In my posting of today's date, the 10th November, 2010, about my recent first-time translation from French into English of a lesser-known, obscure literary work by Jules Verne,i've reverted to fulfilling the original mission of this blog, which is to discuss contemporary Translation Studies and especially literary translation.
It's a relief for me to be posting a translation-related article to the blog after an absence of several months.
The reason i've been away from this blog for those few months, since earlier in 2010, is that I have been busy applying for academic jobs in such areas as TEFL, TESOL, French and Translation Studies - not that there is currently a great deal on offer internationally, at present. Still, hardly a week goes by without there being at least one or two advertised academic posts in my above-mentioned specializations, mainly in French, and occasionally in Translation Studies and in TEFL/TESOL.
It's a difficult time to be a newly-minted PhD graduate seeking an academic post, at least in my own areas of the Humanities, viz. Linguistics, TEFL, French and Translation Studies. So the last few months since my graduation have been a busy and challenging period, but making academic job applications and being interviewed (if short-listed) is all valuable experience.
At the end of the day, though, bread has to be put on the table. Therefore - and as so many people in Ireland and elsewhere are painfully aware (given our current recession) - being 'between jobs' is not much fun!
However, i've been determinedly ploughing away with academic job applications, and i'm happy to report that there may finally be a glimmer of very hopeful, promising light on the horizon... Meaning that in the next couple of months, I will most likely be making postings to this blog, not from a computer in Dublin, but rather, from a quite distant part of the globe, and one which is exotic and exciting.
At least the wheels are in motion. I've been praying and working hard to get a post-PhD break within an educational career, and my prayers may finally have been answered.
Watch this space ...
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
An undiscovered side to Jules Verne: translating one of his lesser-known novellas
I N T R O D U C T I O N
A few months ago, I produced a first translation, from French into English,of a text by Jules Verne, entitled 'Jédédias Jamet, or the Tale of an Inheritance', consisting of three chapters of an unfinished novella or novel written by Jules Verne, most probably while he was still only in his late teens or early twenties. It is a text which he apparently intended to expand into a complete novel, but which he subsequently abandoned, before, of course, going on to much greater things in the literary world. The fact that Verne originally intended this work to become a complete novel, is attested to by the rough draft outline which he produced of the projected entire story, a summary which I also rendered into English. This foray into professional literary translation was accomplished at the behest of the North American Jules Verne Society, which is currently engaged in translating into English, for the first time, many of the hitherto lesser known works of the great 19th century writer, Jules Verne, whom I have, of course, spoken about in previous postings to this Translation Studies/literary blog.
These chapters were written, it seems, during a period when the young Jules Verne was, at his father’s behest, studying law in Paris with a view to eventually inheriting the family law practice in Nantes. However, the true ambitions of Jules Verne lay not in the legal, but rather the literary domain. Verne’s less than willing immersion in the legal world as a young man, probably explains one of the principal themes, and the mocking tone, of this short text which deals with questions of succession and inheritance, and offers a satirical portrait of the legal profession and of its sometimes greedy clients.
The central character, M. Jédédias Jamet, is a pillar of the small community within which he resides, viz. the town of Chinon in the Touraine region of France. Though he is a good father, husband, juror and member of the National Guard, he is depicted with supreme irony by Verne as an inept individual who lives in blissful ignorance of his own incompetence. For instance, his wildly erroneous predictions and instructions lead to the destruction by fire of several farms; the drowning of an unfortunate dog; the failure of numerous harvests; the killing of many hunters and the loss of much livestock.
Notwithstanding his gargantuan ineptness, he is revered by the locals; thus, the general populace equally becomes a target of Verne’s ridicule. Thus, after allowing a wretched canine to drown – yet cannily turning the error to his own advantage – does Jamet become ‘the oracle of the locality’, using his ‘rightfully acquired fame’ to dispense ‘excellent advice’.
