Tuesday, November 9, 2010

"Madame Bovary" Re-translated

I studied Flaubert's work in graduate school and was always gripped and impressed by his portrayal of Emma Bovary. A couple of years ago I tried to re-read "Madame Bovary" and found myself put off by Flaubert's realistic but in some ways misogynist view of Emma. It's true that he famously said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi!" so any negative portrayal of her was, in a sense, a purposeful revealing of his own weaknesses as well.
Nevertheless, reading the novel many years later, although I still understood her yearning for romance and for "something more," I found myself impatient with Emma and with the novel. Now there is a new translation into English, by the well-respected author of unusual, very short stories and a translator of Proust's "Swann's Way," Lydia Davis. Davis feels that earlier translations strayed too far from the original, and lost the sense of Flaubert's style. According to a very informative New York magazine article by Sam Anderson (10/11/10), Davis "spent more than two years trying to create the closest possible replica of 'Madame Bovary' that would still make sense to an English reader." Anderson adds that "Flaubert's novel demonstrates the kind of perfect control seen more often in poetry...craftmanship so advanced that the craftmanship disappears....Davis admits that this is the one aspect of Bovary that will never survive translation: an almost superhuman cohesion." I think I will look for this new translation.
 
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