The Place of Breath in Alan Hollinghurst's Berenice

This chapter closely reads moments in Alan Hollinghurst’s 2012 translation of Bérénice where characters complain of their incapacity to breathe, rejoice in their capacity to breathe again, or contemplate the air around them as a potentially hostile medium. Reflecting on the archaeology of lines in the translation such as ‘I cannot breathe in this uncertainty’, ‘I breathe, you give me life again’ or ‘what air is this you breathe?’, the chapter considers what such moments contribute to Hollinghurst’s rendition of Racine’s play, and how they differ from their French originals. This chapter also considers how such moments enable Bérénice to be read in dialogue with a range of recent and contemporary writing that reflects on the dynamics and ethics of breath and breathing in relation not only to the work of canonical writers but also to Black Lives Matter and Covid-19.