Papers on Joyce 14 (2008): 85-113. [604953]

Papers on Joyce 14 (2008): 85-113.

The “Experience”of Ulysses in
Romanian

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI

Abstract

This essay will look at Iv ănescu’s acclaimed Romanian
translation of Joyce’s novel from both a practical and a
theoretical perspective. Following a general survey of its and
the translator’s place within Romanian culture and history,
among inchoate earlier attempts by other writers, i t will then
focus on several “cruxes” or themes (structural dis crepancies
between English and Romanian grammars, sexuality in
Molly’s soliloquy and censorship, the translation o f proper
names and of networks of motifs) as well as on the styles of
different chapters (“Proteus,” “Cyclops,” “Penelope ”), using
textual close-ups in order to assess the consistenc y of the
rendering. The analysis will be framed at each step by recent
approaches developed by Lawrence Venuti and especia lly
Antoine Berman in favour of a more ethical dimensio n of the
experience of translation, whereby the task of the translator is
to open up the target language to the foreignness o f the
original in order to free possibilities within thei r own
language, rather than domesticating or literarizing the
original’s alterity both linguistically and cultura lly.

oyce published his Ulysses in France at a time when French
literature was the cultural benchmark in Romania an d the national
elite were, with a few exceptions, 1 busy praising the magnum opus of
Marcel Proust. Even amongst the promoters of “Engli sh Literature,”
few were those who were prepared to see in the Iris h writer more
than the author of a “monstrous creation”2 and of a decadent porn J

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

86 novel. In a country which produced Brâncu și and Eliade, who both
decided to exile themselves to Paris, and in which most up-to-date
critics were readers of La Nouvelle Revue Française who could not
have access to Ulysses but through Auguste Morel’s 1929 French
translation, it would have been unrealistic to expe ct a complete
Romanian equivalent of Joyce’s English-based Odyssey in a then
foreseeable future.
The inter-war translations from (rather than of) Ulysses into
Romanian were so scant that they could fit on a sin gle newspaper
page. True to the inclination of Romanian criticism for decades, Al.
Philippide’s3 effort appeared with a few general comments on the
Irish writer and his narrative techniques, the year (1930) when
another “fragment,” translated by I. Holzman, was a lso published. 4
There were a mere handful of attempts at translatin g Ulysses after the
Second World War: Gellu Naum, the most representati ve Romanian
surrealist, and Simona Dr /uni01CEghici translated the “Telemachus” episode
in an anniversary epoch-making issue of the leading journal Secolul
XX dedicated to James Joyce in 1965. The first schola rs to envisage
the translation of the whole novel were Andrei Ion Deleanu and
Eugen Barbu, the latter an important Romanian novel ist, who
together signed a contract for a Romanian translati on in 1967. The
two had already tackled challenging texts; they are the ones to whom
we owe three works of Faulkner’s in Romanian: Intruder in the Dust
(1964), The Hamlet (1967), The Town (1967). However, their
common project on Joyce came to an abrupt end after Deleanu’s
demise in 1980. Only a fragment with the first eigh t pages of “Scylla
and Charybdis” in Romanian, followed by extremely e laborate notes
on the Shakespearean material, saw the light, in Secolul XX , in 1980.
The fact that Deleanu started his translation from the intricate
Shakespearean intertext created by Joyce was no acc ident as he
nourished a real passion for the Bard: he is to be credited with the
most original version of Shakespeare’s sonnets in R omanian.
“Hades” was translated both by Ana Olo ș in 1967 – an
incomplete version which endeavoured to keep as muc h as possible
Joyce’s syncopated technique but which was characte rized, as
Romanian postmodern writer and critic Adrian O Ńoiu noted, by a
reluctance about “Bloom’s fleeting erotic memories, which she toned
down beyond recognition” 5 – and by Mircea Iv /uni01CEnescu in 1973. By
that year Iv /uni01CEnescu had become the most important translator of
Ulysses with his spectacular rendering of “Oxen of the Sun ,”
published in 1971 also in Secolul XX , where subsequent chapters

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
87 appeared in instalments: “Aeolus” (1977), “Cyclops” (1982). 6 The
chapter, which remained unchanged in the final vers ion, was
followed by Andrei Brezianu’s essay, “Parodie și rodnicie” (Parody
and Fruitfulness), in which, among other general co mments on the
Irish writer, the critic pointed out the different styles used in the
original. To be able to transpose into the literary -historical palette of
any other language what Joyce defined as a “frightf ul jumble of
Pidgin English, nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bow ery slang and
broken doggerel” ( Letters I , 140) would in itself be a major tour de
force, let alone in a language lacking the time spa n of the literary
tradition and varieties of Joyce’s Englishes 7 – by the time
Shakespeare had produced his greatest tragedies, Ro manians were
barely literate, the oldest attested document in th e vernacular,
Scrisoarea lui Neac șu din Câmpulung , dating from 1521 only.
Indeed Iv ănescu’s note on “Oxen of the Sun” mentions that “th e
Romanian version tried to follow the succession” of different periods
in Romanian literature, “inevitably more concentrat ed in the
chronological evolution, yet perhaps as rich in nua nces as the
original, after the first pages, in which the rende ring of the style of
foreign chronicles does not represent a style of th e national language
strictly speaking, from the chroniclers through the first literary
classical texts in the evolution of the language to the verbal outbursts
of colloquial and, as much as possible, slangy idio ms.”8
Iv /uni01CEnescu’s complete translation of Ulysses first appeared
in two volumes at Univers Publishing House in 1984, the year when
Dan Grigorescu published the only monograph on Joyc e in
Romanian ( Reality, Myth, Symbol: A Portrait of James Joyce ) at the
same press. The translation was hailed as a success – at a time when
Romanians were eager to read good literature, inclu ding in
translation, and the communist regime was sending m ost talented
Romanian writers to hard labour. Printed on a paper not far removed
in quality from toilet paper, the wonderfully craft ed product soon
sold out, despite being gift-wrapped, as was the cu stom then for
reasons of propaganda for all books earmarked as de sirable and
valuable, either with Ceau șescu’s public speeches at the Communist
Party Congresses or with other equally unsellable p amphlets showing
how to devote one’s life to the party, to socialist ideas, and to the
building of communism, etc. Univers Publishing Hous e was the main
outlet for writers from the “enemy countries,” who were seen to
speak about taboo subjects such as sex, politics, a nd religion in a
manner which censorship could not approve of. Three years after the

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

88 Romanian revolution in 1989, Ulysses was reprinted as a joint
venture with Venus Publishing House, before an expa nded (with
preface) one-volume edition, showing clearer-cut de marcations
between the book’s eighteen chapters and Molly’s ei ght “periods,”
appeared in 1996, an occasion marked by a book laun ch featuring
several prominent Joyceans during a four-day sympos ium (23-27
June).9
Born in 1931 Iv ănescu is a self-taught man who did not
even have a degree in any of the main languages tha t he translated
from. He graduated in French from the University of Bucharest in
1954 but instead of embarking on work related to Fr ench literature,
he took on the translation of most of Faulkner’s ma jor novels ( The
Sound and The Fury, Absalom, Absalom!; Sartoris; Go down,
Moses; Requiem for a Nun; Sanctuary; The Reivers; Intruder in the
Dust ), Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night ,
and Truman Capote’s Other voices, Other Rooms . A proficient
speaker of German, he likewise translated Kafka’s l etters, essays,
short-stories and diary, Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo and The Birth of
Philosophy in the Age of the Greek Tragedy, Rainer Maria Rilke’s
Stories of God , and Musil’s The Man Without Qualities . He is also a
much praised poet of discreet fame, ranked as the s econd most
significant contemporary verse writer after the unt ouchable Nichita
St ănescu, and was even put forward for the Nobel Prize by the
Association of the Professional Writers from Romani a in 1999, a
proposal endorsed by the influential Romanian-born theorist of
postmodernism Matei C ălinescu. Yet, while St ănescu remained a
myth for the Romanian poets of the ’80s, Iv ănescu is nothing but a
reference to the generations to come. 10 There is also an uncanny
similarity between the common mopete (an acronym of the
Romanian words for ”poem” and ”poet”), the protagon ist of several
poems by a writer also known as ”the Joycean reclus e,” and Joyce’s
own Leopold Bloom.
Doubtless the greatest achievement of the translati on is in its
overall feel and the successful transposition of th e idiosyncratic
“technique” of the most overtly experimental chapte rs: the breathing
of sentences in “Aeolus,” the musicality of rhyming jingles and
reprises in “Sirens,” the demotic speech and vernac ular cadences in
“Cyclops,” the namby-pamby mock-literary prose of “ Nausicaa,” the
ontogenetic evolution of the Romanian language in “ Oxen of the
Sun,” the quasi-scientificity of “Ithaca.” Adrian O Ńoiu listed among
Iv ănescu’s translation skills “an unprecedented awaren ess of the

