:: TRANS 29. ARTÍCULOS. Págs. 13-28 ::

Claudio Rodríguez’s Poetry Translations: A Genetic/Critical Approach*

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Natalia Carbajosa Palmero

Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena

ORCID: 0000-0003-1024-8408

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This article deals with the unfinished and unpublished translations that the poet of the 1950s Spanish Generation Claudio Rodríguez made of Anglo-American poets and, above all, of T. S. Eliot. In the theoretical frame section, the principles of the disciplines of Genetic Translation Studies, Genetic Criticism and Authorial Philology are examined to adapt their work proceedings to this case accordingly. In the methodology phase, a work plan regarding the selection, transcription, and analysis of the translation drafts available is established with a view to a future critical edition. Due to Claudio Rodríguez’s deep affinities, only partially explored, with Anglo-American poetry, it can be hypothesized that such an edition could bring some fresh insight into Rodríguez’s own evolution as a poet, or into the ways in which his poetry and his translations emanate from a single method of composition.

KEY WORDS: Genetic Translation Studies, Genetic Criticism, Authorial Philology, Poetry Translation, Claudio Rodríguez.

Las traducciones de poesía de Claudio Rodríguez: un enfoque crítico-genético

Este artículo aborda las traducciones sin fechar y sin publicar que el poeta de la generación española de los 50 Claudio Rodríguez realizó de poetas angloamericanos, prestando especial atención a T. S. Eliot. En la sección del marco teórico se examinan los principios de las disciplinas de los Estudios de Traducción Genética, la Crítica Genética y la Filología de Autor para adaptar su forma de proceder a este caso concreto. En el apartado de metodología se establece un plan de trabajo respecto a la elección, transcripción y análisis de los borradores de traducción disponibles, con vistas a una futura edición crítica. Debido a la profunda afinidad, solo en parte explorada, de Claudio Rodríguez con la poesía angloamericana, se puede especular con el hecho de que una edición de estas características podría aportar nuevas consideraciones acerca de la propia evolución de Claudio Rodríguez como poeta, o de cómo su poesía y sus traducciones surgen de un mismo método compositivo.

PALABRAS CLAVE: estudios de traducción genética, crítica genética, filología de autor, traducción de poesía, Claudio Rodríguez.

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recibido en noviembre de 2023 - aceptado en mayo de 2025

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1. IntroducTION

With only five collections of poems published during his lifetime, Claudio Rodríguez (1934-1999) is unquestionably acknowledged by his peers and by scholars of different generations as one of the most singular voices among the Spanish poets in the second half of the twentieth century. The personal circumstances that led him to live in England in his youth and to develop a life-long devotion for English poetry are explained by Tomás Sánchez Santiago (2006); Jordi Doce (2007); and María Antonia Mezquita Fernández (2017, 2021), among others. 1 In contrast, we can only speculate about the literary fate of Rodríguez’s translations of Anglo-American poets, had they found their way into publication.

The eventful story of the majority of these translations has been accounted for in a study (Carbajosa, 2022) which refers the existence a) of a 1965 publishing contract for the translation of all of T. S. Eliot’s poetic oeuvre —except the Four Quartets— that Claudio Rodríguez never complied with; and b) of around 200 handwritten and typed drafts and manuscripts of these translations at different stages of elaboration, kept at the Archivo Fundación Jorge Guillén. Fondo documental de Claudio Rodríguez in Valladolid. 2 From this corpus, Rodríguez only published a selection of seven translated poems in 1988 in the ABC literary supplement. Given the slow, perfectionist dedication to his own poetry, it does not seem unreasonable to infer, among other considerations discussed in the above-mentioned study, that Rodríguez never became fully satisfied with his progress in the commissioned task and, consequently, refused to publish a full volume with his translations.

The preservation of this collection of unfinished and undated drafts presents an exciting challenge for the reader and the critic who aspire to a fuller understanding of Rodríguez’s connections with Anglo-American poetry. For most of the poems of the Eliotian corpus there are a few unfinished, handwritten, almost illegible versions available; plus at least two or three more elaborate, typewritten drafts and manuscripts with amendments introduced on the margins, strikethrough words and additions over or below the lines. 3

Moreover, the archive keeps two poetry collections used by Rodríguez in whose pages his own pencil annotations are visible on the side. These are T. S. Eliot: Poems Written in Early Youth (1967) and T. S. Eliot Collected Poems: 1909/1962 (1963), both published by Faber and Faber. The well-known translated volume T. S. Eliot, Poesías reunidas 1909/1962 by José María Valverde (Alianza Editorial, 1978) was also in Rodríguez’s library, although it does not include comments, underscoring, nor any other signs of use.

