Are Beckett’s Texts Bilingual? ‘Long after Chamfort’ and Translation

Beckett's ‘Long after Chamfort’, eight late poems, is arguably the only work in Beckett’s oeuvre that has been published as a structurally bilingual text. This paper attempts to put the verse renderings in English of Chamfort’s French prose maxims to use by asking three general – and perhaps also slightly obnoxious – questions. Beckett’s doggerel translations of the 18th-century maxims by Chamfort have been commented on in several other productive ways. Here, the three questions are related to the topic of bilingualism and translation – even if the conclusions relate to wider issues in criticism. Is there a bilingual text in Beckett’s work; what is translation ideally for Beckett; and what does the structurally bilingual text ‘Long after Chamfort’ – and Beckett’s work generally, perhaps – do to some of the ideas that it uses? The results of the analysis prompt us to grasp facets of Beckett's work that some of the tenets of current criticism have tended to erase.