Article published in:
Target
Vol. 11:2 (1999) ► pp. 317–327

Re-writing Hegemony in "Babel"

A Greek Translation of T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"

| The American College of Greece, Athens

Abstract: This paper seeks to determine the ways in which the translation of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets by the post-war Greek poet A. Decavalles challenges the hegemony of this major text of the Western canon. Four Quartets is considered an anti-local poem, expressing the desire for the creation of "classic " English, which presupposes a transcendental linguistic essence and a "universal" perspective. Decavalles evinces an active attitude towards translation both in his reference to it as "re-creation " and in his creation of a target text which is at points not fluent, and even problematic. The opacity of the rewriting of Four Quartets in Greek, a language of a peripheral European country, constitutes a political act of resistance to Western (modernist) hegemony as it undermines the metaphysical certainties of Eliot's text.
Résumé: Le présent article examine la traduction des Four Quartets de T.S. Eliot par le poète grec d'après-guerre A. Decavalles, et singulièrement la manière dont ce dernier s'en prend à l'hégémonie d'un texte majeur du canon occidental. Le poème d'Eliot ayant une portée anti-locale, il est l'expression du désir de créer un anglais "classique", lequel présuppose une essence linguistique supérieure et une vocation "universelle". Decavalles fait preuve d'une attitude engagée, aussi bien par sa définition de la traduction comme "re-création", qu'en tant que le texte traduit ne s'avère pas toujours d'une lecture aisée. L'opacité obtenue par la réécriture des Four Quartets constitue, de la part d'un état périphérique d'Europe, un acte de résistance politique à l'encontre de l'hégémonie occidentale et moderniste, visant à ruiner les certitudes métaphysiques du texte d'Eliot.

Published online: 24 March 2000
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.11.2.07ana
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