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Introduction: The Diaspora of Translation Manuscripts

Translation archives have taken centre stage in research on translation history in recent years, as both “repositories of the evidence of translation and as sites that shape our understanding of the translation process, the translation profession, and the lives of translators” (Cordingley and Hersant, 2021, p. 9). One aspect that has remained relatively underexplored in the literature is the dispersion of translation manuscripts, which tend to be spread out over multiple locations, and the impact of the “archival diaspora” (Sutton, 2016) on our understanding of translation processes. According to David Sutton, the “diasporic” nature of literary papers is one of their defining characteristics: “In contrast with most other types of archives—business archives, medical archives, architectural archives, religious archives or municipal archives—literary archives are often scattered in diverse locations without any sense of appropriateness or ‘spirit of place’” (2014, p. 296). Literary translation manuscripts tend to travel much further than other archival categories and to be housed in diverse locations—often in authors’ and publishers’ archives (Munday, 2013, 2014; Cordingley and Hersant, 2021)—making the work of translation researchers extremely complex. Given that “translation scholarship relies on having all material on hand in order to have an accurate and useful understanding of the translation process” (Rinn, 2020), studying translations across dispersed collections can be very challenging, as the comparison and cross-referencing of the available manuscripts may be laborious or difficult to perform especially if the material is scattered over various locations.

Although the dispersion of translation manuscripts represents a recurring problem, little attention has been paid to the implications that the diasporic nature of translation archives has for translation research (see Zanotti, 2018). Translators’ papers are in fact less likely to be preserved in dedicated collections than among authors’ papers or in publishers’ and commissioners’ archives. For this reason, reconstructing a translation’s genesis is hardly a linear process and the narratives that archives yield are often shaped by the dispersal of translation papers.

Drawing on a variety of archival sources, this article aims to explore the dissonant and conflicting narratives that emerge from the surviving drafts of the Italian translation of Blooms of Dublin (Burgess, 1986; henceforth BD), a musical play based on James Joyce’s novel Ulysses (1922) by English writer and composer Anthony Burgess. In evaluating the archival evidence surrounding this project, the study attempts to reconstruct its genesis with a view to examining the implications of diasporic collections for the study of collaborative (self-)translation. Following previous research by the author (Bollettieri and Zanotti, 2014; Zanotti and Bollettieri, 2015; Zanotti, 2018), this essay aims to discuss “the complicated nature of dispersed collections” (Punzalan, 2014, p. 327), the challenges involved in studying translation-related materials that exist in split collections, and the ways in which the dispersion of translation manuscripts may affect our understanding of a translation’s genesis, as also pointed out by Verhulst, Beloborodova, and Van Hulle (2021, p. 132) and Cordingley and Hersant (2021).

In this study, I investigate the genesis of the Italian stage adaptation of Blooms of Dublin and consider the way it unfolds in the rich archival records held at the Anthony Burgess Foundation Archives (Manchester, UK), the Harry Ransom Center (Austin, TX, USA), and the Archives of Teatro Verdi (Trieste, Italy). This dispersed set of papers not only documents Anthony Burgess’s personal involvement in this project, but also sheds light on how he dealt with the translation of his works, particularly into Italian. From an archival point of view, the case of the Italian Blooms of Dublin reveals the difficulties involved in making sense of the conflicting narratives emerging from the surviving drafts, as well as the importance of supplementing textual analysis with other sources. For this reason, pre-textual and genetic documents (manuscripts and typescripts) are supplemented with extra-textual materials (correspondence, tape recordings, accounts). It will be argued that only by using a triangulation of sources and methods can we make sense of apparently contradictory material traces. From a methodological point of view, the study combines a process-oriented (Buzelin, 2007) and genetic approach (Cordingley and Montini, 2015) with microhistorical approaches to translation (Munday, 2014).

This paper pursues two overarching and intersecting lines of inquiry. On the one hand, the examination of this rich trove of archival material will allow us to consider the difficulties involved in mapping the stages of the translation process across diasporic collections. On the other hand, in exploring the conflicting narratives that emerge in and out of the archive, this article also aims to provide some new insights into the dynamics that underlie collaborative (self-)translation (Hersant, 2017, 2020; Manterola Agirrezabalaga, 2017; Huss, 2019; Rulyova, 2020; Verhulst et al., 2021).

1. Blooms of Dublin

Blooms of Dublin is “a musical adaptation in a popular mode” of Joyce’s Ulysses (Burgess, 1986, p. 11), first broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 1982. Burgess adapted the novel, wrote the lyrics of the songs and composed the music (Phillips, 2010). The dramatic text of the libretto consists of selected excerpts from Ulysses, often quoted almost verbatim and interspersed with songs written and put to music by Burgess. Like the novel, it follows a day in the life of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom wandering the streets of Dublin on 16 June 1904.

