Paul Celan in Translation: Praxis, Poetics, Resistances

9-10 May 2019

Simon Swift

M. Oran McKenzie, UNIGE

M. Francesco Deotto, UNIGE

Prof. Ian Fairley, University of Leeds, Royaume Uni

M. Bertrand Badiou, ENS, Paris

‘The poem intends another, needs this other, needs an opposite. It goes toward it, bespeaks it. For the poem, everything and everybody is a figure of this other toward which it is heading,’ Paul Celan affirmed in his Meridian speech. But the other comes with his or her own language, and the poem is thus also heading toward the language of the other, as well as toward other languages. This two-day workshop will provide a forum to reflect on the relations between poetry, poetics and translation around the figure of Celan, whose oeuvre offers the ideal site to question these interactions not only because he was himself an important translator (translating, among many others, Shakespeare, Marvell, Dickinson and Frost from English, and Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Breton, Char or Michaux from French), but also because a rich tradition emerged out of the translation of his own poetry into other languages, as well as into other forms of discourses, in particular philosophy.

The aim of this event is to encourage exchanges between leading scholars working in different linguistic traditions and doctoral students from Swiss universities with an interest in poetry and poetics, the question of translation and/or the relation between poetry and philosophy. It will offer different venues for these exchanges, including seminars in which we will discuss texts circulated in advance and sessions during which doctoral students will be offered the opportunity to present their research in order to receive feedback from the invited speakers. In its broad approach spanning several literary periods, languages, and disciplines, one of the aims of this event is to increase collaboration between scholars working on poetry and the lyric in the various linguistic traditions taught in Swiss universities, and will thus be useful to most CUSO members, regardless of the fact that their work is directly related to Paul Celan or not.

Genève

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