The host
welcomed two guests: Professors Sian Reynolds and Peter France. The Maigret
book chosen ("La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin" - published 1931 in France) had
been recently translated into English by Sian as "The Dancer at the Gai
Moulin". Peter was the editor of the “Oxford Guide to Literature in
English Translation”. Thus the evening provided an opportunity not just to
discuss the Maigret book but also the wider question of translations of
literature into English. This had been an issue the Group had grappled with on
a number of occasions when non-English books had been discussed.
Simenon
was born in 1903 and died in 1989. He led a colourful life, details of which
you will find online. There were 193 novels written under his own name; 200
others written under 20 or so pseudonyms; 75 Maigret novels; four
autobiographies; 21 volumes of memoirs. An average of four to five books a
year; 80 pages a day; two weeks to write a book. At his death, world sales
stood at more than 500 million copies in 55 languages, written in a vocabulary
of no more than 2,000 words. And he claimed to have made love to 10,000 women,
but was probably joking.
In
financial terms, Simenon’s move to Maigret was a great success. In 1925, his
earnings were 42,671 francs. In 1929, they were 135,460 francs. By 1931, they
were 310,561 francs. By the mid-1930s, he was earning about a million francs a
year. The figures matter: Simenon is one of the few serious writers whose
achievements can be counted in numbers: a writer with a quantitative career, as
well as qualitative achievements.
Penguin
is now honouring Simenon’s spirit of excess with what seems like a lunatic
project. It is publishing all 75 of the Maigret novels, one a month, in order
and newly translated, over the next few years. It is the kind of project of
which Simenon would heartily have approved.
This sort
of quality and commitment is a long way from Simenon’s treatment at the hands
of his previous English translators, notably Geoffrey Sainsbury. As Pierre
Assouline notes:
“From the very beginning Sainsbury
freely altered names, psychological profiles, details and even plot elements
when he considered them inappropriate, implausible or contradictory. The
results of his ‘re-creation’ were duly submitted for the author’s approval,
which was always forthcoming. And for good reason: Simenon did not understand a
word of English.”
Simenon’s
son responded to this by saying that his father did understand English.
Simenon
owed a lot to Geoffrey Sainsbury, his 1930s translator into English, but, as
indicated, Sainsbury had played fast and loose with the books. At the end of
his translation of "La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin" he had missed out Delfosse’s
death in a mental hospital and any hint of syphilis, and missed out Maigret’s
meeting with Adele. As well as his other omissions, Sainsbury never followed
Simenon’s use of the historic present.
Each
Maigret novel is presented as a battle, or a number of battles. There is the
battle between characters that has led to the mysterious death with which each
story opens; the battle between Maigret and other detectives, magistrates or
politicians involved in the case (all obtuse, obstructive or incompetent); and
the battle of wits between Maigret and the murderer. While all this is going on
the inspector frequently has to struggle against appalling weather conditions,
cycling tens of miles along muddy canal paths in pouring rain, fighting wind or
snow, or labouring under suffocating heat. He is endlessly tempted by drink.
Women seek to seduce him. Men try to buy him off. He is deprived of sleep,
punched and shot at. He moves through crowds as though ‘fighting against a
strong current’. Often it looks as though everything is ‘joining forces to
unsettle him’, but he hangs on, his bull-like physique sustained by beer,
sandwiches, pipe tobacco, the warm stove at police headquarters and the
knowledge that at home his chaste wife is patiently preparing the kind of dish
that won’t spoil however long it’s kept waiting. Then there is his genius.
It
doesn’t show. On the contrary, Maigret’s greatest stroke of genius is never to
reveal his genius. There is no brilliant conversation. For the most part he
appears boorish, uninterested, disgruntled, absolutely resistant to theory,
suspicious of advanced forensics, ‘devoid of subtlety’. When asked what he’s thinking he
invariably replies that he doesn’t think. Asked about ideas, he tells us he has
no ideas. Presenting himself as impenetrable – a ‘lifeless bulk’, with eyes ‘dull as a cow’, ‘burly as a market porter’, ‘a pachyderm plodding
inexorably toward its goal’ – he becomes more of a mystery than the mystery itself. The only
intelligence that’s occasionally allowed to cross his face is a mocking irony.
