본문 바로가기
  • Home

The translation experience of Pascal Quignard: The sensitive synchronism of three declination-clinamen, “Reading-Translating-Writing”

YOO JAE-HWA 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

What does it mean for a writer to translate literary works written by another writer? Especially the work would foretell the writer’s future works. What does it mean for a writer who’s not a professional translator to translate? When Pascal Quignard was twenty years old, he decided to translate Alexandra of Lycophron, a Greek poet of the fourth century BC. And this “descent into the lost century” was fascinating, terrible, lucid experience for Quignard. For him, translation was like to live in the “placenta”. What is it really then the sensation aroused by the double movement of “reading-translating” and “translating-writing”? A translator is immersed, obsessed and fascinated by the text that could belong to him only by his translation. Furthermore, what is the relationship between reading, writing and translating? Are they different or “same and different at the same time”? This study on Pascal Quignard’s act of translation is focused on three declination “reading-translating-writing” which have equal status. These three declination suggested by Quignard might be a wonderful way of living in three different worlds governed by the rule of continuity and discontinuity. Pascal Quignard implies that translation is the double movement which causes the painful joy of metamorphosis, the secret of birth of literature.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.