Kaddish for my Father, de Liba (Libby) Scheier et l'écho de la Kabbale : une méditation / traduction

Abstract

sitting on a roof, a woman meditates on the death of her father From above, the world appears small to her, and death large. This bullyCommunist father so full of idealism for the world, so full of anger at her, where is he now? And this sky filling her eyes, what does it portend? Published in 1999 by ECW Press, Kaddish For My Father is the last poetry collection written by the late Anglo-Canadian writer Liba (Libby) Scheier. The translation of this work is the project at the heart of this study. Generally recited at the burial of a person, the Kaddish is a prayer from the Jewish liturgy glorifying the name of God. On the inside front cover of Kaddish for my father, one learns that the author was inspired by the Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition presenting a complex array of notions, concepts and symbols that can be hard to grasp, difficult to identify within a text and, as the hypothesis stands here, challenging to translate. There are two components to this study. Firstly, a theoretical component aims at presenting the context in which this work came to be and offers a perspective on Scheier’s literary approach. Springing from the experience of this translation, this study then examines the different theoretical voices (among them Merleau-Ponty, Meschonnic, Berman and Folkart) that helped me determine my position traductive (translation approach). I conclude with a description of the challenges, specific to the Kabbalah, that arose at the translation stage. The translation that I offer in the appendix constitutes the second component of this project.