This article reviews the new light shed in 1952 on Baudelaire's translation and critical analysis of Poe by W.T. Bandy, which exposed the French poet's plagiarism of American sources. Our aim here is to suggest that Baudelaire's Poe-project, with its wilful problematisation of originality and translation, author and translator, preempts Marcel Duhamel's own translation project of 1945, the Série Noire. We compare these two Parisian translation projects as two major hoaxes of French literature and two foundational stages in the development of French crime fiction. Indeed, we suggest that Baudelaire's original translation praxis is an act of anticipatory plagiarism (of Duhamel's praxis) just as he himself considered Poe's poetry to be anticipatory plagiarism of his own work.
The novel J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, which was famously written by the black American author Vernon Sullivan and translated Jnto French by Boris Vian only to be outed subsequently as a hoax, is generally understood precisely as a simple prank or canular. A close reading of the text, however, reveals multiple layers of mise en abyme, which correspond to the work's equally thickly layered paratextual frame. This article explores the various reflexive devices used throughout the novel, considering them in the framework of its preface, foreword, afterword, and various newspaper articles and legal documents. This book, which is as underrated as it is famous, and in which the diegesis vies for space, at times subtly and at others flagrantly, with the ever-encroaching real world of the hors-texte, in fact raises a number of questions about literary creation, parody, authorial power, and translation. In this way. J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, by testing any number of limits, goes beyond those of an innocent prank.KEYWORDS mise en abyme, reflexivity, paratext, roman noir, Série Noire, 'traduit de l'américain'Si, grâce à leur réputation sulfureuse, les quatre romans 'noirs' signés Vernon Sullivan' éclipsèrent la production littéraire de Vian du vivant de l'auteur, le pseudonyme est aujourd'hui laissé dans l'ombre et l'importance de ces oeuvres minimisée. Pour la plupart des critiques littéraires, la célèbre pseudo-traduction J'irai cracioer sur vos tombes ne serait pas digne de leur attention et ne serait que le résultat du pari effronté d'écrire un best-seller en un temps record. Boris Vian lui-même n'a pas manqué de dénigrer '[c]e livre qui, littérairement parlant, ne mérite guère que l'on s'y attarde' (Vian, 2010: 824). Pour l'universitaire Patricia Godbout, l'élaboration de ce texte relèverait d'un 'pur procédé d'écriture', au cours duquel 'Boris Vian s'est amusé, avec la complicité de son éditeur, à se prétendre le traducteur du roman d'un
'Everybody lies' is a statement that will be familiar to anyone who ever watched an episode of House, M.D. 1 The notoriously acerbic doctor based his approach to medical cases on the premise that every person, no matter how well intentioned or morally upright, would lie. Sometimes their deceptions were so small that the person telling the falsehood did not quite register their own deception. It could almost be the basis for a joke. Everybody lies. And if you are sitting there thinking 'Well, I don't,' then you are a liar. As human beings, in every language, we have myriad words for lying and we also have a sliding scale for the severity of the deception: 'little white lies', that by their very description hint at purity and innocence, harmless untruths told for good reasons; and at the other end full scale betrayal, words or acts that are a complete violation of another person or sometimes of an entire community. And yet, deception is more than just lying and the ways in which deception plays an active part in our day-today lives is far more complex than telling a few untruths to ease our way through awkward work or social situations. In his essay in this volume, Bariș Mete examines the role of the unreliable narrator in literary fiction, and the act of collusion between author, narrator, and reader that enables this particular form of literary deceit to function. Yet, each time we open a novel, are we not complicit in a deception? The worlds that authors create for us frequently speak to and uncover deeper truths but works of fiction are just that: constructs, that we willingly engage with. Both the historian Daniel J. Boorstin 2 and cultural theorist Ralph Keyes 3 have explored how contemporary society has become increasingly tolerant of dishonesty and deception: we live now in an era in which misrepresentation and believability can flourish at the expense of the truth. High-profile dissemblers vie for headlines: fabulist college professors, fabricating journalists, stonewalling bishops, bookcooking executives and their friends the creative accountants. They are the most visible face of a far broader phenomenon: the routinization of dishonesty […] The gap between truth and lies has shrunk to a sliver. Choosing which lie to tell is largely a matter of convenience. We lie for all the usual reasons, or for no apparent reason at all. It's no longer assumed that truth telling is even our default setting. 4 It is something that many of us are guilty of-that joke again: if you are thinking that you are not, you are probably deceiving yourself. Each time that we add a For most of us that 'Fine' is so ingrained as part of the ritualised formula that it does not even register as a lie. Given the extent of our own deception, it is strange Yet, despite the ease with which deceptions, even old ones, can be exposed, we still engage in deceptive behaviour as part of our being. Even when we are forced to face truths about ourselves, we frequently equivocate and justify, deceiving ourselves if no-one else. The study of deceptio...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.