The work of musicalizing Ulysses was part and parcel of Burgess’s life-long commitment to popularizing Joyce, as demonstrated by the number of publications he devoted to the Irish writer.[1] In turning what he regarded as “a great comic novel” (2019, p. 179) into a musical, Burgess made numerous cuts out of a concern for “the unity of the work” (cited by Ingersoll and Ingersoll, 2008, p. 49). Some chapters were omitted altogether, while other chapters were radically shortened to comply with the constraints of a radio performance aiming to provide an abridged adaptation of the original.

The project of an Italian stage adaptation of Blooms of Dublin was devised even before the libretto appeared in book form (Zanotti and Bollettieri, 2015) and was carried out in collaboration with Mario Maranzana, an Italian actor, stage director, and scriptwriter based in Rome. Burgess became acquainted with Maranzana during his long stay in Italy. In the 1970s, Burgess lived between Rome and Bracciano with his second wife Liana, born Liliana Macellari, an Italian translator and literary agent, and their son Andrea. In his autobiography, Burgess describes Maranzana as “an actor friend” of Triestine origins with whom he collaborated on several projects (2002, p. 328). He was to act in the leading role in the Italian adaptation of the play.

The rich documentation that was produced during the translation process of Burgess’s libretto comprises a wide range of diverse materials (manuscripts, corrected typescripts, computer printouts, tape recordings, musical scores, and correspondence) and is dispersed across five main collections:

  1. Anthony Burgess Papers, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas;

  2. Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas;

  3. Anthony Burgess Foundation Archives, Manchester, UK;

  4. Mario Maranzana’s personal papers, Rome, Italy;

  5. Archives of Teatro Verdi, Trieste, Italy.

These archival traces document the making of the project over a period of eleven years, from 1982 to 1993. Work on the Italian stage adaptation of Blooms of Dublin seems to have begun shortly after the radio broadcasting of 1982, as indicated by tape recordings of discussions between Burgess, Liana, and Maranzana revolving around Joyce’s Ulysses and Blooms of Dublin. Several audiocassettes were found among Maranzana’s papers in Rome and in the Anthony Burgess Foundation Archives in Manchester.[2] The meetings took place in Bracciano in the summer of 1982. In an interview published on 3 December 1983, Burgess said he hoped that the opera would soon be performed at Piccolo Teatro in Milan (Dzieduszycki, 1983, p. 143).[3] However, the available documentation indicates that the translation was undertaken only in 1992. A musical entitled Ulyssea, based on Burgess’s Blooms of Dublin, was to be staged by the Teatro Comunale “Giuseppe Verdi” in Trieste in June 1993. Listed as the last event in the theatre’s 1992-1993 program, the show was, as we will see, eventually cancelled and never performed.

2. Untangling a Complicated Story: An Examination of the Surviving Drafts

In what follows, I examine the surviving drafts in order to untangle the complicated story of this translation, which is made even more complicated by the spatial scattering of the relevant archival records. I will specifically look at translation drafts found a) in the author’s archives and b) in the translator’s papers.[4]

2.1 Translation Drafts in the Author’s Archives

2.1.1 The Harry Ransom Center Materials

The Burgess collection at the Harry Ransom Center (HRC) holds two distinct drafts of the Italian libretto. One is found in a typescript entitled “I Bloom di Dublino,” which provides a literal translation of Burgess’s libretto by an unknown author. It consists of 76 photocopied, numbered pages with corrections in pen and pencil.[5] The manuscript covers the whole text, except for Scene 5, based on the “Aeolus” episode of Ulysses, and Scene 11, which centres around Molly Bloom’s monologue. A handwritten translation of this scene, written in blue pen on pink sheets of paper, was found among Mario Maranzana’s papers in Rome and identified by Maranzana’s widow[6] as the work of Liana Burgess.[7] The handwriting, however, cannot be identified as hers.

A different translation is contained in another typescript, which covers Act II of the libretto.[8] It starts on page 71 with Scene 8, based on the “Oxen of the Sun” episode of Ulysses, and ends on page 123 with an incomplete translation of the last episode, “Penelope.” The typescript bears corrections in pen by Liana Burgess, as well as typewritten annotations concerning some of the songs (e.g. Anthony Burgess desidera sopprimere questo numero [Anthony Burgess wants to delete this song], p. 72). These seem to suggest that the translation was carried out by Liana Burgess in collaboration with—or under the supervision of—the author.[9]

2.1.2 The Anthony Burgess Foundation Archives Drafts

The drafts located in the Anthony Burgess Foundation Archives (ABFA) display close similarity to one another, even though they clearly stem from different stages in the translation process. Included in the collection are:

  1. draft translations of the lyrics (AB/ARCH/A/BLO/8; henceforth ABFA-lyrics);

  2. fragments of a draft of Act I, and three incomplete drafts of Act II, including 10 manuscript music scores by Anthony Burgess (AB/ARCH/A/BLO/9; henceforth ABFA-incomplete drafts;

  3. a typescript entitled “Ulissea, commedia musicale di Anthony Burges [Ulyssey, musical by Anthony Burgess],” adapted and translated by Mario Maranzana. The manuscript consists of 193 typewritten pages with handwritten corrections and annotations by Anthony and Liana Burgess (AB/ARCH/A/BLO/10; henceforth ABFA-first draft);

  4. a typescript entitled “I Blum di Dublino overossia L’Ulyssea [The Blooms of Dublin or The Ulyssey],” containing Act I and including a draft score for the operetta (AB/ARCH/A/BLO/11; henceforth ABFA-Act I);

  5. a computer printout bearing a complete translation, entitled “‘Ulyssea’. Musical di Anthony Burgess,” with annotations and corrections by Anthony and Liana Burgess (AB/ARCH/A/BLO/12; henceforth ABFA-final script).

