Histoire des (re-)traductions et des (re-)traducteurs de la poésie de Rainer Maria Rilke dans l'espace francophone

This dissertation rests on the double articulation of Antoine Berman’s analysis of translation in Toward a translation criticism: John Donne. Indeed, Berman’s method integrates as well a macroscopic and individual history of translations as an analysis of texts, considering their peripheral features (paratexts, translation projects, etc.). In the first part, we will depict through a historical panorama the import of Rilke’s poetry in French, from the first versions of the early 20th century to the latest translations of the Duino Elegies. We will thereby give heed to the identity of the different (re-)translators and to the general horizon of their translations. In the second part, we will compare several French versions of the first Duino Elegy, Rilke’s most retranslated poetical opus in French. Through various criteria dealing with form and sense, it will be a question of comprehending what these translations bring and the kind of bond holding them together. We intend eventually to find out whether the sociocultural behaviors we noticed in the first part are also observable in the practices of the Duinesian (re-)translators.