(Untitled)

[wwidsith]

I am flitting a lot at the moment; I can't concentrate on one thing for very long. Everything feels very transient. This is especially reflected in my current reading: I normally have a couple of books on the go at once, but right now I am in the middle of no fewer than seven, which for me is a lot, and indicative of some weird mental flightiness

Comments

[rag_and_bone]

i have tried several times to read swann's way and keep putting it back down. i won't say i've quit on it, but i haven't been successful yet, that's for sure.

[wwidsith]

Which translation have you got? I just find it VERY DULL.

[rag_and_bone]

i've got the "definitive french pleiade edition" translated by c.k. scott moncrieff and terence kilmartin. same as yours? though i see no "enright" credited.

[wwidsith]

Yeah, that may be it. I think Moncrieff did it first, then Kilmartin modernised it. Then later again, Enright revised the revision. Too many cooks perhaps....

[ruakh]

> One of the other books I'm reading is Madame Bovary, which I AM reading in French.

I should do that. I read it in English translation (I didn't know much French yet) and absolutely hated it, but maybe I'd like the original better.

[wwidsith]

Did you? Well I think there is a tendency to appreciate foreign writers who are very clear and (if I'm honest) easy to understand. Most of Europe thought Edgar Allen Poe was a brilliant writer (which he's not), and the classic example is of Tolstoy, whom everyone adores as a writer except the Russians -- in Russia, Turgenev was the stylist and Tolstoy is just a good storyteller. So I am probably biased, but I must say I'm enjoying Flaubert so far..

[weofodthignen]

I think you're onto something here, though I am unashamed of liking Poe and detesting Henry James. I think the ease of translation may explain the popularity in other languages of Jack London.

I liked Mme Bovary in French, too. But my dad enjoyed reading Proust in English . . . so the obvious question is why you haven't looked it up in French and found out if the sentences unknot themselves more satisfactorily? Personally I have no incentive whatsoever--I wanted to strangle Jane Austen, so I know Proust has nothing I'd like.

M

[wwidsith]

I should say I enjoy Poe, I just don't think he's much of a great prose stylist. He's a lot of fun though.

[commonpeople]

Perhaps the effect is much more voluptuous in French.

I think you are right. There are certain things that cannot be translated from one language to the next, no matter how great the translator, and perhaps this is a problem with your particular translation. I know that certain brasilian authors like Guimaraes Rosa are impossible to translate because their language is so specific to certain regions of Brasil, with words that don't have any equivalent in other languages. Translations work better for books like The Da Vinci Code, where the language is easy and straight forward, based on pop culture and easily understandable to people from different countries.