Corps de l’article

Introduction

Yvan Goll was a Franco-German poet who was at the centre of the European avant-garde from the 1910s to the 1930s. His birth name was Isaac Lang but over the course of his life he used a dozen pseudonyms. His identity was indeed manifold: born in 1891 in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges into a Jewish family from Lorraine and Alsace, he was raised in a French-speaking household, but, after the death of his father, his mother decided to relocate to Metz, a town that was at the time part of the German Empire. German became his primary language, as Goll studied in German schools and universities and even became a German citizen (Glauert-Hesse, 2003, p. 155). He made his poetic debut as a German expressionist, before escaping to Switzerland during World War I. Although not a proponent of Dada, he was well acquainted with its members. When he moved to France after the war, he was the unsuccessful rival of André Breton in the beginnings of Surrealism (Ronsin, 1994). Along with his wife Claire Goll, he published poems, novels, and plays in German and in French. The couple was a fixture of the artistic life of the time and had portraits made by artists of the School of Paris like Chagall and Foujita. Since they were both Jewish, the Golls chose to flee Europe as soon as it became clear that war with Hitler’s Germany was inevitable. Claire remembers her husband saying: “We will not wait for our murderers” (Goll, 1976, p. 214).[1] They managed to board a ship destined for the United States at the end of August 1939 and didn’t return to Paris until 1947, only for the fatally ill poet to die of leukemia a couple of years later.

During his years of exile in New York, Goll was confronted with a third language and delved into a new poetic landscape. In this respect, he is one of the few refugee writers of the older generation who managed to adapt to his new surroundings and thus enter a productive artistic phase (Weissenberger, 1989; Zohn, 1989; Kramer, 2005). This part of his work has not been abundantly studied (Pouthier, 1988, pp. 197-198; Grass, 2017), as he is mainly remembered as a bilingual, even equilingual poet, who was perfectly at home in both French and German (Weissmann, 2017). The predominance of these two main languages can lead to minimizing the significance of English in his later writings: “The English part of Goll’s work demonstrates the poet’s basic ability to write in that language; its limited size, however, prevents us from considering Goll as a veritably trilingual poet” (Phillips, 1984, p. 239). However, the way he was able to participate in English-language literature through his translations, his writings, and his publishing work deserves to be better brought to light (Papparella, 2008). It is especially important to take into account the role of translation both as a gateway to and integral part of his work in English. The present paper focusses specifically on his translation of “The Dry Salvages I” by T.S. Eliot in 1943 from the perspective of translator studies (Chesterman, 2009) and genetic translation studies (Cordingley and Montini, 2016). It first exposes the poet’s relationship with the English language both prior to and during his exile. The manuscript and final text of his translation are then examined to show how the Franco-German poet dealt with Eliot’s complex English verses and their evocation of American culture and landscape.

1. Yvan Goll and the English Language

According to Claire Goll’s memoir published in 1976, her husband had no knowledge of English before coming to America as a refugee at the age of 48. She describes the challenge of learning a foreign language, even for a bilingual writer who was used to navigating between French and German: “Their whole lives poets remain tied to one language, sometimes two, like Goll and I. Although Goll had begun to learn English on the ship, he could not dream of assimilating it to the point of making it an instrument of thought” (1976, p. 218). Indeed, Goll’s relationship with both German and French was that of a native speaker, whereas English was a completely new and different language that didn’t come intuitively to him. At the same time, Claire Goll stresses that she and her husband were not as unhappy as other refugees during their exile because of their cosmopolitan background: “Born as John Landless, a Frenchman in Germany, a ‘Kraut’ in France, Goll, like me, had no roots and no home. We used to cast anchor in Zurich, Berlin and Paris… Now we were docked in Brooklyn, in the Columbia Heights neighborhood” (ibid., p. 226). It should be noted that Claire Goll is known to be an unreliable source, as evidenced by her defamation of Paul Celan after the death of her husband (Wiedemann, 2000).[2] But when she emphasizes or minimizes the difficulties that she and her husband faced in New York, it reflects the ambiguity of refugee life, between hurdles and hardships, relative safety, and new opportunities. Contrary to many exiles of his generation, Yvan Goll seems to have been better able to embrace his new environment. Being a bilingual poet who did not conceive his work as rooted in just one language certainly helped him overcome the daunting task of making himself at home in a third one (Forster, 1970, pp. 79-80).

