ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which Yves Bonnefoy employs metaphors to elucidate both the role of the translator and the translation process. One is immediately struck by a group of metaphors, Bonnefoy employs to describe the relationship between author and translator, all of which suggest friendship and intimacy and establish the translator as a privileged interlocutor. Another set of metaphors depicts the translator as an explorer. The translator journeys into the recesses of the poet's psyche, trying to decipher his thoughts in order to re-express them through another poetic language. A third set of metaphors suggests that translating is less about the original text and its author than about the translator himself. In these metaphors, Bonnefoy invokes the senses: he proposes that translating consists in feeding on the teachings of another poet. In Bonnefoy's words, translation is, an occasion for self-reflection, suggesting a self-oriented and narcissistic process.
