Walter Benjamin, la traduzione e l’ironia primo-romanitca

The aim of the paper is to interpret the passage of Benjamin’s text The Translator’s Task, in which the author links the process of translation with the notion of irony. For Benjamin, translation places the original text within a more ultimate context, and that is precisely where irony arises. Here, irony is not merely a rhetorical device, whereby the contingent translation appears more definitive than the original text, but carries a speculative weight related to Romantic thought. Benjamin had devoted his doctoral dissertation to Early Romanticism, seeking, among other things, to liberate the notion of irony from the image of pure subjectivism attributed to it by a Hegelian hermeneutic tradition while also highlighting its positive, objective, and constructive aspects. The general argument of the present paper is that one of the key points of reference for understanding Benjamin’s writing on the translator’s task is precisely his interpretation of Early Romantic thought. More specifically, it shows how the reference to irony should also be understood – and above all – in a technical sense, that is, through the reference to Frühromantik and Benjamin’s reading of that notion. To this end, the paper first examines Benjamin’s original and significant account of Early Romantic irony. Building on this foundation, it then explores how this notion interacts with the theory of translation presented in the essay in question. In conclusion, it offers some reflections on the significance of translation as an ironic process.