Significant departures from the source text are already evident in the title pages, where the original title Blooms of Dublin / I Bloom di Dublino is accompanied or replaced by a new one (Ulissea / Ulyssea), which clearly hints at Joyce’s Ulysses but also brings the Homeric motif to the fore.

One of the drafts (ABFA-first draft) bears evidence of the fact that Maranzana’s initial project involved a radical rewriting of Blooms of Dublin. The script opens with an elaborate overture involving the screening of a film in which the same actors that were to play Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom in the musical appear as Telemachus, Odysseus, and Penelope in a truly Homeric setting. The manuscript was evidently submitted to Burgess for approval, as there are extensive corrections, deletions, and revisions in both Anthony and Liana’s handwriting. The pages containing the overture (1-12) were crossed out, which seems to indicate that the idea of having a prelude was rejected by the author. Anthony Burgess also objected to several translation choices. For example, in translating Mulligan’s line “Come up, Dedalus. Come up, you fearful Jesuit” (p. 14), Maranzana had omitted the vocative Dedalus! (“Kinch” in Joyce’s novel), which was reinserted by Burgess. The latter also changed Maranzana’s translation of the epithet fearful as pauroso [afraid, anxious] to orribile [dreadful] (ibid.). Elsewhere, he corrected the rendition of “Oh, an impossible person [Ah, povera umanità! > Che persona impossibile!]” (ibid., p. 25) in order to restore Joyce’s wording. On page 13 of Act II, as indicated in Figure 1 below, Burgess added an annotation explaining that the expression “French letters,” used by Mulligan in the “Oxen of the Sun” scene (“Thus spake Zarathustra, sometime professor of French letters in the University of Oxtail,” BD, p. 61), was intended to be a reference to contraception rather than to literature (preservativo meaning condom in Italian):[10]

Figure 1

Fragment from ABFA-first draft, p. 13, with A. Burgess’s handwritten annotation

-> See the list of figures

The typescript of the first draft translation ends with the first ten lines of song no. 35, “Boylan Boylan Blazes Boylan,” sung by Molly Bloom in the last scene, which thus remains incomplete.

As pointed out in previous publications (Zanotti and Bollettieri, 2015; Zanotti, 2018), the core idea of the project to translate Blooms of Dublin into Italian, at least in its initial stages, was to establish a parallel between Joyce’s Dublin and the Italian city of Trieste, where the Irish writer lived for more than ten years. This emerges quite clearly not only in the home-recordings of Anthony Burgess, Maranzana, and Liana Burgess discussing proposals for an Italian translation of Blooms of Dublin in 1982, but also in some publications from the early 1980s. In an article published in The New York Times in January 1982, for example, Burgess highlighted the importance of Trieste in Joyce’s Ulysses (1982, p. 15). Likewise, in an interview that appeared in an Italian magazine in 1983, he clearly stated that his intention was to translate Blooms of Dublin in the Triestine dialect: “I believe that Joyce’s Ulysses, written in Trieste, is actually a novel ‘about’ Trieste and not about Dublin” (Dzieduszycki 1983, p. 143; my trans.). But over the course of time this original idea was abandoned and, in resuming work on the project in 1992, he and Liana opted for a standard Italian translation.

Another issue was that, in adapting the text for the stage, Maranzana appears to have indulged in interpolations that, in his view, contributed to “improving” the dramatic quality of the libretto.[11] Anthony and Liana Burgess’s revisions thus aimed primarily to disentangle the text from these frequent and extensive additions and restore it to its original form. For example, Maranzana’s version expanded on the motif of the feminine element of the sea, referred to by Buck Mulligan as “our great sweet mother” (DB 15). The translator added a lengthy elaboration on the Homeric line Epi oinopa ponton [upon the wine-coloured sea], playing on the double meaning of the word mare, “sea” in Italian and “mother” in the Triestine dialect (see Table 1).

Table 1

Excerpt from the first draft containing the translator/Maranzana’s elaboration on the Homeric line Epi oinopa ponton[12]

Excerpt from the first draft containing the translator/Maranzana’s elaboration on the Homeric line Epi oinopa ponton12

-> See the list of tables

As shown in Figure 2, Burgess added an annotation in Italian, perché? [why], objecting to the interpolation.

