Chekhov's Mistress

TNR on Proust Translations

by Bud Parr

Updated see bottom of entry.


I’ve accumulated a stack of reviews on the Prendergast (ed.) Proust translations, but The New Republic has jumped into the fray with an article* by Wyatt Mason with what I would call more of a discussion of translation centering on Proust than a review. In fact, it is not until well into the article until Proust is discussed. However, it’s an interesting read for those considering the new translation or just interested in the subject. Unlike many writers on the sacrilegious act of translation, Mason, himself a translator, ultimately seems to take an agnostic view:


“And yet, such philosophically different approaches noted, we must acknowledge that ultimately the differences they embody, however substantial, are not differences of substance: rather, of style. And in matters of style, if any more indisputably conveys the qualities of the original French, if any is unambiguously more faithful, wiser minds than mine will over similar matters disagree.”


Myself being mostly “monoglot”, but avid reader of non-english prose, I tend to agree with Mr. Mason when he defends all attempts at translation:


“And please don’t ruin everyone’s day by mentioning contumacious Constance Garnett, who had the temerity to render all of Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky, and Gogol, and Lermontov, and Chekhov—which is to say invented the idea of Russia for a century of Western readers. Because, yes, while all of these writers would not exist to us without these translators, let us not forget that the prose of all these shoebuckle villains was second-rate. Their methods? Crude. Their focus? Blurry. How could they give us a sense of these great writers’ Great Styles?


Unless, of course, we consider something that Proust, that supreme stylist, said on the subject. In an interview in 1913, when the first volume of his novel was published, Proust told his interlocutor:

‘Style has nothing to do with embellishment, as some people think; it’s not even a matter of technique. Like the color sense in some painters, it’s a quality of vision, the revelation of the particular universe that each of us sees and that no one else sees. The pleasure an artist offers us is to convey another universe to us.’

It is rarely a risk to say that Proust was right; but Proust was right. The trouble with translations, the reason so many Gides and Goethes find them galling, is that they erase a writer’s every careful choice, and replace a burnished surface with a second-rate surrogate—and still manage to reveal a universe. We hate translations because they succeed despite their failures, and in so doing they reveal our easy ignorance.”


If there are any failings in this otherwise interesting article the one I would like to see corrected is an actual review of the new translations, in detail, on each of the volumes. Astonishingly, Mr Mason seems to have read three separate versions of the six volume book “… having spent the better part of four months reading the new Viking/Penguin Proust, and the old Kilmartin/Enright Proust, and the erenow Moncrieff Proust.” Some take a lifetime to find the time to read Proust. If he managed to read it three times in four months, the I would hope to see some reviews out of that.


As an aside…


When they first came out in the UK, I bought a paperback edition of the “In Search of Lost Time” six volume set. I had read that they would not be released in the states for some time and I wanted to at least have them at my side for occasional clarity or comparison as I moved into Volume II (having read Swann’s Way some time ago) and beyond. Now it seems that Penguin is releasing them here (four so far) as well and the first volume is now in paperback.


*TNR is a subscription site. The article can be accessed for free with a four week trial subscription (which can be canceled), but a credit card is required.

The Literary Saloon has informed me that the article is available for free and that link is in the comments section.


CAAF has a few words on this article as well.


Read widely, think well, and write often.

posted January 12, 2005

comments

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=95KX9Cx+tezOH1Z6gs8/Ex==

    – M.A.Orthofer (01/13  at  10:21 AM)


Thanks for your comments! I have committed myself utterly to the new translations, having bought the first three volumes in the U.S. edition. The fourth, as you say, is also available. I have my eye on what is evidently a remaindered copy of the British edition of volume five, though I gather there are differences, none serious. (The Brits with their greater tolerance for continental foibles leave the literary quotations in French, and also follow French style in using dashes instead of quotation marks.)

Curiously enough, all three volumes I have purchased appear to be remaindered! The first two were sold as new by Amazon but hard black marks on the bottom edge, usually a giveaway; one also has a distressed back cover on the dust jacket. The third volume I bought on Amazon Marketplace from a remainder house in Texas for a very good price, ten bucks including postage; it’s actually in better shape than Vol 2 as purchased from Amz. It bears the same telltale mark on the bottom edge.

    – Dan (03/11  at  04:43 PM)


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