Literature and Translations

Dr Stéphanie Noirard, Université de Poitiers : Un Enterrement dans l’il(e) : Breton poet Paol Keineg faces the challenge of translating Hugh MacDiarmid

Translating Hugh MacDiarmid means having to handle his political stance on the independence and the renewal of Scottish literature, as well as his poetic and linguistic experiments. While the initiative allows Paol Keineg to get back in touch with his youth and his first discovery of In Memoriam James Joyce in the 1970s, it also contributes to a new phase in his own poetic quest. The American Book Review describes Paol Keineg’s poetry as: “a work that moves from the specific to the universal, a work that would reclaim lost ground, both politically and poetically”, terms that could be attributed to MacDiarmid as well.

The aim of the seminar is to show the two authors worked on similar themes in terms of politics, identity and poetry in order to question the definition of the author-translator. It will analyse whether Paol Keineg, as both poet and translator, only means to transmit a text or whether he uses his translation to develop his own ideas and/or experiment with the language. The figure of the translator will thus be defined as a new mask for or avatar of the author, an ideal mode allowing the author to disappear from his text and a new process of linguistic subversion.

Stéphanie Noirard is a lecturer at the University of Poitiers where she teaches English literature and translation. Her research focuses on Scottish contemporary poetry and she has published articles on the subject as well as on Irish and Breton poetry in various journals, including Etudes Anglaises, Scottish Literary Studies or Civilisations. She has also contributed chapters to Mountains Figured and Disfigured in the English-Speaking World (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), Brittany/Ireland: What Relations? (Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique, 2015), Taking Liberties: Scottish Literature and Expressions of Freedom (Scottish Literature International, 2016) and Brittany-Scotland: contacts, transfers and dissonances (CRBC-HTCI, Brest 2017). War Poetry, minority languages and cultures, rhythm and voice are among her main interests. She organized a one day international conference on “War in Poetry” in 2016 and is currently translating From the Line, an anthology of Scottish War Poetry and organizing a venue on the transmission of minority languages.