D’Annunzio, le théâtre, l’auto-traduction

This paper analyzes two couples of texts by the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, La città morta/La ville morte and Il ferro/Le chèvrefeuille. These two plays, written by D’Annunzio in 1896 and 1913, have long been regarded as self-translations. Today, scholars unanimously recognize that the first text was translated by Georges Hérelle; on the other hand, several doubts persist about the second work. A close cross-analysis of the four texts shows considerable differences in the translation strategies – differences which are consistent with the hypothesis of a “normal” translation for the first text and a real self-translation (or at least a translation closely followed by the author) for the second one.