PAOLO SIMONETTI Translating a Book Into… Another Book? Graphic Novels between Comics and Literature As it is widely acknowledged, any translation involves the rendering of some- thing into another language. Absolute fidelity to the original text is nonetheless a theoretical ideal, because, as we know, there is no such thing as a “literal” translation. In an influential essay Walter Benjamin argued that translation is not a simple rendering of some fixed meaning to be copied or paraphrased or reproduced; rather, it is an engagement with the original text that makes us see that text in different ways. According to him, “fidelity in reproducing the form impedes the rendering of the sense […]; a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original’s mode of signification” (Benjamin 1923, 21). In the case of graphic novels, a better suited word would be “adaptation,” that means, according to Linda Hutcheon, “repetition without replication,” aim- ing at “bringing together the comfort and ritual of recognition with the delight of surprise and novelty” (Hutcheon 2006, 173). An adaptation is an extended, deliberate revisitation of a particular work of art, often involving a shift of me- dium, where the final text is by no means secondary or inferior to the original work. Starting from Benjamin’s and Hutcheon’s definitions, I’m going to intro- duce the complex and original relationship between comics and literature—or, ABSTRACT. Since the 1940s, comics have played an important role in the American cultural landscape, constantly reinterpreting, institutionalizing and reinventing former cultural experiences such as non-graphic literature, cinema, and photography. Postmodernist fiction related to comics not only through the appropriation of themes and characters, but also by re-adapting narrative structures and textual strategies typical of comic books, such as the violent juxtaposition of scenes and the use of stratified frames. On the other end, postmodernist techniques eventually contrib- uted to the evolution of comics into the graphic novel form, that added a degree of permanence to an entertainment object which started and developed mainly as a disposable one. Far from being a mere “translation” or a derivative work, Paul Karasik’s and David Mazzucchelli’s City of Glass: The Graphic Novel shows how an allegedly “simple” medium such as comics is able to reinvent the full narrative potential also of insistently language-oriented texts. The authors do not just “translate” Auster’s text; they “adapt” the poetics of postmodernist fiction, inventing a “visual poetics” for their medium. The graphic novel’s visual dimension adds further levels to the narra- tive instability of the text, by inventing visual metaphors and emphasizing similarities and paral- lels that in the original text remained underground.