Participants > Panelists > Fabre-Clark Claire

Lydia Davis (b. 1947) is an American writer who has been publishing short stories since the late 70s and conducting in parallel translations of French authors (namely works by Proust, Flaubert, Simenon and Blanchot). Her predilection for very short stories in her work of fiction seems to be at odds with the style of the authors she has translated (especially in the case of Proust's Swann's Way). In this paper, I would like to explore the relationships between her translation work and her fictional work, with the hypothesis that the former may be understood as the hidden “other” of the latter. Is there a clear cut gap between the body of her translations and her fictional work? Are the choices she makes in her translations influenced in any way by her fiction writing? In order to answer these questions, I will study stories from her Collected Stories (2009) and compare her translation of Swann's Way (2004) to other existing translations. In this manner, I will explore the interstitial intersections, connections, and cross-influences between her translations and her creative work.