Translating an Eighteenth-Century Novel, Part Two: The Enlightenment
The article “Presentist Anachronism and Ironic Humour in Period Screen Drama” appeared in the journal Research in Film and History in 2022. It has illuminated for me some of the stakes of my own translation of the novel Dolbreuse. I quite simply do not want to create a product of period literature with the feel of The Great or Bridgerton, two gleefully anachronistic television products. This line from The Great especially distinguished itself in my mind as something to avoid: “You presented me with a bear and recently stopped punching me. What woman would not be happy?” While the other eighteenth-century novel in translation that I am laboring over, A Dreaming Hermit, is full of clipped remarks, this quip is not quite something that I gather could appear in a Russian book of the era imagined, for one thing. Both the gender dynamic and the very rhythm of the sentence were not represented in art at the time in any way quite resembling this. Indeed, as the author of the article, John Shanks, identifies, much of the appeal of this bit of dialogue stems from the archness of its improbability, the metaphorical wink at an audience who knows that most certainly fewer men abuse their wives in this fashion these days. (To say little about what I see as campy dialogue about bears and the “kooky” aristocracy in Russia.)
Consider these lines from part two of Dolbreuse.
Version one:
“Would philosophy serve as a consolation, when all it offers are monuments to and debates grounded in pride, a jargon of errors and contradictions, uncertainty and extravagance? Would religion strengthen us, when we witness its march through the centuries, across the debris of nations, its victims, & show itself everywhere disgusting, soaked in mortal blood—when it appears in so many guises, that each country, each tribe, each individual even dresses it up in his or her own fashion, and when fanaticism today, fought by all camps, appears to be weakening and faltering only for it to drag a man down with it? Would society itself have faith in a fleeting joy, at a time when gullible men, misled by the word friend, are moaning as they wander in search of someone reasonable? When others are ignorant of the art of enduring happiness, or are strongly tempted to lose their grasp on it every day; & when the sweetest of sentiments, the one that should have made people adore demandingness itself, is destroyed or degraded in the most virtuous hearts, & turned into the fell source of the vilest passions?”
Version two, revised:
“Would there be consolation in philosophy? All it offers are monuments to pride and debates grounded in pride—jargon full of errors and contradictions, uncertainty, and extravagance. Would religion strengthen us, when in truth we are witnesses to its bloody march through the centuries, across the debris of nations and its victims? Its repulsiveness is soaked red from its journey regardless of its guises, each country, each tribe dressing it up their own manner. Would religion strengthen us when each individual even dresses it up after his or her own fashion. Fanaticism today, fought by all camps, appears to be weakening and faltering only for it to drag a man down with it. Would society itself have faith in a fleeting joy, at a time when gullible men, misled by the word friend, wander, moaning, in search of someone reasonable? Would society have faith in that joy when others are ignorant of the art of enduring happiness, or are strongly tempted to lose their grasp on it every day? Would it have faith when the sweetest of sentiments, the one that should have made people adore demandingness itself, is also destroyed or degraded in the most virtuous hearts, & turned into the fell source of the vilest passions?”
Original:
« La philosophie seroit-elle consolante, quand elle n'offre que les monumens & les débats de l'orgueil, qu'un code d'erreurs & de contradictions , d'incertitudes ou d'extravagances ? La religion seroit-elle un appui , quand on la voit marcher dans les siecles, sur les débris des nations , ses victimes , & se montrer par-tout dégoûtante du sang des mortels ; lorsqu'elle paroît sous tant de faces , que chaque pays, chaque peuplade, chaque particulier même l'habille à sa mode, & que le fanatisme aujourd'hui, combattu de toutes parts, ne paroît s'affaiblir & chanceler que pour l'entraîner dans sa chute ? La société même, feroit-elle croire à une félicite passàgere, dans le tems que des hommes crédules, abusés par le nom d'ami, s'égarent en gémissant sur les traces d'un être de raison ? Quand d'autres ne savent pas garder leur bonheur, ou sont tentés fortement de le perdre tous les jours ; & quand le plus doux des sentimens , celui qui dut faire adorer l'exigence, se détruit ou se dégrade dans les coeurs les plus vertueux, & se change en la source fatale des plus viles passions ? »
In my efforts to make these lines scan more easily, I removed some of the connective tissue that made these sentences woefully long. But you may notice an exception in this revised version on the right-hand side. There is still a vestige of those complicated sentences in the middle of the revised passage. That is because I want my audience to feel this approach to argumentation that is totally passionate but of a piece with the Enlightenment’s emphasis on making one’s assumptions transparent and perfectly unambiguous to one’s audience. As such, this style of thought is so often overlooked in adaptations of eighteenth-century fiction. The original sentences are so focused on exposing their priors to the thinker that they do not read as campy rehash of the eighteenth century at all. My sense is that a touch of that energy in the revision is enough. This approach gets at the protagonist’s frequent invocation of abstract principles—though they are never first principles dealt with quite as radically as Descartes would. (This is all consistent with what historian Jonathan Israel called “the Moderate Enlightenment.”)
I will address the Romanticism in this philosophical novel in part three.