1.1. Learning English as a Refugee

Yvan Goll first had to learn English before incorporating this new language into his literary work. The Yvan Goll Papers (YG) archived in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges offer a glimpse into his English lessons.[3] A notebook contains vocabulary lists that he jotted down while attending a night school on Broadway two or three times a week between 1940 and 1941. The contents of this notebook show that he was taking a beginner to intermediate level English class that focused on the acquisition of common phrases for everyday use. For example, the learner listed different expressions based on the verb “to take,” some with apparent transcribing or spelling errors:

to take account of = to take into consideration

take it from me = accept my explanation

Children take after their parents = imitate

To take a leaf of one’s book = to follow one’s example

to take a shine to = to grow fond of

to take back = to resent [sic]

to take in = to comprehend

she takes in working

The business takes in 10$

to take in hand = to have on hand

to take possession… of a room

to take stock in = to believe

to take up = to start french [sic] in school

to take upon myself = I assume my duty

YG, 651.3

Other documents from the archive include lesson sheets prepared by the Committee for Refugee Education (YG, 555). They list American vowel sounds and give examples of the same vowel sounds spelled differently: “eat – lean bean / Some green peas.” Handwritten notes, probably made by Goll himself, mark the phonetic pronunciation of the vowels, in this case [i]. Such documents undoubtedly proved very useful to any English learner, especially, in this case, a poet who was aiming to grasp the sounds and musicality of a new language in order to understand its poetry more fully.

1.2. Previous Contact with English-language Literature

Although materials from the archive corroborate the fact that Yvan Goll had to work hard to learn English upon his arrival in the United States in 1939, Claire Goll’s account about her husband having no previous knowledge of the language may be exaggerated, given that he already had some experience translating English-speaking authors. In Zurich in 1919, he published a German translation of Walt Whitman’s letters dating from the Civil War in a volume titled Der Wundarzt: Briefe, Aufzeichnungen und Gedichte aus dem amerikanischen Sezessionskrieg [The Wound Dresser: Letters, Notes and Poems from the Civil War] that also contained poems translated by Gustav Landauer (Whitman, 1919). But in all probability, Goll based his translation on a French publication by translator Léon Bazalgette, with a very similar title: Le Panseur de plaies: poèmes, lettres et fragments sur la guerre (ibid., 1917).

In the years following World War I, Yvan and Claire Goll edited four anthologies of poetry in an effort to bridge the gap between countries. After two collections of pacifist poems in French and German (Goll, 1919; Goll and Goll, 1920), Yvan published the 1922 anthology of world poetry, Les Cinq Continents: anthologie mondiale de poésie contemporaine. At the time, it not only opened a dialogue between the dominant literary languages but also included the literatures of marginalized African, Asian, Native American, and Jewish cultures. From today’s perspective, it seems unfortunate that the latter are confined to the same section of the book under the umbrella term “Oriental Group” (Goll, 1922). Another section, dedicated to English-speaking poets, is divided between the USA, England, and Ireland. T.S. Eliot is listed as an English author, though the American-born poet had not yet been naturalized at the time. Oddly enough, Yvan chose one of Eliot’s French poems, “Lune de miel,” to represent his work. Therefore, he did not need to translate Eliot, nor did he translate any of the other English-speaking authors in his anthology. He did work with English-language source texts, however, as he is credited with the translation of three Native American poems collected and translated into English by Alice Corbin Henderson and Mathilde Cow Stevenson. Given his limited knowledge of English, he was probably more of an adaptor than a translator, rewriting a pre-existing French translation or working closely with someone well versed in the language. He may have relied to a great extent on his wife, who had published a German anthology of contemporary American poetry (Goll, 1921) the previous year. This anthology did not include T.S. Eliot, probably because he was not identified as an American poet. In her introduction, Claire Goll presents a stereotypical and fantasized view of America, under the influence of Karl May’s depiction of the Far West, stating that “Americans are still a barbaric nation. Only those nations are prolific” (ibid., p. 7).

