The body as a translation: the senses and World War II in U vojny ne ženskoe lico, by Svetlana Alexievich

Abstract

: In this paper, we aim to study the human body as a form of translation by unfolding the (non)presence of the senses in two editions of U vojny ne ženskoe lico, one of the most successful “novels of voices” by Nobel Prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich. First published in 1985, the book gathers testimonies of women who fought in the ranks of the Red Army during World War II. By conducting a comparative analysis of the appearance (and absence) of sensory perceptions in two versions of the text (from 1985 and 2013), we have concluded that the writer makes multiple changes at a microstructural level. The overlapping of the senses in the discursive construction of the most recent version of the book helps Alexievich to translate the horrors of the bloodiest conflict in history, enabling the reader to feel the war through the body of another person.