instance, we decided that the word “stroke” was better served with the harsher sounding “attaque” than the original “beroerte” – perforce (through sheer lack of time) turning a blind eye to the very unmelodious first part of the Dutch sentence. Rein Bloem decided otherwise, and the sentence had the following Werdegang: Dit keer was er voor hem geen hoop meer: het was zijn derde beroerte. (D/Dub/Bloem 1) Dit keer was er voor hem geen hoop meer: het was de derde attaque (suggested revision) Dit keer was er voor hem geen hoop meer: drie maal was zijn hart van slag, toen stond het stil. (D/Dub/Bloem 2) The re-revised version (“thrice his heart skipped a beat, then it stopped”) is keen on getting two meanings of “stroke” into the translation, the medical one and the stroke of a clock, resulting in an extremely unwieldy sentence with little or no bearing to the original. When the book appeared in 2004 it made everybody unhappy. On the colophon page our help was acknowledged by mentioning that this eighth edition was revised “using” (“met behulp van”) yours truly, as if we were spare parts of a vacuum-cleaner, instead of “with the assistance of” which would be “met hulp van.” Writing, as well as translating, is a profession. So we were glad, having Finnegans Wake, Ulysses and A Portrait on our belt, to have the opportunity in 2016 to translate Dubliners all over again, starting from scratch, but with the invaluable experience of having tried to edit an old translation. Finally, we could tackle the first sentence and make it into what we considered Joycean Dutch. The monosyllabic, thudding sentence we

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monosyllabized a bit more, employing the colloquial “klap” (bang, slap, blow, smack, stroke) and the first part we also made into more living Dutch, although we inadvertently – and because still this Bloem translation was haunting our minds – left in the superfluous “meer,” which shall have to go in a next edition. Er was geen hoop meer voor hem dit keer: het was de derde klap. (D/Dub/Bindervoet-Henkes) Er was geen hoop voor hem dit keer: het was de derde klap. (D/Dub/ Bindervoet-Henkes, to be revised) Our retranslation of “The Sisters” was informed by the discovery, in 1993, of the short story that was a direct inspiration and even source for Joyce’s debut in prose fiction.3 As is well known, Joyce was asked by George Russell to contribute stories to the newspaper The Irish Homestead in June 1904. To show what sort of thing he wanted, he sent along “A Weekly Story” asking Joyce to look at it. This story, “The Old Watchman” by Berkeley Campbell resembles “The Sisters” in many respects, in the voice of the young narrator, the structure of the story – so much that Hans Walter Gabler even says that “Joyce not only read the story: he rewrote it.”4 The stylistic differences are of special interest for students and translators alike, as they show the way Joyce wanted to write, and his further rewriting of the short stories highlights even more his specific prose innovations, all of which should be brought out in translation. To see what is good and special about “The Sisters” (and indeed all stories of the suite), studying “standard” contemporary prose can be most illuminating. Even more helpful in gauging the particularities of Joyce’s style is comparing earlier, draft versions of the story with the final, published one. Only then can we see how Joyce clouded the stories in an atmosphere of paralysis, and do we notice that these stories are far from simple, straightforward or “naturalistic.” Herbert Gorman, in his 1924 auto-hagiography of Joyce, wrote that “[b]ehind their naturalism is the unspoken mystery which lies behind life” but nonetheless stresses their naturalistic depiction: “Irish life had never before been treated with the frank naturalism which is evident in the sketches that make up Dubliners, at least, by an Irishman.”5 But textual analysis shows that

3 Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon, “The Origin of Dubliners: A Source,” in Joyce Studies Annual, Volume 4 (Summer 1993): 178-184. 4 Hans Walter Gabler, “Introduction,” in: James Joyce, Dubliners, ed. Margot Norris; text ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Walter Hettche (Norton Critical Edition, 2006, xvi). Gabler’s Joyce text is henceforth quoted as “Gabler,” followed by page and line number. 5 Herbert Gorman, James Joyce: His First Forty Years (B.W. Huebsch, 1924), 39, 24.

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the wording and phrasing and syntax of the stories are in no way unadorned and bare to the bone. Joyce subtly weaves his web of moods by repeating key words, by stringing words for melodic reasons, by grafting his sentences onto his protagonists and allowing their speech patterns to invade the narrator’s voice – a device which the Joycean scholar Hugh Kenner would dub “the Uncle Charles principle.”6 The first two sentences of the story “Two Gallants” go like this: The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets. The streets, shuttered for the repose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily coloured crowd. (Gabler 38:3) Now, if an editor saw these two sentences, he would probably take his red crayon and suggest a replacement of one of “the streets” in the text, or even come up with a much better rewrite himself. Dubliners teems with turns of phrase that are just a bit out of the ordinary, that convey by their phrasing a tiny glimpse of the persons in their surroundings. Needless to say, the previous Dutch translation jollily skips each and every one of these highly Joycean turns. Even the first sentence of the last story, “The Dead,” proved to be a bridge too far, and was silently corrected into something more palatable to the imaginary editor, ousting the linchpin word “literally.” Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. (Gabler 151:1) Lily, de dochter van de huisbewaarder, kon niet meer op haar benen staan. (D/Dub/Bloem 1) Lily, de dochter van de conciërge, liep zich letterlijk de benen uit het lijf. (D/Dub/Bindervoet-Henkes) And still, well into the 21st century, the Uncle Charles principle is often an insurmountable stumbling block for Dutch readers and critics (and translators) alike. Two years ago, when our translation of “The Dead” was published in a separate booklet, the Dutch critic Arjan Peters of De Volkskrant daily newspaper asked us – over social media – in all seriousness if our “letterlijk” in the translation of the first sentence was a mistake for “figuurlijk,” figuratively, metaphorically. It is the way the word is evolving, that is for certain, but the critic apparently missed Joyce’s subtle humour and style here.

6 Hugh Kenner, Joyce’s Voices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 15ff.

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Style may be the most important feature of Dubliners to get right in translation, but vocabulary should not be overlooked either. There are many small but enticing cruxes to be resolved in translating, matters that tend to be glossed over when reading the original, but translators cannot overlook anything. Some instances: On the very first page of “The Sisters” we encounter the word “stirabout.” A meal known in all Ireland, it remains notoriously unknown in the restaurants, taverns and fast food chains of Translasia. The previous Dutch translation domesticated it as plain “pap” (porridge) and allowed it to gather mould over its thirty-one years and seven editions. It was only through our acquaintance with the invaluable Vincent Deane, that we learned the exact recipe of this healthy fare. As it turned out, it does have an exact equivalent in Dutch, not only in content but in form as well: “roerom” is literally (and we mean literally literally) “stir about,” and it is an equally colourful term as in the original. Another example of tricky vocabulary is the phrase “queer old josser” in “An Encounter.” The word “josser” was only included in the Supplement of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971), with an Australian meaning (“clergyman”) and as a word for a “simpleton, duffer; a soft or silly fellow. Hence, in flippant or contemptuous use, a fellow, (old) chap.” It is clear, however, that the word “tosser” is also implied, in the sense of “wanker,” one who masturbates. As to what extent the word “queer” has gay (homosexual) overtones, is not clear: the 1971 OED doesn’t mention any, it defines the word only as “strange, questionable” and “giddy,” “drunk.” We already encountered the word in Dubliners. In “The Sisters,” Old Cotter talks about the dead priest as having “something queer… something uncanny about him” (Gabler 3:19-20) – without ever mentioning what is was. In any case, a translation of the phrase should be neither innocuous nor too damning but leave as much to the reader’s imagination as the original phrase does. In Dutch, the tortuous road to the latest translation was as follows: Verrek … dat is een vreemde snoeshaan. (D/Dub/Bloem 1) Verrek … wat is dat voor smeerkees! (suggested revision) Verrek … dat is een ouwe viezerik! (D/Dub/Bloem 2) Krijg nou wat … Wat een typische ouwe mafkees! (D/Dub/BindervoetHenkes) The first one (D/Dub/Bloem 1) has a word “snoeshaan” that your auntie would use, even in 1968, “a most peculiar chap.” The second one (the suggested revision) is a somewhat misleading translation, something like “what is the dirty bugger doing,” colloquial enough though. The third (D/Dub/Bloem 2)

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reads “what a dirty old man,” which is too much of an interpretation, and no self-respecting boy would use the stiff and old-fashioned “ouwe viezerik.” The fourth has “typisch” in the sense of strange and “ouwe mafkees” colloquial for “old weirdo,” and leaves open the question what the man is actually doing. In the first three stories, the young but precocious narrator employs bookish words that apparently please his ears. “The Sisters” starts with “paralysis,” “gnomon” and “simony,” but soon after we also meet the word “inefficacious” (“the red handkerchief … was quite inefficacious,” Gabler 6:11-13). The narrator probably picked it up from the theological concept of “efficacious grace,” gratia efficax, from among others the Church Father Augustine, which either the priest or the Sunday school would have inculcated in the youngster. Translators tend to normalise the strangeness of the word, by a colloquial circumlocution like “miste zijn doel” (“missed its mark”), or a simpler phrase like “was totaal ontoereikend” (“was completely insufficient”), missing the quaintness. Even Harald Beck is not quite on the mark, with his “war so gut wie wirkungslos” (“was as good as without effect”). In the case of Joyce, translators do not have to translate “what the writer wants to say” – they can just translate what he writes, as this writer always precisely writes what he wants to say. They should look for words that are just as outlandish or bookish or religiously tainted as the words Joyce uses. Hence, our Dublinezen has “onkrachtdadig,” a word that crops up a mere eight times in Google, and has the same faint religious ring to it, “krachtdadige genade” being the common translation for “efficacious grace.” It is important to use the most up-to-date, state-of-the-art text, and for Dubliners this can only be the one edited by Hans Walter Gabler with Walter Hettche in 2006. But even here the careful translator has to beware. After Joyce, at the behest of his reluctant Maunsel & Co publisher George Roberts, grumblingly excised repetitions of “bloody” in the story “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” he never bothered to put them back in again when Roberts finally declined to publish, and Joyce once more was left to peddle his book about. The Gabler edition restores some instances of “bloody” but one, in a passage about King Edward vii and his “bloody old mother” (or even “bloody owl’ mother” in an earlier version) Queen Victoria, was left on the cuttingroom floor. There are good editorial reasons not to reinstate the word, but as the passage became a cause célèbre in the publication disaster, we thought it wise to translate the passage with the word salvaged and so it now says, in glorious colloquial Dutch, “z’n ouwe rotte stinkmoer.”7 7 Gabler (xxiii-xv, 112:453); JJA (Vols 4-6, Dubliners) 4: 215 (ms: “bloody owl’ mother”), 4: 259 (ms: “bloody” crossed out) and 4: 269 (printed slip with “old mother”); D/Dub/BindervoetHenkes, 152, 302.

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In the story “Two Gallants,” the leech and loafer Lenehan is introduced in a paragraph ending with a question as to how he earned his living and stating that “his name was vaguely associated with racing tissues” (Gabler 39:45). The Gabler edition helpfully footnotes that “racing tissues” were “[b]ulletins or articles giving information on horse races,” but that covers a wide range of realia. And why “tissues”? The German translation by Harald Beck, who had the assistance of Vincent Deane, has “Wettlisten,” betting lists, but it was only the timely research of John Simpson, former chief editor the Oxford English Dictionary, that put us on the right track. In the internet journal James Joyce Online Notes, mainly the work of Harald Beck, Simpson retrieves the story behind the slips: The original tissues were said to be slips of tissue paper (containing bang up-to-date information for the betting fraternity) prepared by scouts at a racecourse or stables and carried by pigeon directly to a telegraph office or printer to be circulated immediately to subscribers. The subscribers might be bookmakers, clubs, or private individuals. Even if pigeons were not involved, the light paper delivered to the telegraph office was known as the tissue, as was the telegraph paper itself on which the text was printed out at the receiving end for delivery to the printer. The tissues appear also in Ulysses in connection with Lenehan, at U 7.387-90 (“Lenehan came out of the inner office with the Sport’s tissues”) and U 7.396-7 (“The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the table came to earth”) – where we translated them, in 2010, with “formuliertjes” (forms), but will have to change them now into “stroken met tips” (slips with tips) or simply “stroken.” At any rate, they are not “bookmakerspraktijken” (bookmaker ploys) or “tips voor paardenrennen” (racing tips), as the previous translation had it.8 With Joyce there is always more. The title “A Little Cloud” seemed to refer to I Kings 18:44: “Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand,” as the illustrious illustrated edition of Dubliners by John Wyse Jackson and Bernard McGinley informed us, but they added: “The title does not at first sight seem to fit the story.”9 For translation we tried out a congregation 8 Gabler, 39n9; G/Dub/Beck; James Joyce Online Notes (www.jjon.org): www.jjon.org/joyce-s -environs/tissues accessed 24 June 2018; Ulixes, Du/Bindervoet-Henkes 154; D/Dub/Bloem 1, 50; D/Dub/Bloem 2, 44; D/Dub/Bindervoet-Henkes 56, 288. 9 John Wyse Jackson and Bernard McGinley, James Joyce’s Dubliners, An Illustrated Edition (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993), 75.

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of old Dutch and Flemish Bibles, assembled online in the invaluable resource site www.bijbelsdigitaal.nl, and so we could choose between a range of old and beautiful orthographies to embellish the modern received spelling of “een kleine wolk”: een cleyn wolc (Liesveltbijbel, 1542) een cleyn wolcxkijn (Delftse bijbel, 1477) eene kleyne wolcke (Statenvertaling, 1637) een cleyn wolcken (Leuvense bijbel, 1548) een cleyn wolcke (Vorstermanbijbel, 1538) een kleyn wolcke (Deux Aesbijbel, 1562) eene kleine wolk (Statenbijbel, 1637) But what for? What did the Bible quote have to do with the story? How lucky we felt then to stumble upon a little cloud in William Blake’s poem The Book of Thel. The virgin Thel talks to a character “little Cloud” and, interestingly enough, also to another one named Clay, possibly referred to in the title of another story in Dubliners. In both stories, innocence clashes with experience, as in the poem, where in the last lines frightened Thel “fled back” to the verdant vales of Har. No such escape existed in Joyce’s Dublin. When we proudly presented our finding in a graduate class on Dubliners, one of the brighter students remarked: “Old hat! We already know that! May I refer you two gentlemen to “Little Chandler’s Song of Experience”?10 Live and learn! Even as we were writing this, a possible new source cropped up, when Martin Ullman posted: I am struck by passages in George Moore that Joyce seems to echo. In A Drama in Muslin, for instance, Moore describes an evening in which snow and moonshine blanket Ireland. There’s also a passage in which a spurned lover stands in the snow underneath his lover’s window. And on the same page, he quotes “Tower of Ivory, House of Gold” and, more strikingly mentions “a little cloud.”11 Translating songs is always a major bother – but highly rewarding if it succeeds: if rhyme, rhythm and to a certain extent meaning are preserved, no other genre can give such a genuine feeling of being in the original language 10 11

Thomas B. O’Grady, “Little Chandler’s Song of Experience,” James Joyce Quarterly, no. 28 (Winter 1991): 399-405. Michael Ullman, 30 June 2018, posted on the James Joyce Quarterly Facebook-page.

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as a song. In “The Dead,” two songs take centre stage. One is melancholy and obscure; the other is exuberant and universally known. Of the fist, The Lass of Aughrim, we get only a snatch, three lines of the refrain, while the second, For They are Jolly Gay Fellows, we get it spelled out in its full hackneyed glory of three lines. We will focus here on the more hopelessly hairtearing problems of the second song. There is hardly any Dutch novel without at least some words of English in it, and this has been going on for quite a while. You can often even tell whether a book is a translation from the English by the complete and unnatural absence of English words and phrases. It so happens that the jolly good (or gay) fellows can also fairly often be heard – in English – at Dutch parties, but only at birthday celebrations and only in the third person singular guise, as “for he’s a jolly good fellow” – so perhaps a sly semitranslation could be attempted here. D/Dub/Bloem 1 and D/Dub/Bloem 2 both go for a full-out translation: Want zij zijn vrolijke vrienden (3x) En niemand vindt van niet, Of ’t is een stuk verdriet. Which translates: “For they are joyful friends (3x), And nobody thinks otherwise, Unless he/she is an utter wretch.” The translation as such is fine, of course, but it lacks the unsurpassable triteness of the English. To leave the entire song in English is no solution either, for in Dutch the song is only used at birthdays.12 But because the Misses Morkan are not having their birthday in the story, this solution sounds odd and out of place. Hence, Dublinezen tried to combine the well-worn English words with Dutch, to make it sound completely natural and fit for the occasion, without losing the universality of the words, or the rhyme, which now even works bilingually (“deny – fraai”): Want zij zijn jolly good fellows (3x) Which nobody can deny, Want dat was niet zo fraai (“Because that wouldn’t be really nice”) How easy it is to make mistakes – when you don’t really know what is going on, or are unable to picture for yourself what’s happening, or don’t even think of 12

In a 2013 bachelor thesis, Jason de Krijger (in a partial translation of “The Dead”) substituted it for the most famous Dutch birthday song, “Lang zullen ze leven (3x)/In de gloria” followed by the hooray shout “hieperdiepiep, hoera.” Jason de Krijger, “Adequate and Acceptable: Translating James Joyce,” Bachelor Thesis English Language and Culture, Utrecht University, 2013, online at the Utrecht University Repository.

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asking yourself – can be demonstrated by a very simple word at the end of “The Dead”: the word “tap” used when the Gresham hotel porter leads Gabriel and Gretta Conroy into their room: “The porter pointed to the tap of the electric light and began a muttered apology but Gabriel cut him short.” The Gabler edition footnotes: “The availability of electricity is a mark of the Gresham’s elegance at the turn of the century, when most residences (like the Morkans’) were still lit by gas lamps.”13 Whereas the actual unavailability of the electricity when it is needed is probably a Joycean marking of the paralysis of the city. But: a tap, a faucet to turn on electricity? Rein Bloem bypasses the problem and translates it as if it said “switch,” (“knopje,” “schakelaar”)14 but in fact – the invaluable Internet confirms – it really was a tap you could turn to get the electric light burning. It turns out that the Amsterdam hotel Krasnapolsky – where Joyce would stay for a week in 1927 – also had these “taps” at the turn of the century: In 1883, Café Krasnapolsky installed light bulbs. From then on it was possible, “by means of a little tap, as with gas […] to kindle or extinguish each light separately.”15 So, a real tap it was, and “kraantje” it became in our Dutch Dublinezen. Speaking about which: where does this weird title, Dublinezen (Dublinese), actually come from? It all began on 15 October 1905, when Joyce wrote in a letter to his publisher Grant Richards: I do not think that any writer has yet presented Dublin to the world. It has been a capital of Europe for thousands of years, it is supposed to be the second city of the British Empire and it is nearly three times as big as Venice. Moreover, on account of many circumstances which I cannot detail here, the expression “Dubliner” seems to me to have some meaning and I doubt whether the same can be said for such words as “Londoner” and “Parisian” both of which have been used by writers as titles. From

13 14 15

Gabler, 188: 1351-52 and footnote. D/Dub/Bloem 1, 219; D/Dub/Bloem 2, 190. “Het Café Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam installeerde in 1883 gloeilampen. Nu kon “door middel van een kraantje, net als bij gas […] elk licht afzonderlijk worden opgestoken of gedoofd.” On-line at: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/lint011gesc03_01/lint011gesc03_01_0008 .php with a reference to G. Werkman, Kras = 100/100 = kras, Amsterdam, 1966, 88 accessed 24 June 2018.

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time to time I see in publishers’ lists announcements of books on Irish subjects, so that I think people might be willing to pay for the special odour of corruption which, I hope, floats over my stories. (SL, 78-9) To Irish ears the word “Dubliners” has a connotation that cannot be caught by the denotation, inhabitants or citizens of Dublin, numbering 280.108 in 1901. A Dubliner is more than his or her place of birth or residence: to the Irish, a “Dubliner” is not just somebody coming from Dublin, but also someone endowed with certain characteristics. For one thing, Dublin is in the Pale and more Anglo-Irish and Protestant than the surrounding Catholic rural areas. Secondly, the inhabitants of capital cities are somewhat pfiffiger, more streetwise, than their compatriots. Joyce wasn’t the only one to hear this special nuance in the word. In the 1940s, Flann O’Brien tried to unravel the mystery of what he called “The Dublin Man.”16 Was it the language he spoke that set him apart from other Irish citizens? His way of saying “furenal” instead of “funeral” and “stilumants” instead of “stimulants”? Was it his stoic attitude that can only be shocked by trifles, fiddle-faddles, flummeries? (“That he set fire to my house, I could stand, but that he afterwards broke the milk bottle, no!”) Was it his eternal youth and regeneration, as nobody ever met a Dublin man with a Dublin-born grandfather? At any rate, to be “a Dublin man” (or “Dubliner”) was something special. To Dutch ears, on the other hand, the word “Dubliners” has no other connotation than “inhabitants of Dublin” or “Irish folk band.” We had to do something with it to do justice to the Irish connotation. “Dubliner” is not even Dutch: in our language inhabitants of two syllable toponyms are rarely referred to with the suffix -er. We have Utrechtenaren, Brusselaars, Londenaren and Parijzenaren, but also Milanezen, Hagenaren or Hagenezen (inhabitants of The Hague), Jordanezen (inhabitants of the former working-class district the Jordaan, in Amsterdam). So the standard suffixes are -aren or -ezen. We chose “Dublinezen,” by analogy with “Hagenezen” and “Jordanezen,” both with many connotations: “Hagenezen” and “Jordanezen” are both renowned for their talkativeness, their streetwiseness or “gogme,” and for their musicality. Moreover, a very “special odour of corruption” floats over their streets and over their language, immediately recognizable and even smellable from miles away. That is what we won in our translation, but what we lost was of equal importance – the earworm of The Wild Rover. Although even this loss might be a gain: the

16

Flann O’Brien, “The Dublin Man,” in The Hair of the Dogma, A further selection from “Cruiskeen Lawn (Paladin, 1989 [1977]), 14-19.

Dublinezen, or: the Dutch Dubliners

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Irish folk-band didn’t exist at the time Joyce wrote Dubliners, so any connotation modern readers have is only a distraction. It is a minor miracle that we were allowed to use this Dutchified title. Publishers throughout the non-English-speaking world are getting less and less keen on using titles differing from the English one, especially when it can be avoided, as in the case of Dubliners and Ulysses. To them, it is a brand name that they want to protect at all costs. When we wanted to name our translation of Ulysses Ulixes, the financial supermanager of the publishing firm was heard to say (in English): “Over my dead body.” They are still looking for him in the Amsterdam canals. But, having set this precedent, we had relatively few problems with our somewhat overtranslated title of A Portrait (Zelfportret van de kunstenaar als jonge man) and with our final Dublinezen. As Joyce translators, we feel obliged to use every snippet pertaining to the work that we can find, which means that we consult the previous critical and scholarly editions, the Scholes17 and the Gabler one, as well as the facsimiles in the James Joyce Archive. We keep at our elbow a bevy of translations into the French, German, Italian and Russian that all have their own take on different cruxes and help us to make informed judgments in this business of “optimizing rivalling incompatibilities,” as Fritz Senn once appositely defined the fine art of translation.18 We try to keep abreast of new scholarship, new manuscript findings (it still happens), and any new editions that may appear or are in the making. Recently, at the 2018 Antwerp James Joyce Symposium, Elizabeth M. Bonapfel and Valérie Bénéjam launched a plan for a new edition of Dubliners based on the peculiarities, or wishes, or intentions, of Joyce as are evident from his extant fair copy manuscripts of the stories of Dubliners. It promises to become a very beautiful edition, pleasing to the eye, for Joyce had very strong preferences and pet hatreds re the visual appearance of his texts. It is a logical next step after Bonapfel’s strong case for retaining Joyce’s punctuation in Dubliners in an earlier volume of the European Joyce Studies.19 Especially her exposition of Joyce’s multiple-purpose practice of “double dashes,” to

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James Joyce, Dubliners: Texts, Criticism, and Notes, eds. Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz (New York: Viking, 1969; rev. 1996); for Gabler and JJA, see notes 4 and 7. Fritz Senn, “The Lure of Grammatical Rectification,” in: Scientia Traductionis 12, 2012. Online at: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/scientia/article/view/1980-4237.2012n12p7/ 23791 accessed 21 June 2018. Elizabeth M. Bonapfel, “Marking Realism in Dubliners,” in Doubtful Points, Joyce and Punctuation, eds. Elizabeth M. Bonapfel and Tim Conley, European Joyce Studies 23 (Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2015), 67-86.

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enclose dialogue, to end dialogue, to separate dialogue plus speaker from the narrator’s voice, and supplanting suspension points to suggest hesitancy, calls out for an edition that restores these features. It is hoped their new edition will reinstate these double dashes, as well as Joyce’s unique “extended dashes” (speech dashes falling inside the left margin) that he also wanted for Ulysses (and which we brought back in our Ulixes),20 plus the variety in suspension or ellipsis points (ranging from three to nine dots), and other Joycean proclivities, to come up with perhaps the edition he author envisaged in his mind’s eye. In any case, we will try to follow suit and change our next edition of Dublinezen accordingly, if we can get the publisher to do so. It would be a pity if they had to look for him in our beautiful canals as well. Translating is never about a book, or even an author: it is an entire world the translator engages with and which he tries to render lock, stock and barrel into another world. To make something the same of something else, is the noble task of the translator, and the more tools and knowledge he has at his disposal (apart from stamina, talent, good luck and a publisher’s contract), the better. What can possibly go wrong? 20

Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes, “Punctuated Equilibria and the Exdented Dash,” in Doubtful Points, Joyce and Punctuation, 189-192.

Chapter 15

The Angered Italian Translator: from Pomes Penyeach to Finn’s Hotel Ilaria Natali

Abstract This chapter analyses and compares different Italian translations of Pomes Penyeach by detailing some specific translation issues cast in broader theoretical questions. If every translation is only partial by nature, this feature seems to be somehow exasperated in the case of Joyce’s poems. The numerous obscurities and ambiguities in the original texts open the way to radically different interpretations that coexist and complement each other. Translators keep discovering and exploring new meanings, apparently without exhausting the potential of the source text. The Italian versions of Pomes Penyeach change according to transformations in the target cultural context. However, the original texts present additional and less conventional problems of durability due to the multiple attempts to re-define the Joycean corpus over the years. This is the case with the controversial publication of the collection Finn’s Hotel in 2013, containing two prose fragments that include and frame the lines of “Tutto è sciolto” and “Nightpiece.” Regardless of whether Joyce considered the pieces in Finn’s Hotel as independent works or early drafts for Finnegans Wake, a doubt is cast on the status of the two poems, which could now be read – and translated – according to new criteria.

There is little doubt that Joyce tended to both fascinate and unnerve his Italian contemporaries. In the 1920s and 30s, Joyce’s name had become so prestigious in Italy that editors “would have even published his shopping list”;1 yet, simultaneously, the authoritative scholar Mario Praz questioned whether the Irish

1 Citation from Enzo Ferrieri, director of the literary journal Il Convegno, who claimed that “… avremmo stampato di lui (Joyce) anche la lista della spesa”; quoted in Serenella Zanotti, “James Joyce among the Italian Writers,” in The Reception of James Joyce in Europe, eds. Geert Lernout and Wim Van Mierlo (London and New York: Continuum), 331.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004427419_017

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writer was worthy of such favour,2 and Italo Svevo defined his colleague as a “merchant of gerunds” who caused him “infinite worries.”3 But the most biting reactions to Joyce’s writings may come from those “brave writers” who “managed the exceptionally arduous feat of rendering Joyce’s extremely tortuous and tormented prose into Italian.”4 On January 23, 1948, fourteen years after having translated A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the renowned Italian author Cesare Pavese wrote “confidentially” to Erich Linder, “I hate Joyce with every fibre in my soul.”5 This emphatic expression of dislike for Joyce followed publisher Cederna’s insistent proposal to translate Pomes Penyeach; Pavese rejected firmly, arguing, “… the Pomes are rich in words and rhythmic passages that I cannot understand and that anger me.”6 Pavese was not the first major Italian writer to manifest aversion towards translating Pomes Penyeach: although less passionately, Eugenio Montale had declined the same offer in November 1947. At the time, Montale must have seemed an ideal choice for Cederna since he had already manifested an interest in Pomes Penyeach by translating “Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba” and “A Flower Given to My Daughter” in Il Mondo (January 5, 1946).7 However, he felt that the other texts included in Joyce’s collection were “less

2 When discussing Pavese’s translation of A Portrait, Praz writes, “… nove volte su dieci si vuole anteporre uno scrittore estero a uno nostro, che magari non val meno di lui, pel solo fatto dell’impossibilità di rendersi conto di quel che proprio valga lo scrittore straniero.” (… nine times on ten we are in the habit of preferring a foreign writer to (an Italian) one, who is probably of equal value, just because we are unable to understand the real value of the foreign writer). Praz’s essay “Ritratto dell’artista giovane,” was first published in La Stampa in the thirties (presumably around 1934, the date of Pavese’s translation). It was later reprinted in: Mario Praz, “Ritratto dell’artista giovane,” in Cronache letterarie anglosassoni (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1950), 223. 3 Svevo expressed these opinions on two different occasions; in the original texts, “un mercante di gerundi” (Conference held on March 8, 1927) and “preoccupazioni infinite” (Letter to Eugenio Montale dated December 6, 1926). See Italo Svevo, “Faccio meglio a restare nell’ombra”: Il carteggio inedito con Ferrari seguito dall’edizione critica della conferenza su Joyce, ed. G. Calmieri (Milan, Lecce: Lupetti/Piero Manni, 1995), 86, 195. 4 In the original text, “valorosi scrittori … affrontarono l’improba fatica di rendere in veste italiana la tortuosa e tormentatissima prosa del Joyce.” Anon., “La morte di James Joyce,” L’Avvisatore Librario Settimanale 19, no. 3 (1941): 43. 5 In Pavese’s original letter, “odio Joyce con tutte le forze dell’anima mia.” Cesare Pavese, Lettere 1945-1950, Vol. 2, ed. Italo Calvino (Turin: Einaudi, 1966), 217. 6 In Pavese’s original letter, dated January 22, 1948, “… i Pomes sono variegati di vocaboli e passaggi ritmici che non capisco e mi fanno rabbia.” Pavese, Lettere, 216. 7 James Joyce, “Guardando i canottieri a San Saba” [sic] and “Per un fiore dato alla mia bambina,” trans. Eugenio Montale, Il Mondo 19 (1946): 7.

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translatable” than the two he had already worked on, as he replied to Cederna in 1947.8 Pavese and Montale’s resistance against Pomes Penyeach may seem unexpected at a time when this work was receiving increasing attention on the literary scene. Glauco Natoli (1932), Paolo Nobile (1941), and Ugo Mursia (1944) had already translated some of the poems, and Raffaello Piccoli had published the first Italian version of the whole collection in the literary journal Aretusa (1944-45).9 In addition, Pomes Penyeach was considered rather “approachable” compared to other works by Joyce; the poems were defined as the “most naïve aspect” of Joyce’s art, “free from the logical schemes and psychological subtleties that sometimes burden the pages of his novels.”10 Clearly, Pavese and Montale did not share this widespread opinion and, by acknowledging the complexity of the texts in Pomes Penyeach, they anticipated the directions that scholarly criticism would take four decades later. The image of Pavese as an “angered translator” is not only historically relevant but also still timely and vital: it captures in a provocative way the everchanging problems and possibilities connected with translating Joyce’s texts. As Francesca Romana Paci writes in the afterword to her translation of Pomes Penyeach, all the poems are “difficult to translate” because they are either deceptively simple or “undeniably baffling”; yet, the scholar continues, they “attract translation as fire attracts the moth,” in a procedure that implies destruc-

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10

On November 24, 1947 Montale wrote to Cederna, “Due (poesie) le ho già tradotte, le altre sono meno traducibili” (I have already translated two (poems), the others are less translatable). The full text of Montale’s letter is quoted in Sara Sullam, “The Translation of Joyce’s Poetry in Post-War Italy,” in Parallaxes: Virginia Woolf Meets James Joyce, eds. Marco Canani and Sara Sullam (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 182. See James Joyce, “Tre poesie di James Joyce,” trans. Glauco Natoli. Circoli 2, no. 1 (1932): 3541; “Sulla spiaggia a Fontana” (“On the Beach at Fontana”), trans. Paolo Nobile, Quadrivio 9, no. 20 (1941): 4; “Piange il vento e il ciottolo piange” (“Wind whines and whines the shingle”), trans. Ugo Mursia. Le tre Venezie 19. no. 7-12 (1944): 32-33; Pomes Penyeach / Pomi unsoldoluno, trans. Raffaello Piccoli, Aretusa: Rivista di varia letteratura 1, no. 5-6 (1944-45): 105-11. In the original introductory note to Natoli’s translation, “[nelle poesie] l’arte di Joyce si rivela nel suo aspetto più ingenuo, completamente libera dagli schemi logici e dalle sottigliezze psicologiche, che rendono, a volte, assai grevi certe pagine dei romanzi joyciani.” Glauco Natoli, Introductory note to “Tre poesie di James Joyce,” Circoli 2, no. 1 (1932), 35. Natoli’s comment refers especially to the three poems that he translated in Circoli, namely, Chamber Music XXXV and XXXVI, and “On the Beach at Fontana” from Pomes Penyeach. These texts had just been published in the Anthology of Modern English Poetry edited by Bernhard Tauchnitz (1931).

