Language and untranslatability: Cioran's self-translation into French.

摘要

This dissertation examines language in relation to nation, identity and writing, at the crossroads of French and Francophone studies. Its overarching importance is to complement post-colonial approaches to the French speaking world as concerns the rise of "literature-monde en francais" [world literature in French]. Along these lines, I draw on Emil Cioran's work and his will to choose French over his native language. Cioran's view on the incompatibility between Romanian and French languages and cultures reveals deeply engrained inferiority complexes and national identity crises on the part of speakers of "minor" languages in general. I read Cioran's reluctance to translate some of his early Romanian works into French as an ideological mechanism that I define as "untranslatability." Throughout the five chapters of my dissertation, I show that untranslatability serves a gate keeping function that prevents access to politically problematic texts. I argue that Cioran's writings in French can only be properly understood through the lens of a highly controversial text that he published in Romania in 1936, in the midst of right-wing extremist movements. Given the anti-Semitic and anti-Hungarian content of certain passages, the Romanian re-edition of The Transfiguration of Romania in 1990 was partially censored by Cioran. This text has remained unknown to the French public for twenty years, because Cioran's editors wished to avoid feeding the controversy of his past. In April 2009 the publishing house l'Herne" finally released its uncensored version, although there is no evidence that Cioran had previously agreed to reveal his stance on "the Jewish question" before his death in 1995. I therefore problematize the ethical implications of textual manipulations and the ideologies that fuel the status of untranslatable or unpublishable works, both in France and Romania.