It’s this quality that will be fatal to the murderer, who is drawn into a
battle of wills he can only lose.
Maigret
proceeds by enforced proximity. He goes to the scene of the crime, which
usually takes place in a small, well-defined community, at the centre of which
there is very likely a seedy hotel where Maigret will book a room. He hangs
around bars with the suspects, visits their homes alone and uninvited, eats
with them, walks and talks with them. He establishes who’s an insider and who’s
an outsider, who’s sexually satisfied and who isn’t, which women are attractive
and which plain or plain ugly, whose ambitions are thwarted, who has delusions
of grandeur and power. If there’s a pretty maid he may ask her bluntly whose mistress
she is. When he thinks he has his man he sticks to him like a limpet, waiting
for him to break down. This is a figure who often turns up in a Maigret novel:
the suspect who panics, is hysterical, can’t face the truth. The book we were
discussing contained many of these themes though Maigret was absent, at least
as a participant, for a considerable part of the book.
There was
general agreement that ‘The Dancer at the Gai Moulin’ was not a great detective
story/thriller: the book did not have much depth with a thin story and a widely
implausible plot full of holes. Maigret dumping the body in the laundry basket
was more Fawlty Towers than detective fiction. Nonetheless the group had
enjoyed the book and some characters, eg Adele, were convincing. The translator
made the point that the book had to be considered in the context of 1931 when
it was written. Every thriller of that period she had read was no better and
equally implausible particularly as regards police procedure. (At a previously
the Group had discussed Eric Ambler’s ‘The Mask of Dimitrios’ which was also a
1930s thriller and had been regarded as a superior example of its type.)
Unlike
modern detectives Maigret was not a tortured soul. Maigret was still very
popular amongst British readers, helped no doubt by the TV series starring
Rupert Davies in the 1960s and Michael Gambon in the 1990s. At the Christian
Aid book sale held annually in Edinburgh, Simenon was the foreign author
everyone wished to buy. No doubt the ease of reading Maigret with its limited
French vocabulary was a contributory factor.
Sian
indicated that she had translated three Maigrets for the new Penguin series.
All of them had headless women on the cover! Sian had attempted to use the
language and slang of the 1930s, though this would have been very difficult for
an earlier period, but no doubt she had used modern dialogue unconsciously.
There was much detailed discussion of the principles and technique of
translations. Several members queried why Sian had used certain words and
expressions. Sian said a good
translator should neither introduce nor suppress material. Translation required
reading the text until you fully got it. You should always translate into your
first language, though a few people were genuinely bilingual.
Sian made
the point that there was a huge difference, greater than in English, between
spoken and written French. The French had a strong sense of decorum in written
language. English also had more words from which to choose and made extensive
use of idiom, slang and ambiguity. Some words used by Simenon were no longer
used for the same meaning so old dictionaries were important sources. Similarly
the internet might be necessary to ascertain some modern expressions. Sian’s
current translation was of a young French punk rocker’s book. She was also
reviewing a new translation of Proust, which seemed to be for people who also
knew French. Few people would read the book in both languages.
There was
discussion of the growth of translations into American English. This was
probably unavoidable given market conditions though Penguin and Oxford Classics
provided a rich diet of translations into British English.
Should
translators be creative writers also? It was noted that Hilary Mantel had
approved the stage and TV scripts of Wolf Hall.
Peter
France indicated that there were very different views on how to do
translations. Translations of poetry were very different. He had been involved
in collaborative translations of poetry where some translators did not know the
original language. It was important to think of the reader. Dialect was very
difficult to translate. For example Burns translations into Russian were very
good in themselves but not accurate Burns.
There was
general thanks to Sian and Peter for making the evening an enjoyable and
instructive one for the Monthly Book Group.
