Trajectories of self-translation in Alba de Céspedes: incomparability and untranslatability

Résumé En

The case of Alba de Céspedes (1911-1997), an Italian-Cuban writer who chose to publish directly in French from the end of the 1960s, has been the subject of several studies, mostly focused on the novel Sans autre lieu que la nuit (Le Seuil, 1973), self-translated for Mondadori in 1976 with the title Nel Buio della notte (Ciminari 2005 and 2009; Bramati, 2020). De Céspedes’ poetic writing in Italian and French has however not yet been studied. This paper takes up the challenge and explores issues of self-translation, censorship and untranslatability in the making of the collection Chansons des filles de mai, dedicated to the Parisian '68 and published in France by Editions du Seuil (1968) and in Italian self-translation in 1970 by Mondadori (Le ragazze di maggio). As in the case of Sans autre lieu que la nuit, the choice of French was motivated by biographical reasons (de Céspedes had chosen to leave Italy and move to Paris) but also by a detachment from the public figure around which, up to the 1960s, she had built her identity as an author. Claudio Galderisi has suggested that writing in a non-native language can become a way to reinvent oneself in maturity, and that it often coincides with considerable stylistic experimentation (2011). This is precisely the case of Alba de Céspedes, who grew up speaking Italian, French and Spanish, but was a basically monolingual author until she moved to France. In Chansons des filles de mai, de Céspedes refers to the ‘68 movements in terms of ‘revolution’, firmly convinced that '68 is a global experience destined to challenge Western capitalism. The close link that the writer perceives between the events of 1968 and the Cuban Revolution is highlighted by the numerous references to Cuba, and by the fact that the poems feature Cuban women among the protagonists (Ciminari 2020). At the same time as she was working on the Italian edition, which the author tried in vain to publish with a publisher other than Mondadori, de Céspedes planned a Cuban edition. She identified the ideal translator in Heberto Padilla, an anti-conformistCuban poet and translator closely monitored by the government and already at the centre of numerous controversies. In a letter dated October 25, 1970, Padilla declares himself enthusiastic about the poems, but notes that he has not yet received approval from the Instituto del libro, and speaks of his condition as that of an ‘apestado’ (leper) (FM 90, 1). As a tribute, he encloses the translation of the poem ‘La peur’ (fear). It is a highly symbolic gesture that expresses at the same time the desire and the impossibility of a collaboration. For de Céspedes, given the continuity she perceives between the French and Cuban events, the publication of the collection of poems in Cuba seems a natural outcome. Padilla’s letter insteadsuggests instead another version of the story, in which the untranslatability of the collection (the Cuban edition will never be approved by the government) is closely related to the ‘incomparability’ of the Cuban Revolution. A similar dynamic also conditioned the following novel, Con grande amore, a multilingual text, ‘born in translation’ (Walkovitzt 2015), and conceived from the outset in three editions (French, Italian, Cuban), that would only be published posthumously, in 2011.