Florencia F. C. Shanahan – Buenos Irish
 
THE LETTER 35 (Autumn 2005) pages 43-49
 
There is not such a
consubstantial problem with
letters and their modest 
mystery than the one posed by
translation.
 
J.L.Borges
 
I 
 
It has been said about Joyce’s Ulysses, among many other things, that it should be read in English, and in a loud voice. We did this, together with some colleagues, in rotation, during a year. I had been living in Dublin for three months when we began.
 
From what that experience produced many questions arose, from which I choose two lines of work, whose first articulations I would like to outline today.
 
Firstly, the problem of idiom, related to that of translation, pertinent to psychoanalysis from many and different perspectives. Secondly, the problem of the pair to hear/to read and their difference, which introduces us to the question of writing, central to our field.