Translation and the Arts in Modern France

Description

Translation and the Arts in Modern France sits at the intersection of transposition, translation, and ekphrasis, finding resonances in these areas across periods, places, and forms. Within these contributions, questions of colonization, subjugation, migration, and exile connect Benin to Brittany, and political philosophy to the sentimental novel and to film. Focusing on cultural production from 1830 to the present and privileging French culture, the contributors explore interactions with other cultures, countries, and continents, often explicitly equating intercultural permeability with representational exchange. In doing so, the book exposes the extent to which moving between media and codes—the very process of translation and transposition—is a defining aspect of creativity across time, space, and disciplines.

Foreword / Sonya Stephens
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Sonya Stephens
Part One: Cross-Cultural Translation
1. Transposing Genre, Translating Culture / Marshall C. Olds
2. Translating Bretonness—Colonizing Brittany / Heather Williams
3. Baudelaire and Hiawatha / L. Cassandra Hamrick
4. Migration and Nostalgia: Reflections from Contemporary Cinema / Emma Wilson

Part Two: Cross-Textual Transpositions
5. Parisian Décors: Balzac, the City, and the Armchair Traveller / Michael Tilby
6. The Landscapes of Eugène Fromentin and Gustave Moreau / Barbara Wright
7. Translating the Aesthetic Impression: The Art Writing of 'Marc' de Montifaud / Wendelin Guentner
8. Zola's Transpositions / Robert Lethbridge
9. Transposition and Re-Invention: Rodin's Vision / Sonya Stephens

Part Three: Self-Translation
10. The Mummy's Dance: Staged Transpositions of Gautier's Egyptian Tales / Juliana Starr
11. Translating the Self: Colette and the "Fatally Autobiographical Text / Janet Beizer

Part Four: Translation in Process and Practice
12. René Char: Translating a Mountain / Mary Ann Caws
13. Translations and the Re-Conception of Voice in Modern Verse / Clive Scott
14. Rethinking Originality / Making Us See: Contemporary Art's Strategic Transpositions / Catherine Bernard
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• 19th century
• French Studies
• European
• French

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 10 juillet 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253026545
• Langue: English

Extrait

TRANSLATION AND THE ARTS IN MODERN FRANCE
TRANSLATION AND THE ARTS IN MODERN FRANCE
Edited by Sonya Stephens
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
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iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Indiana University Press
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-02563-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-02614-9 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-02654-5 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
FOR ROSEMARY LLOYD
CONTENTS
Foreword Sonya Stephens
Acknowledgments
Introduction Sonya Stephens
PART ONE CROSS-CULTURAL TRANSLATION
1 Transposing Genre, Translating Culture Marshall C. Olds
2 Translating Bretonness-Colonizing Brittany Heather Williams
3 Baudelaire and Hiawatha L. Cassandra Hamrick
4 Migration and Nostalgia: Reflections from Contemporary Cinema Emma Wilson
PART TWO CROSS-TEXTUAL TRANSPOSITIONS
5 Parisian Decors: Balzac, the City, and the Armchair Traveler Michael Tilby
6 The Landscapes of Eug ne Fromentin and Gustave Moreau Barbara Wright
7 Translating the Aesthetic Impression: The Art Writing of Marc de Montifaud Wendelin Guentner
8 Zola s Transpositions Robert Lethbridge
9 Transposition and Re-Invention: Rodin s Vision Sonya Stephens
PART THREE SELF-TRANSLATION
10 The Mummy s Dance: Staged Transpositions of Gautier s Egyptian Tales Juliana Starr
11 Translating the Self: Colette and the Fatally Autobiographical Text Janet Beizer
PART FOUR TRANSLATION IN PROCESS AND PRACTICE
12 Ren Char: Translating a Mountain Mary Ann Caws
13 Translation and the Re-Conception of Voice in Modern Verse Clive Scott
14 Rethinking Originality / Making Us See: Contemporary Art s Strategic Transpositions Catherine Bernard
Bibliography
Index
FOREWORD
IN ONE OF HER FIRST PUBLICATIONS, ROSEMARY LLOYD INCLUDED as an epigraph a quotation from a letter written by Baudelaire. The correspondence in question charges Julien Lemer with selling Les paradis artificiels (Artificial Paradises) and some other works of criticism, and is dated February 23, 1865. Her citation of Baudelaire in 1981 was a reflexive gesture, evoking a shared critical motivation: J ai une assez vive envie de montrer ce que j ai su faire en mati re de critique (I have a very keen desire to show you what I have done as a critic). 1 In 2007, the year in which the same handwritten letter was sold for twice its estimated price by Christie s, Rosemary retired from Indiana University, having more than demonstrated her own worth to the critical enterprise, and in a career spanning three continents, three decades, and more disciplines. 2 Central to Rosemary s identity as a scholar has been her commitment to translation and to the question of intermediality. She has translated Baudelaire s letters and prose poems, as well as Mallarm s correspondence and George Sand s Master Pipers , and continues her work in this area. She has worked on still life, women writers, jealousy, and childhood, rooted in nineteenth-century France, but almost always with a comparative and intermedial perspective.
The essays in this volume were written with a desire to honor Rosemary Lloyd s critical legacy and interests. Some of the scholars were former students, all were colleagues, and all learned from their work and interactions with Rosemary. This volume is dedicated to her, as was the conference that crystallized these ideas, because collectively we had the desire to show her what she had given, and what we could do en mati re de critique to honor her.
Sonya Stephens
NOTES
1 . Lloyd, Baudelaire s Literary Criticism .
2 . Christie s, sale 5481, lot 77, November 20, 2007. The letter sold for 30,250 ($44,617). Baudelaire, Correspondance , 2:441-443.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE TO ALL OF THE contributors for their participation, patience, and cooperation during the preparation of this volume. I also extend my thanks to Fitzwilliam and Murray Edwards Colleges at the University of Cambridge, for enabling the original encounter among these scholars; to the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of French and Italian, and many other colleagues at Indiana University, Bloomington for their consistent support; to Raina Polivka, Janice Frisch, and Darja Malcolm-Clarke at Indiana University Press for their advice and forbearance; to the museums, libraries, and other copyright holders for their assistance with the images; and to Mount Holyoke College for helping to bring this to fruition.
TRANSLATION AND THE ARTS IN MODERN FRANCE
Introduction
SONYA STEPHENS
IN THE OPENING PAGES OF IS THAT A FISH IN YOUR EAR : Translation and the Meaning of Everything , David Bellos argues that the value of translation lies in the fact that it is a process with no determinate results, and that the variability of translations is incontrovertible evidence of the limitless flexibility of human minds. 1 What translation and transposition describe is both difference of expression in a (somewhat) shared endeavor, and the fact of each work as an object in its own right, a new reality. 2 Translation is an effort of creative minds to convey meaning from one language in another. Most often, this posits a binary structure, and usually an opposition, resulting in the valorization of one over the other. In translation, the original is normally upheld as superior-the source text is valorized and its translation often cast as secondary, or an approximation. In the case of transposition, which describes the transfer of meaning or effect to another form, the representational differences are such that, while the creative reworking is less likely to be seen as secondary ( it is a deliberate mis reading that emphasizes difference rather than similarity 3 ), it may still be seen as oppositional. Indeed, intermedial creativity has long been shown to be paragonal, that is, a struggle for dominance between competing forms. 4
Paul St.-Pierre has argued, however, that the relations between the original text and its translation must always be defined in terms of a third element, or a third term, at least in part extrinsic to the texts themselves. This third term, he contends, leads to an uncertainty that raises questions about authority. 5 Ekphrasis (the verbal representation of a visual representation), or the transposition d art, similarly provokes questions of authority-in the sense of interart competition and the supremacy of one form over the other-while, at the same time, promoting all high art as exceptional, as having universal value, hence the existence of shared artistic circles-and perhaps the notion of great art.
This notion of authority (or artistic elitism) is, one law-the third of five-in what Peter Dayan has called a nexus of principles underpinning the interart aesthetic. These principles are useful in describing what we mean by transposition, as well as for explaining the nature of artistic exchange in a particular moment that has defined cultural production since the 1830s. The first, as we have already seen, is that each work of art is an object in its own right (a new reality ) whose value is not in what it says, but in what it is. The second law of the interart aesthetic is the incalculability of any equivalence between artistic expressions in different media (translation is never direct, and collaborations are never unproblematic). The third principle, as stated above, asserts the universal value of art (its timeless and international validity ) while insisting, in the most authoritarian and often elitist terms, that this cannot be defined. The fourth law states, however, that, while the properties of art are indefinable, it is the uniqueness of each new work that defines its status as art, so that some common value intrinsic to each work connects it to a whole through this quality. Fifth and finally, Dayan posits that the only way to convey the incalculable relations of the interart aesthetic is to describe work in one medium as if it were operating in another -something akin to Charles Baudelaire s assertion that ainsi le meilleur compte rendu d un tableau pourra tre un sonnet ou une l gie [the best rendering of a painting may be a sonnet or an elegy.] 6 It is this phenomenon, Dayan argues, that is the interart analogy. 7
These are loose principles, to be sure, but they have the virtue of offering some shape to an aesthetic and defining in quite performative ways the essential features of works that explore and expose their own procedures more than they (re)work similar subjects. Stephen Bann has underscored this problem, asking whether ekphrasis could not draw attention to the modern conviction (deeply rooted at least since the time of Baudelaire) that a good proportion of what is experienced in looking at a work of art simply cannot be expressed in verbal terms? 8 It is this incompleteness, whether experienced as a lack or a plenitude, or irreso