Translating Artaud and Non-Translation

Abstract

What does it mean to translate someone? If translation, as it is conventionally understood, refers to that activity by which meaning is transferred from one language to another, where and how does the self come into it? In Artaud le Mômo, Antonin Artaud marks his return to society after nine years of internment by creating a new man, endowed with a new language—a mixture of French and strange syllables, as incomprehensible as they are unreadable. Artaud’s later texts not only help to clarify the role of the syllables within Artaud’s poetics, but, by revealing a tension between translation and non-translation, they also deepen understanding of what translation might be. Asking what it means to translate Artaud uncovers the significance of the physical dimension that is involved in the process of translation and the role of the non-verbal (or pre-verbal), while testing the limits of identity, language, and understanding.