Figure 2

Fragment from Maranzana’s first draft translation with a handwritten annotation by A. Burgess (ABFA-first draft, p. 19)

-> See the list of figures

Closely related to this draft is a typescript dated 31 October 1992 and entitled “I Blum di Dublino overossia l’Ulyssea” (ABFA-Act I). The title page details the total number of pages (114) for Act I, 74 of which represent the dramatic text [testo teatrale], with the rest consisting of musical scores with the corresponding translated lyrics. The typescript is prefaced by a signed declaration in Italian dated 2 November 1992, in which Liana Burgess is identified, by her maiden name (Macellari), as the co-translator of both the lyrics and the dramatic text: la co-traduttrice (insieme all’autore) della versione italiana per le liriche e il testo drammatico, Liana Macellari.” As the above statement makes clear, the term co-translator [co-traduttrice] was used to mean “in collaboration with the author” [insieme all’autore].

There seems to be a close relationship between this second typescript and the first draft. We can therefore presume that, in August 1992, Maranzana mailed in the typescript containing the script of Ulissea,[13] which was then heavily revised by Liana and Anthony Burgess. The resulting text of Act I was retyped and returned by post to Maranzana through their agent, along with the musical scores and the lyrics, on 2 November 1992. This new version included extensive revisions and cuts, probably with the aim of making it closer to the original. Close scrutiny of the typescript of Maranzana’s first draft reveals the extent of Liana Burgess’s revisions, which are found on almost every page, alongside comments and revisions by Anthony Burgess. But what was his share in the revision process? One hypothesis is that the typescript does not reflect the degree of the author’s involvement, given the proximity and close relationship between the author and one of the co-translators, i.e. Liana Burgess. One example will suffice to illustrate the difficulties involved in isolating Anthony Burgess’s contribution to the collaborative translation process.

In the scene from episode 1 of Ulysses, Mulligan famously reproaches Stephen for not kneeling and failing to pray at his mother’s deathbed. In the novel, Stephen does not react, whereas in Blooms of Dublin he hits back by saying “I will not serve.” In the revised draft of Act I, shown in Table 2 below, Mulligan back-translates this line into Latin saying: Bravo! Non serviam! Così parlò il diavolo [Well done! Non serviam! The devil said that”] (my emphasis). My contention is that this was an addition inspired by Burgess. Not only does it echo a line that occurs later in the novel, in the “Circe” episode, but, more importantly, it establishes an important intertextual link with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce, 1968 [1916], pp. 117 and 239). In Here Comes Everybody, Burgess argued that the “incident where Stephen refuses to pray at his dying mother’s behest […] stands for the non serviam he wanted to shout to all his mothers,” i.e. Ireland and the Church (2019, p. 21). It is therefore extremely significant that, in the revised draft of Act I, we find what could be called an authorial interpolation in the translation.

Table 2

Excerpt from Scene 1 and corresponding translations in the first and the revised drafts of Act I

Excerpt from Scene 1 and corresponding translations in the first and the revised drafts of Act I

-> See the list of tables

Before we proceed to describe the content of ABFA-final script, it will be useful to consider the complete translation drafts that were found among the translator’s papers.

2.2 Drafts in the Translator’s Papers

In the translator’s files, we find copious traces of both the pre-history of the translation (tape recordings) and its genesis (final script, drafts, source text, musical scores). As already mentioned, tape recordings of Maranzana discussing Blooms of Dublin with Anthony and Liana Burgess show that work on the Italian adaptation started as early as 1982 and that Anthony Burgess fully embraced the idea of a translation rooted in the Triestine language and culture (Bollettieri and Zanotti, 2015).[14] Found among Maranzana’s papers is a typescript entitled Ulyssea (Maranzana, personal papers, henceforth Maranzana’s script). A compilation of various drafts in different typewriting styles, it consists of 180 bound pages bearing corrections in pen, as well as cut-and-pasted fragments. Act I appears to have been assembled from different versions of the text, while Act II provides a clean version of the dramatic text, with the addition of pasted slips containing the song lyrics. The content seems to have undergone some radical structural changes. For example, Act I closes with “Cyclops” and Act II opens with “Nausicaa,” while, in the original libretto, Act I ends with “Nausicaa” and “Oxen of the Sun” opens Act II. Moreover, large parts of the text involving episodes of Ulysses that had been deliberately left out by Anthony Burgess were reincorporated into the translation: Maranzana expanded the scene in the school, based on the “Nestor” episode; added a scene set on the beach, based on “Proteus,” and included a scene set in a library, based on “Scylla and Charybdis,” where Stephen presents his theory about Shakespeare’s art and life. This had been omitted by Burgess probably because, in his view, “a static discussion of Shakespeare’s private life” would not fit into a stage musical (1986, p. 10). As a result, Maranzana’s adaptation is twice as long as Burgess’s original.

