I think of Jean Rhys as an
Expressionist writer whose short sentences are like bold brushstrokes in startling, unpredictable colours. It’s the kind of writing facilitated by
having a bottle of wine or whisky or both beside you, and provides fresh supporting
evidence for the old claim that in vino
veritas.
In her writing, Rhys has to get
past both internal inhibition and external censorship. In real life, she does
things like taking money for sex which place her outside polite society and into the demi-monde and she takes as husbands and lovers men who are
accidental or professional criminals - criminal enough to go to jail.
The alcohol helps her evade
inhibition but the external censorship is evaded by literary crafting of a
character sometimes described as obsessive. Whether the crafting was done drunk
or sober I don’t know; either way, Rhys is a great stylist.
Good
Morning, Midnight published in 1939 and set mostly in Paris of
the period contains significant material written in French, not just in
passages of spoken dialogue but in narratorial sentences written in a mix of
English and French. Sometimes the French is left untranslated even (and
especially) when the words are not ones which would have been learnt at school,
like maquereau [pimp] at page 72.
It’s not glossed though the context at least half-way enables a guess as to its
meaning, “What she wants is three hundred francs to give to her maquereau. Will
I give her three hundred francs for her maquereau?” Sometimes it is glossed but
with a delay.
In one long passage which
extends over pages 42 - 53 and is then picked up again at page 149, much is
made of a contrast in register which could not in 1939 have been clarified with
accurate English translations; the censor would have intervened.
Thus, a tall English girl who
“speaks French very well” (page 38) looks at the narrator sitting in a café and
exclaims, “Et qu’est-ce qu’elle fout ici, maintenant?” (page 39). The
dictionaries, even supposedly modern ones, are coy but this could be translated as, “What
the fuck is she doing here, now?”, the fout
being in the same register as that in
the common expression, Foutez-nous la paix! [Fuck off and leave us alone!]. Things change over time, and in the
1930s, maybe less forceful translations would be in order: What the hell is she doing …? Piss off.../Clear off … Rhys does not
translate but instead writes, half a page later, “But what language!
Considering the general get-up what you should have said was, ‘Qu’est-ce
qu’elle fiche ici?’ Considering the general get-up, surely that’s what you
should have said. What language, what language! What would Debenham &
Freebody say, and what Harvey Nichols?” [These are the names of middle-class/upper middle-class London department stores where most of the shoppers would have been female].
But nothing has been translated
at this point; the reader may be able to work out that ficher is less coarse / vulgar/ offensive than fouter but even though “Qu’est-ce qu’ elle fiche ici?” could have
been glossed as, say, “What on earth is she doing here?” without troubling the
censor, it has not been done.
The narrator returns to the
language issue at page 41 when she speculates that the girl said fout,
“partly because she didn’t like the look of me and partly because she
wanted to show how well she spoke French and partly because….” But though no
translation has yet been provided, the narrator then pulls herself up for her obsessional
behaviour, “…why get in a state about it? (page 41).
But the theme is continued at
page 42, where she adds an implied thought to the original and at last provides
a translation, but a censored one:
“Qu’est-ce qu’elle fout ici, la
vieille? What the devil (translating it politely) is she doing here, that old woman?
…. I quite agree….I am asking myself all the time what the devil I am doing
here”
That’s at top of page 42;
bottom of page 43 the theme is again reprised:
“Now it’s getting dark. Now the
gates are shutting. (Qu’est-ce qu’elle fout ici, la vieille?)”
The play with language then
shifts at pages 44 -47 to simple repetitions in the key of Shakespeare. She
starts with a half-allusion (“tomorrow, tomorrow…”) and then runs through
“Back, back, back…”, “Hours and hours and hours”, “Courage, courage”, “Jesus, Jesus….Mother,
Mother”, “Chloroform, chloroform”, “Back, back, back …” and several more.
But fouter / ficher gets another outing at page 53, when a male
acquaintance describes a friend he wants her to meet and sums up in
untranslated French, “Mais au fond, vous savez, il s’en fiche de tout, il s’en
fiche de tout le monde”. And the narrator then takes one line to comment, “He
sounds fine” which in the context of all that has gone before ought to raise a
smile.
“The damned room, grinning at
me. The clock ticking. Qu’est-ce qu’elle fout ici, la vieille?”
Microsoft has had a field day with
green and red squiggles all over this. I guess it struggles with many
novelists. They do things differently.
