Transletters. International Journal of Translation and Interpreting 7(2) (2023), pp. 143-148 ISSN 2605-2954
Adrada de la Torre, J. (2021) Luis Cernuda y Friedrich
Hölderlin: Traducción, poesía y representación. Granada: Editorial
Comares. 162 pp. ISBN 978-84-1369-104-6
Lee Purvis
Queen’s University Belfast
Received: 24/01/2023
Accepted: 07/02/2023
Luis Cernuda and Friedrich Hölderlin: Translation, Poetry and Representation
1
arrives to
us in times of a corrective ‘outward turn’ in Translation Studies that demands
we seek polyvocality in order to revise definitions of translation. As Bassnett
and Johnston (2019: 187) argue, this ‘outward turn’ needs to involve a
rethinking of “how translation has functioned in the past, and how attitudes to
translation in some contexts have come to be”. Adrada’s afterword makes it
clear that this book directly responds to such a call for critical, multidisciplinary
translation scholarship; he uses the English phrase ‘outward turn’ (p. 3, 133)
and provides a Spanish counterpart: “giro hacia afuera” (p. 133).
The book has two halves. The first half consists of Chapters 2 and 3, in which
Adrada revisits and challenges attitudes to poetry translation. Drawing on the
work of Robert Bly and Ezra Pound, Adrada argues a case of poetry
translation used as a [“weapon”] against the literary canon. This first half of the
book also serves as the theoretical backdrop, which informs the second half;
Chapters 4 and 5. In the second half, Adrada offers a detailed and engaging
study of a bygone process of translation carried out by Luis Cernuda (1902–
1963), who translated the German romanticist Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–
1843). Adrada argues that the German philosopher Hans Gebser (1905–1973)
assisted Cernuda’s translation process, and that Cernuda used translation as a
[“weapon against and towards”] (p. 2) the literary canon in twentieth century
Spain. Consequently, the second half of the book constitutes a translator study,
1
All translations, hereafter denoted in square brackets, are my own.
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which contributes to our current epistemological moment to challenge myths,
models, metaphors, persistent stereotypes, and prefixes attached to exclusive
jargon within translation scholarship. Adrada interrogates the usefulness of an
[“essentialist”] (p. 21) theoretical context for studying translator-poets who
leave behind very little traces of their methods (p. 73). In Adrada’s opinion,
Percy Shelley’s metaphor of ‘seeds being replanted’ [“best illustrates poetry
translation”] (p. 23). Yet, he insists that we look beyond deep-rooted
metaphors, turning outwards, to consider poetry translation, simply, as a
[“creation”], and the poetry translator as a [“creator”] – or is it co-creator in
Cernuda’s case?
The front cover of the book shows the iconic ‘Porch of Maidens’, which might
cause readers to question the suggested connections between Ancient Greece,
Cernuda, and Hölderlin. The book’s foreword, by Antonio Colinas, gives us a
clue: Hölderlin influenced Cernuda’s poetics through [“bringing him closer to
Greece”] (p. xii). Adrada has engaged with Hellenism before and argued that
Cernuda was introduced to Greek mythology by Hölderlin, which
consequently influenced his worldview (Adrada de la Torre 2019).
Nonetheless, we are kept in suspense until the second half of the book, which
examines Cernuda’s process of translating Hölderlin, in which we are told that
Hölderlin viewed poets as chosen by the gods; a view that Cernuda later
absorbed through his translation practice (p. 71). A third paratext (p. vii) tells
us the book is part of the research outputs of a unit based at the University of
Salamanca, GIR TRADIC [Research Group on Translation, Ideology and
Culture]. This group’s outputs, including Adrada’s study, are valuable resources
for those dissecting questions surrounding translation, ideology, geopolitics
and artistic responses. GIR TRADIC’s publication database is perhaps
somewhat unknown to non-Spanish-speaking students and scholars.
2
These
publications, like Adrada’s, demand our attention in times of corrective shifts
in translational thinking towards a “plurality of voices across the globe”,
2
Information retrieved from Grupo de Investigación Reconocida (de la Universidad de
Salamanca) Traducción, Ideología y Cultura: http://campus.usal.es/~tradic/ [Accessed
23/01/2023].
Luis Cernuda y Friedrich Hölderlin: Traducción, poesía y representación
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including theoretical voices in languages other than English (Bassnett and
Johnston, 2019: 181).
Now into the book, Adrada carefully explains the structure of his translator-
poet study in a short introduction. From the onset, readers are in safe hands,
with plenty of later instances of useful signposting that help guide the
connectedness of the two halves of the book. For example, Jean-René
Ladmiral’s concept of ‘sourciers’ is first discussed in Chapter 2, during Adrada’s
critical gaze into translation’s theoretical past. Chapter 4 examines methods
and strategies of translating poetry, and Adrada (p. 61) refers to his discussion
of ‘sourciers’ (p. 10). Such discussions will be valuable to those starting
translation journeys, as well as a reminder to those more experienced, of how
we have arrived at terms like ‘source text’. Accordingly, Chapter 2 is Adrada’s
confrontation with [“the great minds of the past”] (p. 5), in which he revisits
centuries-old debates on, for example, ‘fidelity’ and ‘untranslatability’;
stereotypes like ‘traduttore/traditore’ (p. 8; also 65), and Robert Frost’s oft-
misquoted, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation” (see Brooks and Warren,
1961: 7). Collectively, these revisions of debates serve as a backdrop for
Chapters 3 and 4, to bring us to how and why we are where we are when it
comes to thinking on poetry translation and processes of translating poetry.
Adrada reminds us of the ongoing imbalance between theory and practice
which, for example, [“contradict(s) the champions of ‘untranslatability’ who
defend (ideas) from their ivory towers”] (p. 9). Like Adrada, many of us will
agree [“Poetry can be translated”] (p. 10; original emphasis).
Moving on from old debates, Chapter 3 emphasizes the [“double-edged”]
hermeneutic task of the poetry translator: to read and interpret, to then write
and create. Adrada also revisits the term ‘foreignization’ as an ideological
translation strategy to show how political discourses produced by [“straight
white male(s)”] have arrived at – and saturated – conversations on poetry
translation (p. 41). A welcome surprise appears (p. 43) in response to Frawley
(1984), in which Adrada offers a revised ‘translation as recodification model’
geared specifically towards poetry translation. Frawley’s model can be
understood as an attempt to go beyond written interlingual transfer and
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instead, encompass other modes of translation. In Frawley’s view (1984/2000:
252), translation is recodification by which a ‘matrix code’ is rendered into a
‘target code’, understood as source text (code) rendered into a target text
(code). Adrada is under the impression that Frawley’s model is widely accepted
because it was included in the first edition of The Translation Studies Reader (ed.
Venuti, 2000). Adrada suggests that Venuti included Frawley’s model because
Frawley’s ‘codes’, he argues, seem to have influenced Venuti’s [“foreignizing”]
proposals (p. 43). Yet, Adrada argues that Frawley’s model and Venuti’s model
are [“incompatible”] when it comes to poetry translation. This is because
poetry is already [“Other”]; already a ‘target code’. In other words, poetry
[“through its content and form”] is already [“foreign”], and, therefore, all
translated poetry will seem [“foreign”] (p. 42-43). Adrada then uses his revised
model to study the translation processes of Ezra Pound and Robert Bly (p. 44-
60), in which a convincing case emerges of poetry translation used as a
[“weapon”] against the canon, specifically, literary systems in the United States.
Before getting into Cernuda’s translation process, Chapter Four discusses
approaches, strategies and methods of poetry translation, while maintaining a
critical gaze on the past. This section opens and closes with the assertion that
[“no one knows how to translate poetry”] (p. 61, 68). Instead, what we have
are suggested ‘phases’, ‘proposals’, ‘tools’, and ‘blueprints’ that may help or
hinder when it comes to a bygone translator-poet study. This leads us into
Chapter Five, an impressive analysis of 22 poems (19 published and 3
unpublished), all translated by Cernuda with help from Gebser. I got
distracted, enjoying the fragments of poetry reproduced here. Readers might
also take this opportunity to encounter Hölderlin through Cernuda; enjoy
Cernuda’s “creations” and take time with the discussion. Important takeaways
are, in the first instance, the way Adrada argues that Cernuda was assisted by
Gebser in a crucial first phase of the translation process (p. 71). That is, Gebser
rendered Hölderlin’s German into literal versions of Castilian (like the literal
drafts used by Pound and Bly, Chapter 3). Secondly, the book’s title becomes
clear; Gebser [“represented”] (p. 94) versions of Hölderlin, which were then
[“appropriated”] by Cernuda (p. 75). Despite a universal lack of evidence, this
is convincing because Adrada draws on the Litoral journal and snippets from
Luis Cernuda y Friedrich Hölderlin: Traducción, poesía y representación
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El Heraldo de Madrid newspaper that suggest Cernuda and Gebser were not
only in close contact with each other in Madrid in the 1930s, but they also
worked together (p. 88-99). My guess is that the literary power couple were
more than friends, and perhaps there is room in the book’s title for Hans
Gebser’s name, as another key patron. Nonetheless, Adrada examines the
working relationship of Cernuda and Gebser’s [“business”] and how power
dynamics changed as the business partners were separated due to the Spanish
Civil War (1936–1939). The partners moved to different countries, Cernuda to
Britain and Gebser to France, which meant Cernuda had to adapt to a new
literary system. The last section is a joint bibliographical and biographical
account of Cernuda, which illustrates the [“impact”] Hölderlin’s poetics had on
Cernuda’s writings. This lasting impact reminds us that translation does not
stop once a new text makes its way into the world. Instead, like in Cernuda’s
case, translators live in a constant state of translation, [“inheriting”] translated
ideas and worldviews [“until the end of their days”] (p. 3, 132). Cernuda’s
search for a [“new world vision”] was found in translation (p. 100, 106), and
his representations of an alternative world transpired through Hölderlin.
Adrada’s thorough translator-poet study tracks where we have come from,
where we are, and how to ‘turn outwards’ from deep-rooted conceptualizations
of translation, specifically, poetry translation. As Colinas notes in his foreword,
this book deserves our attention because it brings us closer to the lives and
work of two literary icons, while also examining the duality of what it means to
be a translator-poet (p. xiii). I imagine we will hear more from Adrada in the
future, as he states [“when it comes to poetry translation, there is still much
more to find out”] (p. 1). There is indeed more work to do because, as we
know, the translator never works alone.
References
Adrada de la Torre, J. (2019). ‘Luis Cernuda y Friedrich Hölderlin: La mitología griega
como cosmovisión.’ Philobiblion: Revista de Literaturas Hispánicas, 9, pp. 63-80.
Adrada de la Torre, J. (2021). Luis Cernuda y Friedrich Hölderlin: Traducción, poesía y
representación. Granada: Editorial Comares.
Lee Purvis
148
Bassnett, S. and Johnston, D. (2019). ‘The outward turn in translation studies.’ The
Translator, 25 (3) pp. 181-188.
Brooks, C. and Warren, R.P. (eds.) (1961). Conversations on the craft of poetry. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Frawley, W. (1984/2000). ‘Prolegomenon to a theory of translation.’ In Venuti, L. (ed.)
The translation studies reader. 1st ed., London and New York: Routledge, pp. 250-263.
