Multidirectional Memory, Polyacroasis and (Un)translatability in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad

Abstract

The primary aim of this article is to analyse the alignment between multidirectional memory and literature. Michael Rothberg’s multidirectional memory model is scrutinized so as to elucidate how this approach works in fiction. The present article further analyses the rhetorical concept of polyacroasis, proposed by Tomás Albaladejo in 1998 in order to examine its interlacing with multidirectional memory as well as to demonstrate the manner in which polyacroasis may function as a vehicle of multidirectional memory in literature. On the other hand, the notion of translator as secondary witness (Deane-Cox, 2013; 2017) will be employed so as to evaluate the role of the author as translator. By means of a case study, Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad. Una novela de novelas, I will attempt to analyse how the frameworks provided by multidirectional memory and polyacroasis along with the workings of empathy encourage and pave the way to translatability. Similarly, I will examine how the notion of translator as secondary witness functions in a novel like Sefarad, taking into account that the author of this novel inscribed his translation into Spanish of passages coming from Holocaust testimonies which were not published in Spain by the time the novel was being written.