ABSTRACT
Translation, including Beckett's own 'self-translation' into French, is an issue which has received considerable attention from Beckett's critics. The condition of the trilogy is that of the 'post-Babelian dilemma of the multiplicity of tongues', in which translation is not transmission between distinct languages but a rewriting 'which recasts the original as a different text', and a repeatable process. Beckett's post-war trilogy Molloy, Malone meurt, and L'Innommable have its beginnings in a mode of writing akin to that first attempted in the Nouvelles. The trilogy divides into two, and readers are faced with two competing versions, each with equal claim to authenticity or legitimacy. Beckett began translating Molloy in collaboration with Patrick Bowles, but finally assumed responsibility for translating it and the rest of the trilogy himself. A more demanding idea of the trilogy's topology is suggested here than the linear, teleological schemes expounded in the work of many of Beckett's early critics.