Yvan and Claire Goll’s anthologies from the beginning of the 1920s demonstrate their interest for English-language poetry as a source of modern impulses and international regeneration after the war. But the couple and especially Yvan did not yet have a deep connection to American culture. They most often came into contact with English-speaking poets through the social circles of their cosmopolitan Parisian life in the 1920s and 1930s. During this time, Yvan worked closely with James Joyce, with whom he had become acquainted while previously exiled in Zurich. He arranged the publication of Ulysses in German through his contacts with the Rhein Verlag and contributed, along with Samuel Beckett, Alfred Perron, Eugène Jolas, Paul L. Léon, Adrienne Monnier, and Philippe Soupault, to the translation of Joyce’s Anna Livia Plurabelle into French in 1931 (Milaneschi, 2019). His relationship with Joyce certainly fostered his interest in and sharp ear for English. According to the bibliography of his works, he also translated by himself one of Joyce’s poems, Ecce puer, in 1933 (Kramer and Vilain, 2006, p. 184).

Although his command of the language and knowledge of the culture were insufficient before going to America, Yvan’s previous contact with English-language literature helps explain why he did not just seek to acquire basic language skills, but used his time in exile to deepen his connection with these authors and immerse himself in the American poetic landscape.

2. Translation From and Into English as a Means of Integration

Just a few months after arriving in New York in September 1939, Yvan Goll was already trying to carve out a place for himself in American literary circles. He could count on his European friends, many of whom escaped Nazism like him, but he was also eager to get in touch with American poets.

On December 13, 1939, he wrote to Louise Bogan on the pretext of working on an issue of the German journal in exile Centaur, dedicated to young American poetry, although this issue never came to be. The poet and literary critic found that Yvan Goll exhibited a “refugee drive” in jumping at every opportunity to make useful connections and benefit from refugee solidarity networks like the P.E.N. Club (cited in Steele, 2010, p. 12). In one letter from March 1940, she scornfully remarked about the Golls: “They have everyone lined up, naturally, beginning with the Jewish intellectuals” (ibid., p. 13). By that she was referring in particular to Babette Deutsch and Jean Starr Untermeyer, two Jewish-American poets who had begun translating Jean Sans Terre, Yvan’s latest work, into English (Goll, 1936, 1938, 1939). The latter’s requests for translations made Louise Bogan feel like he saw in her the “female queen bee in the poetry line” and expected her to “give him a push upward and onward” (cited in Steele, 2010, p. 24). Despite her harsh judgement, she corresponded with Goll and indeed helped him establish himself as a poet on the other side of the Atlantic. She published a noted piece of literary criticism in the Partisan Review in July-August 1940 where she unequivocally praised Jean Sans Terre (Bogan, 1940).

Yvan Goll was mainly interested in having Jean Sans Terre translated into English and was trying to recruit as many American poets as possible for this task so he could publish individual poems in various literary journals. To this end, he often offered to translate poems into French, as a kind of gift exchange or barter system: “In this language exchange, which serves as an economy to support as well as promote, people translate each other mutually and, ideally for the refugee, more or less simultaneously, with a view to publication” (Steele, 2010, p. 19). We see this strategy at play in the letter that Yvan wrote in French to American poet and writer William Carlos Williams in March 1940:

My dear colleague,

My wife Claire came back the other day from Stieglitz and Dorothy Norman’s place and was delighted about making your acquaintance. I would have shared her enthusiasm if I had had the same luck. For a long time, I have cherished your poems, for their spontaneity, their colors, their spirit. For a long time, I have wanted to translate some of them for a French journal: Yggdrasill, which, I think, lives on. But I remember that Mesures has published some. I wouldn’t want to be redundant. Could you tell me which ones?

I take this opportunity to send you the last small volume of the series Jean Sans Terre, this poem where I concentrate what I still have to say.

ibid., p. 71

Goll was overjoyed when Williams responded by sending him a translation of the first four verses of “Jean sans Terre conduit la Caravane” / “John Landless Leading the Caravan”. He asked him to translate the rest while immediately contacting a poetry journal to publish it.

This barter strategy was indeed effective, and Goll kept his side of the bargain, publishing a series of translations in New York’s French monthly newspaper La Voix de France (later combined with Pour la Victoire) as shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Yvan Goll’s translations in La Voix de France

Yvan Goll’s translations in La Voix de France

Table 1 (suite)

Yvan Goll’s translations in La Voix de France

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Although he did get some results, Goll was not satisfied with the speed of the translation of his work into English. As early as August 1940, he attempted a self-translation of one of his poems and sent it to Williams, requesting corrections (Steele, 2010, p. 91). He then spent a fortnight with Clark Mills and others (possibly students from Cornell) in Upstate New York to speed up the process through collective translation.

