Refracted Communications: Multilingualism and (Im)Purity in the Works of Maria-Mercè Marçal and Julia Fiedorczuk

Abstract

This dissertation explores the multilingual poetics of hospitality in the works of Maria-Mercè Marçal (1952-1958), who wrote in Catalan, and Julia Fiedorczuk (born in 1975), who writes in Polish. Multilingualism, for Marçal and Fiedorczuk, will not only refer to the presence of multiple languages in a literary text, but also to translation; it also means a mixing of dialects and argots with the normative versions of Polish and Catalan and includes the mixing of different symbolic structures that regulate communication, such as the expression of gender, skin color or class belonging. Chapter One provides an outline of the ties between the nation, national language, and family in Polish and Catalan contexts; it also engages with texts by Marçal and Fiedorczuk that inform and potentially destabilize the traditionally gendered roles within the national community, metaphorized as family. I point to the historical perilousness of the patriarchal understanding of the nation as ‘the country of men,’ and of the romanticized Nature as woman (the latter, I argue, acquires an especially dangerous dimension given the on-going, global environmental crisis). In Chapter Three, I explore some alternative versions of nationalism or patriotism in alignment with the ecofeminist and transnational writing practice of both authors. Marçal complicates the links between motherhood and language; she also reworks the myth of the dragon and Sant Jordi, pointing to the ties between patriarchy and anthropocentrism. For Fiedorczuk, the links between poetry and spirituality give rise to an abstract notion of Fatherland, which needs to be replaced with the care for the cleanliness of the air, seas, and rivers, leading to an understanding of community founded upon inter-species solidarity. In Chapter Three, Marçal and Fiedorczuk appear in their role as translators. In the chapter, rather than offering a critique of Marçal’s and Fiedorczuk’s translations, I sketch the visions of the translator’s task that shine through Fiedorczuk’s and Marçal’s translation strategies. Fiedorczuk analyzes translations in the context of representation of the non-human world and sees translation and writing as part and parcel of the same process: ecopoetic interbeing, by which she understands the making of a home through language. Marçal’s focus is on musicality, sound, and dialogue, which remain linked to her understanding of writing and translating as passion. In Chapter Four I look at the importance of translation as metaphor in Marçal’s and Fiedorczuk’s writing. Chapter Five contains close readings of fragments of Fiedorczuk’s and Marçal’s prose, focusing on language mixing, the definition of language border and linguistic and cultural ‘outsiders.’ For Marçal, boundary-crossing is a metaphor for inter-human and inter-textual, passionate relationships, which are often germane to translation. For her part, Fiedorczuk understands writing as an ecopoetic issue, as the creation of a home in which both the human ‘outsiders’ and the non-humans will thrive.