Jamet is obsessed with neatness. He jealously guards, and preserves in mint condition, the coat he has inherited from his late father. Anything else that he might have acquired from the paternal estate has been cruelly denied him by the greed of others. Jamet thus appears as a rather pathetic figure, unjustly treated by fate. All he has inherited, at least from his father, is this coat, his ‘minimum legal entitlement’, a ‘mediocre legacy’.
On the other hand, Jamet considers that this is ‘the coat to which he owe[s] his happiness’ , in that he feels it helped him to win the heart of his spouse, Perpetua Tertullien. However, Verne, again satirising human greed, hints strongly that Perpetua’s family, in reality, consented to the marriage thanks to her suitor having become rich as a result of an inheritance from a cousin.
Jamet’s mathematical exactness in relation to his coat seems reminiscent of the obsessive-compulsive precision of that subsequent and much more famous Vernian automaton, Phileas Fogg, in Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Thus does Jamet ‘attire … himself in his coat, in accordance with the rules of applied geometry of the thumb and index finger’ and, with a flick of his fingers, he rids the garment of ‘those microcosmic specks which he alone could discern’.
The heavily guarded coat is likened to a virginal daughter whose chasteness is jealously guarded by a vigilant mother (‘a dread-afflicted mother [who] keeps her daughter captive under her wing’). Nobody must place a ‘defiling hand’ on the ‘spotless’ garment. Jamet constantly fears for ‘the virginal lustre of his vestments’, and lives ‘in dread of any base or obscene fondling of the sole object of his thoughts’. This, as we shall see, is one of several sexual subtexts and uses of sexualised language, permeating the story.
The tale begins as Jamet receives a mysterious note advising him of the death of an uncle of his wife, viz. M. Opime Romauld Tertullien. This is a most unusual ‘death notice’ in that it is apparently written by the deceased himself, and fails to give the sender’s address, or the location of the bizarrely-named Church of Saint Collette the Hip Swayer, in which the memorial service is to take place. Following this cryptic communication, the narrator pauses to describe Jamet’s life and to offer flashbacks to significant previous events in his life, before recounting the consequences of the ‘mysterious parchment’ received by Jamet.
The notice causes Jamet to rush to the home of his solicitor in a state of feverish anticipation of a possible large inheritance, tempered by his fear that other relatives and claimants may deprive him of his hypothetical bequest. Jamet’s long and frenzied monologue to his solicitor (who listens to him while freezing in the cold water of his morning bath) strongly satirises mercenary natures; the greed, perhaps, of some of the potential heirs whom Verne probably encountered in his legal work. Perpetua, too, sheds brief crocodile tears for her late uncle but is much more concerned with inheriting the wealth of this successful businessman.
It seems, from Verne’s draft, that the remainder of this unfinished work would have recounted the tale of Jamet’s fruitless international journey in pursuit of the supposed inheritance. The journey would have been strewn with increasing mystery, obstacles and frustrations, and the story in its entirety would, it seems, have been as bizarre as its first three chapters.
There are, in fact, three inheritances referred to in this Tale of an Inheritance. Apart from the potential inheritance from Perpetua’s late uncle, there is the much cared-for coat which Jamet has acquired from his father, and there is also the inheritance which contributed to Jamet’s winning the approval of Perpetua’s family, viz. Jamet had become ‘wealthy as a result of an inheritance from one of his cousins, an intrepid aviator who had dropped himself from a height of three thousand metres’.
This short text is peppered with references of a legal, historical, religious and mythological nature. Footnotes have been provided seeking to explain these allusions, thus fulfilling the didactic duty of the translator. Legal references in this story include allusions to particular kinds of bailiffs, to succession law, to court orders for the seizure of debtors’ possessions, and to secured and unsecured loans. Religious and Biblical references include those alluding to Saint Colette, the Seven Deadly Sins, the story of Joseph in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, the priest Urbain Grandier, the character Holopherne in the Old Testament’s Book of Judith, and the Old Testament story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Mythological references are abundant, so that Verne grandiosely links characters and events in his text to such figures as Horace, Augustus, Plato and Diogenes, and to the walls of Carthage and the siege of Troy. Historical and literary references are to such persons as Henri II of Navarre, César Vichard de Saint-Réal and the writers Berquin and Molière.
