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Henry David
Thoreau |
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On Translating Thoreau:
Q: Your French publisher
recently brought out your translation of
The Maine Woods, an annotated edition with a 128-page historical and
critical commentary and a massive bibliography. Why did you choose
The Maine Woods? A: I’ve always practiced
translation—it has always been part of my work on Thoreau, especially while
working on the Journal. I would translate some passages just for my own better
understanding. With The Maine Woods,
instead of just a passage, I went on translating the entire thing. It had never
been translated. Neither had Cape Cod,
but I found out that someone was translating it. I would be interested in
presenting A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers in the same way, but it’s a big job and although I’ve tried
to find a publisher, none has been ready to publish it so far. Q: Are there many French
translations of Thoreau? A: Actually, at present,
most of Thoreau’s works have been translated into French, apart from
A Week and the
Journal, which is available to French
readers only through a considerably outdated anthology from the 1920s. One of my
projects is to translate a different selection, or an entire year from the
Journal. There are three translations
of Walden—one from 1922, one from
1967, and the latest from 1985, yet I think there is no really good translation
of it. Q: Thoreau is famous for
his double meanings and extra layers. Does any of that come across in
translation? A: Translating Thoreau is
certainly a difficult task–even The Maine
Woods, which seems so much more straightforward than
Walden, is not that easy. After all,
it’s normal that when you’re reading the English text, you will understand, or
feel that you understand, well enough to continue along. But when you’re
translating, it’s another matter. A translator is really expected to understand
everything–so one problem is the need for a lot of documentation in order to
know what the reality was at the time (for example, logging tools) or in that
part of the world (for example, plant names). Thoreau’s intricate prose is also
a well-known difficulty, and I’m particularly grateful to several members of the
Thoreau Society who exchanged e-mails with me over the meaning of various
sentences or passages, such as the concluding paragraphs of “Chesuncook.” I don’t think the problem was crucial in translating
The Maine Woods. It does contain puns,
yet it is not the same type of multi-layered text as
Walden, which Thoreau reworked for
years. The Maine Woods was edited and
published posthumously. Q: What has the reaction
been to Les forêts du Maine? A: Interestingly, a small
review appeared in a French forestry journal, which discussed the text as a
classic. It seems that The Maine Woods
is quite popular with foresters and in forestry schools. Even in English, it’s
almost required reading in Québec, and apparently in the rest of Canada. Q: Your most recent
critical edition in French compares two texts by Thoreau and Frederick Douglass,
doesn’t it? A: Yes, they’re both
counter-Fourth-of-July orations–“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,”
spoken by Douglass in 1852, and “Slavery in Massachusetts,” which Thoreau gave
in 1854. It was particularly interesting to compare them, because, beyond their
common abolitionist commitment, they reflect different political convictions and
personal concerns. I think that Douglass has been virtually unknown in France.
Until very recently,* his 1845 Narrative
of the Life had been out of print for decades except for an abridged or
rather truncated version in 2003. It was part of a series of 80-page books, and
so the publisher just lopped off everything after Douglass’s seventh chapter. It
made no sense to do that. Q: In your experience,
what’s the state of American Studies in France? A: I think it may be
brutally characterized as strongly dominated by contemporary issues. Most of the
Americanist community works on the twentieth century or the contemporary period,
and the number who are working in the nineteenth century or the colonial period
are very few, although there is a strong community of Melville scholars. Also,
the general tendency in France is to focus on fiction and especially
contemporary fiction–the 1960s and after. So trying to work on
nineteenth-century nonfiction is definitely not part of mainstream American
Studies in France. Q: How did you get started
as a Thoreau expert, then? A: At the University of
Paris I had a professor who taught the course on nineteenth-century American
literature, Philippe Jaworski. He is a leading Melville scholar, but part of the
course covered Thoreau. I actually learned English reading Thoreau–I don’t know
if that’s the best way to do it, though. My first attempts at thinking about
Thoreau were my bachelor’s and master’s theses on the
Journal, and I have simply continued
to write about Thoreau. I try to present him not only through translation of the
texts, but also through interpretive studies in order to provide some elements
toward a better understanding of these texts across the distances of time and
geography. Q: Finally, please tell us
how you've spent your time as a Thoreau scholar in Concord. A: Well, my main purpose
was to use the collections at the Thoreau Institute library, thanks to a
fellowship I received from the Thoreau Society. I used those four weeks here at
the Henley Library and at other libraries in the Boston area as well. I read as
much as I could about the context of Thoreau’s and Douglass’s Fourth of July
texts. I was able to absorb others’ commentaries on them, and I was able to
enhance this edition with an up-to-date bibliography for international readers
interested in Thoreau, Douglass, the Fugitive Slave Law, and abolitionism. It’s
difficult if not impossible to find the same materials in France. That’s why
it’s extremely important for me to be able to spend time in the U.S., especially
in New England. *NOTE: A
new translation of Douglass’s 1845 autobiography appeared in 2006, after this
interview took place. Reprinted, with updates, from
Thoreau Society Bulletin, Number 257,
Winter 2007 Randall Conrad is an
independent scholar based in Lexington, Mass., and the director of the nonprofit
Thoreau Project on these pages.
He has contributed essays and reviews to the Concord Saunterer, ATQ, Thoreau
Society Bulletin and other journals. |
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