Translating the Aeneid to the Nouveau Roman: Pierre Klossowski’s Translation

While the relationship between the French and Virgil can most readily be indicated by the overwhelming response to the Bucolics, culminating in the translations of Valéry and Pagnol, the most controversial and perhaps most striking translation into French of Virgil is undoubtedly Pierre Klossowski’s Aeneid (1964). The differences between Klossowski’s translation and the other versions of the Aeneid available to the French public at the time (most of which had been produced by professional classicists) are instantly and palpably obvious. The classicists reacted with predictable hostility, and Jean-Paul Brisson appeared to be voicing the ruffled pique of most of his colleagues when he complained that this translation ‘qui a fait grand bruit est un véritable contre-sens qui dénature profondément le texte de Virgile’. ¹ Klossowski’s crime is to have produced a translation which makes no attempt to familiarize Virgil or to make his work accessible. Rather it jeopardizes the comfortable figure presented by classicists as Father of the West. ²