Comparative Literature Translation St Essay Example for Free

Com comparabilityative Literature interpretation St Essay452? F 132 Abstract The bear on between proportional Literature and interpretation creates a new reading fashion model that ch anyenges the classic entree to exposition, and allows the widening of the scope of the translated school schoolbook. This paper explores this human relationship by and through the analysis of both(prenominal) versions of Charles Baudelaires Les ? eurs du mal make in Argentina during the 20th century, stressing the nature of shift as an act of rewrite. Keywords Comparative writings Translation revising Charles Baudelaire 133 Comparative literature and displacement reaction two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean lien Santiago Venturini452? F. 04 (2011).131-141. 0. Comparative literature and translation a reading framework There ar at least two ways to ride windceive the data affiliation between comparative literature and translation studies. Exchanging the terms i n the framework of an inclusion relationship, it is manageable to get hold of two several(predicate)iated series of questions and to assign different scopes to the link.This exchange appears basically related to the two possible answers to the question ab come on the limits of these corrects, that argon traditionally linked so, it is possible to consider translation studies as sensation of the traditional atomic number 18as of comparatism (Gramuglio, 2006) or to support, as Susan Bassnett did more than a decade ago (1993), the need for a substitution to happen similar to the wiz Roland Barthes established between semiology and linguistics, to make translation studies stop constituting a minor ? eld of comparative literature in coiffure to be the major check into that shelters it (solution through which Bassnett tried to put an end to what he de? ned as the un? nished long debate on the status of the discipline of comparative literature, empowered by the criticism blow that Rene Wellek gave to the discipline in 1958)1.Beyond this ambiguity, what is important to emphasize is the existence of this consoli involvementd link between two disciplines, or I should rather say, between the discipline of comparative literature(s) and the phenomenon of translation which, on the other hand, de? ned itself as the object of a speci? c discipline and some decades ago. In this sense, there is a spontaneous way of speak outing around the link between comparative literature and translation the one that de? nes translation as an event and a commutation habituate for comparatism, since it locates itself at the meeting point of different languages, literaturesand cultures.From this point of view, translation is the activity which is synthetic par excellence, the one that operates at the very intersection of languages and poetics, and the one that makes possible, because of its ful? lment, the ful? lment of other analytic draw ne ares to the texts relating to each other. Nevertheless, this has non everlastingly been this way. In an article devoted to the vicissitudes of this link, Andre Lefevere pointed out that, in the beginning, comparative literature had to face a reprise competence the study of untainted literatures and the study of national literatures,and that it chose to sacri? ce ranslation on the altar of academic respectability, as it was de? ned at the moment of its origin2.And, although translation became necessary for the discipline, it hardly tried to move beyond the relation between European literatures, all the translations were made, criticized and judged, adopting the inde? nable parameter of accuracy, that corresponds to the use made of translation in education, of classical literatures as well as of NOTES 1 Bassnett asserts that The ? eld of comparative literature has always claimed the studies on translation as a sub? eld, but outright, when thelast ones are establishing themselves, for their part, ?rmly as a disci pline establish on the intercultural study, offering as well a methodology of a certain rigor, both in connection with the theoretical work and with the descriptive one, the moment has come in which comparative literature has non such an appearance to be a discipline on its own, but rather to constitute a branch of something else (Bassnett, 1998 101).2 In aver to establish the right to its own academic territory, comparative literature abdicated the study of what it should take a crap been, precisely, an important part of its effort(Lefevere, 1995 3). 