Murder and translation considered as two of the Fine Arts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/diacritica.4953Keywords:
Murder, Translation, Fine arts, Thomas de Quincey, Robert Southey, Frank DrakeAbstract
Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) was an early 19th century English writer and a genius of the most provocative humour that the brilliant romanticism of his nation has offered to the Universal Republic of Letters. In Spanish, his two most scandalous little books, because they were the most popular, were given the following titles: Los placeres y las tormentas del opio, from the original of 1821 (Confessions of an English Opium Eater), and El asesinato, considerado como una de las bellas artes, from the original of 1832 (On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts). If murder in the British Isles could be considered one of the fine arts, as his fellow countrywoman and successor Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) would perhaps demonstrate years later, how could we not use the same metaphor for the Spanish translations: the reception of humour and double entendres, the social criticism, the aesthetic-revolutionary approach, the manipulation of the rules of translation, intentions and even laws of translation, the change of functions, etc., etc., etc. Perhaps it is not possible to search for a more accurate text than the one we propose for this communication, to discover once again that certain translations, at least, are an artistic product, even if the perfect translation does not exist, as, some say, neither does the perfect crime, no matter how beautiful and macabre it may be.
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