Howdy.
A few years ago I picked up the anthology 4 Dada Suicides
published by Atlas Press and found myself enamored by the writings of
Julien Torma. However, other than his Euphorisms published in
that collection and a few letters in Pataphysical Letters
(also published by Atlas Press), I could not find any other English
translations of his writings. What I did find was the collection
Écrits définitivement incomplets published
by the Collége de 'Pataphysique which contains all the known
writings Torma left behind. Unfortunately, I do not speak French
beyond a few phrases I can recall from a few courses in my university
years, but I still maintain the deep desire to read all that I can of
Torma. In order to do so, I shall be
typing the entirety of the
collection into Google Translate to get an idea of what the writing
conveys. I figure that by the time I could even learn French to
translate and read the work,
it'd still be just as poor as a machine translation. I also wish to
share these base translations with other anglophonic people
interested in Torma. Thus, this blog. I will also post the raw French
text as well since I cannot find that online either and perhaps it
will serve as a useful resource for those who wish to do their own
translations Until then.... I'm hopeful the machine translations
hosted on this blog will suffice. I will make a post for each
book/section in Écrits définitivement incomplets,
save for Euphorisms as
it is already translated in 4 Dada Suicides and
the few letters in Pataphysical Letters.
Updates will be rather slow coming, as I'm doing this in my spare
time and the Écrits définitivement incomplets runs
nearly 800 pages in length. Thanks for your shared interest in this enigmatic and elusive figure.
- Damian