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
89 intricacies of the Joycean text, professional explo ration of its
openings, intellectual rigour and a vast cultural h orizon, doubled by
that linguistic resourcefulness, musical ear and lu dic spirit that Joyce
himself always favoured when supervising the transl ation of his
work.” (O Ńoiu 2004, 203). Among the shortcomings, one could
perhaps point to the slight loss of the pulse in “H ades” to recreate the
heart’s systole-diastole, the less convincingly jad ed style of
“Eumaeus,” as well as the stylistic unevennesses in Molly Bloom’s
verbal outpourings in “Penelope.” 11
The first, two-volume edition contained extensive, yet oddly
disproportionate annotations, based on Gifford and Seidman, Zack
Bowen, Darcy O’Brien, and Richard Ellmann. Iv ănescu may have
had to rush through his translation since the initi al intention was to
bring out the book on Joyce’s centenary; the discre pancy between the
first, heavily annotated volume and the second volu me starting with
“Nausicaa” is uncannily huge: no fewer than 337 not es to a mere six,
the latter of a generic nature. Particularly striki ng is the tenor of the
very last endnote, dealing with “Penelope,” in whic h Iv ănescu,
allegedly presenting other critics’ opinions, seems to concur
implicitly with the overall condemnation of Molly’s immorality: “the
character’s crudeness of expression, its lack of mo rality and
spontaneous egotism, seem to have made some comment ators
wonder if the vision of the writer, who entrusted t he end of his book
to this figure, is not, after all, one of an even h arsher condemnation
not only of the moral flaws of his contemporaries, but even one
invalidating the possibilities of human redemption that the whole
book would seem to uphold through its repeated atte mpts at
establishing human communication and valourizing hu man
constants.” ( Ulise , 700, n. 492, translation ours).
For a long time Ulysses represented for Romanian literary
critics – and unfortunately still does so to some e xtent – nothing but
an isolated borderline experiment whose main value was to be found
in Joyce’s literary techniques, especially his use of the interior
monologue.12 What seemed to annoy French people in 1924, as
Giraudoux put it – since, “what intrigued Paris at this time certainly
wasn’t death, it was the interior monologue” 13 – was still in a large
measure a critical novelty in Romania in the ‘80s. When the
complete translation of Ulysses came out, Joyce’s famous alleged
borrowing of this narrative technique from Dujardin was therefore
foregrounded in many Romanian critics’ accounts, to gether with the
well-advertised fact that the book spans a single d ay in the

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

90 characters’ lives and is a modern parody of Homer’s Odyssey .
Ironically enough, it was precisely the interior mo nologue, or rather
its mixture with free indirect style and third-pers on narration,
sometimes in the course of a single sentence or par agraph, that
proved resistant to a smooth Romanianization since, even more than
English, Romanian does not follow the sequence of t enses and
Romanian verbs have different endings for each pers on, making it
thus impossible to keep the original’s deliberate p ronominal
indirections. Thus, Joyce’s interior monologue seem s occasionally
too structured in Romanian, those gaps of the text left intentionally
by Joyce needing to be filled in by Iv ănescu so that Joyce’s
referential, syntactical ellipses give way to well turned, unambiguous
sentences. 14
Such structural discrepancies between languages ma ke it
ultimately awkward to confidently assess the idiosy ncratic mark left
by the translator on his recreation of an original. Referring to
Lawrence Venuti’s debunking of the myth of the tran slator’s
invisibility as the criterion of a successful, tran sparent translation,
Rodica Ieta had noted in her earlier assessment tha t

Iv ănescu’s translation renders the strangeness of Joyc e’s
language quite faithfully, which paradoxically make s him
a both visible and invisible translator. His interv ention is
visible in that he preserves the strangeness of the novel’s
language and invisible in that he also tries to rem ain
faithful to the original. 15

However – and without wishing to detract from what is indisputably
overall a stunning achievement – it should be point ed out that
Iv ănescu’s Ulise is characterized more often than not by a tendency
towards making the original explicit, even to the p oint of
overstepping the limit of the translator as, partly , necessarily a
reader-interpreter, as when Bloom’s name is changed to Blooma in
the section in “Circe” when Joyce’s character under goes
feminization, on a par with Bella conversely becomi ng Bello in the
original, and even though an explanatory endnote sh eds light on the
hallucinatory transformation.16 Possibly as a compensatory strategy
for what is irremediably lost elsewhere, Iv ănescu channels
interpretation into his recreation but also smuggle s in clarifications
which should have been confined to the editorial ap paratus and
arguably go against Joyce’s spirit of indirection. For instance, to

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
91 Bloom’s unfocused thought “All the way from Gibralt ar” in
“Calypso,” referring to Molly’s bed brought from th at location,
Iv ănescu adds a first-person-singular present perfect: “Tocmai de la
Gibraltar l-am adus” (i.e. I brought it all the way from Gibraltar).
Such textual manipulations bring us to a generic pr oblem: how to
assess the translator’s semantic overdeterminations against the
Romanian language’s inability to fully keep the pol ysemic fabric
resulting from flexible English morphology.

gramma’s grammar

In the same chapter Milly’s letter to her father ma kes Bloom think of
her childhood turning into adolescence:

Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now
past. Mrs Marion. Reading, lying back now, counting the
strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone,
increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can ’t
move. Girl’s sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the
flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now.
Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman’s li ps. ( U
4.444-50)

Here is how Iv ănescu renders the fragment into Romanian:

Și Milly, și ea. Pupicuri copil ăre ști; primele. Acum,
departe s-au dus demult. Doamna Marion. Cite ște acuma,
răsturnat ă pe spate, num ărîndu-și buclele dup ă degete,
împletindu-și-le.
Un regret molatec, calm, îi aluneca pe șira spin ării,
tot mai pronun Ńat. Are s ă se întîmple, da. S ă-mpiedic asta.
N-are rost; nu m ă pot mi șca de aici. Buze dulci u șoare de
fecioar ă. Și are s ă se întîmple. Sim Ńea ca o strîngere de
inim ă cuprinzîndu-l. Inutil s ă mai încerc acum. Buze
sărutînd, s ărutînd s ărutare. Buze pline lipicioase de
femeie. ( Ulise , 68)

Romanian knows two types of indefinite subjects: subiect inclus (the
subject “included” in the ending of the verb) and subiect subînŃeles
(the implied subject, a verb in the third-person si ngular or plural
referring to a subject previously mentioned). The f ormer refers to the

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

92 subject expressed by a first-person or second-perso n pronoun, as in
“Să-mpiedic asta” for “Prevent,” lit.: I will/need to prevent this (here
Iv ănescu feels the need to add a direct object ( asta : this), although
the sentence could have done without it). The next subiect inclus
appears in “useless to move now,” which becomes “nu m ă pot mi șca
de aici,” lit.: I cannot move from here (incidental ly the adverb of
time is replaced by an adverb of place: aici ). The second type of
subject appears in the translation of “far away now past,” which
becomes literally “Now, [they, i.e. the kisses] are long gone far
away;” in this sentence Iv ănescu supplies not only the subject of the
sentence but also the predicate, inexistent in Engl ish: “Acum, departe
s-au dus demult,” lit.: Now, they have long gone fa r away. If, as
Molly proudly recalls, “a noun is the name of any p erson place or
thing” ( U 18.1473), the versatile English verb may refer to its own
comparable amount of unspecified referents, which R omanian will
often have to identify.
Another minor interpretive spin Iv ănescu gives to his
translation is for “Lips kissed, kissing, kissed,” which becomes
“Buze s ărutînd, s ărutînd s ărutare.” (lit.: Lips kissing, kissing a kiss)
since the Romanian participle and gerund do not hav e corresponding
functions and meanings to their English equivalents . Thus Iv ănescu
privileges the action (kissing) as the focus of the sentence, unlike
Joyce who concentrates on the result and participle of the verb:
kissed lips. Soon afterwards attention turns to the cat at the door
waiting to get out:

She looked back at him, mewing. Wants to go out. Wa it
before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the
fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her
ear with her back to the fire too. ( U 4.456-9)

