English
translation
I have
chosen to read, study and translate an article in the New York Review of Books
by Roger Shattuck entitled “Think like a Demigod”. In order to briefly justify
my choice I would say that I am generally interested in literature. More
precisely I am fond of XIXth classical writings which may be illustrated by
Flaubert’s work. Besides Roger Shattuck’s paper entails many references
concerning Madame Bovary and Salammbô both of which I read and
enjoyed. Nevertheless I had never had the opportunity to read a biography about
Gustave Flaubert; so reading this specific article was an opportunity for me to
learn new elements about this well-known French author.
Now I am going to present you Shattuck’s work, beginning with the
journalist and the review, to then go on with a summary, stylistic comments and
my personal difficulties regarding the translation.
Author
Roger Shattuck is professor of literature at Boston University and a
literary critic specialized in the study of French classical authors from the
XIXth century such as Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. He is also interested
in French poetry for example in the work of Charles Beaudelaire, Guillaume
Apollinaire, or concerning more recent issues in the Avant-Garde through
paintings. He has quite frequently published articles in the New York Review of
Books and has also written some books. He is indeed the author of Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to
Pornography and recently prepared, with Dorothy Hermann, the centennial
edition of Helen Keller's The Story of My Life. The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts has recently
been republished (February 2004).
Source
The New
York Review of books is a monthly cultural paper from the United States,
dealing with literary but also political issues. Mainly read by the New York
intelligentsia this review was created in 1963 and has acquired its good
reputation thanks to the glorious name of its “writers”: Hanna Arendt, Norman
Mailer, Truman Capote… They were the first to trust in the success of this
project. Detailed, critical and full-length articles and also David Levine’s
caricatures could be mentioned as pecularities of this review.
Summary
This article mainly aims at reviewing Geoffrey Wall’s biography about
Gustave Flaubert from a literary point of view. It is composed of three parts.
In the first, Shattuck essentially mentions the positive points of the
book he is studying: an unusual both physical and literary presentation of
Flaubert (that is to say his personal physical evolution and also from his very
first writings to his best-known such as Madame
Bovary), the allusion to external elements that have influenced Flaubert’s
literary production (notably affective relationships with women or friendships,
but also his epilepsy crisis and journeys to the Middle East for instance),
more generally a contextualization in the XIXth century and the allusion to
Flaubert’s everyday life (his appartment in Paris, feasts with friends such as
Tchekhov, his relations with journalists and the media); as a result Wall
proposes a readable synthesis of the available literature about Flaubert, the
opening chapters are said to be detailed and the central one about the
Sand/Flaubert relationship interesting.
In the second, Shattuck denounces the weaknesses of Wall’s biography:
dubious generalizations about Flaubert’s sexuality, a general trend to
simplism, an excessive criticism of Flaubert as a “bourgeois”, a sketchy
impression; all which logically leads to propose other alternatives in order to
compensate these weaknesses.
Finally, in the third part, Shattuck proposes some new ideas which might
have been developed in order to enrich the already existing works about
Flaubert: to insist on the main character’s ambivalence, who may be considered
as a compromis between the artist-bourgeois/the hermit/the mad and debauched;
to highlight special friendships, such as that with Auguste Taine which is
often neglected and enables to evoke artistic interiority and the dilemma which
is faced by any artist concerning inspiration (the link between dream and
reality), but also the identification with his characters and the gap that
separates it from pure madness.
Main relevant ideas of this article
As mentioned before this article first presents Geoffrey Wall’s
biography through its strengths and weaknesses, then secondly compares it with
other writings concerning Flaubert’s life, third suggests and adds other
relevant perspectives and elements. This is after all the classical work of a
literary critic. However besides this explicit goal, I would consider the
persisting will to highlight Flaubert’s mental duality to be the implicit one.
The journalist’s guiding/leading thoughts could be summarized by two
core issues:
First, a precise one: what is the relevance of Wall’s book compared with
others biographies on the same subject? Secondly, a more general one: what new
perspectives on Flaubert’s life should think about to develop an original
analysis of his books?
Stylistic comments
What was
striking when I read this article for the first time was the syntax. Indeed
this article entails sentences which are above all long and complex in their
grammatical structure. For instance Shattuck uses lots of clauses. Moreover the
high level/register of language reinforced this impression. Add to these points
the use of the specific literary vocabulary and the difficulty of quotations
(from French to English and in a high-style classical English), and you can
evaluate some of the challenges which I have encountered during this
translation.
Difficulties
First quotation at the very beginning:
“Madness
and debauchery are two things that I have probed so deeply, where I have found
my way by my own willpower, that…”
Problem on a grammatical and structural level.
Secound part:
Third quotation:
“The Colet effect –for we may call it that- was generated by the
volatile, hazardous substance she herself compounded with lavish care from
echoes, images and reflections…”
Problem on a grammatical, structural and language level.
Between brackets:
(“What are we…?”)
Problem on a grammatical level.
“(…)the image of a tawdry bourgeois slattern…”
Problem on a lexical level.
Third part:
“(…) an art-for-art’s-sake attitude toward language and form…”
Problem on a language level.
“(…)into the blood-curdling imaginary dungeons of the Marquis de Sade’s
universe.”
Problem on a metapherical level.
Secound quotation “(…), was poisoned so effectively myself, …”
Problem on a grammatical level.
Metapher: “The great ragout (…) begins to taste like the inexhaustible
pot-au-feu…”
Problem on a metapherical level.