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Document Details :

Title: De Beckett van Hugo Claus
Subtitle: Genese, zelfreceptie en 'wat hem aan rede restte'
Author(s): VAN HULLE, Dirk
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 51    Issue: 1   Date: 2009   
Pages: 3-21
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.51.1.2036261

Abstract :
Both as a critic and as a translator, Hugo Claus marked the beginnings of the Beckett reception in the Low Countries. In 1963, ten years after his early review of En attendant Godot he made a translation of the radio play All That Fall for the Belgian broadcasting company BRT. A comparative analysis of (the unpublished typescript of ) Claus’s ‘adaptation’ and Jacoba van Velde’s published translation is the starting point of this investigation into the relation between Claus’s early interpretation of Beckett’s works and his translations, not only of All That Fall, but also of Stirrings Still. As the analysis of the latter work shows, translations might benefit from an examination of the textual genesis and from Beckett’s own ‘self-translations’. Beckett’s bilingual form of ‘self-reception’ embodies his works’ ‘stagnant subtlety’, as Claus already formulated it in his early review of En attendant Godot.

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