Jorge Semprún and the Languages of Democracy.

In Semprún's writing, the translated text is the image par excellence of layered contexts, displaced origins, transferable but not wholly assimilable truths, that the author takes from the experience of exile and makes the stuff of his political and aesthetic vision. The formulation of the reader as 'mon semblable, mon frère' makes the act of translation one of 'courtoisie' and inclusion, especially resonant in relation to fraternity as a core ethical and human value. This article will consider his articulation of that translational vision in the essay Mal et Modernité (1990), before going on to explore how his earlier, bilingually titled novel L'Algarabie (1981) both questions and affirms that vision in the context of ideological breakdown. In particular, it will consider how Semprún extends the layering and displacement of the bilingual or translated text to the possession and haunting of time, place and consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]