«&#8239Une traduction du dedans&#8239»&#8239: Hopkins dans le fonds Senghor

Abstract

Leopold Sédar Senghor was also the occasional translator of several English poets, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, for whom he always professed intense admiration. The Bibliothèque nationale de France holds several first drafts and revised typescripts of his translation of Hopkins’s masterpiece, The Wreck of the Deutschland, so we can see the progress of this challenging work he conceived as “a pleasant pastime”. Our reading of the translation and its drafts reveals a surprising poetic proximity (in terms of topics, rhythm and tropes) between Senghor’s own poetry and his translation of Hopkins, giving rise to two hypotheses: did Senghor impart his own style on the translation (a rather common practice among poet-translators) or does the whole enterprise testify to an unexpected poetic filiation?

Keywords

• Léopold Sédar Senghor
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• poetry translation
• genetic translation studies
• collaborative translation