La Renaissance et la nuit by Daniel Ménager

Abstract

REVIEWS The EmLit Project: European Minority Literatures in Translation. Ed. by PAULA BURNETT. London: Brunel University Press. 2003. xx+503 PP.; CD. p9.99. ISBN I-9023I6-36-3. The title of this volume refers to European minority literatures. Of the nineteen languages covered, only eleven, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Picard, Walloon, Sorbian, Si cilian, Galician, Catalan, Albanian, Greek, and Turkish, are European in the strictest sense of the term, and speakers of the last three count as minorities only by virtue of the fact that substantial numbers of them are domiciled outside their homelands, in Italy or Germany. The eight remaining languages, namely the Asian or African languages Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Sinhala, Arabic, Amazic (Berber), Lingala, and Gun, are spoken by substantial minorities inEurope, but that isnot the same thing as being European. But, even if one grants that writings produced in Europe by members of these communities can, a la rigueur, count as European literature, there is no strong case for giving them precedence over such undeniably European literary languages as Basque, Breton, Corsican, Faroese, Frisian, Irish, Occitan, S'ami, and Sardinian. (Though the title does not make this clear, the scope of the book is restricted to the European Union.) Languages are grouped according to the country inwhich they are spoken: Britain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The omission of France is unexplained and unjustifiable, given that that country has, on even the narrowest definition of what constitutes a language, at least five minority languages (Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Occitan). One might also have expected other European Union countries to be included. The selection of texts (all of them by contemporary writers) is also unsatisfactory, particularly since inmany cases only verse texts are included. Space is not well used. The actual texts count for only 6i pages, the greater part of the volume being taken up by English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations, which, in so far as I can judge, are reasonably accurate and readable. It would, of course, be unfair to expect the editor to have found people able to translate from the originals all theminority languages involved. In this respect, the case of three Welsh poems, translated into English by the poet himself, is particularly instructive. Two of his translations follow the original closely, but the third is a freer rendering, and it is clear that the French, German, Italian, and Spanish versions are all based on the English translation. This is understandable, but it should have been made clear that, in some cases at least, we are given second-hand translations. Nor is space well used on the CD. In particular, some of the time taken up by the English translation of aGaelic poem or of the eleven minutes devoted to one poem in Sicilian would have been better devoted to extracts from some of the nine languages not included on the CD. All in all, then, a disappointing book. UNIVERSITYOFWALES ABERYSTWYTH GLANVILLEPRICE La Renaissance et la nuit. By DANIEL MENAGER. (Les Seuils de laModernite, iO) Geneva: Droz. 2005. 270 pp. SwF 8o. ISBN 2-600-00990-6. The Renaissance, inDaniel Menager's account, has been commonly conceived as a sun-worshipping culture: one inwhich Neoplatonist philosophy encouraged lovers of truth to rise early and to shun the dark hours. This elite conception of night as some how unhealthy ismatched (again according toMenager) by the early modern popular conception, described by cultural historians such as Jean Delumeau, of night as dan gerous and terrifying, inhabited by demons and spirits, and offering a considerable 8I2 Reviews threat to the human soul and to human salvation. This book sets out to redress the balance, and to explore this 'other Renaissance': that of night-lovers, night-students, and night-contemplators, the astronomers, poets, artists, mystics, theologians, and cosmographers who variously celebrated, illustrated, and mapped the complexities of the night. Menager's texts are drawn from an impressively large sample of elite literature: Galileo, Cervantes, Jean de la Croix, Belleau, Ronsard, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Duirer are only the more canonical figures in this wide-ranging survey. The choice of the term 'Renaissance' over 'sixteenth-century' is a deliberate one: it allows Menager to explore a cultural movement...