Julien Green: L’écrivain double in Self-Translation

Abstract

As a translingual Franco-American author who was born in Paris in 1900, Julian Hartridge Green cultivated one of the longest literary careers of the twentieth century. Although French and American scholars have examined questions relating to Green’s bilingualism, his temporary sojourns in the United States, and the representations of America in his fiction, none have yet offered a detailed assessment of his self-translated texts. A comparative, critical analysis of two essays and one article from Green’s bilingual works, Le langage et son double and L’homme et son ombre, will, therefore, correct this dearth of scholarship. More specifically, an investigation of the linguistic and semantic discrepancies that occur in three self-translated texts, “On Keeping a Diary” / “Tenir un journal,” “An Experiment in English” / “Une expérience en anglais,” and “Paris” / “On Paris,” will reveal the extent to which Green cultivates two very different narrative personas in translation. In English, Green’s narrative voice is meek and unassuming, and he exhibits a unique American sense of identity while substantially revising his work to address his American readers. By comparison, in French, he forges a distinct French sense of identity while adopting a more assertive, confident, and speculative narrative tone. By frequently employing translative techniques of revision in his bilingual work, Green constructs an astonishing, double identity in self-translation.