Roy Campbell's Translations of Lorca: an Appreciation or an Appropriation?

Abstract

En 1952, el poeta sudafricano Roy Campbell (1901–1957) publicó un libro titulado Lorca, an appreciation of his poetry que contenía una selección de sus traducciones parciales y no autorizadas de la obra de Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) mezcladas con una serie de juicios críticos que suponía un intento de quitarle el control a la izquierda de la recepción de la obra de Lorca. Este capítulo pretende analizar la percepción que este traductor tuvo de su agencia en la reescritura y la reconstrucción de la reputación literaria de Lorca a través de la traducción y así intentar modificar la recepción predominante de su obra a través de las ya abundantes versiones inglesa de esta obra.

In 1952, the South African poet Roy Campbell (1901–1957) published a volume entitled Lorca, an appreciation of his poetry, a text which contained a collection of his partial and unauthorized translations of the work of Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) interspersed with a series of critical assessments which were an attempt to wrest control of Lorca’s reception away from the Left. This chapter seeks to elucidate this translator’s perception of his agency in rewriting and reframing the literary reputation of Lorca through translation and thus attempting to radically modify the prevailing reception of his work through the already abundant English language versions of his work.