Jamie's Blog

So here it is, my first blog entry focusing on French literature and what I'm currently reading at the moment. As I stated before, I'm currently reading Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin. This is an 19th century version of Victor Victoria. It unfolds with two literary styles, that add to the book's quirkiness: traditional third person narrative, and second-person writing style. Meaning, the main starts off the book by writing letters to his friend, complaining of his lack of a mistress. Something he finds to be a grave injustice, and he complains about it. A lot. About 70 or 80 pages in, it transforms into a traditional third person omniscient novel, when the character Théodore is introduced. And the way that this character is introduced is just amazing: more beautiful than any man, and even any woman.

But what I wanted to devote this entry to was the whole "coming out" scene of the main character d'Albert. At the end of chapter 5 or 6 I believe, he admits that "I love a man!" And to a French reader this is a shock, but that's only because of the way the French language is structured. It allows for an ambiguity unattainable in English. In the pages preceding this monumental moment, he describes his lover's hands, face, gentleness etc., however, in French possessive adjectives (ie: his/her/their) do not agree with the subject, but with the object of the sentence. (Meaning, if you were ot say "his hand" it would actually always be "her hand" because "hand' is a feminine word). So during these preceding pages, this is how it unfolds. He describes "her beauty, her hand, more beautiful than hers" making sure to use nouns that are all feminine to add to the illusion that the lover in question is indeed a woman.

When the reader is 'shocked' to learn that the love-interest is a 'man,' I immediately started thinking how I would translate, or how any translator would go about doing this. And I came to the conclusion that there is indeed, no real way to translate it, and keep the sense of ambiguity that the French language achieves. The closest would be "my lover's hand, my lover's beauty etc." but that immediately sends a message to the reader that "something isn't right."

Ok, I think I've geeked out enough. Time to finish up my tea, and go gallivant around town.