The major reasons for dealing with a corpus which Claudio Rodríguez never intended to publish as it has reached us range from the study of the translation process as such to the tracing of the imprint left by the translation activity in the poet and/or vice-versa —i.e., how Rodríguez’s own poetry had an influence on his translations. With a view to these future outcomes, however, the more realistic aim of this preliminary study is to propose a methodology that, for the time being, must elucidate a) which documents from the archive should be chosen for close examination, and why; and b) how these can be approached in the most respectful possible manner, by no means equating them to finished translations ready for a textual analysis.

The recent discipline of Genetic Translation Studies, based on the related fields of Genetic Criticism and Authorial Philology, provides a plausible starting point for the goals suggested. This young research area is already providing methods and proceedings on how to work with in-progress, unpublished translations and elaborate genetic or critical editions with them. 4 Of course, complete facsimile editions of archive material are also possible and, under special circumstances, even encouraged, as in the case of Claudio Rodríguez’s 2005 unfinished posthumous title Aventura, in charge of Luis García Jambrina. However, in these cases there is neither genetic nor critical editorial work as such. The result, however appropriate to satisfy the curiosity of the reader or the collector, cannot be considered a textual/critical task.

Drawing on the aforementioned disciplines, in this paper a sequence of methodological proceedings will be presented for a critical approach to Claudio Rodríguez’s unpublished translations of T. S. Eliot. Its application ranges from the choice of materials for analysis among the drafts available to the tracing of the translation process that these drafts hint at. A software tool for collating texts will add final considerations to the analysis.

2. Theoretical frame

The young subject of Genetic Translation Studies (GTS) basically “analyses the practices of the working translator and the evolution, or genesis, of the translated text by studying translators’ manuscripts, drafts and other working documents.” It therefore focuses “on the transformations of the translated text during the process of its composition” (Cordingley and Montini, 2015, p. 1). As one of the founders of this field of knowledge, Anthony Cordingley resorts to some of the key concepts of Genetic Criticism, such as the genetic dossier and the ante-text or avant-texte (2022: 123-138). He relates the focus on the work-in-progress that Genetic Criticism adopts with the advances prompted both by contrastive linguistics, corpus-based studies, machine learning and other practices pertaining to Translation Studies as a whole (Munday, 2016), as well as by the sub-discipline known as Descriptive Translation (Toury, 2015). From the intersection between Genetic Criticism and Translation Studies, Cordingley concludes that GTS helps the scholar to attract critical attention to the translation process per se, while bringing the status of authorship for the translator to the forefront (Cordingley, 2023).

Based on GTS theory, the hands-on analysis of translators’ archives provides examples of translation processes in works by James Joyce and Samuel Beckett (Van Hulle, 2015), Emily Dickinson (Romanelli, 2015), and Anthony Burguess (Zanotti and Bolletieri, 2017) in Anglo-American literature, to name just a few. In the 2022 volume Genetic Translation Studies, Ariadne Nunes, Joana Moura and Marta Pacheco Pinto also reveal a wide range of theoretical-practical examples of GTS practices, while they explicitly blend Munday’s and Toury’s theories of translation with genetic criticism. The conclusion reached after examining how all the cited translation experts apply the principles of the genetic methodology to their object of study is that, starting from similar premises, each specific case demands a particular implementation of a variety of methods and techniques.

