Translating Sound Poetry

Abstract

Linked as effect to key moments of the mise-en-scène of the language’s origins, intensely permeated by the affectivity, in the middleway between the verbal and the preverbal, the sound poetry surely is one of the major temptations to a translator of poetry. It also becomes one of his limit-cases. This paper aims to present and discuss the theory of the sound poetry’s translation conceived by Roman Ingarden. Taking as examples some of vanguard’s practices, as well as some of solutions by Augusto and Haroldo de Campos in Panorama de Finnegans Wake, I analyze the Ingarden’s notion of quase word and the difference between the fruition of the literary work and the appreciation the musical work. The interest in translation is not restraint for the Polish thinker to theoretical analyses, having its origin in his philosophical work distinguished by its strong bilingual aspects. In fact, in the formulation of his phenomenological esthetics the translation from Polish to German (and vice-versa) takes an important part in the very process of creative thinking.