Retranslating a 'New' Original: Raymond Radiguet's Le Bal du comte d'Orgel in Italy

After the untimely death of Raymond Radiguet (1900‒1923), the publisher Grasset entrusted the proofs of his second novel Le Bal du comte d’Orgel to proofreaders coordinated by Jean Cocteau. Their questionable interventions, aimed at de-historicizing the story while also effacing the creolized aspects that characterize one of the protagonists, produced a text that ‒ unlike other new avant-garde aesthetics ‒ is carefully crafted on a stylistic level. The novel was translated into Italian by Enrico Emanuelli in 1945, the same year in which Il diavolo in corpo was translated by Maria Ortiz. This double, overlapping and belated mediation, marked by the fame that in twenty years had transformed Radiguet from a young literary star into a revered author, is called into question by the édition intégrale of the novel, which was reconstructed on the original proofs, opening up new questions in France, in 2003, on the authorship of the text and the consequences of the revisions. Luca Grossi’s 2004 retranslation prompts a reflection on the terms of Italian canonization, on past and present editorial dynamics and on the potential inherent in the transience and fundamental incompleteness of the act of translation.