Guillevic and Translation

What is it about?

Both the field of translation studies and the practice of literary translation are primarily concerned with cultural and linguistic particulars and quite rightly tend to view universals with suspicion, as the noxious tools of essentialism or colonialism. In its resolute eschewal of the particular, its search for subjects and sensations that could be fundamental to all human experiences, not only across cultures but across time, the poetry of Eugene Guillevic, seen here in relation to its various and varied translations and translators into English, offers an approach to a universalism that seems increasingly relevant in times of global climate change and pandemic.

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Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash

Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Translation is a political act, and has typically -- for the past half century or so -- been analyzed within the context of conflicting cultural and linguistic tendencies, identity politics, rival nationalisms, and post-colonialism. At the same time, the current planetary situation also seems to require the kind of elemental vision that Guillevic's poetry, in its quest for the deep structures of humanity itself, proposes. And far from propounding some apolitical utopia, this poetry -- as Guillevic's own lifetime of commitment to the French resistance and other causes attests -- is deeply political.

Perspectives