The Solitude of Compassion Read Free Page B

the first American Foundation to crown a French work and to insure the publication of that work in America. The mere fact that it comes from abroad— “l’étranger, cette postérité contemporaine” —arouses a lively interest; again, the fact that the jury was composed of foreigners gave ample assurance that there could be no propagande de chapelle here, no manoeuvres of cliques such as must necessarily
attend French prize-awards. Finally the material value of the prize itself proved of good augur.
    Twenty years since! And just a few months ago I received two new books from Giono— Un Roi Sans Divertissement and Noé —the first two of a series of twenty. A series of “Chroniques,” he calls them. He was thirty years old when Colline won the Prix Brentano . In the interval he has written a respectable number of books. And now, in his fifties, he has projected a series of twenty, of which several have already been written. Just before the war started he had begun his celebrated translation of Moby Dick , a labor of several years, in which he was aided by two capable women whose names are given along with his as translators of the book. An immense undertaking, since Giono is not fluent in English. But, as he explains in the book which followed— Pour Saluer Melville—Moby Dick was his constant companion for years during his walks over the hills. He had lived with the book and it had become a part of him. It was inevitable that he should be the one to make it known to the French public. I have read parts of this translation and it seems to me an inspired one. Melville is not one of my favorites. Moby Dick has always been a sort of bête noir for me. But in reading the French version, which I prefer to the original, I have come to the conclusion that I will some day read the book. After reading Pour Saluer Melville , which is a poet’s interpretation of a poet—“a pure invention,” as Giono himself says in a letter—I was literally beside myself. How often it is the “foreigner” who teaches us to appreciate our own authors! (I think immediately of that wonderful study of Walt Whitman by a Frenchman who virtually dedicated his life to the subject. I think, too, of what Baudelaire did to make Poe’s name a by-word throughout all Europe.) Over and over again we see that the understanding of a language is not the
same as the understanding of language. It is always communion versus communication. Even in translation some of us understand Dostoievsky, for example, better than his Russian contemporaries—or, shall I say, better than our present Russian contemporaries.
    I noticed, in reading the Introduction to Hill of Destiny , that the translator expressed apprehension that the book might offend certain “squeamish” American readers. It is curious how askance French authors are regarded by Anglo-Saxons. Even some of the good Catholic writers of France are looked upon as “immoral.” It always reminds me of my father’s anger when he caught me reading The Wild Ass’ Skin . All he needed was to see the name Balzac. That was enough to convince him that the book was “immoral.” (Fortunately he never caught me reading Droll Stories !) My father, of course, had never read a line of Balzac. He had hardly read a line of any English or American author, indeed. The one writer he confessed to reading— c’est inoui, mais c’est vrai! —was John Ruskin. Ruskin! I nearly fell off the chair when he blurted this out. I did not know how to account for such an absurdity, but later I discovered that it was the minister who had (temporarily) converted him to Christ who was responsible. What astounded me even more was his admission that he had enjoyed reading Ruskin. That still remains inexplicable to me. But of Ruskin another time…
    In Giono’s books, as in Cendrars’ and so many, many French books,