As discussed elsewhere (Zanotti and Bollettieri, 2015), this lengthy typescript provided the textual basis for what looks like the final script of Ulyssea (ABFA-final script). This printout is dated 20 February 1993. On the cover page we read that Maranzana was responsible for the stage adaptation, while the translation was presented as the joint work of Liana Burgess and Maranzana, with revisions by writer, director, and producer Edmo Fenoglio.

Examination of the dispersed traces of this translation project raises a number of questions. While there can be no doubt about the authorship of most of the drafts, it is not clear who translated HRC 5.4-literal translation and the handwritten version of Molly’s scene. Why were these translations produced? And what use was made of the drafts ascribable to Liana and Anthony Burgess, namely Act I (ABFA-Act I) and Act II (HRC 48.9-Act II and ABFA-incomplete drafts)? These are the questions that I address in what follows.

3. Conflicting Narratives in the Archive

3.1 Establishing Connections Among the Drafts

A typescript identical to HRC 5.4-literal translation was found among Maranzana’s papers. As already noted, this latter draft provides a literal translation of the libretto, which contrasts with the approach taken by Maranzana in his versions (ABFA-first draft, and Maranzana’s script), all of which exhibit significant departures from the source text, bordering on rewriting. Still, several passages are found in identical form in the two sets of drafts.

In Scene 10 (based on “Eumaeus”), Bloom tells Stephen about his eating habits:

BLOOM: Any kind of meat. A pork kidney for breakfast. I had one this morning as a matter of fact. Gizzards, giblet soup, that sort of thing. Innards.

BD, p. 87

Maranzana’s translation follows HRC 5.4-literal translation closely and bears little resemblance to Liana Burgess’s version of the same passage in HRC 48.9-Act II:

Table 3

Excerpt from Scene 10 and corresponding translations in the available drafts

Excerpt from Scene 10 and corresponding translations in the available drafts

-> See the list of tables

Bloom’s words resurface at the end of the scene, in which Stephen remains alone on stage and recites some lines from the opening of the “Calypso” episode of Ulysses:

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crust-crumbs, fried hencods’ roes.

BD, p. 88

Here again, we see that Maranzana’s translation is identical to that of HRC 5.4 (literal translation), which diverges from Liana Burgess’s translation of the same passage (HRC 48.9-Act II), as indicated in Table 4.

Table 4

Excerpt from end of Scene 10 and corresponding translations in the available drafts

Excerpt from end of Scene 10 and corresponding translations in the available drafts

-> See the list of tables

The handwritten translation of Molly’s monologue in Maranzana’s archive (Molly/Maranzana) is also reproduced almost verbatim in his script:

Table 5

Excerpt from Molly Bloom’s scene and corresponding translations in the drafts found among Maranzana’s papers

Excerpt from Molly Bloom’s scene and corresponding translations in the drafts found among Maranzana’s papers

-> See the list of tables

As can be seen in Table 5 above, the two Italian texts run in perfect parallel, except for the translation of “rump” as luc, which stands for the word cul (Triestine for “bottom”) with the letters reversed. It can thus be concluded that Maranzana relied on both HRC 5.4-literal translation and the translated Molly passage while creating his own adaptation of the libretto.

As regards Liana Burgess’s translation of Act I, it should be noted that the typescript was literally incorporated into Maranzana’s script, with the sole exception of Scene 7, based on the “Nausicaa” episode in Ulysses; changes and additions were made on slips of paper glued onto the pages supplied by the Burgesses.

By contrast, no immediate connection can be established between Act II as it appears in HRC 48.9-Act II and in Maranzana’s script, although the two versions occasionally overlap—for example in the rendering of Stephen’s line “Bullock-befriending bard” (BD, p. 61) in the opening scene of Act II as un bardo manzosodale in both HRC 48.9-Act II (p. 76) and Maranzana (p. 104), which also differs from the literal translation [un bardo amico dei torelli] (HRC 5.4-literal translation, p. 45). On the other hand, a clearer relationship can be established between Maranzana’s earlier version of Act II (ABFA-first draft) and Liana Burgess’s translation as found in HRC 49.8 (but also in ABFA-incomplete drafts), as exemplified by the excerpts in Table 6.

Table 6

Excerpt from the “Oxen of the Sun” scene and corresponding translations in the available drafts

Excerpt from the “Oxen of the Sun” scene and corresponding translations in the available drafts

-> See the list of tables

Interestingly, this passage does not appear in Maranzana’s later script, but it does appear in the final script submitted by Teatro Verdi, as translated by Maranzana in his earlier draft (Table 7).

Table 7

Excerpt from the translation of the “Oxen of the Sun” scene in the final script

Excerpt from the translation of the “Oxen of the Sun” scene in the final script

-> See the list of tables

Examination of the archives and various drafts contained therein thus gives rise to apparently dissonant narratives of this “translation event” (Toury, 1995, p. 249). The tape recordings in the translator’s archive show that collaboration was integral to the initial stages of the project. Personal accounts such as those of Maranzana’s widow confirm that joint work on the project was intense, with frequent in-person meetings in both Trieste and Rome.[15] Yet the translation narrative that can be reconstructed by examining the drafts contradicts this original scenario, as the surviving documentation from the period 1992-1993 reveals diverging approaches and raises questions regarding the filiations of the various typescripts.