There thus seems to be quite a hotch-potch of varied allusions which combine to give this ironic text a mock ‘learned’ air.
As the names which Verne chooses for his characters in other, later works, sometimes appear to hint, however obliquely, at personal traits (e.g. Fogg, Passepartout, Fix, Nemo, Conseil or Captain Speedy), I have used a footnote to speculate on what might be the significance of the name Jédédias Jamet (footnote number 1).
Finally – and as alluded to earlier in this Introduction – there are some bizarre scatological, and specifically sexual, allusions scattered throughout these chapters. For instance, Verne hints that Jamet’s marriage is now sexless, but that there was a time when Perpetua ‘would vouch for the fact that [Jamet] was never rushed under any circumstances’. Butcher detects a similar sexual undertone in Verne’s description of Phileas Fogg, in Around the World in Eighty Days, as someone who was ‘never in a hurry’, which is described by Butcher as a ‘blatant sexual reference’ (Verne, 1873/1995: 219). And as we have noted earlier, Jamet’s coat is likened to a daughter whose chastity is fiercely protected by a vigilant parent.
There are two references to excretion. Jamet’s son, Francis, is forced by his father to emerge from the bathroom ‘in an appalling state; luckily, his long childhood smock concealed, with due propriety, the offensive disarray of a certain activity, rudely interrupted!’. Jamet’s son is suffering from indigestion, while the family cat suffers from constipation. Then there is Jamet’s solicitor, Monsieur Honoré Rabutin, who, while taking a bath, was amusing himself by ‘making little cowpats.’
In sum, this is, in many ways, a bizarre, surreal text, which seems, superficially at least, to bear little resemblance to the themes of Verne’s later works. It may indeed have been intended as little more than a ‘canular estudiantin’, or student hoax, as J.D. has suggested.
On closer inspection, however, it can be seen that Jédédias Jamet, or the Tale of an Inheritance, would, if completed, have dealt with the quintessential Vernian trope of a long journey of exploration and discovery through different countries, undertaken by the central character in the company of a trusted valet. Furthermore, even these early chapters already contain themes which seem to ‘haunt’ Verne’s later, celebrated works: Jamet’s obsessive-compulsive, unhurried behaviour and his preoccupation with mathematical exactness seem to make him an early model for Phileas Fogg, though Fogg would hardly have shown the type of over-excitement manifested by Jamet when he receives news of his wife’s uncle’s death. In addition, the type of sexual and scatological undertones apparent in Jédédias Jamet have also been identified by Butcher (ibid) in such other Verne novels as Around the World in Eighty Days (op. cit.).
This unfinished Verne work is deserving of scholarly attention, as it offers some insight into the mind of the early writer that was Jules Verne while probably still in his late teens.
A few months ago, I produced a first translation, from French into English,of a text by Jules Verne, entitled 'Jédédias Jamet, or the Tale of an Inheritance', consisting of three chapters of an unfinished novella or novel written by Jules Verne, most probably while he was still only in his late teens or early twenties. It is a text which he apparently intended to expand into a complete novel, but which he subsequently abandoned, before, of course, going on to much greater things in the literary world. The fact that Verne originally intended this work to become a complete novel, is attested to by the rough draft outline which he produced of the projected entire story, a summary which I also rendered into English. This foray into professional literary translation was accomplished at the behest of the North American Jules Verne Society, which is currently engaged in translating into English, for the first time, many of the hitherto lesser known works of the great 19th century writer, Jules Verne, whom I have, of course, spoken about in previous postings to this Translation Studies/literary blog.
These chapters were written, it seems, during a period when the young Jules Verne was, at his father’s behest, studying law in Paris with a view to eventually inheriting the family law practice in Nantes. However, the true ambitions of Jules Verne lay not in the legal, but rather the literary domain. Verne’s less than willing immersion in the legal world as a young man, probably explains one of the principal themes, and the mocking tone, of this short text which deals with questions of succession and inheritance, and offers a satirical portrait of the legal profession and of its sometimes greedy clients.
