Echoes of Translation: Reading Between Texts

"What does it mean to read between the texts? In a certain sense we always read, when we read, 'between' (the lines, for example), because reading always involves a space of presentation where the figures gesture to each other in configurations and constellations that present more than any single figure means. But the structure of the space between the figures, which is determined by them and determines them, is shaped in more particular ways than by the mere universal differential relation of all signs."--from the Introduction

In a series of readings of Sophocles, Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Benjamin, Rainer Nägele investigates the extraordinary territory that lies not merely between texts but also between languages--in translations. This space between texts and langauges is approached in the figure of the echo. It is the figure of a transmission through and with the help of resistance. It is a complex figure that cannot be reduced to the simple repetition of a stable entity or origin. And yet, Nägele argues, it is in this "echo chamber" of resonances that history in all its concreteness has its place and becomes readable.

Rainer Nägele is professor of German at the Johns Hopkins University. His books include Theater, Theory, and Speculation: Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of Modernity, also available from Johns Hopkins.