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tion and regeneration at the same time.11 In the following discussion, I wish to explore some aspects that have fascinated and daunted the translators of Pomes Penyeach for over eighty years. I will look at a stream of Italian translations that has continued unabated to this day, with particular attention to the Italian versions published by Alberto Rossi (1949), who took Pavese’s place as Cederna’s joycista italiano, Aldo Camerino (1988, posthumous edition), Giulia Benvenuti and Domenico Corradini Broussard (2016), and Francesca Romana Paci (2017).12 Among other scholars and poets who have translated Pomes Penyeach, Anton Ranieri Parra (1990) and Roberto Sanesi (1991) are also worth mentioning.13

… “Conservative,” “little,” and “simple” have been among the adjectives most frequent not only in the early reviews of Pomes Penyeach,14 but also in much more recent studies devoted to this collection. Although it is still argued that the poems “are relevant in their own right [only] because written by Joyce,”15 nowadays most scholars acknowledge that the texts are complex,

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In Paci’s original Italian text, “Tutte le tredici poesie, alcune solo apparentemente semplici, altre innegabilmente sconcertanti, sono difficili da tradurre, ma attirano la traduzione, come il fuoco attira la falena …” Francesca Romana Paci, “Postfazione,” in James Joyce, Pomes Penyeach: Pomi un penny l’uno. Poesie una pena l’una, ed. Francesca Romana Paci (Turin: Nuova Trauben Editrice, 2017), 40. See James Joyce, Po(e)mi un soldo l’uno, trans. Aldo Camerino, ed. Rossella Mamoli Zorzi (Venice: Fondazione Scientifica Querini Stampalia, 1988); Poesie da un soldo, trans. Alberto Rossi, in Poesie (Milan: Mondadori 1996, first ed. 1949); Pomi un penny l’uno, trans. Giulia Benvenuti and Domenico Corradini Broussard, in MusicAmore (Roma: Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso, 2016), besides the two translations already mentioned above by Francesca Romana Paci and Raffaello Piccoli. See James Joyce, Poeise Penyluna, trans. Anton Ranieri Parra, in Joyceana (Pisa: ETS, 1990); Pometti da un soldo di James Joyce, trans. Roberto Sanesi (Verona: Ex Officina Chimaerea, 1991). See also Po(e)mi Penniluno, trans. Ilaria Natali, in Ascolta amore (Florence: Barbès, 2012). Indeed, according to George Slocombe Pomes Penyeach is “conservative,” as he wrote in The Tumult and the Shouting (1936); George Russell (Æ) commented on this “little volume” in the Irish Statesman (23 July 1927), and in 1928 Robert Hillyer reviewed the “simple lyrics” of this collection. See Robert H. Deming ed., James Joyce: The Critical Heritage, 1907-1927. Vol. 1 (London, New York: Taylor and Francis, 2002), 286, 348 and 353. Onno Kosters, “‘Bella Poetria!’ (U 16.346): Rereading the Poetic in Joyce’s Prose and the Prosaic in His Poetry,” Hypermedia Joyce Studies 15 (2016), https://goo.gl/5fKLSF accessed 30 June 2019.

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multi-layered and open to plural interpretation.16 Of course, varying perceptions regarding the degree of experimentation of Pomes Penyeach have resulted in different approaches to the texts in the Italian translations, which have emphasized either the most original or the most conventional aspects of the poems. At least, there seems to be some consensus that the texts contain, to use Alberto Rossi’s expression, “shy allusions to … the fusion of linguistic elements” that characterize Joyce’s prose.17 Indeed, unhyphenated compound words are Joyce’s most common idiosyncratic foray into language in Pomes Penyeach; they appear in nine poems out of thirteen, and almost all of them are formations of Joyce’s invention. The extent to which Joyce’s compound neologisms are retained or standardized in the Italian versions can be indicative of the degree of linguistic inventiveness that translators perceive in these forms. A brief premise is needed: Joyce’s compound words can be considered a translation problem because of typological differences between languages. Italian compounding has a limited set of productive morphological patterns when compared to English; as Pierini notes, “[a]djective compounds are peripheral in Italian word-formation,” with only two productive patterns, “[Adj + Adj] and [Adj + N].”18 In Italian, the relations between the elements in a compound expression tend to be marked explicitly through prepositions, postmodification, and inflection; the syntactic transposition that is often needed when translating from English, therefore, may result in significant loss. Interestingly, some translators of Pomes Penyeach have not perceived this linguistic asymmetry as problematic, and they have avoided using compounds in Italian even when dealing with patterns that are productive in both languages. The following chart contains six examples of compound words included in Joyce’s poems, selected among the above-mentioned productive patterns that show significant variation in the Italian translations:19

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See Paci, “Postfazione,” 40. In Rossi’s original Italian text, “qualche timido accenno … alla fusione degli elementi linguistici.” Alberto Rossi, “Introduzione,” in Poesie by James Joyce (Milano: Mondadori, 1996), 10. Patrizia Pierini, “Translating English Compound Adjectives into Italian: Problems and Strategies,” Translation & Interpreting 7, no. 2 (2015): 20. Available online, https://goo.gl/ 587WNe accessed 30 June 2019. The quotations from Joyce’s poems included in this chart are from “A Flower Given to My Daughter,” lines 5 and 8; “She Weeps over Rahoon,” line 11; “On the Beach at Fontana,” line 7; “Flood,” line 1; “Alone,” line 1. See James Joyce, Pomes Penyeach. In Poems and Exiles, ed. J.C.C. Mays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), 44, 45, 47, 49, 51.

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ST 1927

TT 1944-45, Piccoli

TT 1996 (1949), TT 1988, Rossi Camerino

TT 2016, Benvenuti/ Corradini Rosefrail Rosifragile Rosadiafane Fragile rosa Fragile rosa blueveined azzurrovenata azzurrovenata dalle azzure vene bluvenata moongrey grigioluna grige di luna grige di luna grigio-luna fineboned di sottili ossa dall’osso sottile dall’ossa fini dall’osso sottile Goldbrown Orobruni Brunodorati D’oro scuro Orobruniti greygolden orogrige grigiodorate grigio dorate grigio-oro

TT 2017, Paci Rosafragili bluvenata grigioluna Le ossa fini Orobruniti grigiodorate

As compound forms are less common in Italian than in English, their use in the target text might strengthen the effect of estrangement of the original. On the other hand, keeping with the Italian conventional renderings of English compound words – namely, prepositional phrases and adjective phrases – seems to “imprison” and normalize Joyce’s linguistic invention. A consistent procedure of normalization is evident in Camerino’s translations of the poems, since no compounding procedure is attempted in Italian for any of the examples considered; as Rossella Mamoli Zorzi argues, this suggests that Camerino’s reading of the poems kept within the canons of tradition.20 Benvenuti and Corradini Broussard negotiate between different positions by employing two hyphenated compounds; to borrow Arthur Danto’s words, hyphens are “punctuational reminders that the terms have been melted down, so to speak, to form simple, seamless lexical units.”21 One might add that hyphens somehow mark the absence of a relationship that would make the term whole, and they explicitly signal the non-standard linguistic nature of the expression. Rossi recognizes in Joyce’s compounding techniques a “shy” imitation of the linguistic deformation typical of the novels,22 and he adopts an equally shy approach in his translation by attentively balancing conventional and unconventional word formation. Other translators have been more adventurous, proposing varying degrees of linguistic and imaginative conjuring. The effect of Piccoli’s text, the first Italian version of the whole collection, seems particularly estranging; however, as Douglas Robinson notes, “the translation that succeeds in giving target readers an effective estranging sensation, will not only be new and dissonant and strange, but assimilably new and dissonant and

20 21 22

Rossella Mamoli Zorzi, “Nota introduttiva,” in James Joyce, Po(e)mi un soldo l’uno (Venice: Fondazione Scientifica Querini Stampalia, 1988), 12-13. Arthur C. Danto, Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 85. Rossi, “Introduzione,” 10.

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strange.”23 Piccoli’s version seems to fail in assimilating the familiar and the unfamiliar, since he adopts a strategy of “mimetic excess” involving frequent use of lexical calques and adherence to source language syntax; this procedure amounts to a radical means of conveying Joyce’s linguistic inventiveness. Paci’s translation marks a shift away from previous approaches, offering innovative interpretations and solutions; for instance, she is the only translator to propose a change in word class from adjective to noun in “Le ossa fini,” “The fine bones.” On a related point, by juxtaposing two Italian subtitles (Pomi un penny l’uno and Poesie una pena l’una), Paci also makes manifest to the reader a key issue in translating Pomes Penyeach. The title of the collection resembles the warping and compounding of lexical elements typical of Finnegans Wake – significantly, it is among the annotations for this work that Joyce repeatedly jotted down the phrase “Pomes Penyeach.”24 No single Italian expression can convey the interplay of meanings in the original title, which may serve as a warning that the texts included in the volume are open to multivalent reading. Thus, Joyce’s poems vary by remaining the same, while their translations can only vary by transforming themselves; rather than a disadvantage, this is a privilege of translation, which makes it both an instrument of interpretation and an expression of the reader’s creativity. If translators focused merely on re-conveying the same multiplicity of meanings of the source text, they would risk producing alternative original texts – and, incidentally, this is often the case with Joyce’s self-translations, including his Italian version of “On the Beach at Fontana.”25 In Pomes Penyeach, polysemic structures of meaning are generated not only through the semantics of the poems, but also through a dense web of intertextual and interdiscursive threads. In addition, the complex straddling of old and new literary discourses extends beyond specific references, as the poems

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Douglas Robinson, Translation and the Problem of Sway (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2011), 129. To be more specific, in manuscripts Buffalo VI.B.18-94 and 95 Joyce wrote the phrases “Poem,” “Pomes Penyeach” and “Pomes Pennyeach” (sic); see Ilaria Natali, “That submerged doughdoughty doubleface”: Pomes Penyeach di James Joyce (Pisa: ETS, 2008), 46. Joyce’s “Sulla Spiaggia a Fontana” is preserved among the Jahnke materials at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation. A digitized copy of the manuscript is available at The Hans E. Jahnke Bequest at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation online at the National Library of Ireland, 2014, https://goo.gl/Yjo7xL accessed 30 June 2019. On this topic, see also Ilaria Natali, “Joyce l’italiano and the Hans Jahnke collection at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation,” Studi Irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies 1 no. 1: 157-174, https://oajournals.fupress .net/index.php/bsfm-sijis/article/view/7125 accessed 30 June 2019.

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integrate disparate elements from lyric impressionism, expressionism, symbolism, as well as other sources. Translators must choose how to transpose an experience that is both linguistic and cultural, while adapting it to the perceived needs of the contemporary reader; also, they must recognize such readerly needs, avoiding treating the collection as a museum of quotations and focusing, instead, on the intertextual allusions that would still activate cultural memories. With a rich palette of cultural traditions and references at their disposal, the translators of Pomes Penyeach have brought out different aspects of the texts at different times. Among the overtones of Joyce’s poems that reverberate more frequently in the Italian translations are the poetry of the Trecento, especially Dante, and the symphonic verse of decadent writers such as Gabriele D’Annunzio. For instance, Piccoli’s early translation seems to focus on Dantean echoes, a procedure that is particularly evident in “Tilly,” entitled “Giunta” (addition) in Italian:

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Tilly

Giunta

He travels after a winter sun, Urging the cattle along a cold red road, Calling to them, a voice they know, He drives his beasts above Cabra.

Cammina dietro un sol d’inverno, Spingendo il bestiame lungo una fredda rossa strada, Dando loro una voce, voce ch’esse conoscono, Caccia le sue bestie sopra Cabra.

The voice tells them home is warm. They moo and make brute music with their hoofs. He drives them with a flowering branch before him, Smoke pluming their foreheads.

La voce dice loro la casa è calda Esse mugghiano e fanno una bruta musica con gli zoccoli. Egli le caccia con un ramo fiorito innanzi a sé Il fumo piumando le loro fronti.

Boor, bond of the herd, Tonight stretch full by the fire! I bleed by the black stream For my torn bough!26

Villano, vincolo della mandria, Stasera stenditi accanto al fuoco! Io sanguino sul rivo nero Per il mio ramo strappato!27

Joyce, Pomes Penyeach, in Poems and Exiles, 42. Joyce, Pomes Penyeach / Pomi unsoldoluno, 105.

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The relationships that Joyce establishes between “Tilly” and The Divine Comedy are well known: the mention of a “torn bough” in the closing line alludes to canto XIII of Inferno, where the traveller Dante meets Pier della Vigna in the wood of suicides.28 In addition, the “black stream” in line 11 can bring to mind the dark waters of the river Styx, described in canto VII of Inferno (lines 103-108).29 Piccoli was aware of these connections, which are briefly discussed in the introduction to his translation30 and, apparently, he adopted them as an initial cue to work-in an intertextual interpretation of “Tilly.” For one thing, “voice” is repeated twice in the original text, while “Giunta” insists on “voce” three times. This insistence emphasizes the references to canto XIII of Inferno in the closing of the poem, because Dante describes how Pier della Vigna articulates speech in a painful and concomitant flow of air and sound: “… soffiò il tronco forte, e poi / si convertì quel vento in cotal voce” (the tree forced out harsh breath, and soon / that wind was turned into a voice).31 Besides, in lines 4 and 7 of the Italian text, Joyce’s “drives” is rendered with “caccia,” which is of rather restricted currency with this meaning. One might assume that this verb was chosen merely for alliterative purposes, were it not for the concomitant use of “villano” in line 9; a diminutive form of this term, “villanello,” appears together with the verb “caccia” in canto XXXIV of Inferno (lines 7 and 15). Here, Dante draws a long simile involving a young shepherd who experiences a moment of anger and doubt, then goes back to his duties, “e fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia” (and drives his sheep to pasture).32 Therefore, the lexical choices adopted in “Giunta” reinforce or even widen the web of connections that the original text establishes with The Divine Comedy. Piccoli’s texts are evocative not only of the Italian Trecento, but also of D’Annunzio’s deliberately archaic and aestheticized language. Indeed, at times Piccoli employs unusual and refined words such as “insudariate” in “Notturno” 28

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30 31 32

See especially Inferno XIII, lines 31-39. The connections between “Tilly” and Inferno have already been investigated by various scholars; among them, Robert Scholes, “James Joyce, Irish Poet,” James Joyce Quarterly 2, no. 4 (1965): 255-70; John T. Shawcross, “‘Tilly’ and Dante,” James Joyce Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1969): 61-64; Mary T. Reynolds, Joyce and Dante: The Shaping Imagination (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981), 151-54. In Inferno VII, Dante repeatedly emphasizes the “onde bige” (murky waves) of this “tristo ruscel” (dreary stream”; lines 104 and 106). All Dante quotations come from Dante Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994). The English translations provided are by Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander; see Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso (New York and London: Doubleday, 2000-2007). Joyce, Pomes Penyeach / Pomi unsoldoluno, 105. Alighieri, Inferno XIII, lines 91-92. Alighieri, Inferno XXXIV, line 15.

