Document generated on 09/27/2021 6:49 p.m. Meta Journal des traducteurs Translators' Journal The Elusive I Jane Brierley La traduction littéraire au Canada Article abstract Literary Translation in Canada In the light of knowledge gained in translating autobiography, the author Volume 45, Number 1, avril 2000 reviews recent critical theory concerning the genre, and looks briefly at two translations of Stendhal's La Vie de Henry Brulard. URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/002142ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/002142ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal ISSN 0026-0452 (print) 1492-1421 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Brierley, J. (2000). The Elusive I. Meta, 45(1), 105–112. https://doi.org/10.7202/002142ar Tous droits réservés © Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 2000 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ The Elusive I jane brierley Translator, writer and editor RÉSUMÉ L’auteur partage avec ses lecteurs les connaissances acquises lors de la traduction d’une autobiographie et traite de théories récentes sur ce genre littéraire. Elle termine avec une brève analyse de quelques passages tirés de deux traductions de La Vie de Henry Brulard de Stendhal. ABSTRACT In the light of knowledge gained in translating autobiography, the author reviews recent critical theory concerning the genre, and looks briefly at two translations of Stendhal’s La Vie de Henry Brulard. MOTS-CLÉS/KEYWORDS Stendhal, autobiography, memoirs, literary translation Early in my literary translating career I chose to do an autobiographical work (de Gaspé 1988). While a great fan of this type of literature, much of it in translation, I had never considered it particularly as a genre and certainly never as one that required any special analysis. I soon discovered, however, that autobiography has aspects that are unique to it as a genre, and that the ability to recognize and understand the nature of these aspects is immensely helpful to the translator. This knowledge has also been useful in translating fiction and in recognizing passages where deep emotions may surface in fictional circumstances that clearly connect with some very personal experience on the author’s part. The great challenge for literary translators is to transmit the imaginative impulse behind the prose they are dealing with. They must understand the nature of what they are translating and be sensitive to the criteria that, according to critical theory, define the genre and give it depth. This is not the place to discuss nuance in transla- tion; most readers of Meta are aware of the difference in underlying meaning that can be made by the choice of one word or phrase rather than another. I would, however, like to share some of what I have learned. Translating autobiographical works, or parts of works that reveal themselves as deeply intimate, puts literary translators in a special position. They have a double responsibility. Not only do they need to know what is being said in the superficial sense, they need to be especially sensitive to underlying currents, to the writer’s un- avowed aims or preoccupations, and to the influences that surrounded him or her at the time of writing. This sounds like a tall order, but often translators develop this sensitivity because the author is a favourite and they have read much of his or her work and understand the period and the milieu. What many people don’t realize is that the analysis of just what autobiography is all about has become something of a science in the last thirty years. The quest for “the elusive I,” as I have called it, has Meta, XLV, 1, 2000 106 Meta, XLV, 1, 2000 developed into a scholarly sub-genre. This has been fostered by the virtual explosion in modern literature of the number of real autobiographies, as distinct from memoirs, in addition to the now common phenomenon of first-person narration in fiction generally which has made us take this kind of writing for granted. Autobiography must be easy to write (and to translate), we think. The writer merely assembles his or her thoughts and starts. It sounds simple. We shall see. Imagination It is often the case with writers of fiction that, unable to express certain deep emo- tions, they funnel them, consciously or unconsciously, into their literary work. This has led to a branch of literary criticism that has produced many fascinating books in which the sources of events and states of mind are traced to circumstances of the novelist’s life—often based on material that comes to light long after the subject is dead and perhaps forgotten. We have a keen interest in the why and wherefore of writers’ lives especially—a need to know where in the world they get their ideas. The writers themselves may protest that these are works of imagination, exasperated at their readers’ lack of this faculty. “We made it up!” they cry, protesting that fiction is really a pack of lies and would we please give them credit for their ingenuity instead of insinuating that they merely dribbled bits of their life story onto the page or into their computers. Imagination plays a central role in life, said the great Canadian teacher and liter- ary critical theorist, Northrop Frye. We use it in to interpret what is said to us. For example, “suppose we’re talking to… a woman… who’s in a difficult mood. We’re faced with the problem: does what she is saying represent her actual meaning, or it is just a disguised way of representing her emotional state of mind? Usually we assume the latter but pretend to be assuming the former.” He points out that in society’s eyes “the virtue of saying the right thing at the right time is more important than the virtue of telling the whole truth, or sometimes even of telling the truth at all” (Frye 1964: 136-7). “True” autobiography Why am I discussing fiction and imagination in a study of autobiography, you may ask? To begin with, we need to understand that autobiography is a kind of fiction (or “faction” as someone has observed).Writing autobiography requires the author to make the same kind of artistic effort as a novelist. (“What!” you say in shocked tones. “They make it up?”) Well, not exactly. But, as Frye explains in Anatomy of Criticism, “Most autobiographies are inspired by a creative, and therefore fictional, impulse to select only those events and experiences in the writer’s life that go to build up an integrated pattern. We may call this very important form of prose fiction the confes- sion form, following St. Augustine, who appears to have invented it, and Rousseau, who invented a modern type of it” (Frye 1957: 307). Incidentally, we shouldn’t be surprised by the process of selection, whether conscious or unconscious, when view- ing one’s past. Modern critical theory allows us to feel comfortable with unconscious selection—what John Livingston Lowes, quoting Henry James, called “the deep well of unconscious cerebration” (Lowes 1927: 56). the elusive i 107 But this is not all. Not only must there be a creative impulse at work, building up an integrated pattern out of selected events, resulting in “design.” British literary theorist Roy Pascal sees the genre as combining design and truth. “There must also be the need for, and the sincere attempt by, the author to represent a true picture of his personality. Factual truth is not the yardstick by which to judge an autobiogra- phy,” he says, and goes on to enlarge on this phenomenon (Pascal 1960: 189-95). Autobiography and memoirs I mentioned earlier that autobiography and memoirs are not the same thing. Pascal points out that in genuine autobiography, “attention is focussed on the self, in the memoir or reminiscence on others.” However there are wheels within wheels, for in genuine autobiography, even when the author appears to deal with others, “the ostensible form and intention come to serve a different and truly autobiographical intention, since all these identities, these other people, become forces within the writer and are referred back, implicitly more than explicitly, to the writer, whom their impact shapes and who develops in subtle response to them” (Pascal 1960: 8). Another theorist, Philippe Lejeune of France, has written extensively on the sub- ject of autobiography. A groundbreaking work published in 1971, L’autobiographie en France, traced the history of the genre in France and set forth criteria for judging whether or not personal reminiscences constitute a “true” autobiography. It is Lejeune’s belief that writers of autobiography have been much influenced by the similar writings of others. In other words, when faced with the task of how to write about themselves, they adopt and adapt techniques that have been used previously, rather than just dashing it off, as one might a diary entry or a letter. He lists a number of authors who figure as forerunners of the genre, before it was taken so triumphantly in hand by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Confessions. Among these forerunners was a now forgotten woman, Marguerite-Jeanne, Baronne de Staal (1684-1750), whose Memoires de Mme de Staal-Delaunay, giving an intimate view of French aristocratic life, appeared in the middle of the eighteenth century.