Interlingual Metempsychosis: Translating Intertextuality in James Joyce’s <i>Ulysses</i>

Abstract

Highlighting in its very title the unlimited dimensions of intertextuality, James Joyce‟s Ulysses selfconsciously establishes itself as a text that seems impossible to translate without losing essential elements. Ulysses, (in)famous for its multiple styles that in themselves seem to give shape and content to the various themes at hand, is a text for which the term „intertextuality‟ seems to fall short. With a particular eye for the problems that occur when translating intertextual elements of Ulysses into Dutch and other languages and following Fritz Senn‟s coinage of the term „interdynamism‟, this article sets out to investigate a handful of examples from Ulysses that pinpoint the problematic nature of the various echoes and allusions in it. Every sign is at a crossroads of varying purpose, and situatedness is integral to our understanding of it. What an establishment advertising „PAIN‟ has on offer depends (usually) on whether it is in France or in England. The sign „PAIN‟ outside a shop constitutes an invitation to acquire a commodity; on the wall of a derelict building, it is more likely to be a prose poem or a cry for help. The precise location matters. (Griffiths par. 8; emphasis mine) In his article “Intertextual Metempsychosis in Ulysses: Murphy, Sinbad, and the „U.P.: up‟ Postcard”, James Ramey argues that „[. . .] Bloom‟s observation that his “name was changed” [. . .] resonates with the metatextual dynamics of Ulysses, since it recalls the transmigration of characters from ancient to modern texts—a process I call intertextual metempsychosis—which is so intrinsic to Joyce‟s methodology. As the “Odysseus” of the novel, Bloom‟s “name was changed” in the sense that Joyce decided to call him “Bloom”, rather than “Odysseus” or “Ulysses”‟ (97; emphases mine). Ramey‟s words help introduce the salient issue I shall be tackling here: how do translators of Ulysses deal with instances of textual „transmigration‟ that make any solution they will come up with seem at best flawed; how come, by extension, that translators of Ulysses always seem to be „almosting it‟ (U 3.366-67), rather than ever arrive at an Ithaca where critics will unanimously affirm