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(enshrouded, line 3) and “incertitudine” in “Flutto” (incertitude, line 12),33 the latter a Latinism that also appears in D’Annunzio’s “Annali d’Anna.”34 Although to a lesser extent, Aldo Camerino’s versions present a similar tendency as he frequently uses high-flown terms that appear also in D’Annunzio’s works. Among them are “sospirose” for “sighing” in “Guardando le barchette a San Sabba” (line 5), “illune” for “moonless” in “Notturno” (line 10), and “citiso” – rather than the straightforward “laburno” – for “laburnum” in “Solo” (line 4).35 Probably, Piccoli and Camerino were working roughly in the same period; the date of Camerino’s texts is still unknown, but Mamoli Zorzi suggests that they might be dated around 1943.36 Today, these Italian versions seem to be partly based on old-fashioned tools, and perhaps they already seemed so in the forties, especially if compared to Montale’s vibrant translations dated 1946. However, in those years, it was still possible for a translator to use the lexical richness of the Italian ancient tradition as a source; nowadays, it would imply returning to an historical language and assuming an “antiquary” position that would only make the poems less readable. Translators working after Piccoli and Camerino have limited their recourse to linguistic anachronism to selected occasions, where the dissonance caused by older terms or forms serves a specific purpose. This is the case, for instance, with Paci’s Italian version of “Simples,” “Semplici.”37 A few ancient or poetic words stand out; among them, “lucore” (radiance, line 1), a highly poetic term commonly associated with Dante’s Paradise (XIV 94). Inspired by this brief and fleeting suggestion of The Divine Comedy, readers can identify other Dantean echoes in the imagery of Joyce’s poem, such as the similarity between the “child” who “gathering … sings an air” and the young woman in Purgatory, walking through a meadow “cogliendo fiori; e cantando” (as she gathered flow-

33 34 35

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Joyce, Pomes Penyeach / Pomi unsoldoluno, 109. Gabriele D’Annunzio, San Pantaleone (Florence: G. Barbera, 1886), 92. Joyce, Po(e)mi un soldo l’uno, 21, 35 and 39. D’Annunzio uses these terms, too: “sospirose” appears in “Comento meditato a un discorso improvviso,” a commentary published in 1922 together with the speech “Per l’Italia degli Italiani,” now in Libro ascetico della giovane Italia (Milan: Mondadori, 1966), 496. “Illune” occurs in “Il fanciullo,” Alcyone VI, line 181, as well as in various other works; “citiso” is mentioned in Intermezzo, “La tredicesima fatica,” line 80. See Versi d’amore e di gloria, eds. Annamaria Andreoli and Niva Lorenzini. 2 Vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1982). Aldo Camerino’s translation of Pomes Penyeach was posthumously discovered among his books and papers. According to Mamoli Zorzi, this translation could have been drafted shortly after 1943, when Camerino published Chamber Music in Italian under the nome de plume Marco Lombardi. See Zorzi, “Nota introduttiva,” 13. Joyce, Pomes Penyeach: Pomi un penny l’uno. Poesie una pena l’una, 19.

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ers, singing).38 It has often been stressed that reading (and translating) “means to choose, for better or worse, and to choose means to leave out” (original emphasis);39 Paci and Piccoli provide different, but equally precious examples of how translators can bring in and unveil new intertextual resonances in Joyce’s work. Since the 1990s, translations of Pomes Penyeach have shown a common tendency towards facilitating the reading of the poems, only occasionally recreating the historical distance to reflect stylistic contrasts in the original, or to preserve the dynamism between past and present that characterizes the source texts. This approach, however, has not been adopted consistently in dealing with Joyce’s works, and some noteworthy exceptions deserve consideration. In this regard, I would like to shift attention from the collection Pomes Penyeach to another text by Joyce that bears remarkable connections to it. A case in point concerns the much-debated publication of Finn’s Hotel in 2013. Ithys Press defines this collection as a “lost link in the Joyce canon,” and “almost certainly the last unpublished title by James Joyce.”40 The materials included in Finn’s Hotel, however, are not newly discovered; they have been in plain sight for many years, a fruitful object of study for genetic investigations of Joyce’s corpus as part of the avant-text of Finnegans Wake. As Hans Walter Gabler notes, apparently, at some stage Joyce briefly considered publishing the “experimentally … variegated narratives” that he composed around 1923 under the title “Finn’s Hotel.”41 Although it is well known that Joyce frequently and even radically changed direction during his writing processes, the new collection has been presented by Ithys as reflecting the author’s original “intention.” This has generated controversy within the academic community; most scholars agree that Finn’s Hotel “should not be treated as a standalone collection,” since its fragments “are most likely drafts for what became Finnegans Wake.”42 It is not my intention to contribute to this specific debate; my purpose is to show that Joyce’s constant re-working of his own texts, which has long concerned genetic and textual criticism, is becoming relevant also for translation 38 39 40 41

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Alighieri, Purgatory XXVII, 97-99. Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, first ed. 1982), 230. Ithys Press Website, “Finn’s Hotel by James Joyce,” 2013, https://goo.gl/MH8WN9 accessed 30 June 2019. Hans Walter Gabler, Text Genetics in Literary Modernism and Other Essays (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2018), 39. Available online, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0120 accessed 30 June 2019. James O’Sullivan, “Finn’s Hotel and the Joycean Canon,” Genetic Joyce Studies 14 no. 1-8 (2014), https://goo.gl/vmvfBL accessed 30 June 2019.

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studies, especially in the light of recent attempts to re-define the Joycean corpus. Publishing Joyce’s manuscripts involves changing their status, a procedure that can affect translation in unexpected ways; there emerges the need for a new discourse that allows tackling such an expanded corpus. The specific issue I would like to focus on concerns the section “The Staves of Memory” in Finn’s Hotel, which closes with the four characters called “the Waves of Erin” intoning a song, after having witnessed a kiss between Tristan and Isolde.43 This song, which we shall call “wavechant” borrowing Joyce’s own expression, strikingly resembles the poem “Tutto è sciolto.” As a further connection between the two texts, many lexical choices in the wavechant of Finn’s Hotel correspond to drafts and typescripts of “Tutto è sciolto” dated 1915-16 (Cornell 54), 1918-19 (Buffalo IV.A.I), and 1927 (Huntington, Slocum and Cahoon E.6.b).44 Among the various questions raised by the wavechant and “Tutto è sciolto,” one of the most prominent ones is to what extent they can be read independently not only from each other, but also from Finnegans Wake. Tim Conley’s use of negative correspondence comes to mind: “X 6= Y, but X is not altogether unlike Y.”45 This line of reasoning, which Conley originally applies to microlevels of Finnegans Wake, seems suitable also here, where texts are neither the same nor completely different. In bold strokes, the wavechant is an untitled passage enclosed by a narrative frame, where the Waves of Erin address a “poor heart”46 which could be their own or could belong to Tristan; in “Tutto è sciolto,” the speaker seems to be engaged in a dialogue with his own “fond heart.”47 However different and independent from each other, the wavechant and “Tutto è sciolto” share substantial textual relationships and common stages in their history of composition. Paradoxically, thus, they are both independent and interdependent, as the wavechant can be considered as a constituent part of both Pomes Penyeach and Finnegans Wake. From a translator’s perspective, to borrow Edwin Gentzler’s words, there is a “suggestion that the original text is already in translation,”48 so that the target text could be perceived as a trans-

43 44 45

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James Joyce, “The Staves of Memory,” in Finn’s Hotel (Dublin: Ithys Press, 2013), 39. See note 24; Natali, “That submerged doughdoughty doubleface,” 72-86. Tim Conley, “Playing with Matches: The Wake Notebooks and Negative Correspondence,” in New Quotatoes: Joycean Exogenesis in the Digital Age, eds. Ronan Crowley and Dirk Van Hulle (Leiden, Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2016), 172. Joyce, “The Staves of Memory,” 39. Joyce, Pomes Penyeach, in Poems and Exiles, 46. Edwin Gentzler, Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-translation Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 140.

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lation in the second degree.49 One might expect the connections between the wavechant and “Tutto è sciolto” to surface also in the Italian versions, at least because of their multiple and important lexical relationships; instead, Ottavio Fatica’s wavechant in the Italian edition of Finn’s Hotel radically shifts away from available translations of “Tutto è sciolto:” Un cielo senz’uccelli, umbramarina e di stelle una Bassa a occidente E tu, povero cuor, imagine d’amor, frale e lontana Tu rammenti Gl’occhi freddomare e ’l soave biancoschiuma fronte Le chiome profumate Ricadenti come or cade silente Ombra dall’etere. E perché mai Perché rammemorar Perché Povero cuor ti crucci Se quell’amor cui lei con un sospir cedé Mai non fu tuo!50 Fatica’s text is the result of both interlingual and intralingual translation: it presents extreme archaisation through use of obsolete lexical, syntactical, and grammatical forms. High literary language is favoured, as for example in line 3, where the words “imagine” and “frale” are poetical forms for the common terms “immagine” (image), and “fragile” (frail). The artificiality of a re-created poetical language is made manifest in what seems to be a facetious use of high registers, archaisms, and unnatural word-order. While poetically evoking or humorously imitating the language of times past, Fatica’s target text also establishes ambiguities that are absent in the original. For instance, in line 5, the use of “fronte” (brow) as a masculine noun is outdated in Italian; nowadays, “fronte” is feminine when referring to “brow,” whereas the masculine gender survives only in figurative use with the meaning of “front.” Therefore, “bianco-

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This idea is further reinforced by the fact that “Tutto è sciolto” quotes an Italian text; namely, act II, scene 3 of Vincenzo Bellini’s La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker), which runs: “Tutto è sciolto. Oh dì funesto! / Più per me non v’ha conforto. / Il mio cor per sempre è morto / Alla gioia ed all’amor.” See Vincenzo Bellini, La Sonnambula. Melodramma in due atti di Felice Romani (Sesto San Giovanni: Barion Editore, 1931), n. p. James Joyce, Finn’s Hotel, trans. Ottavio Fatica (Rome: Gallucci, 2013), Kindle edition.

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schiuma fronte” may suggest to the modern reader both “foamwhite brow” and “foamwhite front,” leading to some puzzlement. Similarly, “seadusk” is translated with the strikingly alien “umbramarina,” a compound word devised by a combination of the Latin noun “umbra” (shadow) and the adjective “marina” (sea). Perhaps not coincidentally, the Latin umbra marina identifies a kind of fish (umbrine), a suggestion that adds to the sea-related referents in the scene. The compound “seadusk” appears also in “Tutto è sciolto,” but translators of Pomes Penyeach have privileged more cautious and natural-sounding solutions such as “crepuscolo sul mare,” “marina oscurità,” “crepuscolo marino,” and “imbrunire di mare.”51 The only exception, Paci’s original compound “marescuro”52 poses no difficulties to the readers’ comprehension. In short, no translation of “Tutto è sciolto” presents a tendency toward unfamiliar, poetical, and outdated language, or an extent of creativity comparable to those in the Italian wavechant. Fatica foregrounds artificial difference in a sort of parodic adaptation, which, to use Lauren Leighton’s expression, “renders an original false.”53 If we assume that Fatica is not reading Pomes Penyeach, but a text that “in relation to style – while not conclusively – is certainly closely aligned to Finnegans Wake,”54 this sense of “falseness” is justifiable: as Patrick O’Neill reminds us, translators “will … inevitably produce a Wake that is fake.”55 “The Staves of Memory” is replete with Wake-like experimental language, with the exception of the wavechant, which appears formally tight and conventional in comparison to its prose frame. Fatica signals this abrupt change of style by adopting a mock-archaic language, which can also account for the ironic and playful tone of the preceding narrative text. Perhaps it is still in line with a polysemic or Wake-like kind of writing that the translator includes further meanings and ambiguities with the words “fronte” and “umbramarina.” What determines the new direction followed by Fatica is obviously context; his adaptation of the wavechant must “forget” the available Italian versions of “Tutto è sciolto” in order to signal the independence of Finn’s Hotel and Pomes Penyeach. Still, as Conley notes, context can be capricious.56 In our case,

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54 55 56

These quotations are from the translations by Piccoli (Joyce, Pomes Penyeach / Pomi unsoldoluno, 107), Rossi (Joyce, Poesie da un soldo, 133), Camerino (Joyce, Po(e)mi un soldo l’uno, 27) and Benvenuti and Corradini Broussard (Joyce, Pomi un penny l’uno, 101). Joyce, Pomes Penyeach: Pomi un penny l’uno. Poesie una pena l’una, 15. Lauren G. Leighton, “The Soviet Concept of Time and Space,” in Translation: Theory and Practice, Tension and Interdependence, ed. Mildred L. Larson (Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008), 54. O’Sullivan, “Finn’s Hotel and the Joycean Canon,” https://goo.gl/vmvfBL. Patrick O’Neill, Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wakes (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 29. Conley, “Playing with Matches,” 172.

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it is evidently so, especially if we expand the conventional meaning of the word “context” to include the broader ideas of conjunction and confluence suggested by the Latin prefix “con-.” The intricate and dynamic interactions between the wavechant and “Tutto è sciolto” suggest that each is a con-text for the other and, more obliquely, for Finnegans Wake. Accordingly, it would be reasonable to consider a mutually informing process where translations of the wavechant and “Tutto è sciolto” build upon each other just like the source texts do. This opens the way to a series of questions: can translation be affected by variation in use and meaning of the source text (or similar texts) within the author’s production? Given that no writing process ends in a ‘final product,’ how can translation come to terms with a series of texts that are virtually independent, but simultaneously interconnected? Unstable source and target texts engaging in a constant dialogue call to mind Gentzler’s idea of textual re-elaboration as akin to – or even indistinguishable from – translation, which is “an always-ongoing process of every communication” (original emphasis).57 The fascinating theoretical aspects of an encounter between manuscript study and translation deserve scholarly attention, but have so far received little; such interdisciplinary discourse allows for further elaboration on a notion that text is never independent, that it “is as multiplied as it multiplies.”58 However, translators also need to cope with much more concrete frameworks, and currently it is hard to pinpoint specific practical repercussions of this speculation – other than the fact that old certainties are being replaced with new doubts. The translators of Pomes Penyeach (and of Joyce’s corpus as a whole) are confronted by seemingly endless levels of textual instability and theoretical uncertainty; at the same time, by constantly encountering new crossroads, they have occasion to participate in a unique feast of interpretation, a celebration of creativity that was already inaugurated by the “angered translator” Pavese in the 1940s: If it is true that I translate with wisdom and enthusiasm … I could also attempt to invent something new, couldn’t I?59 57 58

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Gentzler, Translation and Rewriting, 5. Clive Scott, “Translating the Literary: Genetic Criticism, Text Theory and Poetry,” in The Translator as Writer, eds. Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush (London, New York: Continuum, 2007), 155. Pavese’s original text appears in a letter to Carlo Muscetta dated 25 September 1940, where he discusses his opportunities as a novelist and a poet: “Se traduco con sapienza ed entusiasmo … potrei anche provarmi a inventare qualcosa, no?” (original emphasis). Cesare Pavese, Officina Einaudi: Lettere editoriali 1940-1950, ed. Silvia Savioli (Turin: Einaudi, 2008), Kindle edition.

Chapter 16

Crosswords; or Rather, Crossing Worlds Fabio Pedone and Enrico Terrinoni

Abstract In this chapter, two Italian translators of Finnegans Wake present a humorous, Wakeinflected “Ithaca”-like duologue, raising and responding to questions of translation concerning the Wake.

How did the duumvirate embrace the idea of completing the Italian translation of Finnegans Wake after the untimely death of Luigi Schenoni? ’twas a serendipitous event, never contemplated before the happy hour when the two met at an Irish pub in Rome, in the early months of 2013. Name the objects laying on that table. A decent number of (empty) pints, paper beer mats, the program of a Joyce conference just ended, while, behind the table, on the wall, rested a commemorative plaque of the translation of Ulysses which had been completed years before on that very spot. And then? Upon the bench lay an entangled heap of jackets. Under the bench a coat had escaped (just another “scapecoat”…). Why strangelators and not stranslators or strangulators? Imperfect synonymy. Which other synonyms are possible? Extraditors, extranslators, ex-translators.

