Sounding Ionesco: Problems in Translating La Lecon and Jacques ou La Soumission Richard Takvorian and Michael Spingler Ionesco’s experiments with theatrical language confront the translator with a number of difficulties. The experiments, and thus the difficulties, are rooted in the idea of sounding, that is, the way language functions as vocal gesture and sonic event within the performed work. A central idea concerning language dominates the early plays: words are concrete elements of the theatrical process. They are valuable not only because they refer to something else, but because they function in their own right as vocal objects and events. In Ionesco’s early plays sounding assumes a number of different forms. First, there is the basic meaning of sonic occurrence. This involves a kind of word drunkenness, an infatu ation with the sheer play of sound, a love of the sound of sound. Then, this infatuation with sound may serve as an invitation to a second sense of sounding, which is word play or combat: a kind of contest in which each character tries to “cap” or “top” the other and where the winner has, quite literally, the last word. The third meaning involves an extension of the second in which the puns, riddles, rhymes and double entendres of word play become incantation, a calling forth of presences. This weaving of spells depends not only on the play and music of words but on a further sense of sounding which is the mythic power of words, that power to evoke both beginnings and endings, by establishing spatial, temporal and logical relation ships between apparently disparate things. RICHARD TAKVORIAN is Lecturer in English at the University of Aachen, Germany, where he directs the English Language Theater Workshop. MICHAEL SPINGLER is Associate Professor of French and Director of the Program in Com parative Literature at Clark University, and is currently working on re-translating and staging Ionesco’s early one-act plays. 40 Richard Takvorian and Michael Spingier 41 An early and revealing example of the infatuation with the play of sound occurs in La Cantatrice Chauve when Mr. Smith cries “Le pape n’a pas de soupape, la soupape a un pape.”l This line works in two ways. First there is the sheer sound of pap-pah-de-pap which resembles a malfunctioning value (“sou pape”) . More importantly, if we consider “soupape,” if we sound its play of puns, we find that it does indeed contain the syllable pape—“soupape” has a “pape” whereas, of course, “pape” does not have a “soupape.” So the line is only deceptively silly; on the level of sounding, punning, play, the line expresses an incontrovertible linguistic fact. It is enough to make translators despair for, clearly, “valve” is useless as a translation of “sou pape” if the fact of the “soupape” containing a “pape” is going to be conveyed in English. Ionesco extended the idea of the “soupape’s” “pape” in La Legon and Jacques ou la Soumission, the plays with which we are concerned here. In both plays, sounding is expanded to contain the more complex dynamics of word combat, incantation, and myth. Ionesco’s sounding of the word “couteau” in the climactic scene between the teacher and the pupil contains the key to the frightening power of La Legon. When we divide “couteau” as we did “soupape” we find that it contains the word “cou.” “Le couteau a un cou”—“The knife has a neck.” Unlike the English, the French states a simple linguistic fact when one considers the structure of the word. Moreover, the “couteau’s” “cou” is, as we shall see, the originator of a developing chain of word play and combat, leading to incantation, a ritualistic sounding of words between the teacher and the pupil which summons forth dangerous powers. Similarly, in Jacques ou la Soumission, the closing riddle scene between Jacques and Roberte II depends upon the fact that the hidden word “chapeau” (hat) contains a “cha[t]” (“cat”). In the ensuing scene, Jacques challenges Roberte II through his hints to come up with yet more words based on “cha” (for example “chateau,” “chapitre”). The scene works on the progressing levels of word combat/play (punning...