Cognition and Comprehension in Translational Hermeneutics

2021

Cognition and Comprehension in Translational Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics and Paratext
Seamus Heaney’s Retranslation of Beowulf

This paper sets out to analyse the hermeneutical process of highlighting at work in Seamus Heaney’s preface to his 1999 retranslation of Beowulf. My analysis takes into account the generic identity of the preface by considering it as a textual subgenre where the translator becomes a metatranslator in order to voice herself out of invisibility, engaging thereby in a (self-reflexive) hermeneutical analysis and ‘justification’ by commenting on the selection of the text to be translated and her own translation choices. The analysis is carried out with the help of two concepts elaborated by Gadamer: situatedness and self-understanding. These concepts will help show how the Northern Irish poet fuses different horizons in the process of his retranslation. In this essay, I also take into account the specificity of retranslation as a particular instance of hermeneutical activity. To do so, I focus on how Heaney introduces his own rendering of Beowulf, and on how he explains the translational choices and processes he opted for in order to render this canonical text into contemporary language. I argue that the closely related notions of situatedness and self-understanding can help bring to the fore how Heaney establishes an intrinsic link between his own retranslation choices on the one hand and, on the other, his cultural identity and poetics. Taking into consideration the hermeneutical dimension of this preface, it will be argued, gives us valuable insight into the retranslation project of Seamus Heaney. It will show that he does not seek to impose on Beowulf a transcendental truth or to fix it in a definite retranslation and interpretation. Instead, situatedness and self-understanding help shed light on how he engages creatively with the epic Anglo-Saxon poem: at issue is both how his retranslation is situated and grounded in his own subjectivity, and indeed with respect to his existential questions, as well as in a wider socio-cultural context.