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Translation and the Reception and Influence of Latin TRANSLATION AND THE RECEPTION AND INFLUENCE OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES By James Remington Krause Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Spanish and Portuguese December, 2010 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Earl E. Fitz Professor William Luis Professor Emanuelle Oliveira Professor Marshall C. Eakin To Aimee, Daniel, Rebekah, and Baby Krause ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With the benefit of hindsight, it is all too easy to gloss over the challenges and to highlight the triumphs; therefore, I recognize that the process of writing this dissertation—from inception to completion—has been a constant ebb and flow of successes and failures. Many people have given me unwavering support and I wish to thank them. I express gratitude to my dear companion, confidant, and wife, Aimee. She continues to lift me with her loving and caring concern. Although my children may not fully appreciate the importance of this accomplishment, they do know I spent hours, days, weeks, and months away from them and I think they are glad to have me back. My parents, Tom and Yvonne Krause, and my in-laws, Tom and Anita Sanders, cheered me on over the years, serving as a constant source of encouragement and support. I came to Vanderbilt with aspirations to study under Earl Fitz and with some luck it worked out. He has helped me navigate these murky waters with persistence, patience, and kindness. I consider my friendship and professional relationship with Earl the highlight of my doctoral experience. Likewise, I cherish the friendship I developed with William Luis while working as his assistant editor on the Afro-Hispanic Review. Emanuelle and Marshall, through their passion and exuberance for Brazil, along with their exemplary friendship, have served as a great source of inspiration and encouragement. I also thank the Center for iii Latin American Studies, the US Department of Education, and the Tinker Foundation for various funds that supported my dissertation research. I wish to give a special thanks to Norma Antillón for her warm kindness in helping me through various bureaucratic hoops. I must also thank my friends and fellow colleagues at Vanderbilt who have supported me these past five years: David Richter, Scott Infanger, Jonathan Wade, Pablo Martinez Diente, David Wiseman, Anna- Lisa Halling, Cory Duclos, and a special shout out to Todd Hughes. In addition, John Krause, my brother, and Doug Moore, my songwriting partner, have always been the truest of friends. Finally, I express deep gratitude to my new colleagues at Brigham Young University. Thanks to the marvelous facilities and support I enjoy here, I was able to complete the majority of my dissertation quickly and with few distractions. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION......................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................... iii INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1 Translation and the Rise of the Boom......................................... 22 Chapter I. REWRITING BORGES IN ENGLISH ............................................ 40 The US Reception of Borges........................................................ 42 Norman Thomas de Giovanni ..................................................... 49 Early Critical Responses (1970–71)............................................. 55 “Pedro Salvadores” ..................................................................... 68 “Las ruinas circulares” ............................................................... 74 Conclusion................................................................................. 93 II. MISREPRESENTING NERUDA IN THE HEIGHTS OF MACCHU PICCHU....................................................................... 94 Verse Translation ....................................................................... 95 Translating Neruda into English................................................. 99 Nathaniel Tarn’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu ......................... 105 Conclusion............................................................................... 147 III. ERRORS OF INTERPRETATION IN DOM CASMURRO................ 149 Dom Casmurro in English ......................................................... 150 Destabilizing the Metanarrative Structure ................................ 160 Conclusion............................................................................... 194 CONCLUSION.................................................................................... 196 Latin American Literature in the United States and the Revitalization of American Letters............................................. 196 The Marginalization of Brazilian Literature ............................... 210 Repressing Sexuality in O cortiço .............................................. 219 Eroticizing Macunaíma ............................................................. 225 Mistranslating Grande sertão: veredas into Oblivion ................. 230 Translation and Inter-American Literary Studies ...................... 238 v BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................. 244 vi INTRODUCTION Translation mediates the exchange of literature in the Americas, the success of which depends upon reliable translations.1 But what happens when a translation distorts the most salient aspects of the original text? In most cases, readers of English translations of Latin American literature2 lack the linguistic training to ascertain their reliability, which means they depend totally on the fidelity of the translation. Certainly one can argue that a poor translation is better than none at all, but how do poor English translations affect the reception of these canonical texts of modern Latin American literature? This is the critical question I seek to answer. In this dissertation, I argue that the concept of the “failed” translation has been largely misunderstood as it applies to certain canonical works of Spanish American and Brazilian literature. I specifically analyze several English translations of two ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges, different English versions of “Las alturas de Macchu Picchu,” by Pablo Neruda, and the Scott-Buccleuch version of Dom Casmurro, by Machado de Assis. Although occasional stylistic missteps are inevitable, a translation truly fails, I will argue, only when it consistently misinterprets and, consequently, misrepresents the source 1 Edith Grossman, in her recent study Why Translation Matters, makes the following declaration that also applies to the burgeoning field of inter-American letters: “And the very concept of world literature as a discipline fit for academic study depends on the availability of translations” (13). 2 In using the term Latin American literature, I refer to both the Brazilian and Spanish American traditions. 1 text. Moreover, a “failed” translation hinders the reception of Latin American literature in the United States because it offers a distorted, and therefore unreliable, version of the original text to the American reader. Nevertheless, translation “failure” occurs along a sliding scale; there are different levels and kinds of failure. Based on the critical spectrum I will establish, I analyze the influence of translation in the American receptions of Borges, Neruda, and Machado de Assis, three of the most exported and influential writers of twentieth-century Latin American literature. In light of the advent of the field of inter-American literary studies in the United States, the reception of these, and other, authors still depends upon the quality of their work in translation.3 This dissertation utilizes the comparative method in approaching various English translations of Borges, Neruda, and Machado de Assis, focusing on the similarities, but more importantly, on the differences and the subsequent effect these had on their reception by American readers.4 By the late 1960s, translations of Latin American literature had established Spanish American and, to a lesser degree, Brazilian literature 3 The concept of inter-American literature comprises the literatures of Anglophone and Francophone Canada, the United States, Spanish America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. In this dissertation, I focus solely on the reception of Spanish American and Brazilian authors in the United States. Certainly, one could apply the theoretical and methodological approaches of this study to a number of literary traditions. See also Fitz, “In Quest of ‘Nuestras Américas.’” 4 Lowe and Fitz explain the advantage to highlighting differences in literary studies: “Indeed, for the study of inter-American literature, as for comparative literature generally, the most vital aspects of the proposition reside with the differences, not the similarities, for it is in differences that we can see what is unique about each American culture and text we are considering” (Translation 22). 2 in the United States. I will argue that there is a direct correlation between the quality of these translations and the degree to which each author selected for study was positively received. In 1969, Emir Rodríguez Monegal—an early and strong proponent of comparative Latin American and inter-American literature—ruminated on the need for excellent translations but also for critics who
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