Poet-Translators in Nineteenth Century French Literature: Nerval, Baudelaire, Mallarmé” Dir
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POET-TRANSLATORS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY FRENCH LITERATURE: NERVAL, BAUDELAIRE, MALLARMÉ by Jena Whitaker A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland April 2018 Ó 2018 Jena Whitaker All rights reserved ABSTRACT The ‘poet-translator is a listener whose ears are transformed through translation. The ear not only relates to the sensorial, but also to the cultural and historical. This dissertation argues that the ‘poet-translator,’ whose ears encounter a foreign tongue discovers three new rhythms: a new linguistic rhythm, a new cultural rhythm, and a new experiential rhythm. The discovery of these different rhythms has a pronounced impact on the poet-translator’s poetics. In this case, poetics does not refer to the work of art, but instead to an activity. It therefore concerns the reader’s will to listen to what a text does and to understand how it works. Although the notion of the ‘poet-translator’ pertains to a wide number of writers, time periods, and fields of study, this dissertation focuses on three nineteenth-century ‘poet-translators’ who each partly as a result of their contact with German romanticism formed an innovative and fresh account of linguistic, cultural, and poetic rhythm: Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855), Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), and Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898). Each of these ‘poet-translators acted as cultural mediators, contributing to the development of new literary genres and new forms of critique that came to have significant effects on Western Literature. A study of Nerval, Baudelaire and Mallarmé as ‘poet-translators’ is historically pertinent for at least four reasons. First, how did these writers react to the emergence of comparative linguistics within the nineteenth-century? Second, what were the effects and outcomes of key technological advances, for example in the domain of the printing industry and in transportation? Third, what was the new geography of cultures and conception of nation that developed during 1815-1914? Fourth, how did the methods of translation change in nineteenth-century France? These four questions relate to cultural shifts that would have wide ranging consequences on the theorization of poetry and its translation that developed during the twentieth and twenty-first century by poet-translator-critics such as Walter Benjamin, Henri Meschonnic, Michel Deguy, and Yves Bonnefoy. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Professor Jacques Neefs, to whom I am indebted. This dissertation would not have been possible without Professor Neefs’ expertise, patience, and nearly intuitive understanding of the idea I envisioned to be at the heart of this project ¾ the idea that translation acts as the genesis of poetry. Writing this dissertation has been a deeply enriching, and also intensely challenging, experience and I am grateful to Professor Neefs for showing me kindness and responding with sensivity and receptiveness at every stage of this project’s development, even during its delays and setbacks. It has been an honor to have studied and written my dissertation under the supervision and care of such a sympathetic reader. My gratitude to Professor Neefs is inexpressible. It has been a pleasure beyond words to work with a teacher who inhabits this world so poetically. I would also like to thank Professor Derek Schilling and Professor Wilda Anderson, whose sustained support, encouragement, and thorough feedback has played an instrumental role in bringing this project into fruition. A special thanks to Professor Schilling for emboldening my interest in resonance and for inspiring me to be ruthless in my realism. And a special thanks to Wilda Anderson for inspiring me to trust my intuition and for generously offering me direction during a critical stage of this project’s development. I am grateful for my committee members, Professor Evelyn Ender, Professor Rochelle Tobias, and Professor Douglas Mao, whose engaging criticism and commentaries have helped me picture how this project might evolve. Several unique research opportunities have profoundly impacted the development of this dissertation. I would like to thank the Faculty in the French Section of the Department of German Romance Languages and Literatures for supporting my year of research abroad in Paris, during which I had the chance to attend seminars and colloquiums held at the ENS, the Sorbonne, and Paris VIII. My participation in the NEH Summer Institute “What is Gained in Translation?” held in June of 2015 was another experience that played a key role in shaping this dissertation. I would particularly like to thank the institute’s hosts and organizers, Françoise Massardier-Kenney and Brian Baer, for developing a seminar whose resourceful and intensive reading list led to many of my research discoveries. My sincerest thanks as well to the colleagues whom I had the pleasure of meeting during the summer seminar and with whom I shared many engaging discussions. I would also like to express my gratitude to both the Marion Frances Chevalier family and the Denis family for their generous support of my research. The Denis Family Graduate Curatorial Fellowship afforded me the rare opportunity to work alongside Gabrielle Dean, Abigail RayAlexander and Elizabeth Brogden as a co-curator of the exhibition Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore and Beyond: Highlights from the Susan Jaffe Tane Collection, held in the George Peabody Library from October 3, 2016 – February 7, 2017. I would particularly like to express my gratitude to Gabrielle Dean, whose extensive knowledge on textual materiality, inspired me to critically reflect on the wide-ranging artistic, political, and economic implications of translations iii in circulation. I am also grateful to Susan Jaffe Tane for generously and enthusiastically sharing the many different “objects of taste” in her collection. I am deeply indebted to all the professors, colleagues, friends, and mentors who have shown me compassion and helped me throughout intellectual journey, several of whom cannot be mentioned here. A special thanks to Aimée Boutin and Ruth Mathilde Mesavage for their mentorship during my studies of French language and literature. I would also like to express my warmest gratitude to my partner, Gérald Venturi, and also to all the family members who have shown me unconditional love. A special thanks to my grandparents, my step-father, and my mother, who were my rocks. I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my father, John Walter Whitaker, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of thirty-one. iv Table of Contents Introduction: Experiential Rhythms of the Modern Poet-Translator ................................... 1 Part I: Contemporary and Historical Reflections Chapter 1: The Contemporary Lens ........................................................................................ 6 I. Antoine Berman and the Trials of the Foreign: L’Épreuve de l’étranger .............. 6 i. Romantic Writers of Jena: Novalis and Schlegel .................................................. 8 ii. An Archeology of the Modern Poet-Translator .................................................. 10 II. Walter Benjamin: Reflections on Translatability ................................................ 13 i. Benjamin and German Romanticism .................................................................. 13 ii. The Task of the Translator ................................................................................. 16 iii. Intentio: Spontaneity vs. Derivation ................................................................... 17 iv. Crise de Vers: Mallarmé and Pure Language ...................................................... 18 v. Syntax: Hölderlin as Poet-Translator .................................................................. 20 vi. Echoes: Translation and the Harmonic Concept of Truth.................................... 22 III. Henri Meschonnic: The Myths of Translation ..................................................... 24 i. The Myth of the Sign ......................................................................................... 25 ii. La Poétique du traduire ...................................................................................... 26 iii. Embabelons: Translations and the Myth of Babel............................................... 27 iv. “Sonnet en -yx”: Mallarmé, Babel and the Apex of Babble ................................ 30 IV. Michel Deguy and the Comme-un ........................................................................ 33 i. Po&sie ............................................................................................................... 33 ii. Ecological Reflections on Translation ................................................................ 37 iii. La lignée Heidegger-Hölderlin ........................................................................... 39 iv. Compas-raison ................................................................................................... 41 v. Trans-en-danse .................................................................................................. 43 vi. Elastic Undulation ............................................................................................. 44 vii. Désesperanto and Universal Languages ............................................................. 45 viii. Translation and Intertextual Memory ................................................................