Mémoire présenté en vue de la validation du Master 1 Aire Culturelle du Monde Anglophone Traduction littéraire et traductologie / Linguistique Directrice de mémoire : Sara Greaves Translating Nonsense : a non nonsense Didier Deléglise – Juin 2015 “What do you know about this business?' the King said to Alice. 'Nothing,' said Alice. 'Nothing WHATEVER?' persisted the King. 'Nothing whatever,' said Alice. 'That's very important,' the King said, facing the jury.‎” Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll Translating Nonsense : a non nonsense page 2/39 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 5 1. What Nonsense is not 7 Nonsense is not light verse, nor (only) meaningless or funny 7 Nonsense is neither the absurd… 7 ...nor humor 8 2. Attempt at a definition 9 Standard and literary definitions 9 A broader approach 10 Our definition 11 3. Some Nonsensical Devices 12 Faulty cause and effect 12 The quintessential absurd 14 Semantic mismatch 15 Absurd precision 15 Multiple repetition 16 Neologism and gibberish 16 Homophony and Alliteration 17 4. Translating Nonsense : nonsense…or not? 18 An Unbalanced presence 18 Translation criticism 19 A few words about the translator 20 (Non) Technical issues : translating the devices 20 The (non) issue of Puns 22 The essence of Nonsense...and translation 23 5. Stephen Leacock, the perfect embodiment 24 Oh no! Not Carroll and Lear! 24 Why Leacock? 24 Stephen Leacock : life and works 25 Forms, means and goals 26 6. Focus on a few translations and some personal attempts 28 7. Conclusion 33 page 3/39 8. Bibliography 34 Primary sources 34 Secondary sources 34 9. Annexes 35 Stephen Leacock’s Bibliography 35 Stephen Leacock on Worldcat 37 page 4/39 “Synopsis of Previous Chapters There are no Previous Chapters.” Nonsense Novels, Stephen Leacock Introduction At the very beginning of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton wrote1 that if he were to be asked for the best proof of adventurous growth in the 19th century, “he would reply, with all respect for its portentous science and philosophy, that it was to be found in the rhymes of Mr. Edward Lear and the literature of Nonsense and that this was the literature of the future.” Unfortunately, one hundred and ten years later it seems that this peremptory assertion was over optimistic. Nonsense fiction, as we will argue, is still underrated as a genre, yet a great number of artists in many different fields have met success under that particular label :Lear’s Poetry, Carroll’s fiction, Beckett‘s theatre, Monty Python’s or Woody Allen’s cinema, to name a few. It can also be indisputably stated that Nonsense, like Humor, has the reputation of being a British —or sometimes Belgian—speciality and, since the death of Eugene Ionesco and Alphonse Allais, poorly represented in French literature, either as a primary source or in translation. Our thesis is that English speaking Nonsense can truly be considered as a genre of its own, and that if we focus on an English source and a French Target, translating Nonsense is not such a challenge.2 Firstly, to mark out the boundaries of our study, we are going to clarify what Nonsense is not, and what it must not be mixed up with. We will then review some academic definitions, show their possible limits and try to supply our own. Then, to pave the way for an effective translation, our third part will focus on the most frequently used devices that Nonsense can rely on. In our fourth part we will take a close look at Stephen Leacock’s art, which perfectly embodies the wealth and variety of the world of Nonsense. 1 G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant. Second edition. London : R. Brimley Johnson, 1902. 2 Within the frame of this essay, we will focus more especially on prose and fiction, English and French and try to avoid ‘universal’ statements about translation ‘in general’. page 5/39 And finally, we will discuss the issues that may arise (or not) while translating Nonsense, illustrated by some short personal endeavors at translation. page 6/39 “It was a wild and stormy night on the West Coast of Scotland. This, however, is immaterial to the present story, as the scene is not laid in the West of Scotland. For the matter of that the weather was just as bad on the East coast of Ireland. But the scene of this narrative is laid in the South of England...” Incipit of "Gertrude the Governess", by Stephen Leacock 1. What Nonsense3 is not Nonsense is not light verse, nor (only) meaningless or funny Light verse, meaningless texts and jokes or puns are often mistaken for literary Nonsense,4 even if Nonsense can obviously sometimes use these forms and devices. Gibberish for example, is a device of nonsense, but cannot be labelled as such if no significant meaning can be found to