As Goll became increasingly familiar with the English language, he could rely more on self-translation, for example for his and his wife’s Love Poems, published in 1947. He even wrote poetry directly in English with the poem Atom Elegy (1943) and later the collection Fruit from Saturn (1946). His translations from English and the translation of his poems into English with the help of his American colleagues was a stepping stone that enabled him to access the literary space of his country of exile.

3. The Translation of “The Dry Salvages I”

Yvan Goll worked on his translation of T.S. Eliot’s poem in 1943, after he had already transitioned to English as a third creative language. Although it was no longer part of his strategy to make a name for himself in America, the translation was made possible by his efforts to become well versed in the English language and the experience he gained exchanging translations with American poets. This is why he was able to tackle a poem by one of the most famous contemporary English-speaking poets, Eliot, who was born in America in 1888 and emigrated to England in 1914. “The Dry Salvages” was first published in 1941 and then republished as the third of Four Quartets in 1943. Yvan Goll only translated the first part of this long poem, referred to here as “The Dry Salvages I”. The context of Goll’s translation, followed by an analysis of the text itself through its different genetic stages, will be presented in the following sections.

3.1. Fontaine’s Special Issue on American Authors

Contrary to Goll’s publications in La Voix de France, his translation of T.S. Eliot was not intended for the French-speaking audience in exile in the USA and did not aim to establish him in his new land through his contacts with the local poets. It was part of another series of translations from the English published far from America in Fontaine, an important poetry journal edited by Max-Pol Fouchet in Algiers since the spring of 1939. During the Occupation, Fontaine was at the forefront of intellectual resistance to the Vichy Regime (Vignale, 2012, p. 147). After Operation Torch in November 1942 and the liberation of North Africa, it became the unofficial literary journal of Free France. To celebrate the arrival of the Anglo-American troops and strengthen the bond between allied forces, Fontaine published a special issue in June-July 1943 dedicated to the “Writers and Poets of the United States of America” (Wahl, 1943), which includes four translations by Goll (Table 2):

Table 2

Yvan Goll’s translations in Fontaine

Yvan Goll’s translations in Fontaine

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In the table of contents, “Les Trois Sauvages” is incorrectly marked as translated by Jean Wahl, who was the editor of the issue and translated most of the texts himself, including the poem “Metric Figures” by William Carlos Williams that Goll had also translated in 1940 (Steele, 2010, p. 25). Jean Wahl was exiled in the United States from 1942 to 1945 and worked as Professor of Philosophy at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts (Giocanti, 2019, pp. 407-408). His correspondence with his friend Max-Pol Fouchet shows that the idea for the project was directly linked to his presence there. The Fontaine editor saw an opportunity to bridge the gap with American authors as early as September 1942, even before the arrival of the Allied Troops in North Africa:

My dear friend,

Have you arrived safely? I wish it with all my heart. And I do wish I had some news from you. Don’t deprive me of it. Let’s keep in touch.

Could you also keep us up to date on American literature? If you find it tiresome, maybe you could find us a correspondent? But I take the liberty to see you as the soul of Fontaine over there. If you knew how much we await your every word here, and Fontaine is the worthiest for carrying it.

That is why I would like to dedicate an issue to American literature. But how is one to reach Faulkner, Caldwell, Hemingway, Steinbeck and the like? This project is close to my heart. I think it is feasible, in spite of everything, and you know what I mean by that. I’ll keep you posted. But I am requesting your help.

Max-Pol Fouchet to Jean Wahl, 10.09.1942, 27 WHL 18.40[4]

Fontaine’s special issue on American literature was followed by another dedicated to British literature in 1944 (Fouchet, 1944). T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets were also included in this publication, with the translation of “Burnt Norton” by Pierre Saffroy. Whereas Goll’s own anthology, Les Cinq Continents, presented T.S. Eliot as an English author (Goll, 1922), both special issues of Fontaine contain works by the poet. The 1943 issue even opens with a lecture he held at the University of Glasgow in February 1942: “The Music of Poetry,” translated by Rachel Bespalof. In a third section dedicated to poetry, Goll’s translation of “The Dry Salvages I” is followed by three other T.S. Eliot poems translated by Wahl: “La figlia che piange,” “Gerontion,” and “Ash Wednesday.” The decision to heavily feature this author is explained in the appendix:

Readers might be surprised to find T.S. Eliot, a naturalized British citizen, in a book dedicated to writers of the USA. Indeed, by education and inclination, T.S. Eliot is more British than American. And yet it was impossible for us to not take into account the place of his birth.