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From what angle did the two look at the Italian language in their work? From the perspective according to which when we are born we are already spoken, and our work on language is just an excruciating attempt to shirk the already-said by unknowingly creating “new worlds for all.” Drawing inspiration from? First of all, Padre Dante who invented Italian. Excuse me? In the great mismàs (Triestine), in the wirrwarr (German), in the tohubohu (Hebrew, French) of the world-in-words, knowledge creates intuition. However, this can happen only in the heterodox prison in which daring linguistic and mental exercises are bound to end up. What was their approach to the white page? Black, and kaleidoskeptic. A permanently translational estate where nothing is ever what it seems, and as in a pictorial sfumato everything varies and vanishes in many other tints, other tones, other shapes. No reading is a neutral transfer of what has mysteriously been written, every passage is a creative act. Divided between? Overdetermination and indetermination. A tension towards overstanding while trying to understand. A new disordering of atoms/etymons aiming at reconciliation after a sundering, so as to make each new reading more and more “eyetalien” and “infamiliar.” The patterns that the razorblade of eccentric interpretation always opens up reside between the sibylline leaves in a symbolic forest of obscure sense. Thanks, all too clear. No prob, pal. List the typical and topical moments of your work.

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The asymptotic identification of meanings, both plain and oblique, hidden in words. The abandonment to the flow of thought and sound associations; self-corrections due to a perennial rethinking in the palimpsest of the mind or hetero-correction occurring in permanent dialogue; the enrichment via erudite allusions, the simplification via infantile lallations, the aim at creating from old connections new ones which will hopefully refract some facets of the originals. Give us an example, will ya? “Atoms and ifs”, or “whercabroads”, where in the shadow of a typo even the Joyce home of St Peter’s terrace, at the crossroads with Cabra Road, might mythically resound with exilic echoes. This happens only in the ambiguity of the contraries which is ineluctably subject to the seemingly opposite tides of religion and science, where the shifts and permutations of linguistic corpuscles and particles are capable of opening the portals of a revelatory yet chaotic cosmos. How did the two cads work in cooperation, in order to revise their work after strangelating it? Knowing that in the fluctuating page of the Wake to read is always to reread with the other’s eye (I?). In the other’s world something never seen before was always re-seen as in a retrospective arrangement. Any Ulyssean parallelism in their recent mutual experiences? A stately simultaneous act of pissing in the direction of the grand starry heliotropes in the Glasnevin area on Bloomsday, not too far from where Stephen and Bloom, with mathematical exactitude, relieve their bladders of the alcoholic liquid transubstantiated in their astral bodies on their way to Eccles street. Any banal though ineludible curiosity you’d like to ask the great man? What would the Maestri di color che sanno have done if an internet connection was available to them. Any image to suggest?

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Digging upwards in Babel’s well. Enumerate various possible old and new definitions of the Wake. It is not about something and yet it tells all about it; a machine for unthinking, an interpretation of vice (device?), an encyclopaedia of the multiverse, his story of Ireland and the world, a nightmare-book from which one should never awake, the plot of a mind put to sleep, a gigantic monster of slanguish, the insurrection in Dublin, a babelic declaration of war against silence, a silent war against Babel, the self-epiphany in which Language appears to Itself, the most grandiose hoax of intellectuality, the holocaust of the reader, the undead letter unlettered and unposted to his daughter Lucia. Who then should read such a book, and why in stranslation? An insomniac water-diviner who divinely feels at ease with double meanings and nursery rhymes; a platonic anarchist, a virtuoso of curiosity, soundsense and nunsongs, well-read in the metaphysics of shanty songs, in Sator Arepo and Sartor Resartus, the angelic choirs and the frogs’ croaking, a ruthless skeptic capable of laughing at the mystique of language and of recapturing the finality of loose textual threads, its disturbed frequencies, one who is familiar with the idea that to read is always an experiment in unknowing, which is exactly what should allow one to overread and even unread the Wake; finally, a reader-translator helped by Gadda’s wisdom that “le parole sono le ancelle di una Circe bagasciona” (“words are the maidservants of a whorish Circe”). How did the two strangelators respond to the problems posed by the ethics of translation, given the fact that eminent post-Victorians consider Joyce’s last book eminently untranslatable. Lightly, respectfully, shamelessly, gently, by resorting to the description of the qualities of water in “Ithaca.” To translate the untranslatable is always a watery way, where the rigidity of Manicheism can only flow away unseen, unrecognized, unremembered. Nobody owns. What made the idea of translating the Wake at the same time risky and desirable?

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It was made risky by its renowned impossibility, its unavoidable invisibility, its proverbial unreadability, its mythological unclassifiability, its persistent untranslatability; what made it desirable was its obstinate taciturnity, its caustic intelligibility, its audacious temerity, its ardent obscenity, its uninterrupted plurality. What was feared most by the two extranslators? What did they hope? They feared the ancient folly of those who cross a dangerous threshold with quixotic indifference to peril and without listening to the warnings of an albatross. They hoped that their fatigues would in the end be welcomed by all the Dulcineas around. Which tempers distinguished the two and yet made them alike? The alternation of the atrabilious and the phlegmatic with a sprinkle of absurdiste humourism, the excesses of sanguine enthusiasm due to the unexcessive consumption of porter, the vague sense of unexpected futures approaching, futures made possible by a melancholic revisiting of old paths or by the discovery of new destinations and new ends. What characterized the Aristotelian humors of the two in the very moment when a surprising idea or solution crossed their minds? A mindful steam of cautiousness when a joke was taken seriously which started an unstoppable flow of puntheism and funtheism. Can or should the Wake then be read? It should clearly be deemed illogically illegible in the old sense of the word. The possibility of reading it resides in a future which instantaneously becomes present after having been past already for some time in our minds. The infinite readings which make it impossibly possible to read are always unfinishable. Which makes the Wake perfectly readable. How long is it to be hoped that a reading of the Wake take? About seventeen years. What about its infinitranslation?

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You need to be doublin’ that. Into what language did the two translate it? Infinitalian. How many lives will the Wake take? A number as infinite as the universes. Deadly. Right so. Why is it universal? Because it is plultiple. It is capable of “multiplying in infinitie”, of infinitiplicare, as John Florio explained in his New World of Words. Florio, Virag? A friend of the Nolan. John Wyse? No, the one beastly burned (bruned?) in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome. Flowers again. Of the mountain. Can the Wake be seen as a continuation of Ulysses? In many plultiple ways. Ithaca ends where the Wake begins. How did the two stranglers, sorry, strangulators work? Playing tennis with words, preying on the subtle work of other scholars, seeking connections, conning sections, privileging the ambiguous over the unambiguous, alluding to many things at once, always keeping alive the flag of the Irish.

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Why is the Wake Irish? Because it is an unfinished project. Because its past is its future, and its present a memory of the past. Because it is aware that history is farcically tragic and tragedy is a far cycle of history. Can history be cycled? Recycled, rather. Can the Wake teach one how to translate? It can, by revealing that the unknown is not the unknowable but what is not known yet. It teaches us that as fathers and mothers we always dream of our sons and daughters, who in return dream of their parents to get rid of them by remembering them, and at the same time by recalling that they have previously been dismembered in their minds. Can the Wake be seen as parallel to any other work? To the Bible of Babel, a Bible of the future where the waters of the world will meet. What made the two translators believe that it was sensible to devote almost a sixth of their current existence to translating one third of a book whose previous two thirds had been already translated by another man now dead? The infinite challenge of recapturing the lost. What would be an appropriate Italian translation of riverrun? riverranno, of course, where we have “to come back” (rivenire), a proper “new coming”, then we have a masculinized form of the name of the river of Dublin (anna) which is also the second name of Joyce’s daughter, the river banks (rive), an idea of truth (ver[o]), the Spanish for “to see” (ver) and the italian rivedranno (“they will see again”), the washerwomen’s ranno (“lye”), a year (anno), the opposite of yes (no), the verb to err (errare), a lot of rs… It’s, to be sure, a sort of humble preservation by recreation of transubstantiation (or transubstranslation) of his work in prowess, so to speak.

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What makes one wish that the Wake will one day be read by one and all? The drive to understand a bizarre metaphor Joyce once used to illustrate the utter sense of the Wake. Which one?

Chapter 17

Derrida and the Phantom Yeses of Ulysse Sam Slote

Abstract This chapter takes as its premise that once a text is translated, it is exponentially retranslatable and partakes in “the problem of textual transmission in general.” Slote centres his discussion on the issues of translatorial multiplicity, departing from a critical rereading of Derrida’s “Ulysses Gramophone.” He examines textual elements of Ulysses – the dot and the end of “Ithaca” and the instances of Joyce’s non-existent yeses that nevertheless appear in the French Ulysse, to be theorized by Derrida; Slote concludes that translation fictionalises a text by misrepresenting and falsifying the original.

According to Borges’s story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” the heresiarchs of Uqbar once proclaimed that “Mirrors and copulation are abominable, for they multiply the number of mankind.”1 In the context of Borges’s story, fictions are also abominations since they too multiply the number of mankind by postulating imagined impossibilities and possibilities alike. Further to this brief list of abomination one might add translations since translations multiply the number of texts in the world. Indeed, a translation can also be construed as a fictionalisation of a text as it gets transposed into a different language: possibilising a text anew and differently, in a different language. Furthermore, few translations stand unchallenged since it is in the nature of translations to be superseded. That is, once a text gets translated, it becomes, necessarily, retranslatable, translatable again, differently, further multiplying the number of texts in the world. One translation is but a challenge, a dare to future translators. A translation thus adds to and changes the text. In this way, some of the problems associated with translations are cognate with the problem of textual transmission in general. What I want to do here is look at the intersection of translational and editorial problems in both Ulysses and Derrida’s essay on

1 Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, tr. Andrew Hurley (New York: Viking, 1998), 68.

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Ulysses as a way of highlighting the problems of textual, translational multiplicity. But first, as a quick entry into and exemplar of this problem, I would like to look at one single point in Ulysses, namely the dot that ends (or not) the “Ithaca” episode. The final question in “Ithaca” is “Where?” and its answer is an enigmatic black dot or point or period (U 17.2331-32). On the fair copy manuscript Joyce wrote a clarification for his French typist: “La réponse à la dernière demande est un point,” the answer to the last question is a point, or, more properly, full stop, since point is the French word for a full stop. The typist perfectly followed Joyce’s instruction and typed in a full stop (JJA 16: 289). On two proof pages, Joyce left instructions for his typesetters: “comme réponse un point bien visible [for the answer a prominent full stop]” (JJA 21: 140) and “le point doit être plus visible [the full stop should be more visible]” (JJA 27: 212). The typesetters followed Joyce’s directions and there is a large point, of a sort, in the first edition, although because of typesetting limitations it wound up a bit square. Over the years, subsequent individual printings of Ulysses have missed the point because someone at the printers had thought it was a mistake and blotted it out. Translations are especially susceptible to this problem and many of them lack the final dot, even though it’s literally the easiest thing in Ulysses to translate. The problem here would be attributable to either the translators’ printers or to the translators happening to work from an edition that itself lacked the dot (for example, the 1936 pre-Gabler Bodley Head printing lacked the dot). On the other hand, some translations, like the Swedish translation of 1953, go the opposite route and present a suspiciously large and groovy dot.2 Because of these variations, the “Ithaca” point is not a full stop that ends this episode once and for all, consistently, in all iterations of Ulysses, rather it is the mark that shows how this episode lives on with variations in new editions and across different languages. Every year when I get to “Ithaca” in my Ulysses class, I ask my students to look in their copies to see if it has the point or not: a spot-check, if you will. And every year at least one student has a printing bereft of the point. Some of these students then say that knowing that there should be a point changes their sense of the episode: instead of having an episode of questions and answers end with an unanswered question, it does end with an answer, albeit an enigmatic one. So, this is not necessarily a trivial point. Indeed, a Joycean

2 Some of these issues are discussed in Austin Briggs, “The Fell Stop at the End of ‘Ithaca’: Thirteen Ways – and Then Some – of Looking at a Black Dot,” Joyce Studies Annual 7 (1996): 125-44.

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named John Gordon told me that he once had an article rejected because the reviewer complained that he was talking about a non-existent dot at the end of “Ithaca.” Recently I had a student whose printing didn’t have the point at the end of the episode, but the point somehow wound up elsewhere in the episode, on a different page, randomly scattered like some kind of grace note or dust mote. This student said that he had wondered if this placement was something Joyce had devised and intended. This wound up being a very good example of why no edition, no printing, can ever be really trusted. All textual instantiations, edited, translated, whatever, are prone to err and miss or mislay the point. This then leads me to my main point. “Ulysses Gramophone,” Derrida’s essay on Ulysses, was first delivered as the plenary address on 12 June 1984 at the ninth International James Joyce Symposium, held in Frankfurt-am-Main. The paper was first published in French in 1985 in the volume Genèse de Babel: Joyce et la création; for this volume Derrida slightly expanded the paper he had delivered the year before. A translation into English by Tina Kendall and revised by Shari Benstock was published in 1988 in the volume of conference proceedings; this translation was of the paper Derrida had delivered in 1984 and does not incorporate the additions he made for the 1985 French publication. This translation was subsequently republished for the 1992 collection Acts of Literature; its editor, Derek Attridge, revised the existing translation in light of the expanded 1985 French publication of the text. Back in 1987, Galilée published a slim volume called “Ulysse gramophone” which includes that essay along with Derrida’s earlier essay on Finnegans Wake, “Deux mots pour Joyce.” This version of the essay includes a lengthy footnote on the German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig dated 2 January 1987, which does not appear in the version published in Acts of Literature.3 Finally, for the 2013 volume Derrida and Joyce: Texts and Contexts that I edited with Andrew J. Mitchell, we included an all-new translation of the essay by François Raffoul, which was translated from the 1987 French text and thus presents, for the first time in English translation, the full and final version of Derrida’s text.4 Derrida’s text exists in multi3 Jacques Derrida, “Ulysse gramophone,” Genèse de Babel, ed. Claude Jacquet (Paris: CNRS, 1985), 227-64; “Ulysses Gramophone,” trans. Tina Kendall and Shari Benstock, James Joyce: The Augmented Ninth, ed. Bernard Benstock (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988), 2775; Ulysse gramophone (Paris: Galilée, 1987); “Ulysses Gramophone,” trans. Tina Kendall, Shari Benstock, and Derek Attridge, Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New York: Routledge, 1992), 253-309. 4 Jacques Derrida, “Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce,” trans. François Raffoul, Derrida and Joyce: Texts and Contexts, eds. Andrew J. Mitchell and Sam Slote (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013), xviii.

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ple states, across two languages, with various disjunctions between them (and I’m not even going to mention the translations of this essay into other languages other than in this one parenthesis you are presently enduring). Just as Joyce’s bibliography has its complexities, Derrida’s bibliography is not without some fiddly bits. In any case, the point that I am leading towards only emerged through the 2013 retranslation of Derrida’s essay and its preceding publication history. In a footnote in “Ulysses Gramophone,” Derrida lists over fifty instances where the French translation of Ulysses has a “oui” where there was no “yes” in Ulysses. He concludes the footnote by stating that a “systematic typology could be attempted”5 to account for these ouis that translate a phantom yes, that is a “yes” that is present only in the French translation as a oui. Many of these phantom yeses derive from specific structural, idiomatic differences between the English and French languages. For example, Auguste Morel, the principal translator,6 usually renders “Ay” as “oui.” In some instances, a oui enables a more compact rendition, such as “Oh mais oui” (F/Morel 2, 119) for “O, to be sure” (U 6.695). In a few instances, Morel makes explicit what was only implicit in the original: such as, “Elle fit oui” (F/Morel 2, 274) for “She nodded” (U 10.870). The original relates the gesture while the translation, instead, describes the intent of that gesture, thereby providing an interpretation of that gesture. In this, the register of representation gets shifted slightly. Perhaps the most important thing about the list is not the individual items but rather the cumulative effect of all these translational displacements, which shows that translations are inherently prone to wobble. The earlier translations of Derrida’s essay simply transposed the list with no modifications or even proof-checking. That is, Derrida’s list of problematic translations was left unmodified and, perhaps one could even say, untranslated. For his collation, Derrida used as his English edition the 1968 Penguin and for the French, the 1948 printing by Gallimard. For the new translation, as editor of the volume, I was tasked with updating the list to cite from the Gabler edition of Ulysses, 5 Derrida, “Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce,” 41-86, 85 n 50. 6 In a letter to Weaver, Joyce acknowledged of Morel that “The translation is really his” (SL 335), but this does not mean that he was the only translator. Morel’s work was painstakingly reviewed by Stuart Gilbert and their work was in turn reviewed by Valery Larbaud. This arrangement led to formidable animosity between the three, as is reflected by the cumbrous credit-line given to the translation, a formulation that was devised by Joyce in order to assuage his translators’ fragile egos: “Traduit de l’anglais par M. Auguste Morel, assisté par M. Stuart Gilbert. Traduction entièrement revue par Valery Larbaud avec la collaboration de l’auteur.” See John L. Brown, “Ulysses into French,” Library Chronicle 20-21 (1982): 29-60. This saga will continue in footnote 8.

