PRESENTATION : TRANSLATION AND INTERARTIALITY Marina Vargau - - PDF document

PRESENTATION : TRANSLATION AND INTERARTIALITY ¡

Marina Vargau

Université de Montréal marinavargau@yahoo.ca

Núria d’Asprer

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Nuria.Asprer@uab.cat deasprer@gmail.com

This issue of the journal Doletiana, entitled "Translation and Interartiality", examines various interactions developed over time between the arts, whether traditional (architecture, music, literature, painting) or more recent (photography, cinema, video). At the centre

• f this questioning is the translation process, understood in a broad

sense, in terms of passage from one art to another, but also as mediation and recovery. The guiding idea of this conceptual rapprochement between the act

• f translating and the act of artial transfer finds its point of departure

in a key word common to both, more specifically in relation. To begin with, we remember that, according to Paul Ricœur (1997), translation implies a relationship between two partners - the foreigner (generic term covering the work, the author and his or her language) and the recipient reader –through the translator, that is, the one who transmits and "passes on the message". By analogy, we consider that any transfer between one work of art and another, within the same art or else between different arts, requires translation. Next, we find the relation at the center of the definition of interartiality, a generic term for relations between the arts (Moser, 2007). This coincidence of terminology encourages the bringing together of the two concepts in

• rder to see how they can work together in various artistic
• productions. Among the possible interartial variations, one thinks of

paintings set to music, novels adapted to the cinema, sculptures transposed into literature, dances expressed in painting, architectures becoming photographs, as well as simultaneous objects, such as dress

TRANSLATION ¡AND ¡INTERARTIALITY ¡

poems

• r poèmes-peints.

Intersemiotic translation, interartiality, intermediality, adaptation, transmutation, iconicity, ekphrasis, impurity, hybridity are all concepts that can be explored from a translatological reflection, in artistic productions from all cultures without spatiotemporal limits. Explicitly or implicitly, directly or (re)mediated, reaching as far as a Baroque vertigo

• f

intertwinings between various arts, these translations traverse time, space and cultures: the novel Satyricon (1st century AD) by Petronius, recreated by Federico Fellini in his film Satyricon (1969); the image of Gradiva translated in the novella by Jensen (1903) and the film Gradiva Calls You (C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle, 2006) by Alain Robbe-Grillet; the myth of Don Juan, told by Tirso de Molina in the play El Burlador de Sevilla (1630) and taken up again by Mozart in his opera Don Juan (Don Giovanni, 1787); the novella Carmen (1845) by Prosper Mérimée, adapted in the opera of the same name by Georges Bizet (1875) and later by J.L. Godard in his film First Name Carmen (Prénom Carmen, 1983) and by Carlos Saura in his flamenco film adaptation (1983); photography in the filmBlow-up (1966), by Michelangelo Antonioni; Snow White (1812), the classic tale of the brothers Grimm, in the film version Blancanieves (2012) by Pablo Berger; the dance- theatre of Pina Bausch, filmed by Pedro Almodóvar in Speak With Her (Hable con ella, 2001); the painting Carrying The Crossby Bruegel the Elder (1564) in Lech Majewski's film, Bruegel, The Mill and The Cross (2011), Baroque architecture in Eugène Green’s film La Sapienza, or the notorious interartial convergence of this film; etc. Reflecting on these translating phenomena and practices within the arts, a series of questions arise. Is a work of art (painting, novel,

• pera, etc.), by its nature, translatable in a work belonging to another

art? Are there any resistances manifested by an art faced with its translation into another art, in relation to its becoming something else, something different? How is an artistic product put to the test in the process of transfer to another art? What is safeguarded, what is lost and what is gained in the process of interartial translatio? What "mutations of matter" (Eco, 2003) does an art undergo in its passage to another art? What relations are established between works of different arts at the moment when they are summoned to the same

TRANSLATION ¡AND ¡INTERARTIALITY ¡

space? Are they of dialogue or of confrontation? And, in such a context, what are the role and the "task" of the author-translator? In paraphrasing Ricoeur again and extrapolating to the artistic domain, one might wonder if there are more hospitable arts than

• thers, which manifest more generously this "pleasure of receiving at

home" (1985), such as the reception of an alterity or else a "hospitality from afar ", as in the happy formulation of Antoine Berman (1985). Finally, could one relate this "hospitality" to the concept of the total work of art, which haunts various artial manifestations, from antique theatre to opera, to cinema and, perhaps, beyond? These various questions, which remain obviously open, animate the reflections developed in the contributions making up this edition

• f Doletiana and should provoke others. The article by Érik Bullot,

which opens the issue in an original and audacious way, shows how the techniques of translating the language of birds recall those of translations between the arts. For her part, Francesca Caruana offers a thought-provoking and critical look at the translation of tribal creation into works of art by the Western arts. She does this by questioning the nature of the translation and relying on Peirce’s semiotics. Gaëlle Loisel, examining the relationship between literature and music from the case study of the work Ophelia's Death, shows how Berlioz explores the difficulties of "instrumental" translation. Hanen Allouch

• ffers an intermedial reading of the literary work of Louis-René des

Forêts through the prism of cinema, music and the arts. The study of Boris Monneau invites us into a less explored territory, which is that of cinema-poems, analyzed here in a comparative approach. Thomas Muzart, in his analysis of the film adaptation of the novel Baise-Moi by Virginie Despentes, shows that the process of adaptation implies an actualization of the actions of the protagonists of the novel in the film. Adriano Sousa analyzes the Julio Bressane film Saint Jerome based cultural series, tackling the process of "transcreation" in cinema. Passage and relation transcend their figurative reach within interartiality in order to adhere to an instance that might be called transduction. This is what Nora Ancarola demonstrates, elaborating a poetic of the passage using the technique of video-art: her "walk" through the canal locks of Paris provides a kind of Benjaminian drift and a singular look at the concept of passage.

TRANSLATION ¡AND ¡INTERARTIALITY ¡

BIBLIOGRAPHY :

¡

BERMAN, ¡Antoine. ¡1985. ¡La ¡traduction ¡et ¡la ¡lettre, ¡ou ¡l’auberge ¡du ¡lointain. ¡Mauvezin ¡: ¡Trans-­‑ Europ-­‑Repress. ¡ ECO, ¡Umberto. ¡2006. ¡Dire ¡presque ¡la ¡même ¡chose ¡: ¡expériences ¡de ¡traduction. ¡Paris ¡: ¡Bernard ¡

• Grasset. ¡ Traduit ¡ de ¡ l’italien ¡ par ¡ Myriem ¡ Bouzaher ¡ (Dire ¡ quasi ¡ la ¡ stessa ¡ cosa ¡: ¡ esperienze ¡ di ¡

traduzione, ¡Milano ¡: ¡Bompiani, ¡2003). ¡ MOSER, ¡Walter. ¡2007. ¡«L’interartialité ¡: ¡pour ¡une ¡archéologie ¡de ¡l’intermédialité». ¡In ¡Marion ¡ Froger, ¡Jürgen ¡E. ¡Muller ¡(eds.). ¡Intermédialité ¡et ¡socialité. ¡Histoire ¡et ¡géographie ¡d’un ¡concept. ¡ Münster ¡: ¡Nodus ¡PubliKationen, ¡pp. ¡69-­‑92. ¡ RICOEUR, ¡Paul. ¡1997. ¡«Défi ¡et ¡bonheur ¡de ¡la ¡traduction». ¡In ¡Sur ¡la ¡traduction. ¡Paris ¡: ¡Bayard, ¡

• 2004. ¡ ¡ ¡

Translator : Eamon Butterfield