A similar diversity of strategies and uses can be attributed to Genetic Criticism and Authorial Philology, the two currents behind GTS. Of French and Italian academic origin respectively, they both deal with the succession of documents that show the genesis and evolution of a literary work before its final, published version —i.e., the stage at which the work is ‘fixed’ on print and, consequently, becomes the field of study of textual criticism. Related to structuralist and post-structuralist theories, Genetic Criticism is born at the end of the 1970s in France and its principles are formulated by the linguists Louis Hay (1977), Jean Bellemin-Nöel (1977), Raymond Debrai-Genette (1988), Pierre-Marc De Biasi (1998, 1996), Almuth Grésillon (1990), and Jean-Louis Lebrave (1986). 5 Apropos the scholarly innovations introduced by these authors, included in the 2008 Spanish volume Genética textual, Emilio Pastor Platero explains in the prologue to the volume that

[e]ste movimiento pretende cambiar la atención crítica del estudioso al trasladar el punto de atención del autor al escritor, de lo escrito a la escritura, de la estructura al proceso, de la obra a la génesis; en definitiva, del producto textual acabado a la producción textual in fieri. (2008, p. 9-10) 6

The first concept that genetic criticism confers to the study of a writer’s work-in-progress —later applied to translators by GTS— is the ante-text. It describes any written item pertaining to the author’s archive —mainly drafts and manuscripts, but also more indirect evidence such as letters, lists, annotations in reference books— that can show the trace of a specific creative process (Lois, 2005, p. 56). The term ante-text, therefore, refers to any writing operations, either in an embryonic or in a more advanced stage, which take place prior to the submission of the finished text for the press (De Biasi, 2008 [1998], p. 125). The purpose of the scholar who deals with ante-texts is not to edit the best possible version of a work, that is, a version close to the concept of archetypal text that defines the manuscript when it is ready for the press (Gagliardi, 2014, p. 2). On another note, it is important not to equate an ante-text merely with a draft or a manuscript, since the term ante-text suggests not only the discovery and classification of archive material, but also a certain level of textual treatment by the critic:

[U]n ante-texto es una cierta reconstrucción de lo que ha precedido a un texto, establecida por un crítico con la ayuda de un método específico, para ser el objeto de una lectura en continuidad con el hecho definitivo. (Bellemin-Nöel, 2008 [1977], p. 63) 7

A collection of workshop material, that is, archive documents that later coalesce in a single work, is known as a genetic dossier. Again, the term implies action from the critic, including classification, transcription and, whenever possible, dating of the available materials (De Biasi, 2008 [1998], p. 117). Another key concept is that of variables, or author’s variants in Javier Blasco’s terminology (2011, p. 229). These are corrections and modifications introduced by the author in the ante-text and must not be misinterpreted as textual variants —that is, changes in the editorial vicissitudes of a published work. Author’s variants may present sub-meanings or derivations depending on the scholarly focus: Israel Ramírez ascribes the term ‘variant’ only to textual criticism and prefers ‘genetic substitution’ for the description of any changes in the ante-text (2009, p. 215). In turn, Daniel Ferrer distinguishes between variants (“when there is a choice between elements regarded as equivalent”) and variation (“when similar elements are juxtaposed in space or time”) (2019, p. 59).

Among the founders of genetic criticism, Grésillon establishes the difference between the writing variant, that is, when an element is immediately crossed out and replaced; and the reading variant, which responds to a later reading by the author of his own draft and is introduced in the spacing between lines (2008 [1990], p. 169). Lebrave refers to the same operation when he traces the differentiation among the corrections immediately introduced while writing, those introduced after a re-reading of the draft, and the blurring in-between domain where both operations apply (2008 [1986], p. 209).

The relevant issue here is that, whereas textual criticism frequently aims to amend and/or suppress any variants spotted in the editorial and post-editorial phases, genetic criticism regards variants as valuable hints deriving from the creative process. These should by no means be interpreted as extremes of finished/unfinished, perfect/imperfect work. Instead of eliminating them, the critic’s task consists in being able to arrange any of these author’s variants for a genetic edition of archive materials in a legible way.

The display of variants in an edition leads us to another crucial aspect for the transcription of ante-texts, namely, that of legibility. Textual and methodological hermeneutics, together with chronological criteria, must ally to offer a tenable version of a text-in-progress that succeeds in reflecting changes without overburdening the reader (Lanz, 2019, pp. 67-68). Since each author’s archive possesses its own peculiarities and clues of a particular philosophy of composition, the chosen method of display, aided both by facsimile reproductions and electronic tools, must reflect such peculiarities whenever possible.