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which Derrida wouldn’t have had access to when he wrote the essay as it was launched at the Frankfurt conference where he delivered his paper. And, likewise, I updated the references from the 1948 Gallimard printing to the 1995 Pléiade edition of Morel’s translation. Such is the glamour associated with the life of the mind. Initially, I assumed that this drudgery would simply involve translating the page references from the editions Derrida used to the current standards. Such editorial work is precisely an exercise in the kind of academic pedantry that, according to Derrida’s argument, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for understanding Joyce. In doing this work, I uncovered four anomalies in Derrida’s list. These anomalies actually could extend and enhance Derrida’s overall argument because of the way they enrich and complicate the hypothetical typology he proposes. Two of these anomalies are simply errors in his collation (one of which involves an “ay” that Morel rendered in this instance as “pardi” instead of the usual oui).7 But two of the anomalies derive from other factors, factors directly related to problems associated with the proliferation of texts. The first is “Oui. Un oui juvénile de M. Bon” (F/Morel 191) for “Yes, Mr. Best said youngly” (U 9.387). As I mentioned, Derrida used the 1948 Gallimard printing of the Morel translation in compiling his list. Unknown to Derrida, Morel made some revisions to the translation for the 1952 reprinting and Gallimard never drew any attention to these revisions (F/Morel 2, lxxi, n 1).8 One of these emendations involved changing this line to rid it of the menacing phantom yes; and so the line now reads, quite simply, in its new, revised form, “Oui, fit juvénilement M. Bon” (F/Morel 2, 221). In his subsequent revisions, Morel has exiled this one phantom yes to the phantom zone of translational infelicity. One of Derrida’s phantom yeses thus itself becomes a phantom within the textual archive of the publication history of the French translation of Ulysses. This shows that the text of Ulysses did not multiply only one time with the publication of its French translation. Once the translation is published, it gets republished, and with republication invariably comes variation, whether deliberate, 7 These are: “Oh oui” for “Very well, indeed” (U 10.219/F/Morel 2, 254); “Oh oui” translates “Oh yes” while “Very well, indeed” is several lines earlier. The other is “Oui” for “Ay” (U 12.335/F/Morel 2, 339); the Oui translates a “Yes” a few lines earlier and this “Ay” is translated as “Pardi,” although Morel does frequently translate “Ay” with oui. 8 As part of Gallimard’s subsequent revisions, the translators’ credit line was modified from 1948 onwards: “Traduction d’Auguste Morel; revue par Valery Larbaud, Stuart Gilbert et l’auteur” (the Pléiade reverted to the original formulation). This was likely done as a result of negotiations between Morel and Gallimard over royalties. See Patrick O’Neill, “French Joyce: Portrait of an Œuvre,” in Geert Lernout and Wim Van Mierlo, eds., The Reception of James Joyce in Europe (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), vol. 2, 411-21, 415 n 6.

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such as with Morel’s revisions, or, perhaps, accidental, as with misprints. The textual multiplication of translation is fruitful as it further multiplies. The second anomaly I uncovered in Derrida’s list is the result of a different type of textual genealogy. This comes from “Penelope,” an episode that hardly suffers from a lack of “yeses,” as, indeed, is the very subject of Derrida’s essay. But, apparently, this surfeit of yeses did not stop Morel from adding a few more ouis, that is, a few more phantom yeses. The line in English is “he asked to take off my stockings lying on the hearthrug in Lombard street well and another time it was my muddy boots” (U 18.265-67). Morel displaces the “well” into a “oui’: “il m’a demandé d’ôter mes bas allongée devant le feu sur le tapis à Lombard Street oui et une autre fois c’était mes bottines pleines de boue” (F/Morel 2, 811). In terms of the various functions Molly’s yeses can serve, one of them is as a conjunction between phrases and in this Morel’s supernumerary oui here can be seen as entirely typical; that is, it ably serves in one of the many rôles given to Molly’s multiple and multifarious yeses.9 But, of course, in the English it’s the “yes” that serves as a conjunction, not a “well.” This “well” is, in fact, a textual mistake. As is well documented, the 1922 first edition of Ulysses was full of mistakes perpetrated by various generations of beleaguered typists and typesetters. Joyce originally wrote “Lombard street west,” as in the Blooms” earlier address, but a typist incorrectly read this as “Lombard street well,” which is how it appeared in all subsequent drafts and all English editions of Ulysses up until Gabler’s.10 Therefore, the text from which Morel had been working was, in this place and others, faulty. This phantom yes comes from a textual miasma. This example shows that a translation can carry over noise as well as any signal into the target language and as well as adding its own brutish noise. These two anomalies have come about precisely because the texts of Ulysses and Ulysse are not fully fixed and stable. As Walter Benjamin noted, translations are always already belated, they issue from the original “not so much from its life as from its afterlife.”11 After carefully teasing out the implications of the vocabulary Benjamin uses in his essay, Paul de Man concludes that, “The translation belongs not to the life of the original, the original is already dead, but the translation belongs to the afterlife of the original, thus assuming

9 10 11

For example, “Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet” (U 18.19-21). Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition, ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior (New York: Garland, 1986), 1850. Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” trans. Harry Zohn, Selected Writings, vol. 1, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 253-63, 256.

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and confirming the death of the original […] translation also reveals the death of the original.”12 In multiplying the text into another language, a translation embalms the text into a single fragmentary, fractal instantiation. As with the nested fictions of Tlön and Uqbar, a translation takes on a life of its own, eclipsing and even contaminating that which occasioned it, even if only temporarily, as with Chapman’s “loud and bold” voice eclipsing “deep-brow’d” Homer’s.13 If literature is, as Ezra Pound claims, “news that STAYS news,”14 then a translation is fake news that slowly obsolesces. On the other hand, even if dead, the original text also has its own afterlife, apart from any translation, since it is subject to its own attendant, subsequent editions and re-editions. Gabler’s is just one of the more prominent subsequent editions of Ulysses; editors are thus to be added to translators as those charged with multiplying the number of texts. Indeed, adding to the multiplication, a translation will have its own re-editions and its own afterlife, as we can see with the revisions Morel made in the early 1950s. Ulysse evolves differently from Ulysses. Just as the translation spawns and multiplies text, so too does the original text, and both can multiply and mutate independently of each other. And, indeed, we see such independent evolution and multiplication not just in the complicated case of Ulysses and its translations but also in the publication history of Derrida’s essay. In their relentless and remorseless multiplications, translation and original stand as mutually unfaithful. The two anomalies, along with the two mistakes in Derrida’s collation, actually buttress Derrida’s overall argument about the possible typologies that can be essayed around “yes” and its phantoms. According to Derrida, a full typology of “yes” is impossible because “each category can be divided into two, depending on whether yes appears in a manifest monologue as a response to the other within oneself or in a manifest dialogue. We would have to take into account the different tonalities of these alleged modalities of the yes, in English and in all languages.”15 This multifarious ambivalence of “yes” is why the exercise of collation Derrida performs in that footnote is misleading, even if it didn’t have those four anomalies. According to Derrida’s argument, calculating “yes” is impossible. Already within the text of Ulysses, any single iteration of a “yes” is, at least potentially, multiple in that it might have multiple resonances and

12 13 14 15

Paul de Man, “Conclusions: Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator,’” The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 73-105, 85. John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” John Keats, ed. Elizabeth Cook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 32. Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (New York: New Directions, 1960), 29. Derrida, “Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce,” 80.

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modalities. Each “yes” contains multitudes. Add then to this potential multiplicity the further multiple modalities that result from translating Ulysses into different languages, each with their own distinct modalities and flavours of affirmation. And add to that the effects of phantom affirmations, affirmations that exist only in translations, affirmations that are only phantoms. And, indeed, the very statement of this problem of textual proliferation is itself necessarily an example of textual proliferation. The very act of collating two texts, two specific instances of texts – in Derrida’s case the 1948 printing of Morel’s translation and the 1968 Penguin Ulysses – this very collational act further multiples the text, and that multiplication itself obviously gets further multiplied in re-editions and re-translations of Derrida’s text in an example of what Beckett called, apropos Proust, “the comedy of an exhaustive enumeration.”16 This is why I suggested at the outset that a translation is a fictionalisation of a text. Put simply and reductively, this means that a translation – even a supposedly good translation – lies about the original. A translation certainly misrepresents the original in the act of presenting it in another language. The phantom yeses are both symptomatic and exemplary of this ineluctable modality of misrepresentation. Let’s look at another example from Derrida’s list, from “Nausicaa”: “Oui, elle avait même été témoin sous le toit familial d’actes de violence” (F/Morel 2, 398). This translates, “Nay, she had even witnessed in the home circle deeds of violence” (U 13.297-98). A “nay” – a negation – is displaced into an affirmation – a “oui,” a phantom yes (also in F/Aubert 438). Idiomatically the oui and the nay are equivalent and serve the same function for emphasis, thereby suggesting that the yes has within its remit a no. This phantom yes is not unlike how Beckett’s Unnamable characterises his aporetic progress, that is, his path of untranslatability, “affirmations and negations invalidated as uttered.”17 Likewise, the text continues on in its translation by substituting the author’s “nay” with the translator’s phantom yes. The translation falsifies the text by making it readable, by affirming it in another language. The phantom yes is thus the translator’s counter-signature: where the original says “no,” the translation says “yes.” Morel’s phantom yes is the metonymic dwarf of translation itself, the translation’s yes in place of naught. We can even see a kind of phantom yes in the Irish translation of Ulysses. Derrida notes that the Irish language weighs over “Penelope” because the language lacks words for yes and no in direct forms.18 16 17 18

Samuel Beckett, Proust (New York: Grove, 1957), 71. Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable, ed. Steven Connor (London: Faber, 2010), 1. Derrida, “Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce,” 82 n 9.

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This absence of yes (and no) would make it very difficult to translate “Penelope” into Irish. And so, what the Irish translators did to redress this famous lacuna was to use the word “seadh,”19 a phatic word devoid of semantic meaning. Even in a language bereft of the lexical resources for unequivocal affirmation, this translation still says yes, yes Ulysses can be translated into Irish, yes I will… Yes. A translation’s phantom yes can just as easily take the guise of an apparent negation. De Man notes a little problem in Maurice de Gandillac’s translation of Benjamin’s essay. Benjamin writes, and for our purposes the English translation is perfectly fine, “Where the literal quality of the text takes part directly, without any mediating sense, in true language, in the Truth, or in doctrine, this text is unconditionally translatable.”20 In this one extreme, hypothetical, pretty much inachievable state of pure and transparent language, Benjamin claims that the text can be perfectly translated, “übersetzbar schlechthin.”21 Gandillac, on the other hand, renders this as “simplement intraduisible,”22 purely untranslatable, thereby confusing an unambiguous positive state for an equally negative one. De Man mischievously notes that in a seminar on Benjamin, Derrida relied on Gandillac’s text here to make a point about untranslatability, but a student then noted Gandillac’s error.23 In this case, the translator translated a positive into a negative, and in so doing affirmed the imperfection of translation precisely because the text – Benjamin’s text, any text – does not take part directly in true language. Gandillac’s translation misses the point and confuses absolute translatability with absolute untranslatability. Because texts continually propagate and multiply and mutate, the recent Gallimard edition of Benjamin’s works corrects this infelicity in Gandillac’s translation, thereby returning the text to its original, hypothetical translatability.24 Amidst this textual proliferation, then, this is then the one point I wish to signal. Following from Derrida’s essay on Ulysses, each yes is already multiple in that each yes suggests an archive of all possible affirmations and negations. Each yes is pointillist and contains multitudes of points. That is, each yes already contains within itself its own phantoms. The text of Ulysses, likewise, 19 20 21 22 23 24

James Joyce, Uilséas, vol. 12, trans. Séamas Ó hInnéirghe and Breasal Uilsean (Belfast: Foillseacáin Inis Gleoire, 1991), 1 et passim. Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 262. Walter Benjamin, Illuminationen, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980), 62. Walter Benjamin, Œuvres, tr. Maurice de Gandillac (Paris: Denoël, 1971), 275. De Man, “Conclusions: Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator,’” 80. The revised text now reads, “absolument traduisible”: see Walter Benjamin, “La Tâche du traducteur,” trans. Maurice de Gandillac, rev. Rainer Rochlitz, Œuvres I, ed. Rainer Rochlitz (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), 244-62, 261.

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also has its own phantoms: each instantiation suggests others, whether actual or not. In this, Ulysses and yes intertwine: the yes within Ulysses and the Ulysses within the yes, and all their phantoms. This all leads to a fundamental problem of textual ontology. What exactly is Morel’s Ulysse a translation of? On a pragmatic level, it’s a translation of the specific edition of Ulysses that Morel used, which is not necessarily identical to other editions of Ulysses (just as Derrida’s collation is a collation of two specific editions, the 1948 Ulysse and the 1968 Penguin Ulysses). A translation, by necessity, translates only one instantiation of that text, a fragment of some textual variorum. And, in so doing, in transposing one textual instantiation into another language, the translation adds to that variorum, but leaves that variorum itself untranslated, thereby indicating the fundamental untranslatability of that variorum. The translatability of one edition of a text reveals the untranslatability of the text. This is a basic implication of translations that de Man signals: They disarticulate, they undo the original, they reveal that the original was always already disarticulated. They reveal that their failure, which seems to be due to the fact that they are secondary in relation to the original, reveals an essential failure, an essential disarticulation which was already there in the original.25 In other words – and a translation is always in other words – the mere existence of a translation, even in potentia, indicates that the original text is not and cannot be linguistically self-sufficient, or pure. In attempting to domesticate a foreign text for native readers, a translation alienates what was already alien. But perhaps translation does not just reveal an essential disarticulation that resides within a text, perhaps a disarticulation of something larger. Translation reveals that the text is not only dead, dead in its multiplication into its afterlife, but that it is also in some fundamental way untranslated. What gets translated is not the text, but its phantom. The ouis that Morel adds and Derrida catalogues are perfectly illustrative of what happens in the act of translation: the translation affirms itself – yes, something has been brought over, transposed, translated into another language – but what is being affirmed and what performs the affirmation – the phantom yes – was never quite there as such in the original. The phantom yes is not just the counter-signature of a translator, it is the inevitable counter-signature of translation in general. Translation’s affirmation can only be performed by some kind of phantom

25

De Man, “Conclusions: Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator,’” 84.

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yes. Compounding the matter further are the errors inherent in the matter of textual multiplications in the misprision house of language. The phantom multiplicities in and around Derrida’s list and, indeed, Morel’s translation are indicative of the phantom multiplicities that were already within the texts of Ulysses, all the many yeses and Ulysseses within just the one Ulysse.

