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Samuel Beckett Self-Translator

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ruby Cohn
Ruby Cohn*
Affiliation:
San Francisco State College, San Francisco 27, Calif.
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Extract

In parentheses, Beckett distinguishes between the artist and the writer; the artist seeks his text within himself, and the artisan translates it, transmits it to the world. To translate—in its more usual meaning, Dr. Johnson's “to change into another language retaining the sense”—has been Beckett's method of improving his own artisanat. In the very essay from which the quotation on translation is excerpted, Beckett rendered into English passages from Proust's texts, while waiting to “acquire” his own.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 1961 , pp. 613 - 621
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 613 Proust (New York: Grove Press, n.d.) p. 64. The quotation within the quotation is Beckett's translation of Proust's “Le devoir et la tâche d'un écrivain sont ceux d'un traducteur.” All quotations from Beckett's French works are from the publications of Les Editions de Minuit, Paris; quotations from Beckett's English works are from the publications of Grove Press, New York.

Note 2 in page 613 “Dante … Bruno. Vico … Joyce,” transition, xvi-XVII (June 1929), 242–253.

Note 3 in page 613 Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (New York, 1959), pp. 661–662.

Note 4 in page 613 Ibid., p. 715.

Note 5 in page 613 Israel Shenker, “Moody Man of Letters,” N. Y. Times (6 May 1956), ii, 1:6.

Note 6 in page 613 Ibid.

Note 7 in page 616 Nikiaus Gesner, Die Unzulänglichkeit der Sprache (Zurich, 1957), p. 32, claims that Beckett also closely superintended the German translation by Elmar Tophaven.

Note 8 in page 617 Village Voice (19 March 1958), p. 8.

Note 9 in page 617 Ibid.

Note 10 in page 617 I am grateful to Professor Leonard Pronko of Pomona College for calling this point to my attention.

Note 11 in page 617 Mr. Norman Moss wrote Mr. Bowles in my behalf.

Note 12 in page 619 See my articles in Perspective (Autumn 1959), pp. 119131, (“Preliminary Observations”), and Yale French Studies, No. 23, pp. 11–17 (“The Comedy of Samuel Beckett”) and No. 24, pp. 48–53 (“Still Novel”) for fuller development of this interpretation.

Note 13 in page 621 Even in this highly accomplished translation, not all the nuances are conveyed. Of special relevance in an article on Beckett's translation is the foreignness implicit in étranger but not in stranger. Of primary significance is the Biblical resonance of poussière de verbe, which is virtually absent in dust of words.

Note 14 in page 621 Shenker, loc. cit.

Note 15 in page 621 Beckett's latest work, Comment c'est, was published in Paris this year, by Les Editions de Minuit. When I inquired whether he planned to translate it, Grove Press wrote me: “We don't know yet if Beckett will translate COMMENT C'EST, but since he's done all the other books, there is no reason not to think that he won't also eventually translate this one.” The opening pages of this work “translated from the French by the author” appeared in Evergreen Review, iv (No. 14), 58–65.