Crossed perspectives - The practice and theory of translation in Valery Larbaud and Alfonso Reyes

The relationship between Larbaud and Hispanic literature is discussed here in the context of the translations of his works into Spanish, his own translations from Spanish, and his role as a “prospector” through his attempts to publish the works of Alfonso Reyes and other Latin American authors in France. Larbaud and Reye’s intuition as authors and translators, rather than theory strictly speaking, is the result of their practice, inhabited by a common love of beauty and the importance of appropriating a text in another language. Since it is impossible to cover the full depth of this subject here, this article offers some examples, based on their correspondence, journals, prefaces and some theoretical writings, of how they played the role of passeurs –sorts of ferrymen– between the two continents. Concrete examples of each of their practice will take into account their experience: Reyes translating Mallarmé and Larbaud translating Reyes. Their dialogue on Larbaud’s translation of Yerbas del Tarahumara de Reyes sheds light on the distance between theory and practice and perhaps on the difficulty of translating a living author, an experience lived by many translators.