Pre-echoing the Bones: Samuel Beckett’s Poetry Translations, 1929-1935

Samuel Beckett’s often highly idiosyncratic translations of, predominantly, French poetry in the 1930s must be seen as the bedrock for his own creative work in general, and for his poetry and self-translations in particular. Under the high-brow influence of the Surrealists and the low-brow influence of Jazz, Beckett’s translations became experiments in transposing – both recreating source texts and creating independent target texts – rather than in translating texts.