<i>Manfred</i>, and: <i>Le Prisonnier de Chillon - La Lamentation du Tasse de Lord Byron</i> (review)

Abstract

MANFRED. Edited and translated by Davy Pernet. Thurins: Editions Fougerouse, 2008. Pp. 203. ISBN 978 2 9527483 1 5. euro19. LE PRISONNIER DE CHILLON - LA LAMENTATION DU TASSE DE LORD BYRON. Edited and translated by Davy Pernet. Thurins: Editions Fougerouse, 2007. Pp. 91. ISBN 978 2 9527483 0 8. euro18. The year 2006 saw the creation in France of a new publishing company, Editions Fougerouse, based in Thurins (Rhone). This company has taken on the laudable project of specialising in lesser-known works of Romantic writers. To date, two volumes by Lord Byron have appeared: The Prisoner of Chillon and The Lament of Tasso was published in 2007, with a print run of 1000 copies, and last year saw the publication of Manfred, with a print run of 600 copies. It is a fact that while foreign Romantic literature enjoyed considerable fame in nineteenthcentury France, it is now difficult to find in French bookshops. This is especially the case if one is looking for an updated translation. Thus, the efforts of small publishing houses such as Fougerouse or Allia to bring Romantic classics to French audiences should be acknowledged here, but the results must match the ambition of the project. Fougerouse's editions of Manfred and The Prisoner of Chillon are well designed, with a legible font, good quality paper and nineteenth-century engravings illustrating the text (though these are unfortunately without title or source information). In the tradition of Byron's first French translators such as Amedee Pichot, Davy Pernet chooses to render Byron's verse in prose; lucidity being, as he asserts, a key element to a good translation. But, in choosing what Eugene Nida would have called 'formal equivalence', the translator's texts unfortunately often border on a word-for-word rendering of the English original. Certain choices also seem highly questionable, such as the systematic translation of 'mind' into 'mental' where 'esprit' would be more apt a rendering. Similarly, one wonders why 'The hurricane I left behind' (Manfred, I, i, 102) is translated as 'Le hurricane que j'ai laisse derriere moi', despite the fact that the word 'hurricane' is not found in French dictionaries, whereas any French reader would comprehend perfectly well what 'cyclone' means. Moreover, some passages are mistranslated. 'By the perfection of thine art / Which passed for human thine own heart' (Manfred, I, i, 246-47), for example, is translated as 'pour la perfection de ton art, qui fit passer pour humain meme ton coeur', where the correct French form would have been 'qui fit passer pour humain ton propre coeur'. …