Mai privi înd ărăt spre el, mieunînd. Vrea afar ă. Sta și-
așteapt ă în fa Ńa u șii, mai devreme sau mai tîrziu, cîndva,
tot are s ă se deschid ă. Las-o s-aștepte. E cam agitat ă. Ele
sînt electrice. E-o furtun ă în aer. Și se sp ăla și dup ă ureche
cu spatele spre foc. ( Ulise , 68)

“Wants to go out” obviously refers to the cat, so I vănescu likewise
uses an implied subject: “Vrea afar ă.” However, the next sentence
starts with “Wait,” i.e. without the third-person s ingular marker, but
Iv ănescu infers that the subject is still the cat: “St ă și-așteapt ă în fa Ńa
ușii, mai devreme sau mai tîrziu, cîndva, tot are s ă se deschid ă.” (lit.:

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
93 [She] is standing there and waiting in front of the door, sooner or
later, sometime, it will still open). “Let her wait ” has no clear
referent either: it may mean “I will let her wait” or, in a more
Bahktinian dialogic form of self-address, “you, Blo om, let her wait.”
In any case this imperative has a slightly differen t nuance than the
one in “Wait” above. Iv ănescu prefers the second possibility: “Las-o
s-aștepte.” lit.: “[You] let her wait,” a choice he usu ally makes,
especially in “Penelope” when Molly plays roles and tells herself
things which are fairly systematically translated i n the second-person
singular. At the same time Iv ănescu introduces a detailed explanation
of what “sometime” would mean in this context in En glish, adding
an unnecessary “mai devreme sau mai târziu” (sooner or later).
Likewise, the one-word sentence, “Electric,” is pad ded out into “Ele
sînt electrice.” lit.: They are electric, just afte r the translation of “Has
the fidgets” as “E cam agitat ă,” yet the translator does not feel like
explaining who this “they” ( ele ), following a singular referent, is, nor
does he mind jumping from the unidentified plural – either cats
(generic) or storms – to “E-o furtun ă în aer.” (lit.: There is a storm in
the air), then back to an implied subject in the th ird-person singular:
“Și – [ ea , i.e. pisica : she, the cat] – se sp ăla și dup ă ureche cu spatele
spre foc.” lit.: And she was washing behind her ear too, with her
back to the fire.
A similar mismatch in the polyvalence of parts of speech
mars the end of what is otherwise a well-executed s core in “Sirens.”
Variously interpreted as introducing the fragments of leading themes
and refrains to be reprised in the chapter’s main “ performance,” or as
the tuning-up of an orchestra, the overture brings together in a raw
state syncopated elements whose consistency of rend ering, once they
are built into the text’s main action, is the key t o ensure recognition
of the compositional stratagem. Here are the very l ast introductory
beats, those with which Bloom will sign off the cha pter:

My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt.
Done.
Begin! ( U 11.53-63)

Si eppripfftappful. Fi-va pfrvrîtt.
Gata.
Începem! ( Ulise , 238)

Compare with:

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

94 […] Let my epitaph be. Kraaaaaa. Written. I have.
Pprrpffrrppffff.
Done. ( U 11.1291-4)

[…] Fie epitaful meu. Karaaaa. Scris. Eu am.
Pprrpffrrppfff.
Înf ăptuit. ( Ulise , 269)

One and the same tiny word (“Done.”), which in Engl ish can either
do duty as a shorthand stage/musical direction or b e injected into a
compound verbal form… but a world of difference i n Romanian,
between the adverb “Gata.” (lit.: Ready) and the im possibility of its
echo: “Eu am […] Înf ăptuit. ” lit.: I have carried out (one should also
note the asymetrical depersonalization of the epita ph in the translated
overture).

The (Un)translatability of proper names

Much of the inimitable atmosphere of Joyce’s maste rpiece
lies in his meticulous recreation of idiosyncratic accents, a feel for
the unmistakeable realism and locality of topograph ical landmarks –
to the point of timing characters’ itineraries thro ugh Dublin as part of
his fictional strategy for shaping “Wandering Rocks ” or ascertaining
whether a man of Bloom’s stature could conceivably vault over the
railing at 7 Eccles Street ( Letters I , 175). The translator is thus faced
with a specific instance of the double bind which A ntoine Berman
and Lawrence Venuti, to name but these, described r espectively as
the translator’s incontrovertible choice between an ethnocentric and a
literal-ethical approach, or between domestication and
foreignization: 17 conveying to the reader the localized ambiance of
June 16 th 1904 while doing so in a language where those Dubl in
pointers will inevitably sound foreign and out of p lace.
In “Des Tours de Babel” Derrida emphasized the nec essity,
yet impossibility – the necessity as impossibility (Walter Benjamin’s
“task” as giving-up [ Aufgabe ] “of the translator”) – to translate,
within which proper names (mainly people’s names bu t also
toponyms) occupy a special place as they cling to a single referent.18
Bloom’s in particular lends itself to all manners o f polytropic
manipulations and fares predictably differently dep ending on the
lexical surroundings: in the truncated sequence “Bl ew. Blue bloom is

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
95 on the.” in “Sirens” ( U 11.6), where it becomes a prosy, almost
meaningless, literal “Plaf. Bum albastru-nflorind î n.” necessary for
each leitmotif part to be semantically recyclable i nto the later
narrative ( Ulise , 237) – just as “flow” cannot be saved as a
syncopated form of his pen name, Henry Flower; like wise in
“Seabloom, greaseabloom” ( U 11.1284), which is rendered as
“Bloommarinul Bloomunsurosul” ( Ulise , 269), whose first element
introduces the hint of an unwanted pun on bleumarin : marine blue; in
Josie Breen’s puns on Molly’s married name: “M Bloo m youre
looking blooming” ( U 18.842-3). This is rendered in a successful
mixture of Anglicized Romanian and explanatory glos s so as to
preserve the punning mediation between common and p roper: “M
Bloom ar ăŃi ca o blumicic ă înfloritoare” ( Ulise , 622), where
floricic ă: little flower (i.e. floare : flower + Romanian diminutive
suffix -ic ă) is “bloomianized” and made more explicit by
înfloritoare : in bloom, soon after the “bloomers” had been blow n
into “pantalonii bufan Ńi bloomer și” (lit.: baggy Bloom trousers), etc.
Molly then derides names with a “bottom” in them, like
Ramsbottom, before ranting on her friend’s own marr ied name:

well its better than Breen or Briggs does brig or t hose
awful names with bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or
some other kind of a bottom ( U 18.843-5)

oricum e mai bine decît Breen sau Briggs cu brizbri zuri
sau numele astea groaznice care au cîte un popo în ele
doamna Ramspopo sau cine știe ce alt fund ( Ulise , 622)

The alliterative play on Breen and Briggs gives way to a creative
adaptation in “cu brizbrizuri,” with brizbizuri : short window curtains
(cf. French brise-bise ) or (more recently) (women’s) frills, being
distorted into “brizbrizuri” in order to bring out Molly’s lack of
education (the incorrect form brizbrizuri is often heard in popular
parlance). Ramspopo does keep the funny bottom ( popo ) part but at
the cost of an implausible family name in the targe t language.
Another approach could have been to opt for a “cult ural translation”
based on a native cur : arse, thus making it possible to enlist the
attested “Cur ăvale” to match Molly’s single instance. In such
micrological decisions as well as at the macro-stru ctural level, the
ethical dilemma is therefore between letting the fo reign original
through to the detriment of verisimilitude and curb ing it into a

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

96 domesticated frame of reference through an equivale nce which
Berman sees as working against the “spokenness” ( parlance ) of the
original (Berman 1999, 65).
The author of Sweets of Sin meets with a less felicitous fate
in order to retain his name’s “cocky” homophony; it is left as “Kock”
in Romanian (since it is a proper name), yet is ado rned with a
common coco ș, i.e. rooster but also, sexually, cock only in
“Penelope.” So we have “domnul de Kock coco ș” ( Ulise , 625),
mixing translation and annotation into an ungainly creation of a
proper name (and though the syntactical flow of Mol ly’s thought
partly helps its lexical integration), whereas it i s left untouched (and
unglossed in the endnotes) when Molly pointedly not es his “nice
name” earlier in “Calypso” ( U 4.358; Ulise 66).
Joyce’s Dublin abounds in characters with popular
nicknames preceding their family names, in which th e translator’s
decision to either domesticate or leave as foreign in a partly
transplanted geo-linguistic setting intersects with issues of
(un)translatability. Iv ănescu fairly systematically chooses the former,
more traditional method, where a more flexible, dis criminatory
approach, based on how “loaded” the semantic determ inacy and
effect of the nickname is in a given thematic conte xt, might have
worked better. Thus, while the character variously known as P/pisser
Burke or, for short, Pisser, becomes Pipilic ă Burke, a great find
Romanianizing the vulgar tag albeit into an un-nati ve compound, the
decision to translate Bantam Lyons into Lyons Coco șul appears less
imperative since its semantic motivation, hence its intended effect, is
less strong – and the result triggers off in the hy permnesic reader or
back-translator an unwanted association with Molly’ s mention of Mr
de Kock in “Penelope.”19

