Translation as an act of literary cartography. Trado – a poetic and theoretical
experiment by Svetlana Cârstean and Athena Farrokhzad
The topic of the current article is the poetry volume Trado by Svetlana Cârstean and Athena Farrokhzad, a poetic and theoretical experiment that focuses on the concept of translation. In the context of geocriticism having gained a significant scope in the recent years while emphasizing the strong connection between literature and spatiality, it is noticeable that the mentioned translation experiment, although concerned with the language, is mainly an act of “geocreation”, of reciprocal construction of the place where each of the two poets originate from. Most importantly, neither of the two authors has access to the original
language of the other’s poems, both of them using a third language, an instrument language which becomes a no man’s langue.
By means of this language, the two poets create a new map, a utopian map that perfectly fits Bertrand Westphal’s review of geocriticism. The act of translation becomes, thus, an act of literary cartography and it is made possible by the two lyrical voices
letting go of their own fixed, original identities.
Keywords: translation, place, geocriticism, poetry, spatiality.
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