Wahl, 1943, p. 214

One of the poems chosen to represent the poet particularly highlights the American components of his inspiration, since “The Dry Salvages I” describes a landscape that evokes both the Mississippi and the shores of New England. It can even be considered as “the most American of Eliot’s Quartets” (Hooker, 1983, p. 137). Interestingly, Yvan Goll’s poetry at the time was also inspired by American places, specifically Native American toponyms: in October 1942, that is a few months before translating Eliot, he wrote “Élégie d’Ihpétonga,” referring to the Native name of his borough Brooklyn, which was followed in 1943-1944 by “Élégie de Lackawanna,” named after a town in Upstate New York (Glauert-Hesse, 2013, pp. 617-618).

While the 1943 issue on American authors was coordinated from abroad, the 1944 issue on British literature was prepared by Fouchet, the journal’s editor, during his stay in the United Kingdom at the invitation of the British Council in September and October 1943 (Vignale, 2012, p. 168). Several influential British authors, including T.S. Eliot himself, were consulted, and the poems were printed in French translation as well as in the original. In the case of “Burnt Norton,” the first of the Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot revised and approved the translation by Pierre Saffroy (Hooker, 1983, p. 5). Such a collaboration did not take place in the case of Goll’s translation of the first part of “The Dry Salvages,” the third Quartet.

Goll and Eliot may have met in the 1920s or early 1930s in Paris, at a time when they were both working with James Joyce (Tamplin, 1988, p. 173; Ackroyd, 1984, p. 152). Goll was also a friend of Eugène Jolas, one of Eliot’s early translators into French (Hooker, 1983, p. 22). According to Claire Goll, however, they made each other’s acquaintance through another channel: “Gertrude Stein introduced us to another American, Natalie Clifford Barney, who hosted an open table every Friday. At her house, you could meet Ezra Pound, Paul Valéry, Barbusse, T.S. Eliot, André Gide” (1976, p. 146). In a letter dated from February 1932, Claire mentions a visit to Eliot:

What about England today? Where are the outstanding poets? How many are there? William Butler Yeats, the young Dylan Thomas you have heard about, Eliot. Though Eliot is American and—as he himself admitted to me—influenced by Rilke. (Though first and foremost by the French, starting with Laforgue…) When I visited Eliot in London then, he wasn’t yet Eliot at all.

Goll, Goll, and Ludwig, 2013a, pp. 140-141

No other source or further details about the alleged visit to Eliot could be found. This may be a case of Claire Goll’s tampering with the archive, given that the manuscript of this letter is not an original, but a later copy, according to the editor of the correspondence Barbara Glauert-Hesse (see Goll, Goll, and Ludwig, 2013b, p. 145). Although the two poets frequented the same circles in Paris, it seems that Goll and Eliot were in fact not well acquainted. When Goll wrote to Eliot in 1930 to ask for permission to translate the first part of “Ash Wednesday” into German, the latter responded:

Sir,

Thank you for your letter of the 8th inst. I have no objection whatsoever if you would like to translate my short poem Perch’ Io non Spero into German. Nevertheless, I should inform you that Ernst Curtius and Max Rychner have already translated the same piece independently of one another. I will soon have a copy of Ash-Wednesday and also of my new poem Marina to send you.

Yours faithfully

T.S. Eliot to Yvan Goll, 14.07.1930, TSE

The tone is distant and formal and the correspondence stopped there. On the other hand, this letter also demonstrates Goll’s continued interest in Eliot’s work. Even if he did not go through with his intention of translating the poem, it appears that he was willing to tackle such a task long before his exile.