Iv ănescu’s more haphazard dealings with toponyms revea l
more fully the extent of the translator’s quandary, especially when
proper place-names also double as, or contain, comm on nouns. The
following passage from “Ithaca” will give an idea o f the inevitable
effect of hybridity achieved in any attempt at tran slating what is
translatable, which cannot avoid turning the Dublin surroundings
into a quaint pseudo-Romanian no man’s land:

A scheme to connect by tramline the Cattle Market ( North
Circular road and Prussia street) with the quays (S heriff
street, lower, and East Wall), parallel with the Li nk line

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
97 railway laid (in conjunction with the Great Souther n and
Western railway line) between the cattle park, Liff ey
junction, and terminus of Midland Great Western Rai lway
43 to 45 North Wall, in proximity to the terminal s tations
or Dublin branches of Great Central Railway, Midlan d
Railway of England, City of Dublin Steam Packet
Company, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company,
Dublin and Glasgow Steam Packet Company, Glasgow,
Dublin and Londonderry Steam Packet Company (Laird
line), British and Irish Steam Packet Company, Dubl in
and Morecambe Steamers, London and North Western
Railway Company, Dublin Port and Docks Board Landin g
Sheds and transit sheds of Palgrave, Murphy and
Company […] ( U 17.1726-38)

Un plan pentru legarea prin tramcaruri a tîrgului d e vite
(șoseaua North Circular și strada Prusia) cu cheiurile
(strada Sheriff jos și Meterezelor Est), paralel ă cu calea
ferat ă de jonc Ńiune care deserve ște (în conjunc Ńie cu calea
ferat ă Great Southern și Western) tîrgul de vite, gara
Liffey și gara terminus a liniei ferate Midland Grand
Western, North Wall 43-45, pîn ă la sta Ńiile terminus sau
gările locale din Dublin ale companiilor Great Centra l
Railway, Midland Railway of England, City of Dublin
Steam Packet Company, Lancashire Yorkshire Railway
Company, Dublin and Glasgow Steam Packet Company,
Glasgow Dublin and Londonderry Steam Packet
Company (linia Laird), British and Irish Steam Pack et
Company, Dublin and Morecamb [ sic ] Steamers, London
and North Western Railway Company, Dublin Port and
Docks Board Landing Sheds și g ărilor de tranzit de la
Palgrave, Murphy and Company […] ( Ulise , 583)

Similarly, in “invite some other woman for him who Mrs Fleming
and drove out to the furry glen or the strawberry b eds” ( U 18.947-8),
Iv ănescu juxtaposes a well-known or popular toponym, l eft
unchanged but capitalized (unlike “Cattle Market” a bove, turned into
a common tîrg de vite ), and a (capitalized) translation: “ și s ă invit ăm
înc ă-o femee pentru el cine madam Fleming și s ă mergem cu ma șina
pân ă la Furry Glen sau la Fr ăget” ( Ulise , 624), a felicitous, slightly
alliterative choice in the target language mixing d omestic adaptation
and adaptability.
Joyce himself may also have constrained the transl ator,
regardless of the latter’s own strategies. Thus Bac helor’s Walk may

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

98 sound quaint as a literally translated Romanian pla ce-name (a
pluralized “Promenada Burlacilor”) until one rememb ers its
association with unmarried Boylan tripping lightly on his way to the
Blooms’ in “Sirens:” “By Bachelor’s walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes
Boylan, bachelor” ( U 11.524), hence, by thematic necessity (yet
leaving aside the change from “Promenada” to “Calea ”), “Pe Calea
Burlacilor birja lejer leg ănîndu-se clinchetea Blazes Boylan, burlac”
(Ulise , 249).
Less accountable, however, is the lack of consisten cy for one
and the same place-name, as when City Arms Hotel is
(un)identifiable as either “Hotelul Armele Ora șului” or “Hotelul City
Arms,” Green street and Little Green street get a d ifferent treatment
(strada Verde, strada Little Green), or, perhaps mo re subtly, when
Featherbed Mountain, itself the end product of a fa mous chain of
transformations in “Proteus” – “God becomes man bec omes fish
becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain” ( U 3.477-9):
“Dumnezeu se face om se face pe ște se face gîsc ă cu pene [lit.: goose
with feathers] se face munte de perne cu puf [lit.: mountain of
pillows with down]” ( Ulise , 55) – becomes “Muntele cu Pene”
(Ulise , 218; lit.: the Feather Mountain) becomes “muntele de puf”
(Ulise , 337; lit.: the down mountain) becomes even a plai n “munte”
in its final appearance in “Penelope” ( Ulise , 611), mixing pene and
puf in different lexical collocations and thematic net works.

Morphing language: “Proteus”

The first more experimental chapter in Joyce’s ody ssey of
styles, “Proteus” displays various instances of met amorphic
language, such as trans-linguistic neologisms or it s famous crux in
underworld cant, apt to defy any translator grappli ng with the limits
of expressivity across languages:

His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to
her moomb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth
moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of
cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring
wayawayawayawayaway. ( U 3.401-4)

Buzele lui se mi șcau cuprinzînd buze netrupe ști de aer:
gura pe pîntecul ei. Pîntec, mormînt atoatecuprinzî nd ca

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
99 un pîntec. Gura lui pl ămădea r ăsuflarea ie șind, nerostit ă:
uiihah: mugetul planetelor cataractante, globulare, în
fl ăcări, mugind departedepartedeparte. ( Ulise 53)

Here we see Iv ănescu, translator but also poet, who elsewhere is n ot
averse to producing belles infidèles , overstepping the call of literality
towards that of literarization (cf. Berman 1999, 39 ), as when he sets
to verse the unrhymed “ The curse of my curses […]” doggerel in
“Cyclops” ( U 12.740-7; Ulise , 287), cringing in front of the
inventive pliability of English grammar, where mono syllabic “lip”
and “mouth” can easily metamorphose into verbs – th e Romanian
offers a literal gloss: His lips moved covering fle shless lips of air –
before being defeated by the portmanteau “moomb” (i .e. mouth +
womb), a plain “womb” in the target language. The f ollowing,
strongly assonantal string, “Oomb, allwombing tomb, ” ghoulishly
redolent of the mer -mère phobia soon “roaring” for Stephen, is
equally normalized and dilated/diluted into (litera lly) “Womb, all-
covering tomb like a womb,” shedding its sonorous g rip altogether in
the process.
A few lines above, the language turns into cant as it
introduces the second stanza of “The Rogue’s Deligh t in Praise of
His Strolling Mort” in Richard Head’s The Canting Academy (1673):

Buss her, wap in rogues’ rum lingo, for, O, my dimb er
wapping dell! A shefiend’s whiteness under her ranc id
rags. Fumbally’s lane that night: the tanyard smell s.

White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
Couch a hogshead with me then.
In the darkmans clip and kiss. ( U 3.378-84)

Strînge-o în bra Ńe, f ă dragoste cu ea dup ă chipul și vorba
celor de jos, c ăci, O, iub ărea Ńă e ști și bun ă. Albea Ńă de
demon femeiesc sub zdren Ńele-i rîncede. Pe maidanul
Fumbally în noaptea asta: mirosul t ăbăcăriilor.

