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- Title
LA TRADUCTION DE WALT WHITMAN PAR ROSAIRE DION-LÉVESQUE : LES AMBIGUÏTÉS D'UNE APPROPRIATION.
- Authors
RUMEAU, DELPHINE
- Abstract
Rosaire Dion-Lévesque's translation of Whitman was published in Montreal in 1933. This work forms part of a transatlantic dialogue with translators in France, but it must also be understood in terms of a specific moment in the history of literature and poetics, when Quebec was becoming more aware of its cultural “Americanness". The translation reflects a desire to be modern, as well as for a thematic and formal renewal of poetry. However, the translation and its paratexts — a preface by Louis Dantin and an homage by Dion-Lévesque - reveal some ambiguities. Whitman is stripped of his American attire and appears as the avatar of some primitive biblical magus. Rosaire Dion-Lévesque clearly had a moral and religious agenda, and his interpretation differs greatly from the political and homoerotic readings of his French predecessors. Indeed, Whitman's poetry had a strong critical and polemical potential in the staunchly Catholic Quebec society of the 1930's. The American poet became the messiah of a new Christianity, one where the human body, long neglected in favour of the soul, played an important role. This translation was a watershed in Rosaire Dion-Lévesque's literary career : while his earlier poetry combined Catholic orthodoxy with a Parnassian conception of the verse, his later work embraced free verse and associated the spiritual quest with the glorification of nature and the human body. There was also a cultural shift, one considered so controversial by the editors of the time that a new publishing house, free of clerical control, had to be created: Les Elzévirs, soon renamed Les Éditions du Totem. This publisher went on to play and important role in the critique of French-canadian morality and the affirmation of the American dimension of Quebec culture and literature.
- Subjects
QUEBEC (Province); WHITMAN, Walt, 1819-1892; DION-Levesque, Rosaire; 20TH century French-Canadian poetry; LEAVES of Grass (Book : Whitman); WALT Whitman: Ses meilleures pages traduites de l'anglais (Book); FRENCH-Canadian literature; PUBLISHING; LITERARY criticism; CANADIAN literature; TWENTIETH century; INTELLECTUAL life; AMERICAN influences on civilization; CIVILIZATION; TRANSLATIONS
- Publication
Globe: Revue Internationale d'Études Québécoises, 2013, Vol 16, Issue 1, p159
- ISSN
1481-5869
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.7202/1018182ar