The correspondence between Wahl and Fouchet does not contain further information about Goll or Eliot. It is in fact very scarce during these years and mentions some lost mail, as maintaining contact between Algeria and the United States proved to be difficult in a time of war. Fouchet had to resort to the help of the Office of Wartime Information (OWI) to send a telegram to Wahl encouraging him to continue his work on the special issue (OWI to Jean Wahl, 16.01.1943, 27 WHL 18.40). Giocanti (2022, pp. 127 and 199-208) uncovered the fact that the OWI took a great part in the project, offering not only material support, but also the collaboration of its agents. One of them was American writer and translator Frederic Prokosch, who helped plan the issue, arranged translations, and sent manuscripts over to Algiers. The fact that he was working with the French Section of the OWI, which employed a number of French intellectuals (Loyer, 2007, pp. 232-298), proved instrumental: in a letter to Jean Wahl, he mentions among others Julien Green, André Breton, Eugene Jolas, and Édouard Roditi as colleagues and potential translators for Fontaine (Frederic Prokosch to Jean Wahl, 19.02.1943, 27 WHL 20.40).

Yvan Goll is not named in the letter, but he also worked for the OWI in 1943 (Goll, 1976, p. 231; Goll, Goll, and Ludwig 2013b, p. 621). He was likely approached by Prokosch directly and had no contact with Wahl during the preparation of the issue. The surviving letters between the two French refugees date from after the publication and mostly pertain to Goll’s own literary journal Hémisphères[5] (27 WHL 18.63). Prokosch collected the translations himself but let Wahl have the final say both in the selection and the revision of the texts provided by him. This caused one of the contributors to the issue, possibly Édouard Roditi (Giocanti, 2022, pp. 202-203), to be angered by the changes made to his translations as well as by the fact that Wahl’s collaborators were not credited in Fontaine. Wahl drafted a long semi-apologetic letter to this unknown correspondent where he explicitly states: “I made a few corrections to Yvan Goll’s translations and your translations” (Jean Wahl, 14.12.1943, 27 WHL 20.40). This document sheds important light on the genesis of Goll’s translation, since it shows that he was one the few translators whose text was revised by the editor, likely without his knowledge, as was the case for his disgruntled colleague.

No other relevant information could be found in the correspondence of the people involved. Therefore, the genetic dossier consists mainly of the avant-texte: Goll’s papers in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges include a typescript of the translation annotated by its author (YG 533.1).[6] It probably dates from the beginning of 1943, as we know from Prokosch that the preparation of the Fontaine issue began in February (Giocanti, 2019, 416). It constitutes the basis for the present analysis of the translation as it illuminates the translator’s choices. All the variants on the typescript can be attributed to Goll, whereas subsequent modifications most likely originate from Wahl.

3.2. Analysis of the Translation Manuscript

The typescript of the translated text is three pages long because Goll only translated the first part of the poem. Handwritten annotations are quite scarce, which indicates that this typescript was at a late stage of the translation. But a few differences can be observed between this document and the printed version in Fontaine:

Table 3

Stages of the translation[7]

Stages of the translation7

Table 3 (suite)

Stages of the translation7

Table 3 (suite)

Stages of the translation7

Table 3 (suite)

Stages of the translation7

Table 3 (suite)

Stages of the translation7

-> Voir la liste des tableaux

The title stands out first: “Les Trois Sauvages.” This translation is based on a note in the English edition of the text: “The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages—is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the north-east coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages” (Eliot, 1944, p. 5; italics in original). Goll chose not to translate this note, but retained the etymology of the toponym that Eliot suggested, although it is a doubtful one (Gardner, 1978, p. 53). As a result, the title loses its reference to a specific place and erases the evocation of the American seascape, so that the French reader might look in vain for three savages in the poem. In Pierre Leyris’s translation, which came out in a bilingual edition of Eliot’s poems in 1947, the title reads “Les Dry Salvages” and the note is translated as well (Eliot, 1969, pp. 186-187). Goll’s “Les Trois Sauvages” is discussed and compared with Leyris’ version in Joan Fillmore Hooker’s essay on the French translations of Eliot’s poems. The overall judgement is that “Goll’s translation has much of the meaning of Eliot’s original, but less rhythmic fidelity than Leyris’s version” (1983, p. 143). However, it begs the question of what “rhythmic fidelity” means when translating poetry and whether it can be achieved between two languages with very different prosody.

