“Then must the [translator] be merciful”. Dante Gabriel Rossetti e Ezra Pound lettori-scrittori di Dante

Résumé :

«Then must the [translator] be merciful». This is a modified citation from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The exact citation would be «Then must the Jew be merciful». These are the words pronounced by Porcia dressed up as a lawyer, in Act IV, scene 1. The substitution of the terms, and therefore of the central figure of Shakespeare’s play, Shylock the Jew, for the translator is, for the specialists of literary translation, a well-known reference to a text by Jacques Derrida entitled Qu’est-ce qu’une traduction «relevante» ?, What is a «Relevant» Translation? In which the French philosopher proposes a commentary on The Merchant of Venice that invites us to consider Shakespeare’s play as if it was, in every part, a metaphor of the translating process. In the Anglo-Saxon and American tradition of literary translation, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ezra Pound participate to Dante’s afterlife. In the Benjaminian sense we could say that Rossetti and Pound participate to the achievement of Dante’s work. The article analyzes the possibility to consider Rossetti’s and Pound’s readings-translations as Aufhebungen of Dante’s work.