James Joyce: Finnegans Rivolta
Book organized by Professor Dirce Waltrick do Amarante
The opinion is unanimous that James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake (1939) is in principle completely untranslatable. Joyce himself, however, was the first to decide that this was no reason why he should not be transposed, transcreated, or translated, in some sense of this flexible term. After the appearance in 1928 of Anna Livia Plurabelle, a text that later became the eighth chapter of the novel, he soon organized an experimental translation group (to continue using the term translation) to translate several pages of this chapter into French, with the your own help; then he collaborated in translating smaller excerpts into basic English; and, finally, he took charge of an exuberant translation into Italian of some pages previously translated into French. In spite of its obvious untranslatability, there are currently, and in Joyce’s footsteps, various versions, translations, transpositions or complete transcreations of Finnegans Wake, in more than a dozen different languages. The first Portuguese translation of excerpts, by Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, appeared in 1957; expanded, gave rise to a small volume in 1962 under the title Panaroma of Finnegans Wake. The first complete translation of the novel was by Donaldo Schüler and appeared in 2003 under the title Finnicius revém. Individual chapters were translated by other hands, including Dirce Waltrick do Amarante, the bold and tireless coordinator of Finnegans Rivolta, the second complete version in Brazilian Portuguese. Following the example of Joyce, who assembled a group of translators, Finnegans Rivolta is the fascinating product of eleven translators.
Patrick O’Neill Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies at Queen’s University, Canada.