134 Comparative literature and translation two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean short temper Santiago Venturini 452? F. 04 (2011) 131-141. national literatures (Lefevere, 1995 4). The critical thinking of the XXth century conferred translation the transcendence it had not had historically and postulated it as a clearly- de? ned object of study.Although this emancipation was achieved already in the second half of the cent ury, it is clear that there are all important(p) contemporary texts about practices precedent to this stoppage. In this sense, the preface by Walter Benjamin to his German translationof the Tableaux Parisiens by Charles Baudelaire, entitled The Task of the Translator (1923), constitutes an unavoidable contribution that, nevertheless, has not always been appraised. A accord has been said on this text lets remind the readings, canonical, by Paul De Man (1983) and by Jacques Derrida (1985), whose formulations were decisive for a conceptualization of translation the way it was presented some decades later by post-structuralism. Lets recover, at least, one of the ideas that organize this document No translation would be possible if its supreme dreaming would be similarity with the confessedly.Because in its survival that should not be called this way unless it means the evolution and the restitution all living things have to go through the captain is modi? ed (Benjamin, 2007 81) . Through this proposition, that can attend obvious to the contemporary reader, Benjamin emphasizes, in the twenties, the inevitable inventive nature of any translation and destroys the vagary of the translated text as a copy or a reproduction of the original, although without attacking the dichotomical pair original/translation, distinction that Benjamin allow never renounce nor devote some questions to (Derrida, 1985).A renunciation that will be carried out, as Lawrence Venuti points out, by the poststructuralist thought especially deconstruction,that again raised the question in a radical way of the traditional topics of the theory of translation through the dismantling of the hierarchical relationship between the original and the translation through notions such as text. In the poststructuralist thought original and translation become equals, they hold the same heterogeneous and unstable nature of any text, and they organize themselves from some(prenominal) linguistic and cu ltural materials that destabilize the work of signi?cation (Venuti, 1992 7).From this acknowledgment, we recover a synthetic Derridean formula There is zero else but original text (1997 533). Thus, translation stopped being an operation of transcription in order to be an operation of productive writing, of re-writing in which what is written is not anymore the weight of the foreign text as a monumental structure, but a representation of this text that is, an invention. It is not anymore a question of transferring a linguistic and cultural con? guration to other one a stable heart and soul as happens with the platonic and positivist conceptions of the significance that, correspond to Maria Tymoczko, are still operating in the education and 135 Comparative literature and translation two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean short temper Santiago Venturini 452?F. 04 (2011) 131-141. training of translators in the West (Tymoczko, 2008 287-288), but a practice of creation that wr ites a reading, an ideological practice accomplished not only by the translator that becomes now an active agent and not a mere forward passer of sense (Meschonnic, 2007), but by a whole machinery of importation that covers outlines, comments, preliminary studies, criticism, etc., and in which a variety of ? gures are involved. In these new coordinates, translation can be de? ned as a practice that is manipulative, if it models an image of the authors and of the foreign texts from patterns of their own Translation is, of course, a rewriting of an original text.Any rewriting, whatsoever its intention, re? ects a peculiar(prenominal) ideology and particular poetics, and as such, they manipulate literature in order to make it work in a particular society, in a particular way (Lefevere and Bassnett in Gentlzer, 1993 IX). This quote reproduces the already famous assertion by Theo HermansFrom the point of view of the target literature, any translation implies a degree of manipulation o f the source text with a particular purpose. Besides, translation represents a crucial example of what happens in the relationship between different linguistic, literary and cultural codes (1985 11-12). To assume the status that we have just conferred to translation implies to re-shape the link between this later and comparative literature.Because when it stops being de? ned in the regulatory terms of mediation or transfer of the stable meaning of an original text, and when it attains the autonomy of an act of rewriting of anothertext according to an ideology, a series of aesthetic guidelines and of representations on otherness, translation gives up its enjoyment of instrumental practice and appears as the privileged practice that condenses a rank of questions and problematic issues related to the articulations great than what is national and transnational, vernacular and foreign. Translation becomes the event related to contrastive linguistics par excellence the get wind practi ce of what Nicolas Rosa calls the comparative semiosisLa relacion entre lo nacional y lo transnacional, y la implicacion subversivaentre lo local y lo globular pasa por un contacto de lenguas, y por ende, por el fenomeno de la traduccion en genus Sus formas de transliteracion, transcripcion y reformulacion de lenguas y estilos. La traduccion, en todas sus formas, de signo a signo, de las relaciones inter-signos, o de universo de discurso a universo de discurso es el fenomeno mas relevante de lo que podriamos llamar una semiosis comparativa (Rosa, 