AN ABYSS OF THE SAME: ON BECKETT'S SELF-TRANSLATION

This paper is about the double role of Samuel Beckett as author and translator of his own work. We will take the play Waiting for Godot as an example. The hypothesis is built from an interpretation of Walter Benjamin's "The task of the translator", being that Beckett's self-translation is related to some sort of reflexion and criticism on the Occidental niilism. We will try to situate this hypothesis in Benjamin's discussion through the conception that it is impossible to the translation of an already translated work to keep its sense. We believe that this point of Benajmin's discussion on translation refers to some sort of impossibility of not recognize the mythical/sacred/absolut content of the human experience (and we must have in mind the negative and destructive value that the myth has in Benjamin's work). The original would be a figuration of this sacred content, while the translated work would be the figuration of the historical and changeable aspects of human work.