Prominent examples of different ways of visualizing and working with legible drafts in Spanish and in Anglo-American Literature include the approach of Javier Blasco to the archives of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Francisco Pino, and Claudio Rodríguez (2011); Juan José Lanz’s tracing of Blas de Otero’s archive (2019); Hans Walter Gabler’s attention to the drafts and manuscripts of the main Anglo-Modernist writers (2018); and Lucas Gagliardi’s rendering of Peter Shaffer’s genetic dossier for his 1979 play Amadeus (2014), among many other.

The discipline called Authorial Philology was founded by the Italian literary critic Dante Isella (1922-2007). As in the case of genetic criticism, its object of study is the ante-text, and both disciplines are frequently mentioned in close relationship (Van Hulle, 2022, p. 3). Authorial philology originally differs from genetic criticism in terms of which archive materials are considered within the pre-compositional/pre-editing phase. While genetic critic Bellemin-Nöel argues that any document, from drafts to simple notes, lexical lists or even drawings, is susceptible to be included in the genetic dossier (2008 [1977], p. 63), authorial philology focuses only on those archive entries —drafts and manuscripts with traces of the author’s variants— that show a direct relationship with the published text. In the first case, the accent is placed on the creative process as such; in the second one, the text and its progression is the core interest (Mazzochi, 2016, p. 10).

Alongside genetic criticism, the field of authorial philology has equally provided us with examples of how to deal with ante-texts such as those of Sebastián Juan Arbó’s archive (Forcadell, 2021). Furthermore, one of the foundational essays on authorial philology proposes an exhaustive methodological model, together with instances of its varied applications (Italia and Raboni, 2014).

3. A methodological proposal

3.1. The selection of materials: how and why

As in the studies mentioned so far, the translations at Claudio Rodríguez’s archive call for a tailor-made solution based on the existing circumstances. Usually, the three scholarly areas discussed in this study —GTS, Genetic Criticism, and Authorial Philology— refer to the ante-texts of a work for which a corresponding published edition is taken for granted. In contrast, ante-texts that, for various reasons, never achieved the publication stage, require a different categorization. Claudine Gothot-Mersch (1989, p. 70) and De Biasi (2008 [1996], pp. 261-262) propose three categories that correspond to what we find in Claudio Rodríguez’s translation archive:

• Manuscripts that present an almost definitive or pre-definitive version: This corresponds to the seven manuscripts that constitute the basis for the seven translated poems published in ABC in 1988.
• Unfinished drafts in an advanced state of composition that enable the critic to build, to a certain extent, a hypothesis of a final version: This is the most frequent case in the dossier available at the archive —approximately two quarters of the files, around 150, fall into this category— and from which the chosen example for this study is drawn, since it is the most representative instance of Rodríguez’s translation archive.
• Unfinished drafts or documents in an interrupted stage: A dozen poems from Claudio Rodríguez’s archive for which only two or more handwritten versions of the poems at a very initial stage are available —sometimes just the title and some illegible scribbling— fall into this third category.

Given that most of the drafts in Claudio Rodríguez’s archive belong to the second category, and following both Gothot-Mersch and De Biasi, Blasco recommends opting for an “A” or “horizontal edition” of Rodríguez’s manuscripts:

En esencia, una edición del tipo A (o, en la terminología de Biasi, una edición “horizontal”) se interesa por un momento preciso de la génesis, sin pretender interpretar en su totalidad el proceso de escritura, frente a una edición del tipo B (o, dentro de la misma terminología, una edición “vertical”), que pretende reconstruir el proceso de la génesis en toda la extensión de su recorrido, desde los primeros testimonios pre-redaccionales hasta la conformación de la copia para la imprenta… (2011, p. 203) 8

Blasco does not specifically refer to Rodríguez’s unpublished translations, but to the ante-texts of Rodríguez’s poetic oeuvre. However, his recommendation can easily be transferred to this turn of Rodríguez’s translation dossier and, indirectly, to the significance of poetry translation in his own work, a circumstance so far almost completely overlooked. Besides, De Biasi himself favors a horizontal edition under the circumstances explained, that is, in the absence of published work, and with unfinished drafts in a reasonable state of evolution available (2008 [1996], p. 262).