3.2 The Letters in the Anthony Burgess Foundation Archives and the Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess

The recent opening to the public of the Gabriele Pantucci Collection of Anthony Burgess at the Harry Ransom Center has made it possible to cross-reference the findings outlined above with the literary agent’s archive, which contains various drafts of the translation as well as the correspondence with the Teatro Verdi. Together with new documents found in the ABFA and the Teatro Verdi archives, this material provides a more detailed picture of the evolution of the Italian Blooms of Dublin, in the period ranging from August 1992 to April 1993.

New insights into the translation process can be gained from the numerous letters housed in the two collections. While little evidence of the exchanges between the author and the translator seems to have survived, the complete correspondence between the theatre and the Burgesses has been preserved. Analysis of these letters reveals that, after the initial stages documented in the tape recordings from 1982, the translation/adaptation of Blooms of Dublin never became a true collaboration.

Work on the Italian script was carried out over a period of nine months, starting in August 1992. Late in November 1992, the Teatro Verdi sent a series of anxious letters to Burgess’s agent urging him to submit the final script. On 18 November 1992, Maranzana informed Gianni Gori, the theatre’s production manager, that he had received an Italian translation of Act I of Blooms of Dublin done by Anthony Burgess and his wife Liana. Maranzana resentfully remarked that Liana Burgess had entirely ignored the work that he had done on it.[16] He thus informed Gori that the final script would be a “mélange” of the two versions. According to another letter in the Teatro Verdi archives, Maranzana submitted what he considered the final script on 14 January 1993. It is not clear whether or when Liana Burgess’s translation of Act II was delivered to the theatre.[17] We can presume that the typescript was sent to Maranzana late in January 1993. This is suggested by the fact that the Pantucci collection holds a copy of HRC 48.9-Act II. The typescript was filed alongside a letter to Maranzana, dated 8 February 1993, from Liana Burgess’s assistant, Merrily Lustig, stating that page 108 of the manuscript had gone missing on the way from London to Monte Carlo.[18] The letter is accompanied by a copy of page 108 of Act II, which proves that this part of the libretto was sent to Maranzana after he had submitted the complete script to the Teatro Verdi.[19]

As an experienced producer, Edmo Fenoglio was hired by the theatre to work on the script. Among the reasons given for this decision were the “delayed delivery of the texts, their disorderly and incomplete draft, the fragmentary nature of and the very frequent changes in song lyrics,” an exceedingly long script, as well as the quality of the translation, which was considered “unacceptable in terms of form and content alike.”[20] After extensive cuts and revisions, on 19 February 1993, Fenoglio submitted what the theatre’s director considered to be the final script,[21] which was sent to Burgess for approval on 19 March 1993.[22] The theatre informed Artellus, Burgess’s literary agent, that, owing to delays in the submission of the script, it had no other option but to cancel the show, which could be rescheduled for the following season provided that the final script be approved by the author by 1 May.

In a letter to the theatre’s director, dated 25 March 1993, Artellus explained that one of the reasons for the delayed submission of the Italian version was that “the translation initially supplied to Mr Burgess was not satisfactory to him, and he has been making comments as well.”[23] This seems to a be reference to the script that was extensively revised by Liana Burgess in collaboration with the author (ABFA-first draft).[24] The copy of the final script located in Manchester (ABFA-final script), dated 20 February 1993, bears handwritten comments by Anthony Burgess concerning aspects of Joyce’s text that he considered of crucial importance. For instance, he made it clear on page 1 that Buck Mulligan always addresses Stephen as “Dedalus,” and he corrected the translated text accordingly:

Dedalus

- never

Stephen

On page 5, towards the end of “The School” scene based on “Nestor,” we find the following annotation, whose contents and underlining give us a sense of Anthony Burgess’s discontent with the changes made to the libretto:

Where is Haines? Where

is the mother theme? The

school is totally unnecessary.

Burgess evidently noted that, in the Italian script, the dialogue between Stephen and Haines had been deleted, creating inconsistencies. Moreover, what Burgess calls “the mother theme,” which in his view was “a big theme in Ulysses” (2019, p. 27), had been relegated to the background, whereas the school scene had been given prominence.

On page 8, he wondered why a scene on the beach based on “Proteus” had been added and on page 31, in the hospital scene based on “Oxen of the Sun,” he added a comment to the line “DOCTOR SIR HORN” in the opening song which made it clear that “Sir” was “impossible” (ABFA-final script, p. 31).

Burgess’s comments suggest that the script provided by the theatre did not receive the author’s approval. In April 1993, he wrote a firm statement concerning the translation of the songs:

As my wife and I have consistently worked together on the music and the lyrics of my musical version of Joyce’s “Ulysses,” our final Italian versions work very much better than the revised versions sent from Trieste. I would insist, then, that my wife’s and my renderings be considered the only authentic ones.[25]

Plans to resume the project were suspended, as Anthony Burgess passed away on 22 November 1993.

