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Maurice BLANCHOT

Manuscrit autographe sur Hemingway intitulé [traduit de ...]

1946, 16 pages 1/2 in-8 (13,5x21cm), en feuilles.

(HEMINGWAY) BLANCHOT Maurice. Autograph manuscript on Hemingway
1946, 16 pages 1/2 in-8 (13,5 x 21 cm), loose leaves
Author's autograph manuscript, 16 and a half 8vo pages, published in number 17 of L'Arche (July 1946) and reprinted, with slight modifications, in La Part du Feu (1949).
Complete manuscript, written recto-verso, very densely spaced, with numerous deletions, corrections, and additions.
In order to examine the problems related to the translation of a literary text into another language, Maurice Blanchot looks at the contemporary American novel and its perception in Europe.
“Many good critics complain about American literature: they find it less than original and of middling interest for a culture that moved, over fifty years ago, beyond naturalism. They make fun of young writers who think they're being modern by imitating Faulkner, Dos Passos or Steinbeck, while for Americans themselves these writers are more of yesterday than tomorrow.”
Thus the critic, for whom the oddities of language particular to any literary work survive translation, takes the example of a novel by Ernest Hemingway. “In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan, discovering the importance of the moment he is living, repeats the word ‘now' in several languages. Maintenant, ahora, now, heute. But he is somewhat disappointed by the mediocrity of this vocabulary, and looks for other words. […]. He tries to find in language links between these words and what they mean for him, his meeting with Maria, who is also his meeting with his final hour, his meeting with death. […] The word Todt seems to him the most dead of all, the word Krieg the one that resembles war most closely.” Or is it just that he knew German less well than the other languages? This reflection fascinates Blanchot: “This impression of Robert Jordan's can give us food for thought. If it's true that a language seems more expressive and more real to us when we know it less, if words need a certain ignorance to keep their virtue from being revealed, this paradox should hardly surprise us, since translators come across it all the time and it represents both one of the principal challenges and one of the foremost riches of all translation.”
An inspired look at the work of Ernest Hemingway and the problem of translation. 

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