Modalities of translating nonsense

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe essay deals with the paradox of translating nonsense texts: how can one translate a text that is devoid of meaning? And yet, surely, text being written in a recognizable natural language (there is such a thing as English nonsense) can be translated. The essay considers a proto-lettrist poem by Morgenstern, a nonsense letter by Edward Lear, and a series of translations of the first stanza of Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky”: first Carroll’s own youthful translation into “literal English”, then a number of French translations, culminating in the “perfect” translation by Henri Parisot and Artaud’s famous non-translation in his “anti-grammatical attempt against Lewis Carroll”. The translations are analyzed using various combinations of grammatical modalities and negation (“you cannot translate nonsense and yet you must”, etc.). Their sequence forms a gradient that goes from non-translation (Morgenstern’s poem cannot be translated insofar as it is always-already translated) to Artaud’s non-translation, which might be more properly called an “un-translation”.