Finally, the method by Paola Italia and Giulia Raboni based on Authorial Philology can also offer a work plan for Claudio Rodríguez’s translation drafts. The authors suggest starting with the transcription of either the first or the latest version available, and graphically representing, in inverse order, the critical apparatus with its successive variants: “si el texto es la última redacción, el aparato de las correcciones será genético; si, en cambio, es la primera redacción, el aparato será evolutivo” (2014, p. 30). Below the critical apparatus which, for lack of space, must necessarily be kept short and typographically schematic, the authors suggest that the critic may add a section of philological notes for further clarification (53).

Italia and Raboni are mainly referring to the edition of ante-texts for which, again, there is a finished, ‘authorial,’ published text. This is the reason why an edition of Rodríguez’s unpublished translation drafts or ante-texts will only partially make use of their methodologies. As Blasco very appropriately points out:

Un caso diferente es el que plantean los borradores nacidos con pretensión literaria, pero nunca convertidos en libro en vida del autor. Con estos materiales el editor ha de adoptar medidas nuevas, distintas a las que demandan los materiales de archivo de una obra ya editada y diferentes también de las derivadas de un conjunto de borradores cuya justificación editorial es meramente la documental. (2011, p. 201) 9

Clearly, this is the state of affairs that best defines Claudio Rodríguez’s translations, and for which a corresponding method, based on the existing alternatives, must be found. All of the above substantiates in the following prerequisites for a future critical edition of Claudio Rodríguez’s translation archive:

• To the question of whether it is better to prepare an edition for genetic experts —a genetic edition— or for poetry readers in general and poetry translation scholars —a critical one —the answer is clear: a critical edition is preferable when the long-term objective is to gain some insight into the ways poet Claudio Rodríguez faces the translation of poetry.
• Since the editors of such a critical edition are —not by choice but by necessity— obliged to work only with ante-texts, they must make use of the tools provided by GTS, Genetic Studies and Authorial Philology, without losing sight of the desired outcome, which will be rather critical than genetic.

The first step should be, therefore, designing a methodology to proceed with the available materials towards the pursued objective. To that end, a starting point for the editors could be to manually transcribe the most legible or ‘nearly finished’ typewritten draft of each poem, using a specific editorial method —that is, a set of sign conventions— to mark the author’s variant. The one introduced in this study is inspired by Blasco’s model (2011, p. 33). In addition, with the help of software for text collation and comparison, editors may follow Italia and Raboni’s model to produce the genetic critical apparatus for their transcription (2014, p. 30). This apparatus will be equally generated only from legible typewritten versions that can provide items of comparison. From the software tools available on the market, Juxta has been chosen, precisely, for the efficacy in which it helps display the two functions that are going to be explored through it: the collation and comparison of two unfinished translations, and the subsequent generation of critical apparatus. 10

Should there be more than two typewritten drafts in a legible state, these could also be considered within the genetic critical apparatus. The predominant criterion must always be legibility. An approach like the one stated here is not so interested in the working process as such, but rather on elaborating an edition respectful of the unfinished nature of the ante-texts and, if possible, able to reflect upon Rodríguez’s translation choices through the examination of the variants. 11 Finally, scholars may resort to the two volumes of Eliot’s poetry that Rodríguez used for any further clues on translation choices. In genetic terminology, these are considered materials from a pre-compositional phase in the genetic dossier (Bellemin-Noel 2008 [1977]).

To illustrate this method, a case in point can be Eliot’s beginning of the Choruses from The Rock. Published in 1934, The Rock is Eliot’s first drama. In it, the choruses play the classical role of announcing and explaining the ongoing events to the audience. In a solemn style and rhythm, they blend the material and historical vicissitudes of the plot with a mythical pattern of understanding that points to an eternal, transcendent vision of life. Ever since the premiere of the play, the choruses have been published and translated separately in poetry anthologies and praised for their beauty and depth.

The translation of Part I of the Choruses from the Rock has been chosen for the analysis because it faithfully reproduces the most common circumstances of Rodríguez’s archived translations: two handwritten drafts in a very initial state of composition, and of so scarce legibility that they have been discarded (CR20/086 and CR20/105); and two typewritten versions in a reasonably advanced state of composition, one of which —in absence of any date— shows a stylistic evolution directly related to the other (CR20/011 and CR20/190 respectively). It is these two manuscripts that the analysis is going to be based on.