3.3 Blooms of Dublin as a Case of Failed Collaboration

Several factors played a role in the failed staging of Blooms of Dublin in Trieste. These included delays in finalizing the text of the Italian version, as well as a lack of communication and understanding between the translators, the author, the Teatro Verdi, and even Burgess’s agent. Archival evidence shows that the failed collaboration resulted in multiple versions of the script being produced simultaneously.

In light of the correspondence examined in the previous section, we now have a better understanding of how the events unfolded. Mario Maranzana submitted his translation/adaptation of both Acts to the Burgesses early in August 1992. They sent back a revised version of the text of Act I after working jointly on the translation. The typescript was annotated throughout by Anthony and Liana Burgess, who made revisions on almost every page. The edits include not only translation variants, but also clear indications regarding the superfluous sections of the text to be cut. Maranzana incorporated this translation into the script that he submitted but also included what looks like an unrevised (and hence unauthorized) version of Act II. This probably occurred because Act II was submitted by the Burgesses at a later stage. Teatro Verdi’s final script complicated things even more, due to the intervention of a third adapter.

Conflict is no stranger to the theatre, since collaboration often involves different agents (directors, actors, translators, etc.), who “occupy different positions and bring with them different and often conflicting agendas, perspectives, and assumptions” (Marinetti and Rose, 2013, p. 173). In adapting the libretto into a stage script, and a radio production into a theatrical performance, Maranzana did not just focus on performability, as is typically the case in theatre translation (Brodie, 2019); he extensively rewrote Burgess’s libretto and created what looks like a new text, using the English original as a blueprint. He tried to engage directly with Joyce’s novel, making structural changes and additions, and extensively modifying the text. In doing so, he was not only reconciling the specificity of the original medium (a musical for the radio) with the needs of a stage performance, but also offering his own interpretation of Joyce’s novel, one that often went beyond what Burgess intended. It is quite revealing that, on page 132 of his translated script, Maranzana refers to himself as the “adapter-translator-author” of the text—a definition that illuminates his approach to Blooms of Dublin, which was that of a translator who accorded himself co-authorial status.

Liana and Anthony Burgess’s aim was different. Attentive to echoes and allusions, they were focused on preserving the letter of the source text, which largely consisted of verbatim transcriptions of Joyce’s novel, while removing Maranzana’s interpolations and additions. What is unique to this case is that the author sought not only to preserve the meaning of his own creations (the songs, the overall plan of the work), but also to act as a gatekeeper to the text of Ulysses. This is particularly noteworthy, since self-translators are believed to enjoy more freedom and be more prone to making changes when translating their own works than allograph translators, who are thought to adhere more closely to the original (Grutman and Van Bolderen, 2014, p. 324; Grutman, 2020, p. 517). By contrast, here we have an allograph (i.e. non authorial) translator (Maranzana) who adopts an authorial stance that leads him to stray from the original Blooms of Dublin (while also attempting to engage with the other original, Ulysses), and an author/self-translator (A. Burgess) who seeks to adhere to the English adaptation (and to the letter of Joyce’s novel).

The adaptation of Blooms of Dublin thus provides an interesting case for further investigation into the dynamics at play in collaborative (self-)translation (Dasilva, 2016; Manterola Agirrezabalaga, 2017; Verhulst et al., 2021; Cordingley, 2022). According to Dasilva (2016, p. 26), the most common forms of authorial collaboration on the translation of their own works include a) self-translation in collaboration with an allograph translator; b) self-translation revised by an allograph translator; c) allograph translation revised by the author; d) allograph translation by a relative or a friend of the author. As Verhulst et al. (2021) point out, the role played by the different parties may evolve over the course of the translation process.

Varying degrees of authorial involvement can be observed in the case under study here. The surviving tape recordings reveal the author’s mediating role in the translation of Blooms of Dublin during the sessions that took place in Trieste, when some of the translation solutions found in the drafts were arrived at collaboratively (Zanotti and Bollettieri, 2015).[26] This can be regarded as a first level of authorial mediation. In the case of the lyrics, Burgess acted as a co-translator, as evidenced by the previously quoted handwritten note located in the HRC archives. Different versions of the lyrics were found in the various drafts of the translated script. This material does not allow us to reconstruct Burgess’s actual role in the translation process, as working documents do not seem to have survived. In the case of the dramatic text, archival traces suggest that Burgess acted more as a consultant than as a co-translator, even though the extent of his contribution is difficult to ascertain given his proximity and close relationship with one of the translators. In the Italian version of Blooms of Dublin, a continuum of authorial collaboration can be observed. This joint venture evolved from being an “allograph translation” (Maranzana) revised by the author, to becoming a close collaboration (Liana Burgess-Anthony Burgess-Maranzana), and then a collaborative (self-)translation (Liana Burgess-Anthony Burgess), since, in this last stage, Anthony Burgess assisted his wife with the revision/retranslation of the dramatic text and actively collaborated on the translation of the song lyrics, identifying himself as a co-author.

