Abstract

The history of the translation and reception of the poetry collection Chansons de filles de mai, written by Alba de Céspedes shortly after the Parisian May uprisings, demonstrates the limits of the translatability of a work despite a deeply transnational subject such as that represented by the 1968 uprisings. Written in French, in Paris, by an Italian-Cuban writer, and subsequently self-translated into Italian, the collection presents an interesting case for scholars of self-translation. Using unpublished materials preserved at the Alba de Céspedes archive (Mondadori Foundation), this paper explores Alba de Céspedes’ centrifugal impulse, her ambition to translate the Chansons into as many languages as possible, and the reasons for the work’s untranslatability beyond the Franco-Italian contexts. It first examines the transition from the French edition to the Italian self-translation, and then contextualizes this operation within the author’s translation project. Our central argument is that the untranslatability of the Chansons did not depend on linguistic issues, but on economic and, above all, political reasons.