Index A.E. [Æ] 208, 288n14. See also Russell, George William Addison, Joseph 108 Aelfric (Ælfric) 232 Akar, Seniha 180n6 Alatorre, Sophie 34n4 Alfonso X of Castile (Alfonso the Wise) 232 Ali Ufkî Bey/Wojciech Bobowski 187n25 Alighieri, Dante 48, 292-294, 301 Allen, Esther 3n6 alliteration 41, 66, 75, 78, 91, 99, 109, 120, 131, 141-142, 155-156, 181-182, 188-189, 197, 209-210, 218-219, 229-232, 238, 293 Alonso, Sabrina 143n34 Alvstad, Cecilia 223n5 Andreoli, Annamaria 294n35 Anjos, Augusto dos 218 Apter, Emily 11-13 Aristotle 304 Assis, Machado de 217 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 181n8 Atay, Oğuz 180, 187 Atherton, J.T. 22n82, 107-108, 111n20 Attridge, Derek 5n14, 14n65, 88, 92, 98n27, 104n2, 122, 166n4, 174n33, 310 Aubert, Jacques 26, 33, 34-38, 41-44, 46, 47, 144n37, 315 Auerbach, Erich 12 Augustine 277 Azadibougar, Omid 223n5 Baccolini, Raffaella 261n10 Bach, Johann Sebastian 90 Baker, Mona 3n6, 106n9, 222n1, 226n17, 259n5 Bakhtin, Mikhail 125-126, 221-227, 232, 241 Bartnicki, Krzysztof 125n2 Bašić, Sonja 166n8 Bass, Alan 104n5 Bassnett, Susan 299n58 Bataillard, Pascal 35-37, 38n14, 46 Bazarnik, Katarzyna 129n18, 139n27, 147 Beach, Sylvia 8, 148 Becher, Victor 226n17

Beck, Harald 26, 48, 50, 60, 62n13, 85n32, 86, 271, 277-278 Beckett, Samuel 151n8, 315 Beja, Morris 95n22, 126n8 Belge, Murat 179, 188 Bellini, Vincenzo 297n49 Bénéjam, Valérie 283 Benjamin, Walter 12, 126, 178n48, 313, 316 Bensimon, Paul 2, 4, 126 Benstock, Bernard 310n3 Benstock, Shari 310 Benvenuti, Giulia 31, 288, 290, 298n51 Berman, Antoine 2-4, 6, 34-35, 119, 122, 221, 222n2, 240 Bermann, Sandra 4n11 Bigazzi, Carlo 260 Biguenet, John 126n8 Bindervoet, Erik 18n80, 19, 21, 23, 25, 29-30, 129n17, 223n9, 228, 231, 235-236, 239, 240, 271, 274-276, 277n7, 278n8, 284n20 Bishop, John 100n30 Black, Catherine 45n29 Blake, William 279 Blamires, Harry 179, 183 Bloem, Rein 271-276, 278n8, 280-281 Bloom, Harold 3, 151n8 Blum-Kulka, Shoshana 222n1, 226n17 Blümlová, Dagmar 149, 152n11 Bobowski, Wojciech/Ali Ufkî Bey 187n25 Bollettieri Bosinelli, Rosa Maria 30, 166n8, 167n13, 170n21, 258-259, 260n5 Bonapfel, Elizabeth M. 172n25, 271, 283 Borges, Jorge Luis 3, 38, 308 Boulanger, Pierre-Pascal 5n13 Bowen, Zack 92n18, 183 Briggs, Austin 309n2 Brisset, Annie 3, 4n7 Brockman, William S. 143n34 Brody, Daniel 49 Brown, John L. 33n1, 36n10, 311n6 Brownlie, Siobhan 4 Bruno, Giordano (the Nolan) 305 Budgen, Frank 63, 101n31, 179, 237, 268 Bullock, Marcus 178n48, 313n11 Bulson, Eric 14n64

320 Bush, Peter 299n58 Byron, George Gordon

Index

272

Cabrera Infante, Guillermo 180 Calmieri, G. 286n3 calque 17, 127, 135, 137, 291 poetics of the 17 Calvino, Italo 269n18, 286n5 Camerino, Aldo 30, 288, 290, 294, 298n51 Campbell, Berkeley 274 Canani, Marco 287n8 Caneda Cabrera, M. Teresa 260n5 Čapek, Karel 149 Caragiale, I.L. 253 Carroll, Lewis 148 Cǎrtǎrescu, Mircea 243n3 Cassin, Barbara 11 Cassou, Jean 5n17 Castro, Michael 120n32 Catullus 262 Celati, Gianni 6, 20, 23, 258, 260, 262n13, 263-268 Cervantes, Miguel de 5 Chapman, George 314 Chesterman, Andrew 221, 222n2, 227n18 Chiaro, Delia 261n10 Claes, Paul 19, 21, 23, 29, 183, 223n9, 228, 230, 231, 234, 236, 238, 240 Coetzee, J.M. 15-16 Cohn, Alan M. 10n42, 115n26, 117n27 Collombat, Isabelle 4n11 Conley, Tim 9n35, 172n25, 283n19, 296, 298 Connor, Steven 315n17 Cook, Elizabeth 314n13 Cooper, James Fenimore 114 Corradini Broussard, Domenico 31, 288, 290, 298n51 Creasy, Matthew 249n16 Crowley, Ronan 108n16, 296n45 Cusin, Michel 36, 37, 38n14 Ćwiąkała, Jadwiga 129n18 Czechowicz, Józef 124, 130-136 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 292-294 Damrosch, David 13n59 Danto, Arthur 290 Darwin, Charles 3n5 Dastjerdi, Hossein Vahid 128n14

Davison, Sarah 108, 114 De Angelis, Giulio 6, 20, 23, 144n37, 167n13, 258, 262-268 De Campos, Haroldo and Augusto 203 De Man, Paul 313, 314n12, 316-317 de Valera, Éamon 152 Deane-Cox, Sharon 6, 165n2 Deane, Vincent 271, 276, 278 defamiliarization 4, 19, 120, 131, 144, 245 Defoe, Daniel 108n16 Deming, Robert H. 288n14 Dent, R.W. 183 Derrida, Jacques 5, 12, 13n57, 14, 18-19, 31, 103, 104, 121, 122n35, 126, 166, 308, 310-318 Descartes, René 107n12 Desmidt, Isabelle 126n11 Devi, Mahasweta 13n56 dislocution (Senn) 14-15, 25, 32. See also translation Doizelet, Sylvie 36, 37, 38n14 domestication. See translation Doorslaer, Luc van 4n11, 223n5, 227n19 Doubinsky, Claude 295n39 Drevet, Patrick 36, 37, 40 Driver, Clive 182n10 Ducrot, Oswald 223 Đurić, Mina 28, 129n19, 144n37, 165 Durych, Jaroslav 152 Eco, Umberto 268 Edward VII (King) 277 Egri, Péter 105n6 Eisenstein, Sergei 171n24 Ekici, Armağan 18n80, 20, 22, 24-25, 28-29, 179, 182, 184-186, 188-200 Eliot, Thomas Stearns 8, 153 Ellmann, Richard 92n18, 179, 183, 203 Emerson, Caryl 125n5, 225n13 Emmet, Robert 174 empan traductif (translational span; Bensimon) 4 Engelhart, Bernd 168n14, 169n20 Épié, Flavie 9n40, 26, 33 Erhat, Azra 188 Erkmen, Nevzat 20, 22, 24, 28-29, 179-182, 184n22, 185-186, 188n30, 191-200 Esterházy, Péter 107n14

Index explicitation hypothesis 222 explicitation. See translation Eysteinsson, Ástráður 260n5 Eyuboğlu, Sabahattin 187-188 Fastrová, Jarmila 28, 149-150, 153-154 Fatica, Ottavio 297-298 Faull, Katherine M. 4n10 Ferrer, Daniel 9n38, 35n5, 166n4 Ferrieri, Enzo 285n1 Filipova, Kalina 166n8 Fischer, Andreas 96n23 Flaubert, Gustave 6, 63 Flecchia, Bona 258n2 Florio, John 305 Flotow, Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand 81 Folkart, Barbara 222n5 Fordham, Finn 129n18 foreignization. See translation Francis, Gill 226n17 Frehner, Ruth 25-26, 48, 50-51, 58, 60n8, 258n2 Fromek, Jan 150 fuga per canonem 92n18 Gabler, Hans Walter 28, 50, 59, 62, 65, 71n20, 82-83, 139, 158, 182, 196, 203, 258, 262n13, 271, 274-278, 281, 283, 295, 309, 311, 313-314 Gadda, Carlo Emilio 303 Galindo, Caetano Waldrigues 18n80, 21, 23, 25, 29, 129n19, 130n20, 144n37, 202, 204n8, 205, 207-213, 215-219 Gambier, Yves 4, 223n5, 227n19 Gandillac, Maurice de 316 García, Noelia Ramón 224n10 Gaskell, Philip 182 Gáspár, Endre 27, 88-89, 91n16, 103, 105-107, 109-110, 112-115, 117, 119, 121, 144n37, 145n38 Gass, William 15-16, 17n76, 18n78 Genette, Gérard 295n39 Gentzler, Edwin 296, 299 Gibson, Andrew 166n5, 183 Gifford, Don 109, 167nn10-11, 176n38, 182, 215n18, 242n1, 253, 254n31, 256n33, 256n35, 256n38

321 Gilbert, Stuart 9, 11, 26, 34, 36, 39, 62n14, 179, 183, 311n6, 312n8 Glenny, Michael 171n24 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 2 Goldmann, Márta 88n3, 105n6 Gordon, John 310 Gorjan, Zlatko 153, 170-173, 175-176, Gorman, Herbert 274 Goyert, Georg 8, 10, 35, 49, 59, 64n17, 66-71, 115, 118n28 Gradišnik, Janez 153, 167, 170n23, 172-173, 175-176 Green, Julien 9n39 Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm 73n21, 73n23 Grossman, William L. 217n19 Grubica, Irena 166n8 Grutman, Rainier 165n1 Gula, Marianna 25-27, 87, 90n12, 101n32, 103, 105, 110n17, 113n21, 119n30, 190n32 Gunn, Ian 183 Györffy, Miklós 106n10 Hacks, Peter 62n13 Halamová-Jiroušková, Martina 153n13 Harmon, Maurice 95n22 Hart, Clive 9n36, 22n82, 108n15, 182, 183 Harte, Bret 114, 115 Hassan, Wail S. 12n56 Hatim, Basil 223n8 Hauptmann, Gerhart 7-8 Hayman, David 22n82, 97n26, 108n15 Heaney, Seamus 125 Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm 104n3, 122n35 Heise, Ursula K. 13n59 Helsloot, Kees 272 Henkes, Robbert-Jan 18n80, 19, 21-23, 25, 29-30, 129n17, 223n9, 228, 231, 232n22, 235-236, 239, 240, 261n9, 271, 274-276, 277n7, 278n8, 284n20 Hermans, Theo 221, 223n5, 223n8 Herring, Philip 95n22 heteroglossia/-glossic 22, 103, 119, 122, 125-126, 139n28, 143, 144n37, 169-170, 221-222, 225, 227-228, 230-231, 236, 240 heterolingual(ism) 22, 165, 168 heterology 222, 225, 227-228, 230-232, 234-236, 240

322 Hettche, Walter 274n4, 277 Heusser, Martin 101n32, 106n7, 110n18, 247n11 Hewson, Lance 6n19 Heyvaert, Stefan 122n35 Hiberno-English 48, 58, 61-62, 66-69, 72, 90, 115-117, 156-157, 184-185, 196, 200 Hickey, Raymond 68n18 Hillyer, Robert 288n14 Hinkis, Victor 142n33 Hoepffner, Bernard 26, 36-40 Hoffmeister, Adolf 150-151 Hogan, Ciara 261n8 Hollander, Jean 293n29 Hollander, Robert 293n29 Holquist, Michael 125n5, 222n3 Homer/Homeric 7, 45 48, 75, 79, 188, 314 homography/-graphic 10, 113, 122, 167, 169 homophony/-phonic 10, 19, 99, 113, 122, 132, 154, 159, 167, 169, 207, 247 Horužij, Sergej 142n33 Houaiss, Antônio 21, 29, 144n37, 202, 203, 205-209, 211-219 House, Juliane 222n1, 223n7 Hrách, Tomáš 151n8 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 125 Hurley, Andrew 308n1 hybridity (linguistic; in language) 24, 29, 118, 222, 225, 236, 241 Ilmberger, Frances 101n32, 106n7, 110n18, 247n11 Ionescu, Arleen 243nn2-3, 244, 246, 250, 254n30 Ivǎnescu, Mircea 30, 242-246, 248, 250-257 Ivić, Pavle (Ивић, Павле) 167n12 Jackson, John Wyse 278 Jacquet, Claude 310n3 Jahnke, Hans 291n25 Jennings, Michael W. 178n48, 313n11 Jesenská, Milena 5 Jílovská, Stanislava 149 Johnson, Ben 52 Johnson, Dr. Samuel 109 Johnson, Jeri 182, 194, 197, 255n32 Jolas, Maria 8 Jones, Ellen Carol 126n8

Index Josipović, Sandra 166n8 Joyce, James, works: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 9, 18, 31, 49, 148-149, 179, 188, 203-204, 273, 283, 286 “Anna Livia Plurabelle” 150-151 Chamber Music 127, 287n10, 294n36 Dubliners 30, 49, 129n17, 148, 179, 204, 271-279, 283 “A Little Cloud” 278-279 “An Encounter” 276 “Clay” 279 “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” 277 “The Dead” 275, 280-281 “The Sisters” 273-274, 276-277 “Two Gallants” 275, 278 Finn’s Hotel 31, 204, 285, 295-298 Finnegans Wake 7, 9, 10n45, 19, 30-31, 34, 47, 91, 107, 111, 125n2, 127, 128n15, 150-151, 168-169, 172n26, 175n36, 176n39, 177, 243, 259n5, 269, 271, 273, 285, 291, 295-296, 298-299, 300, 302-307, 310 Giacomo Joyce 204 Pomes Penyeach 30-31, 285-289, 291-292, 293n30, 294n33, 294nn36-37, 295-296, 298-299 Ulysses episodes: “Aeolus” 37, 88n1, 143n36, 254, 266 “Calypso” 27, 30, 37, 54, 94n19, 124, 130, 143, 194, 242, 243 “Circe” 37, 84, 134n24, 137, 139, 141n30, 142, 149, 158, 211n15 “Cyclops” 28, 37, 42, 44, 112, 119n30, 125, 153, 165-166, 168n16, 171, 173-177, 189, 256 “Eumaeus” 28, 32, 37, 49, 111-112, 139, 162, 174n32, 183, 185, 189, 194-197, 216-217 “Hades” 37, 140, 189, 245 “Ithaca” 31, 37, 112, 139, 140, 155, 161, 303, 305, 308-310 “Lestrygonians” 37, 63, 88n1, 154, 171, 249 “Lotus Eaters” 37, 143, 249 “Nausicaa” 37, 54, 65, 136-137, 315 “Nestor” 37, 269

323

Index “Oxen of the Sun” (also the Coda) 9n38, 10, 21-22, 27-30, 37-38, 47, 49-50, 56, 62, 85, 103-104, 107-108, 110-111, 113-115, 117n27, 119, 119n30, 121-122, 124-125, 136, 138-140, 142n32, 149, 155, 160, 183, 186-187, 218, 221-223, 228-229, 240, 242, 247, 251-254, 257 “Penelope” 9n38, 37, 59n5, 136, 179, 185, 247n12, 249, 268, 313, 315-316 “Proteus” 19, 37, 88n1, 167 “Scylla and Charybdis” 37, 61-62, 154 “Sirens” 26-27, 37, 53, 58, 61, 72-74, 76, 78, 80, 85, 87-90, 92, 95, 96n23, 97nn25-26, 102, 140, 143, 149, 173-174, 189, 190 “Telemachus” 37, 42, 83, 149, 179n2, 181, 263, 265 “Wandering Rocks” 37, 116, 140, 149 “Work in Progress” 49, 150 Joyce, Lucia 303 Joyce, Nora 66 Joyce, Stephen 36 József, Attila 120 Kadir, A. 188n27 Kafka, Franz 5, 16n73 Kahn, Robert 37n13 Kamuf, Peggy 126n9 Kappanyos, András 26, 103, 105 Karadzić, Vuk C. (Караџић, Вук С.) 167n12, 172 Keats, John 314n13 Kendall, Tina 310 Kenner, Hugh 8n29, 179, 183, 232, 248-249, 275 Kershaw, Angela 259n4 Kershner, Brandon R. 165n3 Kilito, Abdelfattah 12 King James Bible 160 Kinker, Johannes 22 Kiss, Gábor Zoltán 26, 103, 105 Klaudy, Kinga 222n1, 226n17 Klein, Lucas 13n59 Klitgård, Ida 121n33, 123n38 Knowles, Sebastian D.G. 96n23, 97n26 Koljević, Svetozar 166n8 Koskinen, Kaisa 4n11, 227n19