The central character, M. Jédédias Jamet, is a pillar of the small community within which he resides, viz. the town of Chinon in the Touraine region of France. Though he is a good father, husband, juror and member of the National Guard, he is depicted with supreme irony by Verne as an inept individual who lives in blissful ignorance of his own incompetence. For instance, his wildly erroneous predictions and instructions lead to the destruction by fire of several farms; the drowning of an unfortunate dog; the failure of numerous harvests; the killing of many hunters and the loss of much livestock.
Notwithstanding his gargantuan ineptness, he is revered by the locals; thus, the general populace equally becomes a target of Verne’s ridicule. Thus, after allowing a wretched canine to drown – yet cannily turning the error to his own advantage – does Jamet become ‘the oracle of the locality’, using his ‘rightfully acquired fame’ to dispense ‘excellent advice’.
Jamet is obsessed with neatness. He jealously guards, and preserves in mint condition, the coat he has inherited from his late father. Anything else that he might have acquired from the paternal estate has been cruelly denied him by the greed of others. Jamet thus appears as a rather pathetic figure, unjustly treated by fate. All he has inherited, at least from his father, is this coat, his ‘minimum legal entitlement’, a ‘mediocre legacy’.
On the other hand, Jamet considers that this is ‘the coat to which he owe[s] his happiness’ , in that he feels it helped him to win the heart of his spouse, Perpetua Tertullien. However, Verne, again satirising human greed, hints strongly that Perpetua’s family, in reality, consented to the marriage thanks to her suitor having become rich as a result of an inheritance from a cousin.
Jamet’s mathematical exactness in relation to his coat seems reminiscent of the obsessive-compulsive precision of that subsequent and much more famous Vernian automaton, Phileas Fogg, in Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Thus does Jamet ‘attire … himself in his coat, in accordance with the rules of applied geometry of the thumb and index finger’ and, with a flick of his fingers, he rids the garment of ‘those microcosmic specks which he alone could discern’.
The heavily guarded coat is likened to a virginal daughter whose chasteness is jealously guarded by a vigilant mother (‘a dread-afflicted mother [who] keeps her daughter captive under her wing’). Nobody must place a ‘defiling hand’ on the ‘spotless’ garment. Jamet constantly fears for ‘the virginal lustre of his vestments’, and lives ‘in dread of any base or obscene fondling of the sole object of his thoughts’. This, as we shall see, is one of several sexual subtexts and uses of sexualised language, permeating the story.
The tale begins as Jamet receives a mysterious note advising him of the death of an uncle of his wife, viz. M. Opime Romauld Tertullien. This is a most unusual ‘death notice’ in that it is apparently written by the deceased himself, and fails to give the sender’s address, or the location of the bizarrely-named Church of Saint Collette the Hip Swayer, in which the memorial service is to take place. Following this cryptic communication, the narrator pauses to describe Jamet’s life and to offer flashbacks to significant previous events in his life, before recounting the consequences of the ‘mysterious parchment’ received by Jamet.
The notice causes Jamet to rush to the home of his solicitor in a state of feverish anticipation of a possible large inheritance, tempered by his fear that other relatives and claimants may deprive him of his hypothetical bequest. Jamet’s long and frenzied monologue to his solicitor (who listens to him while freezing in the cold water of his morning bath) strongly satirises mercenary natures; the greed, perhaps, of some of the potential heirs whom Verne probably encountered in his legal work. Perpetua, too, sheds brief crocodile tears for her late uncle but is much more concerned with inheriting the wealth of this successful businessman.
It seems, from Verne’s draft, that the remainder of this unfinished work would have recounted the tale of Jamet’s fruitless international journey in pursuit of the supposed inheritance. The journey would have been strewn with increasing mystery, obstacles and frustrations, and the story in its entirety would, it seems, have been as bizarre as its first three chapters.