2006 60-61).1. Two Argentinean versions of the spleen by Baudelaire Once the approach to translation that we favour in this work is speci? ed, what we intend now is to re? ect on the particular eluding of136 Comparative literature and translation two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean spleen Santiago Venturini 452? F. 04 (2011) 131-141. the Argentinean translations of Les ? eurs du mal (1857) by Charles Baudelaire. We will condens e on two comprehensive translations of Les ?eurs du mal, and two very different publications the one that can be de? ned as the inaugural translation of Baudelaire in Argentina, carried out by the female poet Nydia Lamarque published by the publishing crime syndicate Losada in 1948 and reprinted numerous times to date, and the one signed by Americo Cristofalo for the ColihueClasica collection from the publishing mark Colihue, published originally in 2006, and that appears as the last link of the chain of Argentinean translations.The difference between the date of publication of the translation by Nydia Lamarque belated, if we take into account that a ? rst translation to Spanish, incomplete, came out in 19053 and the one by Americo Cristofalo, reports the currency of the name of Charles Baudelaire along the lines of translations of cut poesy in Argentina name that, conterminous to the names of Stephane Mallarme and Arthur Rimbaud the founder triad of modern French poetry survi ves through differentdecades4. What interests us now is to try out a cross-reading of the poems by Baudelaire and the rewritings by Nydia Lamarque and Americo Cristofalo.We will not use the affinity according to the frequent use that has been given to it in the study of translations, that is, as a method to reveal a collection of translation strategies implemented in each case with the purpose of identifying diversions with regard to the original. As Andre Lefevere has pointed out, to think about a new relationship between comparative literature and translation implies to set forth the approach with regulations, the one that pretends todifferentiate between good translations and bad translations, to concentrate on other questions, such as the search of the reasons that make some translations having been or being very in? uential in the exploitation of certain cultures and literatures (Lefevere, 1995 9).In this sense, what we intend is to read the sequence of these texts, with the purpose of demonstrating dissimilar ways of articulation with the Baudelairean poetics, two rewritings that take shape as different forms of literary writing in which the vernacular and the foreign are linked, and that are backed up by an ideology.In order to do this, we are going to con? ne our analysis to one of the poems entitled irascibility that is included in one of the ? ve sections that structure Les ? eurs du mal Spleen and rarefied. Walter Benjamin pointed out that the Baudelairean spleen shows life experience in its nakedness. The melancholic sees with terror that the cosmos relapses into a merely natural state. It does not exhale any halo of prehistory. Nor any aura (1999 160). In this sense, the spleen marks the death of the character of idealism either of enlightened or NOTES 3 We are talking about the translation by the Spaniard.Eduardo Marquina, a version marked by modernist aesthetic conventions. As Antonio Bueno Garcia has pointed out, the translation of the w orks by Charles Baudelaire in Spain is a fact that takes place belatedly, not due to ignorance of the writers of that period for whom Baudelaire was a recognized in? uence but for the censorship problems of the second half of the XIXth century. Garcia gets even to moderate that, over and above the translation by Marquina at the beginning of the XXth century and two more versions published in the forties, the restoration of Baudelaires spirit and therefore of his worksdoes not take place until by and by the Second World War, and in Spain until well into the seventies (Bueno Garcia, 1995).4 Besides the two translations that we tackle in this work, we can take again the prose translation of Las ? ores del mal signed by Ulises Petit de Murat (1961) and the carriage of Baudelaire in anthologies like Poetas franceses contemporaneos (Ediciones Buenos Aires Librerias Fausto, 1974) or Poesia francesa del siglo XIX Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud (Buenos Aires Centro Editor de America Latin a, 1978), both of them prepared by the poet Raul Gustavo Aguirre. 