Deconfining Translation in Samuel Beckett's Le Dépeupleur and The Lost Ones

Abstract

Abstract: Le Dépeupleur (1970), Samuel Beckett's short work of prose translated by the author himself as The Lost Ones (1972), crafts a scenario in which 200 bodies are confined to a squat cylinder with scant more than a square meter each and only the rumor of an exit. The confinement Beckett imposes on these dehumanized bodies goes beyond the spatial, and also manifests itself on temporal, linguistic, and narrative planes. Beckett's two versions of the text (English and French) engage each other in ways that both reinforce the confined nature of this fictional universe as well as generate possibilities for liberation.