There are, in fact, three inheritances referred to in this Tale of an Inheritance. Apart from the potential inheritance from Perpetua’s late uncle, there is the much cared-for coat which Jamet has acquired from his father, and there is also the inheritance which contributed to Jamet’s winning the approval of Perpetua’s family, viz. Jamet had become ‘wealthy as a result of an inheritance from one of his cousins, an intrepid aviator who had dropped himself from a height of three thousand metres’.
This short text is peppered with references of a legal, historical, religious and mythological nature. Footnotes have been provided seeking to explain these allusions, thus fulfilling the didactic duty of the translator. Legal references in this story include allusions to particular kinds of bailiffs, to succession law, to court orders for the seizure of debtors’ possessions, and to secured and unsecured loans. Religious and Biblical references include those alluding to Saint Colette, the Seven Deadly Sins, the story of Joseph in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, the priest Urbain Grandier, the character Holopherne in the Old Testament’s Book of Judith, and the Old Testament story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Mythological references are abundant, so that Verne grandiosely links characters and events in his text to such figures as Horace, Augustus, Plato and Diogenes, and to the walls of Carthage and the siege of Troy. Historical and literary references are to such persons as Henri II of Navarre, César Vichard de Saint-Réal and the writers Berquin and Molière.
There thus seems to be quite a hotch-potch of varied allusions which combine to give this ironic text a mock ‘learned’ air.
As the names which Verne chooses for his characters in other, later works, sometimes appear to hint, however obliquely, at personal traits (e.g. Fogg, Passepartout, Fix, Nemo, Conseil or Captain Speedy), I have used a footnote to speculate on what might be the significance of the name Jédédias Jamet (footnote number 1).
Finally – and as alluded to earlier in this Introduction – there are some bizarre scatological, and specifically sexual, allusions scattered throughout these chapters. For instance, Verne hints that Jamet’s marriage is now sexless, but that there was a time when Perpetua ‘would vouch for the fact that [Jamet] was never rushed under any circumstances’. Butcher detects a similar sexual undertone in Verne’s description of Phileas Fogg, in Around the World in Eighty Days, as someone who was ‘never in a hurry’, which is described by Butcher as a ‘blatant sexual reference’ (Verne, 1873/1995: 219). And as we have noted earlier, Jamet’s coat is likened to a daughter whose chastity is fiercely protected by a vigilant parent.
There are two references to excretion. Jamet’s son, Francis, is forced by his father to emerge from the bathroom ‘in an appalling state; luckily, his long childhood smock concealed, with due propriety, the offensive disarray of a certain activity, rudely interrupted!’. Jamet’s son is suffering from indigestion, while the family cat suffers from constipation. Then there is Jamet’s solicitor, Monsieur Honoré Rabutin, who, while taking a bath, was amusing himself by ‘making little cowpats.’
In sum, this is, in many ways, a bizarre, surreal text, which seems, superficially at least, to bear little resemblance to the themes of Verne’s later works. It may indeed have been intended as little more than a ‘canular estudiantin’, or student hoax, as J.D. has suggested.
On closer inspection, however, it can be seen that Jédédias Jamet, or the Tale of an Inheritance, would, if completed, have dealt with the quintessential Vernian trope of a long journey of exploration and discovery through different countries, undertaken by the central character in the company of a trusted valet. Furthermore, even these early chapters already contain themes which seem to ‘haunt’ Verne’s later, celebrated works: Jamet’s obsessive-compulsive, unhurried behaviour and his preoccupation with mathematical exactness seem to make him an early model for Phileas Fogg, though Fogg would hardly have shown the type of over-excitement manifested by Jamet when he receives news of his wife’s uncle’s death. In addition, the type of sexual and scatological undertones apparent in Jédédias Jamet have also been identified by Butcher (ibid) in such other Verne novels as Around the World in Eighty Days (op. cit.).
This unfinished Verne work is deserving of scholarly attention, as it offers some insight into the mind of the early writer that was Jules Verne while probably still in his late teens.
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