Translation and the Aesthetics of Prose Poetry

Translation is generally understood as the transformation of text from one language into another. But translation is also a dialogue between two languages, between two versions of a text, and between author and translator. Such dialogue involves thought on language, its usage and potential, and on literary creation itself. Poetry also involves attention to, and experimentation with, language and contains a constant analysis of its own expression. This dissertation examines this coincidence of translation and poetry and seeks to explore how translation, both in theory and in practice, illuminates the understanding of a key development in modern French poetry: the prose poem. It analyses the relationship between the practice of translation and thought on translation, and the development of the new poetic form which is prose poetry. It concentrates on the aesthetics of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rimbaud, and shows that in each case an intensely self-reflexive poetics is driven by an engagement with translation. Divided into two parts, the dissertation first considers each poet’s differing relation to translation. It shows that translation enabled Baudelaire to develop his own style, that it shaped Mallarmé’s relationship with common language, and that it sits at the heart of Rimbaud’s poetic ethics. The second part concentrates on the specific issues of the prose poem in relation to translation, and demonstrates that the form distils fundamental issues in translation and is in turn shaped by them. The prose poem oscillates between two literary forms, and is itself a form in translation, engaging with its different versions. Baudelaire’s, Mallarmé’s and Rimbaud’s poetic experiments in prose echo and reflect each other. The prose poem and its generation in translation provide a critical space where the three-way dialogue between these defining figures of modernism may be heard and examined.