Albe cazmalele, ro șu Ńi-e botul
Și trupul t ău iub ăre Ń mi-e.
Întinde-te-aici cu mine cu totul
În strînsoarea și pupatu' de întunecime. ( Ulise 52)

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

100 While the colloquial diction and matching choice of lexical units
(e.g. cazmalele ) capture the semantic flavour of the original, the
Romanian reader will not undergo a similar experien ce of
“defamiliarization” as even a cultured Anglo-Saxon would, who is
not likely to be conversant with seventeenth-centur y underworld
cant. Iv ănescu in all likelihood applies the age-old princip le of
conservatism when faced with linguistic, literary e ccentricity, let
alone one bordering on “intra-lingusitic translatio n.” Rather than
venturing into limbajul lumii interlope , or the contemporary
Romanian equivalent of underworld cant (e.g. zotc ă for the merely
colloquial bot – gan), and in spite of the forced reference to “c elor de
jos,” i.e. of those from below, which further clash es with the Biblical
echo of “dup ă chipul” (Genesis 1:27), Iv ănescu “plays it safe,”
possibly for consistency of tone, but falls short o f the perlocutionary
impact of Joyce’s text, losing the snappiness of th e original cadences
as well (“wap in rogues’ rum lingo” is drawn out in to “fă dragoste cu
ea dup ă chipul și vorba celor de jos;” note also the reduplication of
iub ărea Ńă /iub ăre Ń, for the more varied “dimber” (pretty) and
“dainty”). If, as Berman contends, only the koinai or “cultured
languages” have the ability to be carried across or translated into one
another, and the exoticization of external foreignn ess (source
language) into an internal one (target language) me rely travesties the
original (Berman 1999, 64), the issue of the latter ’s wilful obscurity
and alterity in some passages opens up a slightly d ifferent
problematic that brings it closer to his emphasis o n respecting the
literality of the letter.
Soon after, Joyce’s Protean prose translates itself into
polyglottal coinages before conjuring up its own ve rsion of the
Homeric epithet (signalled by the Greek oinopa ponton and its literal
translation): “myriadislanded,” a felicitous nem ăsuratinsulate in
Iv ănescu’s rendering:

She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A
tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides,
myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa
ponton , a winedark sea. ( U 3.392-4)

Pășește, se împinge, se tirîie. se înver șuneaz ă, î și trage
dup ă sine povara. Fluxul amurgind, atras de lun ă, în urma
ei. Fluxuri, nem ăsuratinsulate, în ea, sînge nu al meu,
oinopa ponton, o mare întunecat ă ca vinul. ( Ulise 53)

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
101
German schleppen , French traîner , Italian trascinare , all Anglicized
for smoother integration, “drag” out the meaning of the initial
“trudges” in an intra-linear translation which famo usly expresses
language’s all-too-slippery nature – hence Stephen’ s “Put a pin in
that chap, will you?” ( U 3.399), which doubles up as a self-conscious
remark about his own uncertain morning literary exe rcise on
Sandymount Strand. Although two of these foreign eq uivalents
belong to a Romance language, thus closer to Romani an than they
would be to English, Iv ănescu curiously does not translate the effect
of translation, plumping instead for a lengthening/ quickening of the
rhythm and the presumably deliberate unusual reflex ive “se împinge”
(she pushes herself) so as to suggest the accumulat ion in the scene
(lit.: She steps, pushes herself, drags herself, ge ts insistent, pulls her
load behind herself).

Cyclopean garrulity

The Romanian text does a brilliant job at capturin g the wide
spectrum of narrative styles and addresses, from th e demotic pearls
of the vituperative citizen (with their quaint but apposite Biblical
archaisms in the translation instead of such Hibern ianisms as
“begob” and “arrah”) to his cronies – featuring suc h delightful lingo
as “Sfinte Sisoie” ( Ulise , 287) for “Holy Wars” ( U 12.765) – to the
pseudo-loftier accents of the intrusive catalogues, right to the
bathetic finale when Bloom hastily departs “like a shot off a shovel”
(U 12.1918), which Iv ănescu adapts to a perfectly punchy “precum
piatra dintr-o pra știe” ( Ulise , 316), suggestive of a-și lua hamul și
pra știa: to pack up and go (lit.: to take one’s harness an d sling) while
adding a further alliterative twist to the stock ph rase ca o piatr ă
dintr-o pra știe .
Though not reaching the stylistic, literary amplit ude of
“Oxen of the Sun,” the chapter is so rife in verbal pyrotechnics that it
would deserve a separate study to fully do it justi ce. We shall
therefore limit ourselves to one specific dense pas sage: the spoof on
the Apostles’ Creed, as it raises complex issues of “intertextual
translation” – the original prayer in the source la nguage versus the
specific, slightly more archaic version used in the target language
(the Nicene Creed), and Joyce’s own parody:

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

102 They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell
upon earth, and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was
conceived of unholy boast, born of the fighting nav y,
suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flaye d and
curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose
again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his
beamend till further orders whence he shall come to
drudge for a living and be paid. ( U 12.1354-9)

Cred în varga, pedepsitoarea atotputernic ă, creatorul
iadului pe p ămînt și în Jacky Catran, fiul de tîrf ă, care-a
fost z ămislit dintr-o l ăud ăro șenie blasfematorie, n ăscut din
marina militar ă, care a suferit sub ciozvîrte și bastonade, a
fost sacrificat, jupuit și uns, a zbierat ca un blestemat al
iadului, și a treia zi s-a în ălŃat iar ăș i din pat, mînat în port,
și a stat pe raza fundului s ău pîn ă la noi ordine de unde va
veni s ă mai trudeasc ă pîn ă iese untul din el ca s ă-și Ńin ă
zilele și s ă primeasc ă plat ă. ( Ulise , 302)

(Lit.: They believe in (the) rod, the almighty puni sher,
creator of hell upon earth and in Jacky Tar, son of a bitch,
who was conceived of an unholy boast, born of the
military navy, who suffered under hunks and beating s,
was scarified, flayed and greased/anointed, yelled like a
cursed from hell, and the third day he arose again from the
bed, driven into port, and sat on the ray of his be hind till
further orders whence he shall come to toil till th e fat
comes out of him to make a living and to get his pa y.)

An endnote informs the reader that the sequence is a parodic version
of the Creed based on corporeal punishment in the B ritish Navy, and
clearly this was the semantic angle privileged by I v ănescu, to the
detriment of the competing religious vein. Thus the barely disguised
Jack Tar, personifying a seaman but with no equival ent in Romanian
except the common lup de mare , is transposed literally (in keeping
with the prevalent strategy used by Iv ănescu to adapt a mixture of
nickname and proper noun) but meaninglessly for a R omanian reader
(though there is arguably a catchy feel to the coin age). An even
greater degree of semantic literality was used for both “rod” (instead
of “God”) and “unholy boast” (instead of “[un]holy ghost”), the
latter being turned into an unwieldy mouthful in Ro manian. The
travesty of “Was crucified, dead and buried” into “ was scarified,
flayed and curried” is similarly rendered more lite rally, as “a fost

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
103 sacrificat [ possibly a typo for scarificat], jupuit și uns.” The choice of
“uns:” greased, but also (religiously) anointed and (slang) well
beaten, for “curried” is in itself problematic, des pite potentially
carrying across the punitive element, since the rel igious undertones
are positive rather than in tune with the negative, parodic
environment, and it is later echoed in an unjustifi ed accretion “pîn ă
iese untul din el,” lit.: until the grease/fat [ unt ] comes out of him,” to
convey a less convoluted “to drudge for a living an d be paid,” which
in the original puns on “to judge the living and th e dead.”
Conversely, the anticipatory echoes of the spoof ea rlier in the chapter
(U 12.1329, 1338) are not retained: “marina de r ăzboi” becomes here
“marina militar ă” and the otherwise graphic “Ciozvîrta și duzina” is
emended to “ciozvîrte și bastonade,” possibly in keeping with “bataie
cu bastonul,” the (plain) Romanian translation of t he citizen’s own
“translation” into what “the modern God’s Englishma n calls it:”
“caning on the breech” ( U 12.1339-40) – one should note here that
Iv ănescu unfortunately translates the text’s metalingu istic fold
literally into a non-sequitur since the “engleza mo dern ă de acuma”
(modern English of nowdays) ushers in a Romanian syntagm…
Finally, “a stat pe raza fundului s ău,” lit.: he sat on the beam (i.e. ray:
raza ) of his behind, gets the wrong beam or end of the stick and, in
trying to keep to the letter of Joyce’s humorous Na vy-based
description, provides a fairly opaque translation.
A more satisfactory rendering moving between Joyce’ s own
colloquial parody and the more formal Romanian orth odox liturgy,
for the sake of recognizability, could yield someth ing like the
following:

Cred în dumneb ăŃu,a biciuitorulb atotputernic, creatorul
iadului pe p ămînt, și în Lupu Marin ărescu,c fiul de tîrf ă,
care dintr-un duhán d sfînt fost-a z ămislit, n ăscut din
marina de război, care sub ciozvîrte și ciom ăgeli e a
pătimit,f fost-a scarificat, jupuit și tăbăcit,g a zbierat ca un
blestemat al iadului, și a treia zi s-a în ălŃat iar ăș i din pat,
mînat în port, și pe ciuci șade h pîn ă la noi ordine de unde
va să vin ăi s ă mai trudeasc ă din greu ca s ă-și Ńin ă zilele și
să-și ia plata.

