Should Someone Retranslate Denon with More Double Entendres?

I have gaped every once in a while at the cover of No Tomorrow:  a lush rococo painting of young love, a Fragonard painting at that. This book by (the Baron) Vivant Denon has been an obsession of mine for the simple reason that New York Review of Books Classics and translator Lydia Davis and some larger ecosystem of cultural actors plucked it from the oblivion of time; the content of the text in all its manneredness corresponds to this judgeable cover.

Also, I should add: the translation is excellent. It is simply not, however, what I would have done with the book myself. What gets me about this novella about a tryst is that the title could have been brought into English in a funny alternate way. Point de lendemain means “No tomorrow” but it also contains a play on words about a point… the first connotation of the word point  listed in the Académie Française dictionary closest to the era of this book without overshooting it is of the tip of a needle. The metonymy that is a prick must be considered. There are shades of a burst of pain and coitus and even more so, the idea of a point du jour; a break of day. With that in mind, there is a phrasing that splits the difference and maintains the tension: If Tomorrow Comes. (Note the double entendre.)

There is good reason for hesitation between multiple options. These two translations of this book title are joined in the middle by the nature of negation in eighteenth-century French. 

Je ne marche pas. 

can be translated as I do not walk or I am not walking. But this verb negation literally consists of a ne, which initiates the set of words that imply negation. The verb walk is in the middle. And, lost to many students of French is that the pas actually means step. It literally means I do not walk a step. Or: I am not walking a step. 

In situations in which marche is not being modified with negation to imply never or nothing or something else, the most common negation today involves pas. Perhaps nobody can actually mean it deep down when they say:

Je ne mange pas.

Which nearly no one would normally take to mean I do not eat a step. It rather means I don’t eat. 

In eighteenth and seventeenth century French and earlier, to take two examples, these negations are less frozen inheritances of a complicated past than conveyors of precise meaning. One may encounter 

Je ne mange mie.

and

Je ne bois goutte.

Which can be rendered faithfully (but not so much in elegant literary style) as

I don’t eat anything/ I am not eating anything…not even a crumb.

And

I am not drinking anything / I don’t drink anything…not even a drop.

Sometimes the negation ne…point is made out today to mean not…at all. This negation form is generally understood to be more elevated or soutenue.  But much more in the eighteenth century, this negation is very much the melding of the two interpretations I gave above.

Il n’y a point de lendemain.

means on some level

There is no tomorrow at all.

But more literally it can be said to contain the idea

There is not even a pricking of tomorrow.

Or something like

There is not even a dot of tomorrow (that will be coming).

The meaning today that maintains that ne…point is a stronger negation than ne…pas can be understood to stem from a point or a tip being smaller than a human step. The title of this little story from NYRB can be understood to be something like this sentence but with much ellipted out.

It is fair enough to weigh heeding the criticism that one must focus on primary meaning without overwhelming readers with subtext. As strange as it would be to overlook the thousands of French books from that era that lack translations into English on account of the clandestinity of their circulation in the eighteenth century, on account of a British and American intellectual and cultural climate that did not appreciate them in the era in which they were produced (with both a fear of Catholicism and a fear of libertinage in many quarters), it is still food for thought how one might differentiate oneself from the likes of Davis as a translator engaged with that time period. I think that in this instance, just as a matter of asserting uniqueness in a market, something like a double entendre may be worth the risk.

All that said, this subtext is all over the place in this short text. The epigram for the story is 2 Corinthians 3:6. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” In the original published French epigram for the story, if one were to read the letters normally, one would say, “La lettre tue, et l’esprit vivifie.” The catch is that if one were to be very concerned with the spirit of the letters, one would reach the end and say period—or in French, point. 

In truth, much of the story sounds like this: 

Devenu moins tumultueuse, l’ivresse de nos sens ne nous lassait cependant point encore l’usage de la voix. (48)

On adore… On ne cédera point… On a cédé. (49)

Which, in Davis’s hand, becomes: “Though it became less tumultuous, the intoxication of our senses did not yet allow us the use of our voices.”

and

They adore… They will never yield… They will surrender. 

There is much value in pointing out that there is so much at the surface that dwelling upon a subtle cue from these words may seem silly. I still see a value in that second sentence in the second excerpt being They will not budge a needle’s breadth. Why not imagine adopting a different approach to this book or one much like it, such as my translation of Loiaisel de Tréogate’s Dolbreuse?

Do consider these these two excerpts from that philosophical novel. There are a few instances of double entendres or at least allusions to matters of romance in this passage. I am incidentally particularly proud of the fact that I was not sure how to reconstruct every double entendre from French in English. As such, the vague être détrompé at the end becomes pulled out of error.

La Marquise étoit de ces femmes qui s'extassent au mot de conscience, & dont la vie entière est un tourbillon d'inconstance, qui ont le langage & tout l'extérieur du sentiment, qui aspirent, qui eurent des droits peut-être aux biens qu'il promet, qui * se croyant de bonne-foi susceptibles d'une tendresse à toute épreuve, prodiguent les sermens d'aimer toujours avec les témoignages de la passion la plus vive & la plus sincère ; mais chez lesquelles l'imagination ne se repose jamais , & dont l'ame trop flexible & gâtée d'ailleurs par une mauvaise éducation, ne reçoit plus que des impressions fugitives. Sans 'former aucun desir injurieux à mon épouse, je me procurai des lumières sur le compte de la Marquise . Au premier abord , elle m'avoit paru faite pour ressentir & inspirer une passion : & malgré ma résolution de ne jamais violer la foi conjugale , je fus fâché d'être détrompé . 

Translation:

The Marquise was the type of woman who becomes rapturous at the word steadfastness and whose whole life is a whirlwind of fickleness, who possesses the language and the full edifice of sentiment, who breathes in the lofty air, and who perhaps gained a right to the goods sentiment promises, who believes herself to be of good faith, prone to tenderness in the face of each test, lavish oaths of love forever borne witness to with the most brisk and sincere passion, but in whom imagination never is at rest, and whose soul, too flexible and spoiled moreover by a bad education, no longer receives anything but fleeting impressions. Without forming any desire to injure my wife, I obtained some insights into the Marquise. At first sight, she seemed to me to be made to feel and inspire passion: and in spite of my resolve never to violate conjugal fidelity it displeased me to be pulled out of error.