In terms of power relations, the case of Blooms of Dublin goes beyond the ordinary author-translator relationship, for Maranzana happened to be the translator-adapter but also the actor in the leading role. The translator’s typically subordinate position was thus partly neutralized. Due to his widely recognized name in theatre, Maranzana enjoyed a semi-authorial status. The situation was further complicated by the presence of another co-translator, who happened to be the author’s wife. Liana Burgess thus offers “yet another example of women translating alongside their husbands” (Manterola Agirrezabalaga, 2017, p. 204). As we have seen, the close relationship between the author and one of the translators makes it possible to categorize the process as an example of collaborative (self-)translation. Manuscripts, letters, and other archival evidence bear traces of their joint working system and show that there was explicit recognition of both the author’s and (co-)translator’s participation in the translation process. However, some scholars have addressed the unique dynamics at play in collaborations between writer and spouse, both in terms of power relations and in terms of the translator’s autonomy: the co-translator here being the wife of the writer may have reinforced “the traditional hierarchies of the writer-translator relationship” (ibid.). In light of this, it could be suggested that the author was able to remain in control of his creation because he was working on the translation with his wife.

Conclusions

This article has examined the surviving archival traces of a collaborative translation project based on an Italian stage adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s Blooms of Dublin. As we have seen, work on the project started as early as 1982 and ended in 1993, only six months prior to Burgess’s death. Even though Ulyssea was never presented on stage, it left a wide range of archival traces, including typescripts, manuscripts, and audio materials, which attest to Burgess’s personal involvement in the project.

The case is interesting on several accounts. First, it shows the challenges that diasporic archives pose to scholars (Punzalan, 2014, p. 327), given the difficulty of locating, comparing, and establishing connections between documents across dispersed collections. Second, it reveals that digital copies of translation manuscripts taken out of their archival context may provide only a partial picture of how they relate to each other; hence visiting archives in person is often necessary. More specifically, the Blooms of Dublin case foregrounds how the frictions that often characterize collaborative translation (see Anokhina, 2016) may be reflected in dispersed archival traces—here, spanning five different locations. By piecing together the scattered remnants of this aborted translation project, we were able to reconstruct its non-linear development. In contrast to the relative linearity that typically characterizes translation workflows (or the representation thereof), the existence of multiple and often unrelated versions of the libretto points to an element of chaos that probably undermined the successful completion of the project. But we could also see it the other way round: the chaos could simply be the result of the various agents involved being unable to agree on a line of conduct. Ten years after the project’s inception, the author’s and (co-)translators’ views came to diverge, resulting in translations that reveal different agendas. As we have seen, a tacit dispute between the author and the translator over their respective roles led to delays and confusion in producing and submitting a script to the commissioner, resulting in a failed translation project and a performance that was never staged.

While dissonant narratives were found in the drafts, conflicting views also emerged from personal accounts. From a methodological point of view, it is important to point out that the present study has not relied on archives only, but also on information obtained through direct contact with close relatives of those involved. This obviously had some impact on the way the data were researched and interpreted, at least initially. In fact, one of the problems encountered in pursuing the study was comparing and reconciling information based on the memories of an eyewitness (the translator’s widow) with documentary evidence found in the archive. For example, the attribution of the handwritten translation of Molly Bloom’s monologue to Liana Burgess could not be substantiated.

Another aspect that should be pointed out is that the Italian Blooms of Dublin provides an example of an unfinished translation project that can be detected only in the archive. Focusing on different sets of archival documents, the study has shown that two parallel translations were produced: one by Mario Maranzana, who adapted Burgess’s libretto rather freely using a literal translation by an unidentified author; the other by Burgess’s wife in collaboration with the author. The final version, carried out by a third party, was a compromise that left all actors involved not entirely satisfied. This raises questions as to what should be considered “the finished product.” Should we identify the typescripts containing the text of Act I and Act II, revised and approved by Liana and Anthony Burgess, as the Italian Blooms of Dublin? Does a final text exist or is it just a chimera that we may be tempted to create in an attempt to “possibilize” the impossible? The genetic approach adopted here makes it possible to examine translation “not from the point of view of the finished product but from the point of view of the process, of translation being negotiated and texts coming into being” (Paloposki, 2021, p. 73), shifting the focus from translations as products to the “translation event” (Toury, 1995, p. 249). The event-oriented view, as suggested by Paloposki, highlights the “disruptions and impasses [that] constitute a significant share of translators’ and editors’ work and are crucial in understanding the translation process” (Paloposki, 2021, p. 73).

Finally, besides being a striking a case of failed collaboration, the Italian Blooms of Dublin sheds some initial light on Burgess’s working methods in dealing with his works in translation. The exact nature of the writer’s involvement in the translation of his works is still largely unknown and is an area that deserves further investigation.