Since the present analysis is more rooted in translator studies and genetic translation studies than in translation criticism, it does not aim to discuss the fidelity or poetic quality of the translation as such, but rather to compare textual stages in order to explore Goll’s translation process in the context of his acquisition of English as a third poetic language. A particular focus is placed on semantic choices that reveal the extent of his familiarity with English vocabulary and realia, as well as on the evolution of the syntactic structure of the poem, which affects its rhythm and therefore its poeticity (Meschonnic, 2012). The analysis will show that some rhythmic problems pointed out by Hooker are much less present in the typescript than in the published version in Fontaine, highlighting Jean Wahl’s role as a revisor (see Hersant, 2019).

Some of the corrections of the typescript merely have to do with spelling, while others introduce minor lexical changes, such as from maussade to boudeur (l. 2), from intermédiaire de commerce to convoyeur de commerce (l. 4), or from anxieuses, désolées to inquiètes, soucieuses (l. 41). The main differences between the stages of translation have to do with the syntax of the poem: Goll’s first draft tends to loosen the grammatical structure by using nominal phrases instead of the verbs found in the original, as we can see on lines 26 to 29 and on line 34. The translator also replaces a relative clause by a main clause at the end of the text but then corrects it immediately on the typescript (l. 48). Goll’s initial preference for a paratactic style and his reluctance to use the verb être point to an aesthetic of condensation, as if he didn’t want to waste any space on grammatical words that are not rich in meaning or poetic power. This translation approach corresponds to a general trait of his poetry, that Forster (1970, p. 79) described as being rooted not in language, but in images. It often seems on the typescript that Goll tries to write as concisely as in the original, whereas some lines are longer in the final version (l. 30 and 46). The published translation revised by Wahl reintroduces the verbs and as a result has a much closer structure to the original (l. 26 to 29). The opposite movement can be found on line 10, where Goll first closely follows Eliot’s succession of present participles (attendant, vigilant, attendant) before deciding to turn them into clauses: il attend, vigilant, il attend. The second version is not any longer, but it also introduces a firmer syntactic structure. Here the translator wanted to avoid repeating the heavy sound [ɑ̃] too many times, since it is present in the verb “attend” as well as in the suffix of the present participles. His concern for the structure and rhythmic quality of his translation is also clear in the way he rearranges three lines when he finds himself unable to reproduce the tricky enjambments of the source text (l. 38 to 40).

Some changes made by Wahl reduce the musicality or the evocativeness of the text. Et à la réunion vespérale sous la lampe à gaz de l’hiver becomes a heavy line with long-drawn adverbial phrases that get no closer to the source text: Et à la réunion le soir à la lumière des gaz, l’hiver (l. 14). Not knowing that it was not written by Goll, Hooker describes this line as “aurally deficient” (1983, pp. 137-138). Even though it exhibits a perfectly symmetrical pattern alternating 6-2-6-2 syllables, the unevenness of its units and the three breaks in the prosody do not match the very linear content of the verse. The first version on the typescript is admittedly a little bit longer but has a better rhythmic flow because the use of an adjective (vespérale) and a genitival construction (de l’hiver) condenses the meaning and introduces a singular caesura in the middle of the line. At the end of the typescript, Goll tries to emulate Eliot’s very short lines: he first translates “Clangs” (l. 49) with a two-syllable word (Agite), and then adds a third syllable by changing the verb into a present participle (Agitant). The final version revised by Wahl also has three syllables but is visually longer because it consists of two verbs (Fait sonner). It also introduces a repetition in the translation (qui sonne, l. 37), whereas the source text uses two different verbs (“tolling” l. 37 and “clangs” l. 49). The emphasis on the sound produced by the bell probably dictated this choice, although one could argue that it was already implicitly present in the first version with the more concise and lively evocation: Agite / La cloche. Goll and Wahl seem to each focus on different elements of the poem, while both trying to strike a difficult balance between meaning and musicality. The final translation of “the whale’s backbone” justifiably reinforces the vision of the sea creatures as ossified remains, but, at the same time, it sacrifices the symbolism of the great biblical mammal by going from le dos de la baleine to l’épine dorsale (l. 19). Another correction by Wahl makes a significant idea disappear from the translation: Elle secoue en l’air skips the designation of the remainders of human activity found at sea as “losses,” although Goll’s draft did include the word pertes (l. 22).