3.2. Transcription Proceedings and Analysis

Once the drafts have been selected, the proceedings must be clarified. The steps to be followed are:

• An initial look into the original edition of Eliot’s poems that Rodríguez used for his translation —what has previously been described as “materials from a pre-compositional phase”— so as to become familiarized with the content, and to spot any underlined words or expressions that drew the attention of the translator in first place.
• A direct observation of the two typed drafts selected for analysis. Prior to the transcription of the poem according to a set of textual conventions, the legibility of these documents allows for a direct observation of their changing elements, which will be duly discussed.
• An edited transcription of the poem, following a simplified version of the editorial method proposed by Blasco (2011: 33). The reason for this simplification is based on the fact that Blasco applies his method to a process of genetic criticism that contemplates a large number of ante-texts —drafts and manuscripts— and variants. In contrast, the prerequisites explained in the previous sub-section for a critical —not purely genetic— edition of ante-texts, in this case limited to the analysis of two drafts, do not require such thorough methodology.
• Once the transcription is completed, it will be the turn for the Juxta software to be introduced. Through text collation and the generation of critical apparatus, it will be possible to reflect about the process in depth.

Part I of the Choruses from the Rock starts on page 161 from Rodríguez’s 1963 edition Collected Poems by T. S. Eliot. The first strophe shows two instances of words underlined with a pen by the translator:

1 The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
2 The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
3 O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
4 O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
5 O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
6 The endless cycle of idea and action,
7 Endless invention, endless experiment,
8 Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
9 Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
10 Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
11 All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
12 All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
13 But nearness to death no nearer to God.
14 Where is the Life we have lost in living?
15 Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
16 Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
17 The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
18 Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

Eliot’s opening in The Rock is full of mythological and literary resonance. The Eagle refers to the constellation related to Zeus. The subsequent lines evoke two central motifs in Eliot’s mature poetry work Four Quartets (1941): the cyclic nature of stars and seasons, and the deceitful messages (information vs. knowledge) transmitted in contemporary times. As it will later be revealed in the play, through the final adage of biblical resonance in line 18 Eliot is alluding to a variety of themes, including the 1930’s development of the relativist consumer society, the rise of the totalitarian credos —fascism and communism— and the decline of spirituality and a communal sense of life.

The tone of the passage is solemn, as it corresponds to the chorus in its classical sense. To that end, exclamations are employed (“O perpetual / O world…!”), together with anaphora and parallelism (“Knowledge of… / All our…”), especially concerning opposites (idea and action, knowledge and ignorance). Semantically loaded terms are capitalized (The Eagle, the Hunter, Life, God, the Word, Heaven, Dust). The metrical scheme contributes to this solemnity too: tetrameters which, in some lines, even reproduce Anglo-Saxon alliteration (“nearness… no nearer / Life… lost in living”). The effect is that of a timeless, lofty speech. The two parts underlined by Rodríguez, “configured” in line 3 and “no nearer” in line 13, have a significant weight in his translation decisions, as can be seen from the observation of the two typed manuscripts:

This ante-text shows an advanced stage of the translation in terms of verse and word choice. Revision signs are scarce, consisting only of strikethroughs and additions. The translation conveys the solemn tone and cadence of the original, to which the natural flow of the Spanish rhythm contributes. Despite these positive qualities for the analysis, the draft can by no means be considered close to the final manuscript, mainly because of some imprecisions in the layout of verse: lines 2, 11 and 12, for example, are split into two. Moreover, the transition from line 12 to 13 (“nos acerca más a la muerte, / y estamos más cercanos de la muerte, / mas no de Dios más cerca”) does not sound as fully resolved yet.

The underlining of “no nearer” by Rodríguez in line 3 of Eliot’s volume of Collected Poems indicates that he was probably at pains to render “nearness” and “no nearer” in a way that would not sound cumbersome. In turn, the other underlined word in the Collected Poems edition, line 3 (“configured”) is translated as “fijas;” the translator chooses the same term for the next line (“determined”), although inverting the noun/adjective order (“estrella fijas” / “fijas estaciones”). It can be hypothesized that, at a farther stage of the corrections, Rodríguez would have probably come up with a different solution for the “configured/determined” tandem. As it is, though, he seems quite aware that rhythmic and semantic parallelism must be somewhat highlighted.