NOTES:
a A pun on Dumnezeu : God, incorporating băŃ: stick,
allowing to keep the same grammatical gender throug hout

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

104 b Based on a biciui : to flog, less common than a pedepsi ,
therefore more appropriate to translate “scourger”
c Lupu de mare : (old) seaman, turned into a mock-
Romanian, yet plausibly a native proper name
d Duhán (regional): tobacco, punning on Duhul Sfînt :
Holy Ghost, in a similar way as Joyce does, i.e. th e
meaning of the literal distortion is deemed to be l ess
relevant and dropped
e The alliterative locution tries to partly recoup t he loss of
the colourful historical flavour of “rump and dozen .” Like
duhán , ciom ăgeli is of Hungarian origin (the latter
markedly so to a native Romanian ear) and would hel p
recast the ironic tensions between the citizen’s be llicose
nationalism and the mock-bombastic deflations of a more
impersonal narrative voice into a Romanian context,
introducing a note of Hungarian “dissidence” into t he
dominant language – and providing a localized equiv alent
to the shift from the original polyglottism to dial ectal
polyphony in Joyce’s own Italian adaptation of “Ann a
Livia Plurabelle,” praised by Berman in conclusion to his
study (142).
f Unlike the more common a suferi used by Iv ănescu, the
more formal a p ătimi appears in the Nicene Creed
g A tăbăci : to curry (skins) or, slang, tan (hides), keeps th e
two most relevant meanings, though it still cannot suggest
“buried” from the Apostles’ Creed
h pe ciuci șade combines a humorous, colloquial phrase
for “on one’s bum” and the verb used in the Nicene Creed
in the right (present) tense, as in the original’s
heterogeneous mix of archaism and nautical slang (“ sitteth
on his beamend”)
i A slightly more formal version of the future tense used in
the Nicene Creed, followed by a more literal, light er
rendering of the end.

Translation, tradition and censorship: Taming Molly ’s soliloquy

The “scandal of Ulysse s” on grounds of its alleged obscenity
would prove a natural challenge to translation, a c raft which has long
blushed more readily on “calling a spade a spade” t han its immodest
originals, let alone in the more morally restrained former communist
countries. While the mildly lewd doings of its prot agonists on June
16 th cannot be excised without incurring the charge of basic semantic

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
105 infidelity, the graphic wording and occasional use of salacious or
taboo words offers more scope for placating vigilan t censorship.
It is no surprise therefore that some of Molly Blo om’s
“veritable psychological peaches” (C. G. Jung in JJII , 629) in
“Penelope” are toned down, sometimes excessively, a s when her
bluntly direct “O Lord I wanted to shout out all so rts of things fuck
or shit or anything at all only not to look ugly” b ecomes a tamer,
generic “îmi venea s ă Ńip în gura mare tot felul de porc ării haide sau
așa orice lucru mai porcos numai s ă nu i se fi p ărut murdar ă” ( Ulise ,
615; lit.: I felt like shouting out loud all kinds of smut come on or
any smuttier thing like that only not to look dirty ), or when her
comment on Bloom’s sexual abstinence, “he couldn’t possibly do
without it that long,” is translated as “nu e el în stare s ă stea atîta f ără
să a șa” ( Ulise , 602; lit.: he couldn’t possibly stay like that wi thout
[doing] so”). The use of the Romanian adverb așa (so) here instead
of a verb of action betrays a reticence to name wha t would offend
sensibilities and was still in Romania of the ‘80s a coded linguistic
ellipsis substituting for the unmentionable. Likewi se, Molly’s foul-
mouthed “to make his micky stand for him Ill let hi m know if thats
what he wanted that his wife is fucked yes and damn well fucked too
up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handru nning theres the
mark of his spunk on the clean sheet” ( U 18.1510-2) is urbanized
into “a șa ca s ă se scoale mititica aia a lui și-am s ă-l și anun Ń dac ă asta
vrea s ă afle c ă nevasta lui e servit ă da și-nc ă al dracului de bine
servit ă umplut ă pîn ă aproape sus la gît nu de dumnealui de cinci sau
șase ori la rînd uite și urma spermei lui aici pe cearceaful curat”
(Ulise , 638). “Al dracului de bine servit ă” (damn well served), in
spite of the mild, yet common expletive, sounds odd in Romanian
and would readily suggest to the reader something m ore in line with
the vexed issue of who will serve breakfast to whom at the Blooms
on the morning of June 17 th , and only because the correct, if de-
slanged (sperm for spunk) translation of “his spunk on the clean
sheet” can one reconstruct what this top-notch serv ice actually
involves… 20
Conversely, and possibly making up for the diminuti on of
the vulgar sexual vein, words are occasionally put in Molly’s mouth
which are more colloquial in Romanian than what she actually says
in English, as when a perfectly straightforward “I gave her her weeks
notice” (U 18.70) becomes a stylistically hybrid “i-am pus în vedere
să-și ia papucii într-o s ăpt ămîn ă” ( Ulise , 602; lit.: I made it clear to
her she’d get the boot in a week): “a pune în veder e,” a phrase which

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

106 is more elevated than the downright colloquial “a- și lua papucii” (lit.:
to take one’s slippers – when one is sacked) and th e mixture of
formality and informality sits awkwardly with the m ore
homogeneously spoken register of a somewhat uneduca ted Mrs
Bloom, despite her odd pretension to class and cult ure. In that
respect, the translation usually endeavours to capt ure how a gabby,
loud-mouthed Romanian might spontaneously vent out her feelings
to herself in a comparable situation, even if it im plies supplying the
extra idiomatic touch, as when “a dirty barefaced l iar and sloven” is
reworked into “o mincinoas ă de-asta ordinar ă și neru șinat ă și o
tîrîtură” ( Ulise , 602; lit.: one of those ordinary, barefaced
[shameless] liars and a strumpet [ tîrîtur ă; cf. French trainée]). The
(out)spoken orality of Iv ănescu’s Molly Bloom might not be quite as
consistent as Joyce’s, yet it eschews the trap of v eering into the
excessively demotic (cf. Berman 1999, 58). 21

“curios of signs”

If home would be incomplete without Plumtree’s Pot ted
Meat, a critical examination of a Ulysses translation would be
equally so without looking at some of those memorab le motifs and
punning delights which keep even the most demanding reader on
their toes after prolonged acquaintance with the no vel but equally put
the translator’s skills of linguistic innovation an d literary
expressiveness to the utmost test as s/he endeavour s to redeploy the
structural imbrications of underlying signifying ne tworks into the
target language.

– Plumtree’s Potted Meat

The reiterated Plumtree meat advertisement first ap pears in “Lotus
Eaters” as “ What is home without Plumtree’s Potted Meat?
Incomplete. With it an abode of bliss” ( U 5.144-7; Ulise , 74), then
when Bloom is deciding on his lunch: “ What is home without
Plumtree’s potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid a d! Under the
obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam’s potted
meat.” (U 8.742-5). There are later ruminations on the Plumt ree
Potted Meat motif, among which the one in “Ithaca:”

What is home without Plumtree’s Potted Meat?

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
107 Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.
[…]
The name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree in a
meatpot, registered trade mark. Beware of imitation s.
Peatmot. Trumplee. Moutpat. Plamtroo. (U 17.597-605 )

Iv ănescu manages to retain consistency, turning the pr omotional
rhyme (“Meat / Incomplete”) into a catchy alliterat ive pattern, but
imparts a quaint literal twist to the language in a n attempt to retain
the proximity between the brand name and the common tree, as in
the passage from “Lestrygonians:”

Ce este un c ămin f ără conservele de carne Plumtree? Un
cămin incomplet. Ce stupid ă reclam ă! Sub anun Ńurile
mortuare s-au g ăsit s-o plaseze. Hai s ă ne suim cu to Ńii într-
un plumtree, într-un prun din ăș tia. Conserve din carnea lui
Dignam. ( Ulise , 161)

The word “plumtree” is kept as well as translated/e xpanded upon:
“într-un prun din ăș tia” (lit.: one of those plumtrees), yet the deathl y
proximity to an obituary column, which prompts Bloo m’s dismissal
and ironic comment “All up a plumtree” (cf. up a tr ee), still remains
unaccounted for. 22 The rendering of the “Ithaca” fragment carries
across the alliterative slogan 23 as well as boasts an ingenious jingle
matching the four verbal “imitations:”

Ce-i un c ămin f ără cutiile de conserve de carne Plumtree?
Un c ămin nedes ăvîr șit. […] Numele pe firm ă este
Plumtree. O cutie Plumtree este o cutie de conserve de
carne, marca înregistrat ă. Feri Ńi-vă de imita Ńii. Plumcutie.
Trumplutree. Cutitrie. Plamtutree. ( Ulise , 551)

– Met him what?

