“A Letter! A Litter”: The Challenges of Translating Joyce

Abstract

In James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), a hen named Belinda picks up trash in a dumpster and, among the litter, she finds a letter (A letter! A litter). It is a letter written by Anna Livia Plurabelle, the protagonist of a novel. The contents of the letter could save the reputation of her husband Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE). However, this letter, pecked by the chicken and filthy, is practically unreadable. This letter would symbolize the novel itself and unveiling its content is the objective of the characters and, I would say, of the readers. It is possible, however, to “unravel” only a part of it, not the whole thing. Here resides a reflection on reading, the reading of literature that is always under construction or that is fragmentary. In Finnegans Wake, the translator will have to deal with this fragmentary construction and with the “fragility” of the aesthetic information and, therefore, it is necessary that he is skillful in the target language in order to maintain these characteristics in the translation, which would be achieved through re-creation.