Wahl had an extensive knowledge of English, to the point of being himself a bilingual poet who even wrote four “anti-quartets” in reaction to Eliot’s work (Giocanti, 2019, p. 407). It is all the more intriguing that a significant translation mistake or “curious lapse” (Hooker, 1983, p. 140) was not corrected in the final version. Goll seemingly fails to recognize the continuation of the sound motif in “The distant rote in the granite teeth” and misinterprets the word “rote” as stemming from “rot”: La carie lointaine des dents de granit (l. 32). The translator-poet was likely led astray by a conjunction of factors: his confusion between “rote” and “rot” was due to his imperfect grasp of English vocabulary and morphology but also influenced by the familiar German verb verotten, while the metaphor of the “teeth” used to describe the granite rock formation lent an air of plausibility to this flawed reading of the source text. This mistake indicates that Goll was not completely proficient in English, despite his efforts to master the language since his arrival in the United States, a mere three and a half years prior to his translation of Eliot.

In this relatively short time, it also appears that Goll did not gain a vast enough experience of American culture to seize the full meaning of the word “dooryard” (l. 12), which he translates as arrière-courette, although a dooryard is typically located at the front of a house and not behind it (Hooker, 1983, p. 138). This particularity of American life and architecture obviously eluded the refugee who mainly dwelled in large New York buildings. Another, more profound marker of American culture and mentality is the use of the word “frontier” (l. 3), which is steeped in the history of the United States’ territorial expansion throughout the 19th century. The term is a challenge for any French translator since the French language does not distinguish between a fixed geographical border separating two countries and a frontier as the limit of settled lands that can and shall be pushed farther. So it is not surprising that this nuance disappears both in Goll’s and in Leyris’ translation (Hooker, 1983, pp. 136-137).

Conclusions

As pointed out by Hooker (ibid., pp. 135-146), Yvan Goll’s translation of “The Dry Salvages I” has some shortcomings, which are especially evident in the choice of the title. But the fact that Wahl did not correct the more objective mistakes or inaccuracies paradoxically shows that Goll was on par with him, a vastly more experienced translator of English. The two versions of the text mainly reflect differences in the interpretation of the poem and in translation style. The analysis of the typescript shows that Goll’s translation paid closer attention to the rhythm of the text but was later revised by Wahl to focus on the syntax and the imagery of the poem. However, these corrections are not particularly abundant or extensive. Overall, “Les Trois Sauvages” is a solid attempt by a poet who had only been learning and translating English for a few years. Goll exhibits a high level of familiarity with the English language and poetry, which is a direct result of his efforts to gain access to American literary circles through translation.

Since this translation of T.S. Eliot was not published in America but in Algiers, it begs the question of what Yvan Goll wanted to achieve with it. He could have hoped to gain recognition outside of the United States for his new skill as a translator from English. He also probably wanted to strengthen his ties with Free France and the French intellectual field. This is evidenced by the fact that in 1944 Goll also published in Fontaine a poem about the Liberation of Paris, “Grand cortège de la Résistance en l’an mil neuf cent misère.” Whereas his earlier translations and self-translations into English aimed to establish him as a writer in the United States, his collaboration with Fontaine helped him find his way back to France, first as a translator and then as a poet. When Goll returned from exile in 1947, he was already at the end of his life and rejoiced in the opportunity to reconnect with his French and German roots. Thus he did not continue to pursue the connection to English-language literature that he had been able to develop during the war. This does not change the fact that, during this time of his life, he had indeed been able to incorporate a third language into all areas of his literary pursuits, beginning with translation. His exploration of English might not be considered at the same level as his German and his French, making Yvan Goll a trilingual poet in the sense of Forster (1970) and Phillips (1984). However, when discussing intercultural and multilingual literature, the important question is not whether a writer has achieved optimal fluency, but how their unique perspective and relationship with language have informed their art:

The use of English in Fruit from Saturn [Goll, 1946], the language of Goll’s host as a refugee in New York, remains undomesticated, devoid of idiomatic characteristics. […] Fruit from Saturn becomes a space where the power of exile is returned to creation itself through language.

Grass, 2017, pp. 244

It is in this sense that the trilingual nature of Goll’s experience and work as a refugee writer should not be minimized but instead further investigated.