Molly’s legendary puzzlement at the sesquipedalian for “the
transmigration of souls” presents a double challeng e: finding a
plausible distortion or “reduction” (met him what?) within which
some of the character’s own concerns of the day (a meeting with
a(nother) pike in hoses) would still show through, and keeping those
across the motif’s several iterations:

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

108
Met him what? ( U 4.336)
Mă tu-n-pe ce? ( Ulise , 65)

[M]et him pike hoses ( U 8.112, 11.1062, 13.1280-1)
Mă tu-n pisoz ă ( Ulise , 145)
mă-tu-n-pisoz ă ( Ulise , 266, 347)

Though, strictly speaking, “m ă-tu-n-pisoz ă” is meaningless in
Romanian, a native ear would not only intuitively p ick up a
burlesque distortion of metempsihoz ă but also parse it as a dismissive
variation on du-te-n m ă-ta (go to hell, lit.: to your mum) and pisoi +
pizd ă (kitten; tomcat + cunt); neither him, pike, nor ho ses, therefore,
but possibly the contiguous female sex instead. Mea nwhile the
shorter version of Molly’s “Met him what?”, “M ă tu-n-pe ce?”,
convincingly keeps the truncated word/locution and the question
([ pe ] ce : [on] what).
But then what happens to the motif when it is recy cled one
last time by Molly herself in “Penelope,” as “that word met
something with hoses in it” ( U 18.565), i.e. barely retaining the
phonetic framework of “metempsychosis”? There we se e Iv ănescu
changing tacks between the two editions, from the t otally
disconnected, literal “cuvîntul ăla s ă te-ntîlnești cu ceva care parc ă
are un furtun” 24 (lit.: that word met something which it seems has a
hose [i.e. not hose s as breeches]) to a more contiguous “cuvîntul ăla
mă tu-n pisoz ă ceva care parc ă are un furtun” ( Ulise , 615), from the
unfortunate effect that Bloom’s several musings abo ut his wife’s
garbling of the word during the day were out of syn ch with the way
Molly herself rearranges it in the final chapter, t o the successful re-
tuning of the motif.25

– Rose of Castile

Lenehan’s riddle “What opera is like a railwayline? in “Aeolus”
which produces the punning solution: Rose of Castile / Rows of cast
steel ( U 7.588, 591), returning in slightly curtailed form in “Oxen of
the Sun” as “Rose of Castile. Rows of cast.” ( U 14.1510-1) – and lost
in translation: “Roza din Castilla [ sic ]. Ce mai distribu Ńie” ( Ulise ,
385) – is adapted into a more appropriately sexual joke in order to
attempt preserving a near-homophonic pun: “Ce oper ă e ca o femeie
frigid ă?” (lit.: What opera is like a frigid woman?): “ Rosa din

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
109 Castilia. Nu v ă prinde Ńi? Roza de casta Lia.” ( Ulise , 128; lit.: The
Rose of chaste Lia).
Still in “Sirens” one of the most amusing sexual-m usical
double entendres , triggering off a sequence of verbal effects: “Ten ors
get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at his
feet. When will we meet?” ( U 11.686-7), is rendered somewhat flatly
but also erroneously by Iv ănescu as “Tenorii au la femei cu gr ămada.
Le face vocea mai ampl ă. Le-arunc ă flori la picioare, cînd ne-
ntîlnim?” ( Ulise , 253, lit.: Tenors get loads of women. Makes their
voice more ample. Throw(s) flowers at their feet, w hen will we
meet?), i.e. Bloom’s imperceptible refocusing from a general
statement to the particular situation irking him (a t his feet), the
impending meeting between Boylan and his wife, is o bscured, as is
the double semantic vein so prominent in the chapte r – if anything
the Romanian reader has to be more sophisticated th an the original
reader to think of a sexual innuendo in “Le face vo cea mai ampl ă.”

– “U.P. UP”

The terse postcard sent to Mr. Breen represented, b y Iv ănescu’s own
admission, one of the difficulties for the translat or, one he “solved”
by turning the original liquidity into solid matter in order to keep the
play on letters as a noun: “K.K.: caca.” (e.g. Ulise , 148, 150; 275).
The explanatory note sums up the various ways U.P. has been
interpreted by criticism – its sexual innuendoes, i ts ominous note via
an allusion to Oliver Twist , even the supposedly “kinder” French
(Morel’s) translation as Fou-tu – yet fails to mention the play on
secretions in the letters (“you pee”), which would thus seemingly
have found its way into the Romanian version owing to the fortuitous
fact that k was the only letter which, if reduplicated, could yield a
derogatory message ( Ulise, 666, n. 193).

“Conclusion” – Translation as an experience of the limits

In a work of such magnitude as Ulysses , and with such deep
local moorings, translation is at times indissociab le from
transplantation in ways that subtly relativize Berm an's and Venuti's
categorizations and plea for an adherence to the le tter of the original.
Thus syncretism, which Berman identifies as a featu re of
ethnocentric translations (Berman 1999, 31), is har dly avoidable as

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

110 soon as the necessity to adapt, rather than adopt, becomes a guiding
principle if no systematic strategy can hope to com mand the
multitude of trans-linguistic issues, and lit terality (the letter as
signifying residue) and sense come into conflict.
In that respect, and although her practical exampl es and brief
commentaries fail to live up to her overall theoret ical outlook, it is
worth returning to Rodica Ieta’s Benjaminian take o n the relation of
any translation of Ulysse s to the nature of Joyce’s work as itself
already in a state of intra-linguistic translation manifesting the full
plenitude of a reine Sprache :

My premise is that the English of Ulysses is itself
governed by the law of translatability, that is, it derives
from, echoes, and aims at pure language, at express ion
outside the confines of meaning. The novel sounds l ike a
translation in both languages […], from a pure la nguage
into an English and a Romanian that experience a st range
purifying metamorphosis, namely that of both being and
not being themselves any longer. (Ieta 2007, 124) 26

This desirable status is also what for Berman any g ood translation
should aspire to: beyond the specific task required in “Oxen of the
Sun” (which can therefore be taken as a literary pr ecursor of this
approach), “ to give back to the language the memory of its hist ory
back to its origin, to open it up to a future of un suspected
possibilities ” (Berman 1999, 137; translation ours). Such an
“experience” of translation – from Latin experiri : to put to the test,
by going beyond ( ex-) a risk or danger ( periculum , related to Greek
peras : limit) – ultimately aims at the manifestation of the origin of
the original (Berman 1999, 95), and to translate is “ to look-for-and-
find the non-normative [le non-normé] in the mother tongue in order
to introduce into it the foreign tongue and its way of saying [son
dire]” (Berman 1999, 131, and also 75; translation ours).

