Beckett and Beyond Putting Self-Translation in Perspective

In this essay self-translation will not be addressed as some kind of freakish accident of nature, but rather as the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Beneath the water dwell many more bi- or even multilingual writers, to which we gain access by going beyond traditional models of literary history and criticism. In fact, the best-known cases of self-translation (Beckett, Nabokov, and Green yesterday, Huston, Semprun, and Dorfman today) embody but one of two categories: horizontal transfers between symmetric pairs of widespread languages. In many other instances, however, asymmetric linguistic configurations saddle the act of self-translation. At least three categories of self-translators whose linguistic repertoire is characterized by such asymmetry can be distinguished: (1) (post)colonial writers who alternate between their native tongue(s) and the European language of the former colonial powers; (2) recent immigrant writers who expand on work begun in their home country while staking out new ground for themselves in the language of their adoptive country; (3) writers belonging to traditional linguistic minorities because of the multilingual make-up of the State of which they are citizens. While drawing attention to the existence of those writers, this article will also develop a typology of self-translators, thereby looking beyond the famous case of Samuel Beckett. Beckett has often been constructed as a hapax legomenon, the quintessential exception that confirms the unwritten rule of monolingual writing, a situation that stands in the way of a better, more general comprehension of self-translation as such. In this essay, we want to show that Beckett can help us gain many precious insights into self-translation, but only if we allow ourselves to look beyond him, instead of staying in the shadow he casts.