Rebuilding Bohemian castles in the Spanish sky, or how I translated one of Nodier’s books

Nodier conceived his Histoire du roi de Bohême as an exemplary novel. Together, its vignettes inserted in the text, its calligrams, and its self-referential allusions all emphasize its very condition as an object. Translating a novel whose singularity only a facsimile would be capable of rendering, therefore, proves to be a tricky and even chimerical undertaking. This article aspires to recount the adventure of this publication in the hope of showing Nodier’s novel in a new light.