137Comparative literature and translation two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean spleen Santiago Venturini 452? F. 04 (2011) 131-141. lyrical and romantic education (Cristofalo in Baudelaire, 2005 15), and exposes him to emptiness. In the framework of Baudelairean poetics, ideal and spleen appear as two value which ubiquity has a profound impact both on the sphere of an ideology of poetry, and on the verbalization and the textual organization as long as both have a clear linguistic scope Sometimes he believes, and sometimes he does not sometimes he rises with the ideal, and sometimes hefalls to piec es into the spleen It is easy to observe the poems that come from these two reverse perspectives (Balakian, 1967 50). In the chain of the poem, ideal and spleen mark, respectively, the victory of what Bonnefoy calls poetic alchemy, of its dynamics, of its operation, but similarly the lawsuit of its withdrawal or its retreat, the contradiction of the poetic rhetoric with what is perceived further away it is the meeting of poetry with nothingness, that happens, nevertheless, inside the corroborated possibility of the poem there is no material failure of poetry in Baudelaire.De Campos pointsout that el rasgo estilisticamente revolucionario de esos poemas estaria en el dispositivo de choque engendrado por el uso de la palabra prosaica y urbana en ? n, por el desenmascaramiento critico que senala la sensacion de modernidad como perdida de la aureola del poeta, disolucion del aura en la vivencia del choque (De Campos, 2000 36). So, the usual lyrical vocabulary faces up to unusual allegorical quotes, which rive in the text in the style of an act of violence (2000 36). Ideal and spleen mark the comparison of the consonant and the dissonance, of the romantic poetical rhetoric, of its power ofevocation and transcendence, with a more austere rhetoric, of prosaic nature, that undermines the poetizat ion through the imposition in the text of another movement, negative (the negative is read in terms of the contesting of a consolidated representation of the poetic). A ? rst reading of the translations by Nydia Lamarque and Americo Cristofalo makes it possible to observe that we are talking about writings ruled by two completely different poetic rhetorics5, which in the translation framework are based on a combination of decisions that determine the rewriting of the source-language text.Theserhetorics are assumed and verbalise explicitly by each of the translators in this paratextual mechanism that is relevant to any translation, set up in order to justify what has been carried out, to try and specify its exact sense, to protect it the introduction. So, in her introduction, Nydia Lamarque, in order to explain her actions, turns to two masters Holderlin and Chateaubriand. From the second one translator of Paradise Lost by Milton into French, the female translator extracts her tran slation methodology, that she summarizes in one precise formulaTo trace Baudelaires poems NOTES 5 As Noe Jitrik points out, thepoem is a place, a material support on which certain operations are carried out that are governed by rhetoric, in both a limited sense of rhetoric strict rules and conventions as in a wide sense the obedience to or the subversion to the rules and even pretentions or attempts of non-rhetoric, which onus, operatively speaking, is, nevertheless, the identi? cation of a text as a poem (Jitrik, 2008 63). 138 Comparative literature and translation two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean spleen Santiago Venturini 452? F. 04 (2011) 131-141. on a glass (in Baudelaire, 1947 39), which implies the search foran isomorphism between the original and the translation, the lexical, syntactic, calculated isomorphism.to a greater extent than a half century later, after the pioneering translation by Lamarque, Americo Cristofalo builds an academic reading and develops m ore complex hypotheses. He maintains that his translation is built up on the basis of two conjectures the ? rst one, that metrics and rhyme are not strictly bearers of sense (Cristofalo in Baudelaire, 2006 XXVI) and the second one, the exposition of the double con? ict about the Baudelairean rhythms Del lado del Ideal la retorica poetizante, los mecanismos prosodicos, ladesustanciacion adjetiva, los hechizos de la lirica.Del lado del Spleen tension hacia la prosa, aliento sustantivo, una corriente baja, material, de choque critico (2006 XXVII). Taking into account these positions, we can get back the ? rst verses of one of the poems of Spleen to know what we are talking about 1. Jai accession de souvenirs que si javais mille ans. 2. Un gros meuble a tiroirs encombre de bilans, 3. De vers, de billets doux, de proces, de romances, 4. Avec de lourds cheveux roules dans des quittances, 5. Cache moins de secrets que mon triste cerveau. 6. Cest un pyramide, un immense caveau, 7.qui cont ient plus de morts que la fosse commune. (Charles Baudelaire) 1. Yo tengo mas recuerdos que si tuviera mil anos. 2. Un arcon atestado de papeles extranos, 3. de cartas de amor, versos, procesos y romances, 4. con pesados cabellos envueltos en balances, 5. menos secretos guarda que mi triste cabeza.6. Es como una piramide, como una enorme huesa, 7. con mas muertos que la comun fosa apetece. (Nydia Lamarque) 139 Comparative literature and translation two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean spleen Santiago Venturini 452? F. 04 (2011) 131-141. 1. Tengo mas recuerdos que si hubiera vivido mil anos. 2.Un gran mueble con cajones llenos de cuentas, 3. versos, cartitas de amor, procesos, romances, 4. sucios pelos enredados en recibos, 5. guarda menos secretos que mi triste cabeza. 