Resistance and its Futures: Translating the (Untranslatable) Wartime Poetry of Rene Char

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This two-day international conference will explore how René Char’s Feuillets d’Hypnos (Leaves of Hypnos), became a global inter-semiotic phenomenon. Often considered “untranslatable,” this collection of 237 short prose poems was drafted by Char while leading a division on the Maquis in WWII. In fact, its mysterious, aphoristic language soon inspired translations into more than 30 languages, as well as into the visual arts, theater, music and film. Through a series of panels, conversations, and performances enlisting some 30 scholars and artists, as well as a number of Princeton students, we will begin to consider these issues.

Pre-conference screening
Wednesday, April 30
East Pyne 127

6:00 – 7:30: Jérôme Prieur’s film, 1941, dernier bateau pour l’Exil
Introduction: Michael Wood
Translator: Yassine Ait Ali

Day 1
Thursday, May 1
Chancellor Green Rotunda

9:00 – 10:30: The politics of languages
Welcome and Chair: Sandie Bermann
Translator: Rebecca Graves-Bayazitoglu
Xita Rubert, “Impersonality”
Isabelle Chen, “Regional Resonances”
Rachel Galvin, “Reading René Char in Spanish”
Fabrice Langrognet, “Sereni’s Fogli as a Gateway to Charian Worlds”

11:00 – 12:30: Yesterday and today
Chair: Fabrice Langrognet
Translator: Isabelle Chen
Brooke Holmes, “Char's Heraclitus”
Jesse Godine, “Translation and Originality”
Karen Emmerich, “Belated Waking”
André Benhaïm, “Ulysses’ Brothers: Char, Camus, and the Odyssey”

1:30 – 3:00: Poetry as resistance
Chair: Isabelle Chen
Translator: Yassine Ait Ali
(Poetry reading by Gabriel Dufay)
Effie Rentzou, “Translating Resistance to Poetry”
Peter Makhlouf, “Mouvance: a Politico-philosophical Inquiry”
Yoshimoto Motoko, “Les traductions japonaises”

3:30 – 5:00: From the literary to the digital
Chair: Peter Makhlouf
Translator: Isabelle Chen
Brian Kernighan, “Exploratory data analysis of translations of Feuillets d'Hypnos”
Wouter Haverals, “When Humans and Machines Translate Char: Computational Insights
into Feuillets d'Hypnos Across Languages”
Christiane Fellbaum, Arnov Ambre, and Jalen Johnson, “From Lyrical to Digital and
Back”

5:30 – 6:30: New Char translations by students from HUM 423
Chairs: Sandie Bermann and Peter Makhlouf
Translator: Rebecca Graves-Bayazitoglu

Day 2
Friday, May 2
Chancellor Green Rotunda

9:00 –10:30: Dialogues with tradition
Welcome and Chair: Michael Wood
Translator: Isabelle Chen
Daniel Heller-Roazen, “Before the Unknown”
Haun Saussy, “Signals Both Discreet and Discrete”
Robyn Creswell, “Loyaux Adversaires”

11:00 – 12:30: Translating change
Chair: Fabrice Langrognet
Translator: Rebecca Graves-Bayazitoglu
David Bellos, “Poetry and Translation”
Liesl Yamaguchi, “Moonlight”
Tamara Hundorova, “The Language of War”

1:15 – 3:00: Resistance and the arts
Chair: Sandie Bermann
Translator: Yassine Ait Ali
(Poetry reading by Gabriel Dufay)
Marie-Claude Char, “René Char, Poet and Artist”
Gabriel Sobin, “Translating Poetry into Stone”
Sasha Hemon, “All Together: Music, Poetry and Vision”
Polina Kosmadaki, “Zervos, Char, and Cahiers d'Art”

3:15 – 4:45: Resistance now
Chair: Michael Wood
Translator: Rebecca Graves-Bayazitoglu
Annette Becker, “Traduire les paysages”
Emily Apter and Jacques Lezra, “Paleo-resistances”
Matthew Reynolds, “Collaborating with an LLM”
Philip Nord, “The Fate of Resistance Humanism”

5:00 – 5:20: Reading from the Feuillets by Gabriel Dufay
Introduction: Sandie Bermann
Translator: Yassine Ait Ali

5:30 – 6:50: Screening of Jérôme Prieur's film, René Char, nom de guerre Alexandre
Introduction: Michael Wood
Translator: Rebecca Graves-Bayazitoglu

Fung Global Fellows Program, PIIRS | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Fung Global Fellows Program, PIIRS (OWNER), Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies

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