L’archive traduite : W. S. Merwin troubadour de Hawaii

In The Folding Cliffs (1998), his epic poem about the resistance of the Hawaiian island Kaua’i to the deportation of lepers by the colonizers, Merwin translates and adapts into verse a missing or faulty archive, composing a long poem in which the English language sounds estranged from its roots, ado...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Françoise Palleau-Papin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" 2017-12-01
Series:Sillages Critiques
Subjects:
Online Access:http://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/5467
Description
Summary:In The Folding Cliffs (1998), his epic poem about the resistance of the Hawaiian island Kaua’i to the deportation of lepers by the colonizers, Merwin translates and adapts into verse a missing or faulty archive, composing a long poem in which the English language sounds estranged from its roots, adopting a local viewpoint. The recreated archive, newly elaborated by an empathetic imagination and following the Western tradition of the troubadours, paradoxically conveys the spirit of Hawaiian resistance in a manner more faithful than the letter of the archives imposed by colonisation.
ISSN:1272-3819
1969-6302