On Vilém Flusser’s Idiosyncratic Use of Commas and Round Brackets
This essay explores a dimension of Vilém Flusser’s writing and thinking that has not received any attention so far: his idiosyncratic use of punctuation. Punctuation marks are more than just a way of structuring sentences. They can also be seen as gestures, as embodiments of specific mental attitudes. In this sense, Flusser’s frequent combination of round brackets included within commas articulates a fundamental tension in his thinking. These punctuation clusters are the very site where two contrary tendencies of his thinking meet and collide: the constant creative push forward and the continuous flow of the ongoing reflection, on the one hand, and the persistent urge to stray off from the main path through frequent associative eruptions on the other. It is the conflict between circles and lines, between the sprawl of tangential offshoots and the continuous attempt to impose linearity by chopping off the outgrowths, the tension between losing oneself in writing and the wish to keep in control. As Flusser calls it in “The Gesture of Writing”, it is the tenacious struggle between the ramifications of the ‛branching thought tree’ and the formal compulsion of the ‛Mesopotamian brick’. The essay also contains a detailed analysis of Flusser’s “The Gesture of Writing”, “Le geste d’écrire” and “O gesto de escrever” that shows how the use of this specific punctuation cluster evolves in the process of self-translation.
Scrittura bilingue
In this interview, Pierre Lepori focuses on biographical reasons for his practice of bilingual writing, the relationship of his two writing languages (Italian and French) to each other and its evolution in the course of his career as a writer and translator.
Selbst-Übersetzung und mehrsprachiges Schreiben
In this e-mail exchange, Christen focuses on his career as a bilingual writer. He started out with German poetry, but is now writing in both German and French moving back and forth between the two languages. Christen defines self-translation as a form of recreation. Differences between languages are not a drawback but activate the artist’s creativity.
Literary Translingualism in Switzerland: Pierre Lepori and Beat Christen
The Swiss writer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer had two languages at his disposal, German and French. He hesitated, but in the end he opted to write in German. His decision was deeply affected by the outcome of the French-German war of 1870, which led to the unification of Germany. Contemporary Swiss writers do no longer have to grapple with such heartbreaking decisions. Quite the opposite is the case. In the last few decades, new forms of translingual writing have come into being. They have created a dense dialogical net across the country linking the four linguistic regions with each other. In this paper I would like to discuss two significant examples of this new form of translingual literature. Pierre Lepori combines Italian and French and Beat Christen writes in German and French.
Literarische Selbstübersetzung im Kontext weniger verbreiteter Sprachen – ein zweischneidiges Schwert?
Self-translation is a common practice among minority language writers, who often consider their works an active contribution to language maintenance. However, translation reveals itself to be a double-edged sword in contexts of lesser-translated languages. This article aims to show that there is an urgent need for self-translation studies to explore the link between self-translation and language maintenance.