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enstein s creation and the stitching of the body back together; 2) her
ability to disrupt or unsettle hierarchical relationships of power and
dominance; and 3) her inability to find a permanent home. To describe
Célanire as dislocated, then, demonstrates the degree to which one
word in translation, as Condé mentions in her interview with Apter,
has the power to disrupt or unsettle (but here not necessarily for the
worse), the play of languages in the original.
Conclusion
What constitutes the Caribbeanness of a text? (xi). Philcox
poses this question in his preface to The Last of the African Kings and
states that critics would have little reason to call African Kings a Gua-
deloupean novel, whereas Crossing the Mangrove would be exem-
plary of such a text. His response to this question echoes the senti-
ments of his wife:7 that what makes a text Caribbean cannot solely be
defined by either the writer s choice of language (French or Creole) or
by elements such as landscape, forms of entertainment, or magical and
religious practices (xii). Instead, he argues, it is very much the inner
relationship of the individual to his or her environment, culture, or
self (xii) that plays one of the determining factors in translating
Caribbean literature. If, as I have argued throughout this article, Céla-
nire s relationship to her environment, culture, and self is always one
of rupture and disconnect, then Philcox s translation succeeds in
bringing out Condé s distinctive poetics.
It is only by immersing oneself in the dislocations of transla-
tion from French into English that one can uncover how concepts of
tone and intertextuality reveal what constitutes Condé s Célanire cou-
7
In response to Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant s Éloge de la créolité, and
their positing of the Creole language as the sole means of achieving an authentic
Caribbean poetics, Condé writes in her essay Créolité without the Creole
Language?: I maintain that all writers must choose whatever linguistic strategies,
narrative techniques, they deem appropriate to express their identity. No exclusions,
no dictates (107).
Okawa 175
coupé as a Caribbean text: the permanent feeling of exile that haunts
Célanire. It is likewise only by engaging in close readings of the two
novels together that one can begin to visualize how neither originals
nor translations are ever created in isolation. Furthermore, a transla-
tor s preface can figure as an important bridge between the original
and the translation, underscoring the linguistic and cultural differences
between the two texts, and also pointing to the new, creative work that
has emerged. Attempts to establish aesthetic norms can end up con-
straining the artist s creative process, not to mention the reading,
interpretation, and translation of the work of art.
In his essay, Translating Maryse Condé: A Personal Itinerary,
Philcox explains how translating his wife s novels has helped to trans-
form him into an Other (for as he puts it, his work has often forced
him into a world not of his own), and also into an author in his own
right:
I thus become Maryse Condé Maryse Condé, c est moi and perform
the greatest ventriloquist s act there is, taking over from the author and
playing to the gallery. There she sits on the stage beside me, silent and
composed, while I can reach an English-speaking audience with a transla-
tion she does not recognize of a text she once wrote in another language.
And yet she should know what it s like, taking an author and adapting her to
one s own voice. After all, she did it to Emily Brontë and Wuthering
Heights, and I did it to Maryse Condé and Windward Heights. (33-34)
What Philcox refers to here is the way in which the process of transla-
tion, the movement or transfer of meaning from one language and
culture to another, has the potential to add something new to the origi-
nal. For what does it mean to be an original anyway? When read
together, Condé s novel and Philcox s translation become a testament
to the intertextual nature of the creative process for both authors and
translators alike. With the ongoing dialogues, re-writings, and collab-
orative efforts occurring among writers, translators, originals, transla-
tions, paratexts, and readers, perhaps the limits of translation could
best be viewed as the possibilities for new texts and new interpretative
meanings.
176 FLS, Vol. XXXVI, 2009
Works Cited
Bernabé, Jean, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant. Éloge de la créo-
lité. Paris: Gallimard, 1989.
Condé, Maryse. Célanire cou-coupé. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2000.
_____. Créolité without the Creole Language? Caribbean Creolization:
Reflections on the Cultural Dynamics of Language, Literature, and
Identity. Ed. Kathleen M. Balutansky and Marie-Agnès Sourieau.
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