“The Place where Bloom is in the Restaurant”: French Translations of the “Sandwich” Passage of Ulysses

Resumo

There are, to date, only two translations of Ulysses into French. The 1929 ‘authorized’ translation by “M. Auguste Morel, assisté par Stuart Gilbert, entièrement revue par Valery Larbaud et l’auteur”, published by Adrienne Monnier’s La Maison des Amis des Livres,1 was the only French version for over seven decades. The cultural monopoly achieved by Morel’s text resulted in part from the widespread conviction that the translation he had produced was exceptionally good – a conception powerfully bolstered by the fact of Joyce’s and Larbaud’s involvements in the project. These contributions by the author and by “l’un des plus grands stylistes français”2 ensured that the published translation became invested with near-canonical status in the French-speaking world.