6. Es una piramide, una sepultura inmensa 7. que contiene mas muertos que una fosa comun. (Americo Cristofalo) The comparison allows us to notice the distinctive characteristics of each translation. In the ca se of Lamarque, the metrical imperative is conditional on all the other choices and has a direct impact on the intelligibility of the verses. The phrase structure gets more complicated hyperbatons predominate, the organization of the sense of the verseis compromised, new lexemes are added and some are suppressed in order to hold the rhyme patterns. We are not trying to cast a shadow on this translation to which we have to admit its statute of inaugural work, but we are interested in showing its contradiction, since the translation by Lamarque ends up obtaining quite the opposite of what he enunciated as his mandate Each word has to be respected and reproduced as things that do not belong to us (Lamarque in Baudelaire, 1947 39).As far as he is concerned, Americo Cristofalo, who in the introduction to his translation goes through the previous versions among them isthe translation by Lamarque6, gives up the rhyme, which allows him to carry out a work of rewriting closer to the French text the verses are, syntactically, less complex than those in Lamarque version, clearer. Cristofalo builds a poem governed by another rhetoric, stripped of all those processes of poetization that appear in the translation by Lamarque, although someone could wonder if the elimination of rhyme in his translation does not imply, partly, the loss of this tension between ideal and spleen that characterizes Baudelairean poetics.But in order to deem what Lamarque and Cristofalo do with theBaudelairean spleen (tedium, for Cristofalo weariness, for Lamarque), it is enough to concentrate on only one of the afore credited verses, the fourth one, which we mention now isolated Avec de lourds cheveux roules dans des quittances (Baudelaire) con pesados cabellos envueltos en balances (Lamarque) sucios pelos enredados en recibos (Cristofalo) A metonymic verse that with its stripped-down length shows the best of each translation.The lexical selection displays two completely different records Lama rque produces a more solemn verse, leant NOTES 6 Cristofalo maintains that the translation by Nydia Lamarque resembles the oneby Eduardo Marquina, whom she condemns Lamarque bitterly complains about the unfaithfulness of Marquina, who chooses radially symmetrical poetic measures otherwise he thinks he would not respect the original, she says she maintains the prosody, the rhyme, she says she is scrupulous about the adjectivation.However, the movement of pomp, of conceit and affectation in the tone is the same, the same dominion of procedures of poetization, and of confused articulation of a meaning (Cristofalo in Baudelaire, 2006 XXV). 140 Comparative literature and translation two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean spleen Santiago Venturini452? F. 04 (2011) 131-141. on a delicate, subtle image, a verse with a modernist ? avour (heavy hair wrapped in accounts) whereas Cristofalo destroys any effect of poeticity in this direction.He simpli? es the lexical selection (dirty hairs instead of heavy hair) and he builds a harsher image, in a realist style. Both translations strengthen the Baudelairean image, but in opposite directions Lamarque leads it towards a lyrical intensity, Cristofalo makes it more prosaic.There are other questions that can be appreciated in the cross-reading of these poems, for example the presence of a repeated pattern in theversion by Lamarque, boudoir, (that Cristofalo translates as tocador or dressing table), which expresses a whole attitude towards the foreign language we see the same contrast in the lexical choices, that apart from being bound to the aesthetic reconstruction of the poem, marks re-elaborations that are different from the Baudelairean images, as in the case of this verse un granit entoure dune vague epouvante (Baudelaire) una granito rodeado de un espanto inconsciente (Lamarque) una piedra rodeada por una ola de espanto (Cristofalo) Here, Nydia Lamarque and Americo Cristofalo carry out a grammaticalreading tha t is different from the alliance vague epouvanteLamarque inclines herself towards an abstract image (she interprets vague as an adjective of epouvante), whereas the image on which Cristofalo bases himself has something of a maritime snapshot (he interprets vague as a noun wave), it is more referential. Both these works of rewriting apportion to the Baudelairean text a different scope they assemble two images by Baudelaire that respond to conventions and aesthetic values that are also differentiated. In this way, they do nothing but demonstrating the true nature of the translative act.Even if it is true and undeniable that we are talking, all the time, about the translation of a previous text, pre-existing of an original, it is also true and undeniable that translation is a deeply critical and creative practice, that exceeds the borders of the reproduction of a text its forms move from appropriation to subversion, a practice that in the passage of a text to another shows all the thi ckness of its power. . 141 Comparative literature and translation two Argentinean versions of the Baudelairean spleen Santiago Venturini 452? F. 04 (2011) 131-141. Works cited BALAKIAN, A.(1969)El movimiento simbolista. Juicio critico. Trad. de Jose Miguel Velloso, Madrid Guardarrama. BASSNETT, S. 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