Voice Devoured
Artaud and Borges on Dubbing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4300170 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mikhail Yampolsky, Larry P Joseph, Larry Joseph |
| Year | 1993 |
| Volume | 64 |
| Pages | 57 |
| Publication date | 1993-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | October (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2870 • E-ISSN: 1536-013X |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/778714 |
| OpenAlex | W2313061566 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Antonin Artaud's article Les souffrances du 'dubbing' (The torments of dubbing) appears to have been written in 1933.1 Discovered soon after his death, it was published posthumously. At first glance, it appears to be a straightforward vindication of those French actors who sold their voices for pittances to American film companies engaged in dubbing their own productions for the foreign market. A closer look at the text will, however, reveal a connection between Les souffrances du 'dubbing' and a whole constellation of aesthetic issues that transcend the narrow limits of the essay's ostensible topic. On April 19, 1929, Artaud wrote to Yvonne Allendy to inform her that he was completing work on the screenplay for the film The Dybbuk, which was to contain fragments: I have decided to introduce sound and even talking portions into all my screenplays since there has been such a push toward the talkie that in a year or two no one will want silent films any more.2 The script of The Dybbuk did not survive, but its very title is highly suggestive. A dybbuk is a character in Jewish folklore, a person inhabited by the spirit of someone who has died and who speaks through the mouth of that person. The ghost of the deceased torments the living person, causing him to writhe and to rave, forcing him to blaspheme against his will. This folkloric character obviously recapitulates, in its own way, the problematic of dubbing, though in an inverted form: in dubbing, the film star divests the live actor of his voice; through the dybbuk, the voice of the deceased inhabits a living body. Nevertheless, in both cases the situation remains much the same; the voice resides in someone else's body. Given his love for anagrams and of glossolalia, Artaud might well have identified one with the other, purposely retaining the foreign, English spelling
Aesthetics · Art · French Literature and Poetry · Translation Studies and Practices
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,12 |
| Citation span | 2001 - 2022 (22) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |