Event Date
Discomfort in Spanish Translations of Virgil’s Aeneid: Nisus’ Doubt (Aen.9.184-185)
Description:
Studies of Virgilian translation have gained recent momentum, thanks to contemporary Latinists such as Susana Braund, whose monumental Translating Virgil (2025) stands out. Braund, together with Zara Torlone, edited a special issue of Classical Receptions Journal (2022) on failure in Virgilian translation and published the collective volume Virgil and his Translators (2018). In the Spanish-speaking world, equally valuable work includes Río Torres’ (2024) research on fidelity in Spanish American Virgilian translation and Marcela Suárez’s (2018) survey of Spanish translations, beginning with Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield’s Argentine version (1888).
Within this Spanish American context, however, much remains to be done. Specifically, tracing the links between seminal translations published in Spain that reached the Americas and American translations that made the reverse journey is crucial. Thus, conceptualizing the broader history of Virgilian translation into Spanish—with its many ramifications and traditions shaping complex and distinct cultural identities (as previously discussed in García Jurado and Mariscal de Gante [2020], and Mariscal de Gante and García Pérez [2024])—remains a challenging task.
Against this backdrop, the lecture “Discomfort in Spanish Translations of Virgil’s Aeneid: Nisus’ Doubt (Aen. 9.184–185)” examines how Spanish translators in the Americas and Spain have addressed the discomfort (an approach previously explored by Thomas (2001) in relation to translators of Dido) posed by a significant passage of the Aeneid. Unlike previous studies, it highlights the distinct interpretative challenges that Nisus’ doubt poses to translators—especially Catholic ones—and how these challenges prompt reflection on their approaches to faith and interpretation. By analyzing translations and paratextual commentary, it attempts to show how translators shape their readers’ understanding, offering new insights into the interplay of translation, uncertainty, and culture.
The lecture is organized into three sections. First, it discusses the dynamics of Virgilian translation into Spanish on both sides of the Atlantic, emphasizing their continuities and discontinuities. Second, it analyzes the discomfort caused by a passage in which Virgil’s Epicurean background emerges and an existential question arises—a passage that has not left Spanish translators indifferent. Finally, it offers conclusions about Virgilian translation by comparing different versions of the Aeneid from a linguistic perspective and focusing on the anxieties and discomforts that a classical work can provoke, even in its seemingly enthusiastic translators.
Short bio:
Carlos Mariscal de Gante Centeno holds a PhD in Classics with honors from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), as well as a BA and MA in Classics from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), and a BA in Philosophy from the National University of Distance Education (UNED, Spain). Since 2023, he has been an Associate Researcher (Level C) at the Center for Classical Studies (Institute of Philological Research, IIFL) and a Lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL), both at UNAM. His current research focuses on the history of Virgilian translation into Spanish in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, particularly through the concepts of “challenge” and “discomfort.” He is a member of the Mexican National System of Researchers (SNII, Level 1). H currently directs the international project “Ibero-American Modernity of Virgil’s Georgics” (IA401025, https://iberogeorgicas.wixsite.com/unam) and coordinates the Virgilian Studies Seminar at the IIFL (https://virgilianos.hypotheses.org). He recently joined the Steering Committee of Hespérides: Classical Studies in the Luso-Hispanic World (https://www.hesperideslusohispano.org). His latest publication is Virgilio y las identidades culturales hispanoamericanas, co-edited with David García Pérez (UNAM, 2024).
Brief bibliography
Braund, S. M. (2025). Translating Virgil: A Cultural History of the Western Tradition from the Eleventh Century to the Present. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108556828
Braund, S. M., & Torlone, Z. M. (2022). Introduction: What is failure in translation? Classical Receptions Journal, 14 (3), 289–296. https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clac020
Braund, S. M., & Torlone, Z. M. (Eds.). (2018). Virgil and his Translators. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198810810.001.0001
García Jurado, F., & Mariscal de Gante Centeno, C. (2020). Identidades culturales del virgilianismo en Hispanoamérica. Reinventar la Antigüedad. [Electronic resource]. https://doi.org/10.58079/mvgs
Mariscal de Gante Centeno, C., & García Pérez, D. (2024). Nuevas perspectivas culturales sobre Virgilio en el ámbito hispanoamericano. In Mariscal de Gante Centeno, C. & García Pérez, D. (Eds.) (2024), Virgilio y las identidades culturales hispanoamericanas (pp. 9-18). IIFL-UNAM. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19435077
Mariscal de Gante Centeno, C. (2024). Una nueva identidad católica para Virgilio. Los ensayos y la traducción de Aurelio Espinosa Pólit. In Mariscal de Gante Centeno, C. & García Pérez, D. (Eds.) (2024), Virgilio y las identidades culturales hispanoamericanas (pp. 185-217). IIFL-UNAM. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19430822
Río Torres-Murciano, A. (2024). ¿Traducciones fieles en verso? El caso de los Virgilios mexicanos. Nova Tellus, 42(2), 111–133. https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.nt.2024.42.2/000S22X0Q116
Suárez, M. A. (2018). América traduce a Virgilio: El caso de Colombia, México y Argentina. In D. D. Battiston & M. C. Domínguez (Eds.), Et ipsum ludere, quae vellem, calamo permisit agresti: Traducir a Virgilio: la recreación incesante (pp. 22–43). Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de La Pampa.
https://www.unlpam.edu.ar/images/extension/edunlpam/Pliegos%20de%20traducción:%20volumen%20II.pdf
Thomas, R. F. (2001). Dido and her Translators. Virgil and the Augustan reception (pp. 154–190). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511482403.007