What we talk about when we talk about translation: The Gide/Bussy correspondence

Abstract

This article starts out from the proposition that it is difficult to talk about the practice of translation in general terms; what's more, that difficulty is both analogous to and, in certain instances, due to the difficulties that arise when talking about love. This proposition is tested and expanded upon through the case of the bilingual correspondence between André Gide and Dorothy Bussy, a fascinating conversation between two writer-translators in the first half of the twentieth century, and draws on two moments in the work of Roland Barthes. The “business of translation” is a dominant topic in the Gide/Bussy correspondence: Gide calls it a “genre”, distinguishing it from and opposing it to the “genre” of their more intimate exchanges – in other words, Bussy's deeply felt expressions of love for him. The article examines the ways in which that opposition between “genres” is set up and collapses, and considers the role of affect in translational practices.

Keywords:

• André Gide
• Dorothy Bussy
• translation and affect
• literary correspondence
• Anglo-French literary relations

Notes

1. The letters were first published in three volumes as Correspondance André Gide–Dorothy Bussy, edited by Jean Lambert (1979, 1981, 1982); an abridged edition edited and translated by Richard Tedeschi appeared in English translation in 1983.

2. Caws notes that Dorothy Bussy receives very little attention in the critical work on Gide: “In many works about Gide […] there is absolutely no mention of Dorothy Bussy. In Sheridan's recent biography, where her role is definitely both a minor and an unthankful one, she is relegated, along with his secretary Yvonne Davet, to the role of adorer – yes, she translated him, of course, but that's about it. My contention is that for all her knowledge of his unavailability, it was all the same her passion for him that gave her work its flair and her life its meaning. This is no small thing” (2006, 44–5). Caws has set about redressing this with a full chapter on Bussy in her book Glorious Eccentrics (2006) and another on the relationship between Gide and Bussy in the earlier Bloomsbury and France: Art and Friends (Caws and Wright 2000).

3. See, for example, Bussy's letter of 8 May 1937 (Tedeschi 1983, 176–7).

4. On Gide's position in relation to gender and sexuality see Naomi Segal (1997).

5. Letter of 30 November 1922 (Tedeschi 1983, 96).

6. For an interesting recent discussion on the question of the translator's (lack of) feeling for a book, see Barnes (2010).

7. Bussy first showed Gide her novel Olivia in 1933. As Jean Lambert recounts in his introduction to the Selected Letters (1983, xii), Gide initially professed to be charmed, but rapidly lost interest. Fourteen years went by, and in the meantime Bussy had shown her manuscript to a number of friends, among them Leonard Woolf. Olivia was published by the Hogarth Press in 1949 to great acclaim, both in English and in its French translation, with Colette writing the screenplay for the 1951 film adaptation.

8. “I am annoyed that he [Knopf] should have wantonly altered my title Back from the U.S.S.R. which exactly keeps the innuendo of Retour de l'U.R.R.S. into Return from the U.S.S.R. which means absolutely nothing but that you paid a visit to the U.S.S.R. and returned. Back from = away from, into an earlier position (cf. O.E.D). But Knopf, of course knows neither French nor English. I shall never, you know, get over having been forced to use the hideous hybrid counterfeiters instead of Coiners. A sore point in my professional career” (letter of 8 May 1937; Tedeschi 1983, 177).

9. As Marty notes (1986, 91), Bussy's translation was much criticized. Marty cites an unpublished letter from Waldo Frank to Gide of 8 April 1923 in which he spells out his grievances in detail: “‘L'hymne confus de la nature’ is beautiful: ‘Nature's mingled hymn’ is ugly and meaningless”.

10. They relate to Gide's Thésée, which appeared in John Russell's translation, Theseus, in 1948. In a letter of 1 May 1946, Gide had written: “It […] seemed to me that a woman's vocal chords were inappropriate for so deep a voice” (Tedeschi 1983, 249).

11. On the working conditions of translators see Bussy's comments in the same letter: “There is a ‘crise de traducteurs’ – Janie [Bussy's daughter] and I are perpetually being asked to translate French books and we steadily refuse. We think it is high time to strike, like everyone else, for better pay.”

12. In a section of the course dealing with advice transmitted from writer to writer, Barthes (2011, 280) quotes Julio Cortázar encouraging young writers to “stop writing for a while and do translations”.