A Hubbub of Phenomenon. the Finnish and Swedish Polyphonic
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A Hubbub of Phenomenon. The Finnish and Swedish Polyphonic Translations of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Lauri A. Niskanen The Faculty of Arts University of Helsinki Doctoral dissertation, to be presented for public discussion with the permission of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Helsinki, in room 302 (32), University Athena Building, on the 28th of May, 2021 at 1 PM. © Lauri A. Niskanen 2021 Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Arts, and Society ISBN 978-951-51-7248-8 (paperback) ISBN 978-951-51-7249-5 (PDF) http://ethesis.helsinki.fi Unigrafia, Helsinki 2021 The Faculty of Arts uses the Urkund system (plagiarism recognition) to examine all doctoral dissertations. ii To my mother, and the memory of my father, in gratitude. iii Abstract A Hubbub of Phenomenon: The Finnish and Swedish Polyphonic Translations of James Joyce’s Ulysses explores James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and its Finnish and Swedish translations and retranslations as polyphonic intertextual processes. I call this new, experimental view of translation – presenting translation and retranslation as a polyphonic hubbub of voices, a choir of competing and supplementary comments on a source text – the Polyphonic Translation Model (PTM). Every translation is fundamentally polyphonic, as translation can never carry the source text over to a new target audience as such but must always rather represent the original text in its place in the new lingual and cultural context. In A Hubbub of Phenomenon, however, the focus is on translations of explicit cases of literary intertextuality and intermediality. The study construes the process in which translations and retranslations form a polyglot macrotext, in which the source text is commented on, reread, and rewritten. The question is approached through Gérard Genette’s notion of palimpsest: the source text and earlier translations are present “under the surface” of a new translation. The relationships between these texts are studied from the viewpoint of intertextuality. The study focuses on James Joyce’s Ulysses, a source text in which the implicit intertextual nature of all texts is made explicit through intertextual literary techniques such as pastiche, parody, and the musicalization of fiction. In my thesis, I study the way Joyce’s influential novel exists for Finnish and Swedish readers. The material of the study is the Finnish and Swedish translations of the book, which vary widely in their translation project and the horizon of the translators: Thomas Warburton’s Odysseus (1946/1993), Pentti Saarikoski’s Odysseus (1964), Erik Andersson’s Ulysses (2012), and Leevi Lehto’s Ulysses (2012). Comparisons between these translations and retranslations make the problematic of translating intertextual literary structure become clearly visible. Furthermore, much of the cultural and literary value bestowed upon Ulysses was originally “found in translation”, as Stuart Gilbert wrote the first major study of the book on the basis of his conversations with Joyce during the process of the first French translation of the book. iv In A Hubbub of Phenomenon I study how different translations re-create the intertextual material of Joyce’s Ulysses in a new cultural context. Literary translation is understood as a process, a polyphonic dialogue, in which various texts – the source text, its various translations into different languages, and different translations into a single language – act as agents. The polyphonic model is based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of literary polyphony as well as the productive translation criticism of Antoine Berman. Berman sees first translations and retranslations as a continuous, self-correcting process. In Berman’s method, translations are analysed on the basis of the translating position, the translation project, and the horizon of the translator. Berman calls the norms and expectations that define translation in a certain culture and a certain time, and the translator’s relationship to this discourse, the translating position. The conception of what the first translator or retranslator sets out to achieve, the composite of the translating position and the demands of the task at hand, Berman calls the translation project, an articulated purpose. The translating position and the translation project together are what Berman calls the horizon of the translator, the horizon of understanding in which the translation is received. The study of the translations of Ulysses uncovers explicitly something usually implicit in the processes of translation and retranslation, but conversely the study of these particular translations also uncovers new aspects of Ulysses, and more widely the techniques of intertextuality employed in it: parody, pastiche, and the musicalization of fiction. In light of the focus on intertextual structure in the dissertation, the episodes analysed through close reading are episode 12, ‘Cyclops’ for parody, episode 14 ‘Oxen of the Sun’ for pastiche, and chapter 11, ‘Sirens’ for intermediality, namely the musicalization of fiction. For the analysis of episode 14, ‘Oxen of the Sun’, I have created a digital companion for the study, The Oxen of the Sun hypertext (OSH). This novel and experimental device, employing the methods of the digital humanities, works as a machine-assisted tool for the reader of this dissertation. It allows a more extensive and intensive analysis on how the hypertext of the ‘Oxen of the Sun’ episode refers to its hypotexts from the history of English prose, and how these imitations are conveyed in the four Finnish and Swedish target texts. v Acknowledgements At the beginning of a study on the dialogic nature of literature and the polyphonic phenomenon of translation, it is fitting to note that just as in the words of John Donne, “No man is an island entire of itself”, no researcher is self-sufficient, but is a “piece of the continent, a part of the main”. I certainly have not written the present work on my own ingenuity alone, but have received invaluable directions from my supervisors, comments and feedback from colleagues, and support and love from my family. Above all, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisors, first Professor Emeritus H. K. Riikonen, who not only is a foremost expert on all matters Joyce, but is also a supervisor who gives exact and demanding feedback for a junior researcher, but still makes sure to let a young researcher’s own point of view and style flourish. I am equally grateful to have had the benefit of direction from my other supervisor, Docent Sanna Nyqvist, who has offered me insights into pastiche and intertextuality, but most importantly into the style and composition of interesting academic writing. I am also indebted for the advice of Docent Janna Kantola, who supervised my project when I first set out on my journey eight years ago. I had the benefit of a thorough and careful pre-examination of my work by Professor Emeritus Hans Walter Gabler, and Professor Kaisa Koskinen. I am very grateful for their suggestions, advice, and their supportive and critical reading of my study. Docent Emeritus Mark Shackleton reviewed the language of the manuscript with meticulous attention. I am responsible for any remaining errors. I also wish to thank Professor Heta Pyrhönen, who has believed in my Ulysses research project ever since it was a plan for a master’s thesis. I’m very grateful for her advice and support over the years. I should also like to thank Docent Klaus Brax, Acting Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki during my dissertation work, who offered insightful comments on intertextuality, and was very helpful in the bureaucratic process of transferring to a new doctoral degree structure. I am of course very grateful to the translators whose work I have studied, and their publishers, for their goodwill. I visited Erik Andersson at his office in Alingsås in 2015 for an interview which proved to be very influential for the future direction of my vi study. Since then, he has offered insights, and conveyed messages to Albert Bonniers Förlag, especially on questions regarding my Oxen of the Sun hypertext (OSH). The importance of Leevi Lehto for the existence of this study cannot be overstated. Lehto was my teacher at the Critical Academy school for writers, where I first learned of his work in progress to retranslate Ulysses into Finnish. He agreed to an interview in 2009, and even though my master’s thesis turned out to be quite critical of his newly published translation in 2012, he acknowledged my thesis in his translator’s foreword. Lehto was a great teacher and translator, who would have enjoyed reading this dissertation, and arguing with me on several points afterwards. I am grateful to Leena Kaakinen and Outi Kitti from Gaudeamus for their help with my research and the OSH hypertext. I should also like to thank Johanna Harkkila and Päivi Koivisto-Alanko from Tammi, the publishers of Pentti Saarikoski’s Odysseus, for their help during my research. Another translator from Tammi who should be thanked is Helene Bützow. A translator of, among others, Don DeLillo and Kazuo Ishiguro, she was kind enough to offer her insights about translating complex intertextual novels. The seminars of the Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Arts, and Society, and the Comparative Literature research seminar have been important collegial testing grounds and microcosms of the academic community. In the former I have had the benefit of comments from different perspectives in the field of liberal arts, from, especially, the director and vice-director of the programme Professor José Filipe Pereira da Silva and Docent Merja Polvinen. In the literature research seminar I have been fortunate enough to receive feedback on my work from Professor Emerita Pirjo Lyytikäinen and Docent Anna Hollsten from the Department of Finnish, and a group of talented and encouraging colleagues: Doctoral candidates Eric Bergman, Ana Calvete, Pekka Raittinen, Juulia Jaulimo, Sanna-Mari Niemi, Iida Turpeinen, and Doctors Hannasofia Hardwick, Laura Oulanne and Vesa Kyllönen.