balance it. Otherwise, the text simply falls into literal non-sense. A lot of texts may be funny and share humor, inconsequentiality, or playfulness with Nonsense, but without having the necessary tension between meaning and lack of meaning, or the necessary break in the logical thread. Riddles are not nonsense, because the tension between meaning and lack of meaning is canceled as soon as the answer to the riddle is given.5 Even the most absurd jokes cannot be considered as Nonsense, because what makes them funny is precisely that we make sense of them, that we ‘get them’. Nor is Nonsense fantasy as it doesn’t follow the illogical constraint : Once you have accepted the wonders or magic of ‘Fantasyland’, everything within follows the rules of logic and the very use of magic can ‘logically’ explain the uncanny. Nonsense is neither the absurd… The first and most common translation of Nonsense in French is ‘absurde’. Unfortunately, the word ‘absurde’ has mainly two very different meanings. The first one, as quoted from Le Robert’s French dictionary :6 “has a Latin origin Absurdus (that which doesn’t sound right), lacking 3 Nonsense will be written with a Capitalized N throughout this essay to distinguish it from nonsense or non­sense, in the common acceptation of the term : “That which is not sense; absurd or meaningless words or ideas” as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary. 4 See definitions, in part 2, for more details. 5 When the Mad Hatter asks Alice in Carroll's Alice in Wonderland :"Why is a raven like a writing­ desk?" and Alice gives up and the Hatter replies that he does not know either,” we actually have a nonsensical riddle, but only because the commonly accepted logic of the riddle, i.e. that the speaker KNOWS the answer, is not fulfilled here. 6 Le Nouveau petit Robert, Nouvelle édition. Paris : Les dictionnaires Le Robert, 1993. page 7/39 common sense, or reason, stupid.” The second definition is actually more relevant in the philosophical field or to a lesser extent in that of literature. Far from being funny, the latter has a very pessimistic acceptation and has been popularized by Albert Camus in the 50’s : “the existence of that is not justified by any final goal” (Le Nouveau petit Robert, ibid.). As Ronald Aronson put it in the Online Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy :7 “Camus posed one of the twentieth century's best-known existentialist questions, which launches The Myth of Sisyphus : ‘There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide’. And his philosophy of the absurd has left us with a striking image of the human fate : Sisyphus endlessly pushing his rock up the mountain only to see it roll back down each time he reaches the top. ” In France the ambiguity of the term remains. Even restricted to the literary area, one speaks of ‘Théatre de l’absurde’, for Eugene Ionesco’s theatre as well as ‘roman absurde for L’étranger, by Camus or even Voyage au bout de la nuit by Céline. Thus, Nonsense may include some absurd situations, in the first meaning of the word, but may seldom refer to the absurd in its existentialist acceptation. Bernard Gendrel,8 during a lecture at l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure, pointed out that « l'absurde d'un roman de Kafka ou d'une pièce de Beckett diffère du nonsense. D'ailleurs, en anglais, on parle de «Theatre of the absurd» et non pas de «nonsense theatre». L'expression anglaise montre qu'il y a une différence de perception entre les deux genres. Chez Beckett, l'absurde se présente comme une vision du monde inspirée par une philosophie pessimiste. L'absurdité du monde soumis à la vieillesse et à la mort, l'absurdité du langage qui ne peut que se répéter sans innover […] Le nonsense, quant à lui, semble difficilement utilisable dans le cadre d'une philosophie.» ...nor humor Last but not least, Nonsense is not humor. More precisely, Nonsense is almost always humoristic, but the reverse is not true : there are actually numerous forms of humor that don’t rely on Nonsense. This distinction is all the more important as it is often the source of many misunderstandings. As we will see later on, puns or wordplay for example, which can be difficult to translate, are not at the heart of Nonsense. 7 See : http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/ 8 L’humour : tentative de définition, a Lecture from Bernard Gendrel and Patrick Moran. Ecole normale supérieure, Paris, 2005­2006. page 8/39 "Lord Ronald said nothing, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions." Gertrude the Governess, Stephen Leacock 2. Attempt at a definition Before attempting to propose our own definition of Nonsense we are going to review some of those proposed by reference dictionaries and then by literary glossaries.