Keywords
anti-fascist struggle
urgent translation
intellectuals
Romancero
epic
How to Cite
Abstract
The brotherhood of French intellectuals committed to fighting fascism gave shape to an unprecedented project in the winter of 1936-1937: a special issue of the journal Commune, including translations of 24 Spanish poems that had been published in El Mono Azul from a besieged Madrid, for those on the front. This translation, conceived in urgency as a response that echoed wartime action-poetry, actually became a full anthology in February 1937, Le Romancero de la guerre civile. So, on the translation front, intellectuals showed solidarity by reactivating on the occasion a traditional Spanish epic form: the romance. In the event, the combined effects of limited time, the nature of this “duty to translate” and the simultaneous need for swift mobilisation whilst conveying something timeless and universal, were to transform the translated
corpus. An examination of the “Romancés historiques” section brings to light the alterations, amendments and inflections wrought on the Spanish epic by this heterogenous set of distinct voices coming together in the name of antifascist involvement.