33(2) - 2021

Arthur Symons the translator: Translation, remediation, recognition

Bénédicte Coste

Title
Arthur Symons the translator: Translation, remediation, recognition

Abstract
This article investigates Arthur Symons’s translations of French poets Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Baudelaire as they appeared in press and magazine articles before being reprinted in his collections of poems, and, in the case of Baudelaire, as full-length-volumes. This constant process of remediation has been understudied and may have led to the lack of recognition of the achievements of Symons as a translator. This article therefore retraces the various formats under which those substantial translations appeared and reappeared as well as their coexistence with Symons’s criticism through magazine articles and collections of essays. Symons exemplifies translational practices bridging the gap between Decadence and early Modernism that were woven in his critical production, but which have remained unexplored. An approach of translation in quantitative and material terms may help literary and translation historians achieve a different, more complete understanding of both early-twentieth-century poetic translation and criticism.

Keywords
Arthur Symons, translation, remediation, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Baudelaire

DOI 10.17462/para.2021.02.01

May 24, 2021
  33(2) - 2021