Friday, January 30, 2009
Old yarns
Paid a visit to the second hand bookshop at Earlsfield yesterday and acquired a nice little collection of Maupassant stories. Part of an ancient CUP series of French texts. Nicely done with an introduction and with sparse footnotes giving translations of odd phrases which one might otherwise have difficulty deciphering. Only let down by the lettering on the spine, fortunately hidden by the elderly dust jacket, which is fine. How did they come to choose such an inappropriate font for the spine? Makes the book look very cheap. Maybe we were still in the throws of austerity book production when the second reprint of this thing was knocked out in 1952.
Nostalga'd by finding a Bowes & Bowes sticker inside, this being a shop of my youth. I think there is still a bookshop on the same site but I don't think it bears much resemblance to the slightly stuffy academic bookshop of my time - although it was never pleasantly fusty in the way of the late lamented Heffers. Much more up-to-the-minute sort of place.
Reminded by the introduction of my blockage with "Boule de Suif", which I had not known was his first best seller. Most of the time I read this as ball of fat or ball of suet - and only occasionally render it as dumpling, which I suppose to be the correct translation. The one which gets you a point in a GSCE translation. Illustrating one of the things which is hard about translation: neither rendering fully captures the spirit of the original. And that is only three words!
Read "Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme" on the way home. Very affective under the influence of a couple of Bombardiers and a couple of ordinaries. A level of directness, brutal directness even, about family life in the country not matched by English realist novels - my understanding being that George Eliot was considered, or considered herself, a realist, in opposition to the romantic tosh which had been poured out before her time.
All in all, a very good £3 worth.
Nostalga'd by finding a Bowes & Bowes sticker inside, this being a shop of my youth. I think there is still a bookshop on the same site but I don't think it bears much resemblance to the slightly stuffy academic bookshop of my time - although it was never pleasantly fusty in the way of the late lamented Heffers. Much more up-to-the-minute sort of place.
Reminded by the introduction of my blockage with "Boule de Suif", which I had not known was his first best seller. Most of the time I read this as ball of fat or ball of suet - and only occasionally render it as dumpling, which I suppose to be the correct translation. The one which gets you a point in a GSCE translation. Illustrating one of the things which is hard about translation: neither rendering fully captures the spirit of the original. And that is only three words!
Read "Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme" on the way home. Very affective under the influence of a couple of Bombardiers and a couple of ordinaries. A level of directness, brutal directness even, about family life in the country not matched by English realist novels - my understanding being that George Eliot was considered, or considered herself, a realist, in opposition to the romantic tosh which had been poured out before her time.
All in all, a very good £3 worth.
# posted by Jim @ 12:54 AM 
