Beckett and Babel: An Investigation into the Status of the Bilingual Work by Brian T. Fitch (review)

B o o k R ev iew s les prendre en défaut, l’on néglige leur immense savoir—et qui ne prête pas forcément à rire...” (p. 210). Le critique omet de signaler que dans la Correspondance, à toutes les étapes de la rédaction de son roman, Flaubert met l’accent sur le caractère comique de l’œuvre et appelle ses héros “ les deux bonshommes” , allant même jusqu’à les traiter, à six ou sept reprises, d’“ imbéciles” ou d ’ “ idiots” . Soulignons en terminant que le livre de Kempf n’est nullement désagréable à lire; au contraire, son style allègre repose du jargon pédantesque auquel nous a habitué une cer­ taine critique. C’est l’utilité de l’ouvrage, plutôt que son agrément, qui est en cause ici. Après les études pénétrantes d’Helen Zagona (1985) et d’Yvan Leclerc (1988) sur Bouvard et Pécuchet— sans oublier les pages remarquables que lui a consacrées Anthony Cascardi dans The Bounds o f Reason (1986), il était permis d’attendre davantage d’une nouvelle étude. Louis F o u r n ie r Université de M oncton Brian T. Fitch, B e c k e tt a n d B ab e l: A n I n v e s tig a tio n in to t h e S t a t u s o f t h e B ilin g u a l W o rk . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Pp. x + 242. $35.00 cloth. Any critical reader of Samuel Beckett’s work in English or in French is convinced from the outset of the necessity of such a study as Fitch’s. He is thorough and perceptive in presenting not only a review of the best in translation theory, but also practical and theoretical applications of it to Beckett’s work. Fitch first discusses “ The Beckettian Problematic,” pointing out the little emphasized special status of Beckett’s works as original in both English and French. That is, each work, regardless of its language of origin, is received by the reader and often analyzed by the critic as either French or English, rather than as both. This linguistic separation, he says, has in effect created “ the Samuel Beckett o f the anglophones and the Samuel Beckett of the fran­ cophones.” There are, then, two Becketts, two sets of works rather than one corpus, and two schools of thought in literary criticism since the works originating in English belong for the most part to the Existential period, and those originating in French begin with the New Novel era. It is, however, Fitch’s practical applications of translation theory which deserve most attention and praise. In “ The Texts’ Production,” . . by studying side by side the whole sequence of manuscript drafts of each version leading up to the definitive tex ts.. .” (63) of Bing/Ping and Still/Immobile, Fitch establishes the interdependence of Beckett’s “ original” works and their translations. The two language versions, whether English to French or French to English, complement and complete each other rather than the second depending upon the original as is the usual status for translated works. And in “ Text(e)s & Metatext(e)s,” he creates a hypothetical model, showing by his own interlinear criticism of a combined language text of Beckett’s L ’Innom m able/The Unnamable the future face of bilingual criticism. It is inter-, intra-, and metatextual, each text commenting upon the other, each benefiting from the existence of the entire corpus of works, with his criticism “ filling the blanks.” Further advancing the idea of creating an analytical text which incorporates both language versions, “ The Bilingual Text” brings home the pressing need for such a tool for the analysis of bilingual works. The actual formulation of several versions of this hypo­ thetical bilingual text is, for translation critics, his most important contribution here. All of Fitch’s research emphasizes that this type of bilingual text, wherein all connotation and in­ tent of the two “ original” versions are at once present, is what is needed by the critic of bi­ VOL. XXXI, NO. 4...