The draft in Fig. 2, written at an earlier stage of the translation than the one in Fig. 1, confirms, to a certain extent, some decisions taken later:

As we can see, line 2 expands into 3 and 4 and includes two alternatives for the same verse (“The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit”), whereas in Fig. 1, one of the solutions found here (“el cazador con sus perros su rotación acosa”) has been discarded. The third verse of the original poem —here spread between lines 5 and 6— and the word order in the translation (“estrellas fijas/fijas estrellas”) reflect the adjectival oscillation found in the more advanced draft. The two options given for “revolution” (“revolución/rotación”) are also eloquent: they give evidence of the translator’s evolution from a literal to a more technically precise translation of the term. Again, the imprecision in verse 13 in the original can be traced at this earlier stage, with “cercanos” typed over “cercanía.” Compared with the draft in Fig. 1, the poorer quality of the layout is also significant: there is less spacing and some almost illegible handwritten additions.

Any comments about how the translator has proceeded up to the point at which his work was left unfinished will necessarily focus on the transcription of the most recent draft (fig. 1). To that end and following —as has already been argued— Blasco’s model (2011: 33), an editorial method as simple as possible has been designed, based on abbreviations instead of on typographic signs.

The abbreviations introduced are as follows: sp.c. = superscript (added above the baseline); sb.c.= subscript (added below the baseline; b.l. = amendments between lines; o.w. = overwritten; l.m. = left margin; r.m. = right margin; u.m. = upper margin; l.m. = lower margin; [blank space] = unwritten words; [illegible word]. Within the text, all the author’s variants appear in bold type, crossed out words with strikethrough, whereas handwritten additions are marked by the use of italics.

Strictly speaking, this way of transcription responds to the concept of what is defined as a diplomatic edition of a manuscript by François Masai (1950), that is, a faithful rendering of the original draft with all its typographic inconsistencies visible, and no attempts to amend them. Masai’s transcript code for ancient manuscripts, however, is far more intricate than the model attempted in this paper, since the goal here is to interpret the most advanced stage possible in the translation process, instead of rendering its genesis and every single step of its evolution. The result, necessarily provisional as indebted to the fact that we are working with an ante-text, must be legible and restricted to a single document, as in the transcription of file CR20/011:

1 El Aguila (sic) se cierne en la cumbre del Cielo,
2 el Cazador acosa con sus perros
2b su rotación.
3 Oh, eterna rotación de las esterllas [o.w.: estrellas] fijas,
4 oh, repetición eterna de fijas estaciones,
5 oh, [strikethrough] mundo de primavera y otoño, de nacimiento y muerte[o.w.: !] 6 El infinito ciclo de la idea y la acción,
7 el eterno descubrimiento, y la experimentación eterna,
8 nos dan el conocimiento del movimiento, mas no el de la quietud,
9 conocimiento del lenguaje, pero no del silencio;
9b no del silencio;
10 conocimiento de las palabras, no de la Palabra.
11 Y nos acerca más a la ignorancia 1b todo conocimiento, y toda nuestra ignorancia
12 nos acerca aún más a la muerte,
13 y estamos más cercanos de la muerte, 13b mas no de Dios más cerca.
14 ¿Dónde se halla la vida que vivimos perdimos viviendo?
15 ¿Dónde la sabiduría perdida al conocer?
16 ¿Dónde el conocimiento perdido en información?
17 Durante veinte siglos, los ciclos del cielo
18 nos alejan aún más de Dios, nos acercan aún más al Polvo.

The transcription confirms the impression caused by the facsimile (Fig. 1) about the advanced state —though not definitive— of the translation. Apart from the aspects commented before, the level of corrections is basically reduced to a few writing variants or immediate corrections, for example in punctuation (question and exclamation marks); and to probable reading variants marked by the crossed words “no del silencio”, “aún”, and “vivimos.” Clearly, “no del silencio” simply points to a change in verse order, which sometimes is just a consequence of the use of the typewriter. This may be the case with the displacement of “su rotación” too. In turn, “vivimos” probably responds to a momentary confusion while translating between “lost” and “living”. As for “aún”, it gives us another hint about how the translation “nearer / no nearer” was problematic.