Kosok, Heinz 166n8 Kosters, Onno 288n15 Kostić, Laza 172-173, 176 Kosztolányi, Dezső 106n9 Kovács, Veronika 168n16, 176n37 Krein-Kühle, Monica 223n7 Krijger, Jason de 280n12 Kujamäki, Pekka 226n17 Larbaud, Valery 8, 9nn37-38, 11, 26, 33n1, 34-35, 36, 39, 127, 311n6, 312n8 Larson, Mildred L. 298n53 Lawrence, Karen 95 Lázaro, Alberto 166n8 Leeming, Henry 167n10, 168-169, 175n35, 177n43 Lefevere, André 262 Leighton, Lauren 298 Leo XIII [Pope] 256 Lernout, Geert 124n1, 148n1, 166n8, 285n1, 312n8 Levin, Harry 182n10 Lewis, Geoffrey 181n8 Lewis, Philip E. 104n3, 104n5, 122n35 Linder, Erich 286 Liska, Vivian 260n5 Litz, A. Walton 283n17 Lorenzini, Livia 294n35 Lowe, Elizabeth 4n11 Maerlant, Jacob Van 232n22 Magalaner, Marvin 11n49 Mamigonian, Marc A. 183 Mamoli Zorzi, Rossella 288, 290, 294 Mánek, Bohuslav 148n1, 152 Mann, Thomas 106n8 Marroni, Michaela 6n20 Massardier-Kenney, Françoise 4-5 Mauranen, Anna 226n17 Mays, J.C.C. 289n19 McCourt, John 6n21, 14n64, 125n3, 166n7, 168n16, 177n45 McGinley, Bernard 278 McHugh 168, 177n43 McLaughlin, Martin 269n18 Mecsnóber, Tekla 143n34, 165n3, 166n6, 167n10, 172nn25-26, 175n35 Melchior, Claus 62n14, 313n10

324 Melchiori, Giorgio 6n20 Mensah, Patrick 19n81 Mercier, Vivian 11n49 Meschonnic, Henri 4, 5n13 Mihálycsa, Erika 1, 26-27, 88n4, 91n15, 92n17, 95n22, 98n28, 103, 107n11, 107n13, 110n18, 128n16, 129n19, 144, 145n38, 147, 168n15, 174n32, 174n34, 191n33, 193n34, 243n4, 246, 247n11, 258n1 Milanović, Vujadin (Милановић, Вујадин) 173n30 Milesi, Laurent 244, 246, 250, 254n30 Mitchell, Andrew J. 310 Mitchell, Breon 49n1 Mohammadi, Amene 128n14 Moldovan, Rareş 25, 27, 30, 130n20, 242 Monnier, Adrienne 8, 9n37, 36 monological. See translation Montale, Eugenio 30, 286-287, 294 Monteverdi, Claudio 111n19 Mooney, Susan 97n26 Moore, George 279 Moore, Thomas 119n30, 136 Morel, Auguste 9n38, 10, 26, 34-39, 41-47, 49, 144n37, 311-315, 317-318 Mossop, Brian 222n5 Muir, Willa 5 Murat, Laure 36n10 Murray, Lindley 195 Mursia, Ugo 30, 287 Murtisari, Elisabet 226n17 Muscetta, Carlo 299n59 Musil, Robert 106 Nabokov, Vladimir 272 Nachdichtung 58 Nagy, Ladislav 151n8 Nakaji, Yoshikazu 42n25 Natali, Ilaria 25, 30-31, 285, 288n13, 291nn24-25, 296n44 Natoli, Glauco 30, 287 Newman, Cardinal John Henry 152 Newman, Channa 295n39 Nicholson, Robert 179 Nobile, Paolo 287 Norris, David 95n22 Norris, Margot 274n4

Index Norton, Jim 180n4 Nys, Mon 19, 21, 23, 29, 183, 223n9, 228, 230, 231, 234, 236, 238, 240 Ó hInnéirghe, Séamas 316n19 O’Brien, Flann 282 O’Grady, Thomas 279n10 O’Hanlon, John 271, 274n3 O’Leary, Catherine 166n8 O’Neill, Christine 10n41 O’Neill, Patrick 177n45, 298, 312n8 O’Sullivan, James 295n42, 298n54 Oliphant, Dave 33n1 Olohan, Maeve 222n2 onomatopoeia/-eic 23, 29, 72-73, 90-95, 101, 155, 173-174, 176 opera aperta (Eco) 268 Oțoiu, Adrian 243n3 Oudin, César 5 Ovid 250 Paci, Francesca Romana 287-288, 289n16, 290-291, 294-295, 298 Pǎcurar, Elena 243n2, 246n10, 248n13 palimpsest/-ic 105, 122, 170, 302 Palimpsestes 2-3, 35n7, 119n29, 126n11, 128n15, 222n2 Paljetak, Luko 170n23, 172-173, 175-176 Paloposki, Outi 4n11, 227n19 Pamuk, Orhan 188 Paparunas, Penelope 101n32, 106n7, 110n18, 247n11 parallax/-actic 86, 101n32 Parks, Tim 13n60 Parmenides 11 Paunović, Zoran (Пауновић, Зоран) 171-177 Pavese, Cesare 30-31, 286-288, 299 Pedone, Fabio 25, 31, 300 Peeters, Kris 29, 221, 223n9, 225n12, 226n16 Perec, Georges 180 Perkins, Jill 8n32, 11n49 Pessoa, Fernando 269 Peters, Arjan 275 Petr, Václav 149 Petrič, Jerneja 166n8 Petrocchi, Giorgio 293n29 Piccoli, Raffaello 287, 288n12, 290-295, 298n51

325

Index Pierini, Patrizia 289 Pinheiro, Bernardina da Silveira 21, 29, 203-213, 215-219 Pogačnik, Aleš 166n8 Pokorný, Martin 28, 148, 151n8, 157-164 polyglossia/polyglossic 1, 19, 28, 30, 144n37, 165, 170-171, 174, 176-178 Pór, Péter 17 Porter, Catherine 4n11 Pound, Ezra 7-8, 106n9, 314 Power, Arthur 9, 32n88 Praz, Mario 285, 286n2 Predrag, Piper (Предраг, Пипер) 169n19 Privratsky, Bruce G. 187n25 Procházka, Vladmir 150 Proust, Marcel 106n8, 315 Pugliatti, Paola 269 Puurtinen, Tiina 226n17 Pythagoras 250 Quirino, Maria Teresa

203n2, 205

Rabassa, Gregory 217n19 Rabaté, Jean-Michel 7n24, 24n84, 95n22 Raffoul, François 310 Ranieri Parra, Anton 288 raznojazyčie/raznorečie 225 re-languaging. See translation Read, Forrest 8n31 Reichert, Klaus 49-50, 52 Rentel, Nadine 261n8 Retranslation Hypothesis 2, 4, 25n85, 29, 103n1, 126-128, 221-222, 227 Reynolds, Mary T. 293n28 Richards, Grant 281 Rilke, Rainer Maria 15-18 Riquelme, John Paul 10n43, 84n31, 260n7 Roberts, George 277 Robinson, Douglas 290, 291n23 Rochlitz, Rainer 316n24 Rodin, Auguste 99 Rodriguez, Liliane 9-10, 11n48, 35n5 Röhrich, Lutz 82n30 Rose, Danis 271, 274n3 Rosenzweig, Franz 310 Rossi, Alberto 30, 288-290, 298n51 Royer, Clémence 3n5 Ruggieri, Franca 91n15, 107n13

Rundle, Christopher 261n10 Russell, George William 208, 288n14. See also A.E. [Æ] Said, Edward 12 Saillet, Maurice 33n1 Saldanha, Gabriela 259n4 Samoyault, Tiphaine 36-42, 43n27, 45 Sand, George 6 Săndulescu, George C. 177n43 Sanesi, Roberto 288 Sanz Gallego, Guillermo 29, 221 Savitsky, Ludmila 9 Schenoni, Luigi 31, 300 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 125-126 Schmidt, Arno 49 scholar-translator 25-26, 43, 47, 59, 129 Scholes, Robert 271, 283, 293n28 Schulte, Rainer 126n8 Schutte, William M. 183 Schwerter, Stephanie 261n8 Scott, Clive 299n58 Scott, Walter 184n21 Scott, L.H. 168n14 Seidman, Robert J. 167nn10-11, 176n38, 182n12, 215n18, 242n1, 253, 254n31, 256n33, 256n35 self-retranslation 127, 136, 168 Senn, Fritz 9-10, 14, 26, 32, 38, 43, 48, 50, 60n8, 61, 84n31, 90, 101, 123, 125, 132, 137, 147, 166n5, 168nn15-16, 174n34, 176n37, 179, 191n33, 193, 243, 246n9, 247, 249n16, 250n19, 258n2, 260, 263n14, 283 Serafimov, Sveto 170n23, 172-173, 175-176 Seth, Catriona 37n13 Seydi, Sevin 180n5 Shakespeare, William 48, 52, 61, 157, 172-173, 176, 187, 200, 208, 217 Shawcross, John T. 293n28 Sherry, Vincent 7n28 Sigler, Amanda 249 Simpson, John 278 Skelton, Robin 62n12 Skoumal, Aloys 28, 148-149, 151-164 Skrabanek, Petr 177n43 Slocombe, George 288n14 Słomczyński, Maciej 27, 124, 127-137, 139-147, 153, as “Joe Alex” 128

326 Slote, Sam 9n38, 31, 35n5, 250, 255, 256nn37-38, 261, 308, 310n4 Sloutsky, Larissa 45n29 Soupault, Philippe 9n38, 10 Spenser, Edmund 109 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 12, 13n56 Spoo, Robert 260 Sprachskepsis 18 Steele, Richard 108 Steppe, Wolfhard 62n14, 313n10 Sterne, Laurence 148, 156, 187, 203 Stojaković, Siniša 169, 177 Subirat, José Salas 29, 144n37, 228-230, 234-235, 237, 240 Sullam, Sara 287n8 Susam-Sarajeva, Şebnem 4n11 Svevo, Italo 286 Swift, Jonathan 108, 148, 152, 156 Synge, John Stuart Millington 7, 55-56, 61-62, 110 Szegedy-Maszák, Mihály 106nn9-10 Szentkuthy, Miklós 24, 26-27, 87-95, 98-99, 100-103, 105-107, 109-110, 111n19, 112-122, 128, 129n19, 130n19, 144n37, 145n38, 153 Szolláth, Dávid 26, 103, 105 Tageldin, Shaden 14n62 Taivalkoski-Shilov, Kristiina 222n5 Takács, Ferenc 106n8, 107n14 Tandori, Dezső 15-18, 106 Tauchnitz, Bernhard 287n10 Taylor, Richard 171n24 Tellér, Gyula 17n74 Terrinoni, Enrico 6, 20, 23, 25, 31, 91n15, 107n13, 144n37, 167n13, 183, 258, 260-261, 262n13, 263-269, 270n19, 300 The Thousand and One Nights 3 Thomas, Brook 269 Thomas, Dylan 153 Thornton, Weldon 179 Todorov, Tzvetan 225n13 Tognini-Bonelli, Elena 226n17 Topia, André 9n38, 35, 128 Torresi, Ira 30, 166n8, 167n13, 170n21, 176n40, 177n44, 258, 259n4, 260n5 Tortosa, Francisco García 29, 228, 231-232, 236, 239, 240 trans-semantification. See translation

Index translatability/translatable 12, 13n59, 223, 287, 308, 316-317 translation: “in the second degree” (Gentzler) 297 abusive 103-104, 108, 113, 118, 121-122 appropriating 11, 14, 16, 106, 121-122 as conventionalization 221, 226, 228, 240 as domestication 2, 5, 13n56, 19, 33, 41, 45-47, 59, 93, 94n19, 106n9, 119, 126, 133, 144-145, 151, 154, 159, 176-177, 244, 258-259, 260n5, 263, 265-266, 276, 317 as explicitation 29, 33, 221-222, 226-228, 230-232, 234-235, 237-240 as fictionalization 31, 308, 315 as re-languaging 27, 124-125, 128, 143, 170 as revision 5n17, 24-28, 48-51, 57, 58-63, 65-67, 69, 71-80, 82-86, 87, 90-92, 95, 99, 100, 122, 158, 271-273, 276 as trans-semantification 27, 124, 147, 170 as translavication 28, 165-166, 169-171, 174, 177-178 as transreading (re-writing, co-creation) 15 as transtextual reading 177 canonical 2, 45, 227 creative/creativity in 11, 13n59, 14, 19, 24-25, 27, 29, 46, 59-60, 104, 122, 129, 147, 202-204, 207-208, 216, 219, 221-222, 224, 229, 236, 241 cultural 2, 145n38, 170, 178, 219, 237, 292 dialogical (dialogism in) 30, 221-222, 225-228, 235-236, 240 dislocution in 14-15, 25, 32 ethics of 3-4, 6, 25, 121, 122n35, 303 extreme 7, 17, 173, 279 faithful 29, 42, 223, 227 foreignizing (foreignization in) 19-20, 33, 39, 43-44, 47, 60, 99, 120, 126, 146, 177, 258-260, 263, 265-266 interlingual 23, 25, 116, 120, 126, 297 Internet-assisted 183-184, 223, 281, 302 intertextual(ity) 4, 25, 31, 61, 105, 114, 120, 160, 173-174, 177, 187-188, 291-293, 295 Joyce’s engagement in 6-7, 8, 127 monologic(al) 226-228, 234-235, 240 multilingual(ism) in 1, 14, 19, 24-25, 27, 103, 105, 110, 114-115, 120-122, 150, 165, 171, 176-177

327

Index poetics of 12, 16, 17, 106n10, 107, 173, 208 portmanteau in 15, 27, 44, 60, 115-116, 122, 129n19, 210, 214 re-foreignization in 30, 177, 258-260, 262, 266 source-oriented 10, 221, 227 target-oriented 10, 29, 221, 227 textual amnesia of 147 translator’s invisibility 182 translavication. See translation transposition (linguistic) 76-77, 81, 247, 250-251, 289 Trim, Richard 34n4 Turner, John Noel 183, 252, 253n29, 256 Uilsean, Breasal 316n19 Ullman, Michael 279 Uncle Charles principle 75n25, 232, 233n26, 235, 275 untranslatability 11-14, 19, 108, 127, 154-155, 222, 304, 315-317 untranslatable(s) 8, 11-12, 14, 18, 25, 113, 125, 142n31, 223-224, 261, 303, 316 Unverständlichkeit 12 Urbánek, Zdenĕk 151 Valverde, José Maria 29, 228, 230, 235, 238, 240 Van Hulle, Dirk 108n16, 296n45 Van Mierlo, Chrissie 114 Van Mierlo, Wim 124n1, 148n1, 166n8, 285n1, 312n8 Vandenbergh, John 19, 21, 23, 29, 183, 228-230, 233, 235, 237 Vasileva, Iglika 167, 172, 174-176 Veldeke, Hendrik Van 232n22 Venegas Lagüéns, María Luisa 29, 228, 232, 236, 239, 240 Venuti, Lawrence 3n6, 4, 13n59, 14, 104n3, 106n9, 120, 126, 176n40, 224n11, 259, 260n5 Véry, Dalma 105n7, 113n21 Vichnar, David 28, 148 Victoria (Queen) 277 Vidan, Ivo 153, 166n7, 176n38 Virk, Tomo 166n8

Vors, Marie-Danièle 36, 37, 38n14 Vymĕtal, Ladislav 28, 149, 150, 153, 154, 160 Wagner, Richard 77 Walkowitz, Rebecca 178n47 Wawrzycka, Jolanta 1, 6-7, 10n45, 25, 27-28, 30, 92n17, 124, 127n12, 130n20, 131-133, 135, 142n33, 143n34, 168nn15-16, 170, 174n34, 176n37, 177n46, 191n33, 193n34, 243n4, 245, 246n9, 249n15, 250, 258n1, 259n3 Weatherallová, Maria 150 Weaver, Harriet Shaw 8, 9n37, 311n6 Wehrmeyer, Jennifer 224n10 Wellek, René 152 Weltliteratur 3, 8 Werkman, G. 281n15 Whitsitt, Sam 261n10 Wiede, Anna Elisabeth 62n13 Wilkinson, Tim 111n19 Wittman, Emily 7, 8n34 Wollschläger, Hans 26, 48-56, 58-86, 118n28, 183 Woods, Michelle 5 Woolf, Virginia 106 writer-translator 6, 26, 43, 47, 86, 106, 129, 182 Yao, Steven 7n27 Yared, Aida 183n20 Yeats, William Butler 7, 8, 11n49, 87 Yeğinobalı, Nihal 187 Yerguz, Ismail 180n7 Yücel, Hasan Âli 188 Yutkevich, Sergei (Сергей Юткевич) 170n22 Zacchi, Romana 269 Zach, Wolfgang 166n8 Zanotti, Serenella 6n20, 92n17, 259n5, 261-262, 285n1 Zeller, Ursula 25-26, 48, 50-51, 58, 60n8, 258n2 Zigal, Thomas 33n1 Zimmer, Dieter E. 49, 59n5 Zingg, Gisela 61nn10-11 Zohn, Harry 313n11 Zuckerman, Jeffrey 37n13