Nesta dissertação traduzimos e comentamos os quatro primeiros registros de diário (10- 14 de maio de 1932, 50 páginas) da obra EIMI de Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962). EIMI é um diário/romance experimental que relata a viagem de trinta e seis dias que Cummings realizou na Rússia soviética entre maio e junho de 1931. Justificamos a escolha de EIMI porque, além de entendermos que é um livro importante e pertinente no contexto do Modernismo literário do século XX, ele nunca foi traduzido. Com o intuito de respaldar nossa pioneira tradução realizamos uma pesquisa que pode ser dividida em duas esferas: estudos sobre a vida e a obra de Cummings; e estudos sobre o ato de traduzir, focados especificamente na exploração do livro Poétique du traduire de Henri Meschonnic. As investigações dentro da primeira esfera fundamentaram o Capítulo 1 do trabalho, onde apresentamos e problematizamos EIMI. As investigações da segunda esfera fundamentaram o Capítulo 2. Aqui, partimos do pressuposto que o sujeito e a língua são elementos necessários para que se faça literatura; mas que o fazer literário, por seu turno, é fundamental no processo de formação e compreensão do que é (ou se torna) a língua e o sujeito. Argumentamos, com Meschonnic, que mais importante do que traduzir a língua de uma obra é traduzir o modo como a obra negocia, através do uso específico da língua por um sujeito, uma nova língua e um novo sujeito. Posto de outro modo, argumentamos que não é a língua no sentido estrito que se traduz, mas o discursotal qual articulado em uma obra específica e implicado na subjetividade de um ser histórico. Testaremos as diretrizes de Meschonnic em nossa própria tradução e comentários, expostos no Capítulo 3. / In this dissertation I translate and comment upon the first four diary entries (May 10-14, 1932, 50 pages) of the work EIMI by Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962). EIMI is an experimental diary/novel that recounts the thirty-six-day trip that Cummings made to Soviet Russia between May and June of 1931. I justify choosing EIMI because it is, as I seek to demonstrate, an important and pertinent work within 20th Century literary Modernism, which, furthermore, has never been translated. As a means of supporting the translation itself, the dissertation also includes a theoretical study that can be divided into two spheres: research on the life and work of Cummings; and research on the act of translating, focused specifically on the exploration of the book Poétique du traduire by Henri Meschonnic. The investigations within the first sphere make up Chapter 1 of the dissertation, where I introduce and examine EIMI. The investigations within the second sphere make up Chapter 2. Here, I start with the assumption that subject and language are necessary elements for the making of literature; but that the literary act is, in its turn, fundamental to the process of shaping and understanding what is (or becomes of) the language and the subject. I argue, with Meschonnic, that more important than to translate the language of a work is to translate the way in which the work negotiates, through the specific use of language by a subject, a new language and a new subject. In other words, I argue that it is not the language of a text that is translated, but a subjects discourse such as articulated in a specific text and implied within the subjectivity of the historic beings who conceive it and read it. I put Meschonnics guidelines to test on my own translation and commentary in Chapter 3.

Stanley Chapman n’est pas un traducteur ni même un écrivain très connu. Le volume de ses écrits originaux, qui sont d’ailleurs difficiles voire impossibles à trouver, et des traductions à son actif reste mince. Peut-être serait-il même passé complètement inaperçu, sauf bien sûr chez ses compères du Collège de ’Pataphysique, de l’Oulipo et de l’Outrapo, s’il n’avait pas traduit deux romans phares de l’écrivain français Boris Vian: L’Écume des jours et L’Arrache-coeur. La prose singulière de Vian l’aurait-elle incité à passer à l’acte d’écriture qui trouve justement sa source et se déploie dans l’acte du traduire ? Par ailleurs, les affinités intellectuelles que partageaient Vian et Chapman pourraient-elles aussi être en cause dans cette expérience du traduire ? Henri Meschonnic et Antoine Berman nous informent que la critique de la traduction a le pouvoir de révéler le rapport intime entre la pensée, l’écriture et la traduction. À partir de la « poétique du traduire » de Meschonnic et de « l’analytique de la traduction » de Berman, ce mémoire interroge en quoi Heartsnatcher, la traduction anglaise de L’Arrache-coeur, peut être considérée comme un acte de « traduire-écrire ». Étayée des notions de rythme et de signifiance, notre critique identifie les stratégies qui émergent de cette activité de création qu’est la traduction et par le fait même, révèle la manière particulière dont Stanley Chapman est parvenu à traduire L’Arrache-coeur. / Stanley Chapman is not a well known translator or writer. The sum of his original works, which are difficult – when not impossible – to find, and of his translations is modest. He would probably have gone completely unnoticed by the literary establishment – beyond the literary circle of the Collège de ’Pataphysique, the Oulipo and the Outrapo – had he not translated two of the French writer Boris Vian's most famous novels : L'Écume des jours (Froth on the Daydream) and L’Arrache-coeur (Heartsnatcher). Has Vian's singular prose incited Chapman to the act of writing, an activity which springs from, and unfolds in, the act of translating ? Moreover, could the intellectual affinities Vian and Chapman shared have also been a factor in this translating experience ? According to Henri Meschonnic and Antoine Berman, a translation criticism reveals the close interaction of thought, writing and translating. Using Meschonnic's « poetics of translation » and Berman's « translation analysis », this memoir will endeavour to determine how Heartsnatcher, the English translation of L’Arrache-coeur, can be considered an act of « translating-writing ». Taking into account such concepts as rhythm and significance (signifiance), our criticism will identify the crucial strategies that arise from this act of creation that is translation, and in so doing, will reveal the particular manner in which Stanley Chapman translated L’Arrache-coeur.