The ante-text is readable enough to establish a credible hypothesis for a pre-final manuscript; a hypothesis developed by sheer necessity or, in other words, for lack of a published version. The reason for producing this hypothetical document is by no means to make it pass off as a manuscript validated by the author. In fact, the aim is to feed the following artificially created version into Juxta and see what the software displays:

1 El Águila se cierne en la cumbre del Cielo,
2 el Cazador acosa con sus perros su rotación.
3 ¡Oh, eterna rotación de las estrellas fijas
4 oh, repetición eterna de fijas estaciones,
5 oh, mundo de primavera y otoño, de nacimiento y muerte!
6 El infinito ciclo de la idea y la acción,
7 el eterno descubrimiento, y la experimentación eterna,
8 nos dan el conocimiento del movimiento, mas no el de la quietud,
9 conocimiento del lenguaje, pero no del silencio;
10 conocimiento de las palabras, no de la Palabra.
11 Y nos acerca más a la ignorancia
11/12 todo conocimiento, y toda nuestra ignorancia
12b nos acerca más a la muerte,
13 y estamos más cercanos de la muerte,
13b mas no de Dios más cerca.
14 ¿Dónde se halla la vida que perdimos viviendo?
15 ¿Dónde la sabiduría perdida al conocer?
16 ¿Dónde el conocimiento perdido en información?
17 Durante veinte siglos, los ciclos del cielo
18 nos alejan aún más de Dios, nos acercan aún más al Polvo.

Faithful to the uncertainties of the ante-texts, the unresolved issue between verses 11 to 13 is maintained. For the same reason, the repetition of the adjective “fijas” in verses 3 and 4 remains unchanged. Once this minimally modified version of Fig.1 is fed into the Juxta platform tool for collation with that of Fig. 2, the already spotted differences become all the more visible. To that end, Fig. 1 —the more advanced draft in its ‘clean’ version— and Fig. 2 —the prior draft— have been named The Rock Trans.1 and The Rock Trans.2 respectively.

The collation of the two drafts by the Juxta tool partly confirms what the direct observation of the typewritten versions in Figs. 1 and 2 and the diplomatic transcription had already demonstrated: namely, that the unresolved issues revolve around the opening lines and the repetition of “nearer,” “no nearer,” as well as “farther” (“aún más”) in the final verse (“Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust”). In addition, the collation highlights changes between synonyms, such as “reposo/quietud” and “ciclo/período.” The final opting for “quietud” and “ciclo” seems to better suit the verse rhythm. This means that the poet’s ear, and not only the semantic precision, was at work at the moment of composition.

As for the critical apparatus, that is, the rendering of the variants from the older draft in relation to the newer one that Juxta can also generate, in this particular case it does not seem to reveal any different information from the one already gathered.

Perhaps more interestingly, Juxta can also be used to generate philological notes within the critical apparatus, for example if a scholar or editor were interested in saving, in electronic format, the underlined words in the volume of Eliot’s poems used by Rodríguez. The display enabled by these electronic solutions can contribute to a reader-friendly edition, despite the fact that this would be exclusively based on transcriptions of unfinished drafts.

4. Conclusions

All these tentative proceedings suggest that the central element of a critical edition of Rodríguez’s unpublished translations must consist of the transcription of the most recent and —whenever possible— typewritten draft, for whose display an editorial method with its corresponding textual conventions will be followed. Software tools such as Juxta may contribute to the textual commentary built around this central element, insofar as they enable collating the transcription with the immediate previous draft. The interest of such a prospective critical edition should be based on the analysis carried out, as an example, in the present study: once the methodology of selection, transcription and commentary of materials is established, editors and scholars may proceed with further drafts from the archive in a similar manner.

Claudio Rodríguez’s translations of T. S. Eliot’s poems are a unique case of study within the GTS guidelines, insofar as there are no finished, published versions available —with the exception of the seven poems in ABC. Furthermore, a deep analysis of Rodríguez’s translating method of composition may, by comparison, cast some light on how he conceived and drafted his own poetic oeuvre, given the influence of poetry in English already acknowledged in it. What the poet lends to the translator and vice versa could thus be assessed, with translation as the mediating process between languages and creative forces.

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