Proust: la traduction du sensible by Nathalie Aubert (review)
2003; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 98; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2003.a827407
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Critical Theory
Resumo786 Reviews volume concludes with an important bibliographical update covering the extensive work (much of itof an editorial nature) that has been carried out over the last ten years. University of Bristol Timothy Unwin Proust: la traduction du sensible. By Nathalie Aubert. Oxford: Legenda (European Humanities Research Centre). 2002. ix+147 pp. ?I9-5?- ISBN 1-900755-793 . Towards the end of 'Combray' Proust uses an expression in regard to his description of the interplay of light and the wet surface of a wall that encapsulates everything Nathalie Aubert attempts to do in this study ofthe transcription of sense impressions into words. Connecting the glint on the wet tiled roof of the gardener's shed and reflections in the pond, the narrator not only records his enjoyment of this fleeting moment but insists that the effortto understand it must not be shirked. He is aware that the effortinvolved implies, as does this study, a particular kind of translation: La plupart des pretendues traductions de ce que nous avons ressenti ne fontainsi que nous en debarrasser [. . .] Et voyant sur l'eau et a la face du mur un pale sourire repondre au sourire du ciel, je m'ecriai [. . .] 'Zut, zut, zut, zut'. Mais en meme temps je sentis que mon devoir eut ete de ne pas m'en tenira ces mots opaques et de tacher de voir plus clair dans mon ravissement. (A la recherchedu tempsperdu, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 3 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 1, 155) Though this is not an instance quoted by Aubert, it is clearly the nub of the issue. Her plan is to execute a most careful examination of that delicate area between object seen and the deepening sense of being and elation which goes beyond the banality ofthe situation and becomes a challenge for the narrator to resolve in words: in fact, the very opposition of life and art that lies at the root of Proust's quest. She sees this as a refinement of an aesthetic and ontological experience that has beginnings in Jean Santeuil, and gathers momentum from Proust's acquaintance with Ruskin. The broad thrust is to elucidate how Proust creates an are from the moment of mysterious sensation through to the revelations in Le Temps retrouvewhich show the power of the expressivity of metaphor. It is in the firstpart, 'De la pratique traduisante a la theorie de la metaphore', that Aubert detects the important change of direction in Proust's writing and what he may do beyond the simple recording and description of pheno? mena. She proposes a strong link between Proust's obsession with Ruskin, involving his translations of The Bible ofAmiens and Sesame andLilies, and his maturing insight, which is: translating Ruskin teaches him in turn to translate, justify,and hence deepen what would otherwise remain a mere descriptive record. The very energy and detail of Ruskin's descriptions spark offProust's originality in that the moral sense that underlies Ruskin makes Proust aware ofan ethical dimension to his own aesthetic adventure, namely that 'devoir'. After translating Ruskin he at last finds his own way of dealing with the translation of reality into fiction. Aubert reminds us too of the lesson for Proust in Carlyle's Essays, where, referringto Shakespeare, Carlyle says that the artist is concerned not so much with 'looking at a thing, but through it [. . .] the thing melts as itwere into light under his eye, and anew creates itselfbefore him' (p. 19). The most interesting part of this study links with this sense of the visual and sets out examples of Proust's stylistic resources, especially the feeling for the power of indirection and of metaphor as the tool for re-establishing an epiphany as the preliminary to under? standing it. The section on 'L'esthetique du tableau' (pp. 76-83) is a very fruitful MLRy 99.3, 2004 787 application ofher thesis with interesting speculations on the transmitting ofthe visible world in terms of painting, involving comparisons with Elstir, Turner, and Ruskin. University of Glasgow W. L. Hodson Giraudoux: 'La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu'. By Victoria B. Korzeniowska. London: Grant and Cutler. 2003. 71pp. ?7.95. ISBN 0-7293-0434-5. The...
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