Notes

1 See e.g. Ion Biberi, “James Joyce,” Revista Funda Ńiilor Regale 2
(May 1935) 393-401, a year which also saw the publi cation of his Joyce-
influenced novel, Proces . For an account of the literary influence, see

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
111
Arleen Ionescu, “Ion Biberi – A Romanian Joycean wr iter,” forthcoming in
the proceedings of the XX th International James Joyce Symposium on
“Joycean Unions,” Budapest-Szombathely, June 2006, eds. Brandon
Kershner and Tekla Mecsnober.
2 Al. Philippide, “James Joyce,” Adev ărul literar și artistic 502 (20
July 1930) 5. For a compendium of critical grievanc es typical of the period,
emanating from one of Romania’s major prose writers of the time (who sets
off Proust’s genius against Joyce’s numerous shortc omings), see Camil
Petrescu, Teze și antiteze (Bucharest: Editura Cultura Na Ńional ă, 1936). A
fuller account of the national antipathies raging a gainst Joyce can be found
in Arleen Ionescu, “Inter-war Romania: Misinterpret ing Joyce and
Beyond,” The Reception of James Joyce in Europe , vol. I, eds. Geert
Lernout and Wim Van Mierlo (London and New York: Th oemmes
Continuum, 2004) 214-8.
3 “James Joyce Ulysses ,” trans. Al. Philippide, Adev ărul literar și
artistic 502 (20 July 1930) 5.
4 “Ulysses,” trans. I. Holzman, Hasmonaea 4 (September 1930)
14-16. Interestingly, and in spite of the prevalent Anglophobe cultural
climate, an early attempt to translate from Finnegans Wake appeared in
1931, a mere three years after the serial publicati on of the original:
“Considera Ńii asupra Annei Livia Plurabelle” [Considerations o n Anna Livia
Plurabelle], Cuvântul 2352 (6 November 1931) 2.
5 Adrian O Ńoiu, “‘Le sens du pousser.’ On the Spiral of Joyce’ s
Reception in Romanian,” The Reception of James Joyce in Europe , I, 202.
6 See “Oxen of the Sun,” Secolul 20 (October 1971) 55-98;
“Hades,” Secolul 20 (December 1973) 169-97; “Aeolus,” Secolul 20
(September 1977) 59-92; “Cyclops,” Secolul 20 (April 1982) 5-47.
7 Irena Grubica makes a similar point about Croatian in “ Ulysses in
Croatian,” Joyce Studies in Italy , 10: “Joyce and/in Translation,” eds. Rosa
Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi (Roma: Bulzoni, 2007) 115.
8 James Joyce, Ulise , ed. and trans. Mircea Iv ănescu, Foreword by
Ștefan Stoenescu (Bucharest: Editura Univers and Edi tura Funda Ńiei
Culturale Române, 1996) 691, n. 407 (translation ou rs); thereafter cited as
Ulise with page references in the text. In her review of Iv ănescu’s
translation, Geta Dumitriu mentions the felicitous rendering of the famous
snatch of alliterative Anglo-Saxon prose “Before bo rn babe bliss had.
Within womb won he worship.” ( U 14.60) as “Naintea n ăsc ătorii noroace
avea pruncu șorul. Prins înc ă în pîntece pre Ńuire prea mare precî știga.”
(Ulise , 349, and 692, n. 409, quoting Gifford and Seidman ’s explanation),
lit.: Before the birth luck(s) did the small nursli ng have. Still (taken) in the
womb(s) all too much valuing did he pre-win. See James Joyce Quarterly
35.1 (Fall 1997) 203.

THE “EXPERIENCE” OF ULYSSES IN ROMANIAN

112
9 For a more detailed presentation of the translatio n’s historical
context, see Geta Dumitriu’s review referenced abov e.
10 Cf. Alexandru Cistelecan, Mircea Iv ănescu, Monografie
(Bra șov: Aula, 2003) 7.
11 Thus we wish to nuance Geta Dumitriu’s appreciativ e remark
that “[a] part of the […] episode’s great charm i s that the cadence of Molly’s
monologizing mind brings it closer to the speaking voice or rather to a voice
that has gender and cultural determinations” (Dumit riu, 1997, 204).
12 See e.g. C. George S ăndulescu, The Joycean Monologue: A
Study of Character and Monologue in Joyce’s Ulysses against the
Background of Literary Tradition (Colchester: Wake Newslitter Press,
1979), who also translated part of Giacomo Joyce into Romanian.
13 Jean Giraudoux, Juliette au pays des hommes (Paris: Émile-Paul,
1924) 149.
14 A similar point was made both about Romanian and H ungarian
translations by Erika Mihálycsa, who, starting from Fritz Senn’s earlier
leads and critical nonce words, especially in Joyce’s Dislocutions . Essays
on Reading as Translation (1984), notes that “[e]ven a superficial glance at
the translation texts reveals how far they turn the Bloomian sents into well-
rounded, grammatically complete sentences.” (“Trans lating the Gap: The
Hungarian and Romanian ‘fillings-in’ of Bloom’s ‘I AM A’ in ‘Nausicaa,’”
forthcoming in Joyce Studies Annual 2009 ).
15 Rodica Ieta, “James Joyce’s Ulysses in Romanian: An Uncanny
and Foreign Language,” Joyce Studies in Italy 10, 124-5. See Lawrence
Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Transla tion (London and
New York, 1995).
16 Thus, in view of its overall excellence, it might sound churlish to
object that, while Iv ănescu’s translation concentrates usually successful ly
on the novel’s stylistic purple patches and notorio us cruxes, it is
occasionally still guilty, even in its slightly rev ised form, of blinking at
details, as in “on the occasion […] of the interm ent of Mrs Emily Sinico,
Sydney Parade” in “Ithaca” ( U 17.1453-4), which becomes “cu prilejul […]
înmormânt ării domni șoarei [i.e. of Miss] Emily Sinico, din Sydney Parad e”
(Ulise , 576) – followed in the first edition by a wayward “Esplanada
Sinico.”
17 See e.g. Antoine Berman, La Traduction et la lettre, ou
l’auberge du lointain (Paris: Seuil, 1999) and Lawrence Venuti, “Strateg ies
of Translation,” The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies , ed.
Mona Baker (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 2 40-44.
18 Jacques Derrida, “Des Tours de Babel,” trans. Jose ph F.
Graham, Difference in Translation , ed. and intr. Joseph F. Graham (Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press, 1985) 165-207 .
19 Similarly the supposed no-hoper of a horse that is the indirect
cause of Bloom’s undoing in “Cyclops” is translated as Zvîrluga , based on a

ARLEEN IONESCU AND LAURENT MILESI
113
verbal equivalent of the English “throw away” ( a zvîrli ), lit.: groundling, a
small vivacious fish but also (for a person) a “wil l-o'-the-wisp,” hence more
readily suggestive of vivacity, though the consiste ncy of the motif is not
adhered to throughout, especially in the crucial ex change with Bantam
Lyons where the more common synonym a arunca is used: “Eram tocmai
să-l arunc” / “Eram cît pe-aci s ă-l arunc în clipa asta.” ( Ulise , 84, 85),
whereas the same verb is used in other contexts, as in the editor’s “Throw
him out and shut the door” in “Aeolus” – in Romania n: “Zvîrle-1 afar ă și
închide u șa.” ( U 7.399; Ulise , 122).
20 Yet a similar degree of obscenity in “if he wants to kiss my
bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his face as large as
life he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my brown part“
(U 18.1520-22) is carried across into Romanian: “dac ă vrea s ă m ă s ărute în
fund am s ă-mi desfac pantalona șii și am să i-l scot bine drept în fa Ńă în
mărime natural ă poate s ă-și întind ă limba șapte mile în sus în gaura mea
dac ă tot e-acolo în partea mea întunecat ă” ( Ulise , 639).
21 The appeal to consistency, as opposed to the misma tching of
registers, is not to be confused with a call for ho mogenization versus
prose’s native hetereology; cf. Berman 1999, 60, 66 .
22 Compare with Ira Torresi’s analysis of De Angelis’ s Italian
translation in “Domesticating or Foreignizing Forei gnization? Joyce
Translation as a Test for Venuti’s Theories,” Papers on Joyce 13 (2007):
104-6.
23 Indeed Iv ănescu’s poetic talent comes to the fore in such mus ical
passages, as in his rendering of the Ulyssean varia tion on the Mother Goose
rhyme of Peter the Piper in “Scylla and Charbydis,” to which he freely adds
“L-a picnit,” lit.: it gave him a sniffle:
—Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back?
Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickle d pepper. ( U
9.275-6)
— Piper? pic ă-n vorb ă domnul Best. S-a-ntors Piper?
Peter Piper a picat un pic de piper pe pipa lui. L- a picnit. ( Ulise ,
180).
24 James Joyce, Ulise , ed. and trans. Mircea Iv ănescu (Bucharest:
Editura Univers, 1984), vol. II, 407.
25 Compare with Jolanta W. Wawrzycka’s compendium of
polyglottal solutions in “‘Tell Us in Plain Words:’ Textual Implications of
Re-Languaging Joyce,” Joyce Studies in Italy 10, 41-2.
26 See also 131-2 where, taking her cue from Patrick O’Neill’s
approach in Polyglot Joyce: Fictions of Translation (2005), she adds that
the inter-text of Ulysses in translation enriches the work’s interpretive
experience.