{"id":11250,"date":"2020-05-19T19:21:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T18:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11250"},"modified":"2020-05-20T08:35:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T07:35:42","slug":"paul-valery-nathaniel-rudavsky-brody-translator%c2%a6the-idea-of-perfection-the-poetry-and-prose-of-paul-valery-a-bilingual-edition%c2%a6farrar-straus-and-giroux%c2%a6-reviewed-by-edmund-prestw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11250","title":{"rendered":"Paul Val\u00e9ry, Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody (tr.)\u00a6The Idea of Perfection The Poetry and Prose of Paul Val\u00e9ry: a Bilingual Edition\u00a6(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)\u00a6 reviewed by Edmund Prestwich"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Paul Val\u00e9ry, Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody (translator)\u00a6The Idea of Perfection The Poetry and Prose of Paul Val\u00e9ry: a Bilingual Edition<\/em>\u00a6Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardback $54.50\u00a6 reviewed by Edmund Prestwich<\/p>\n

Paul Val\u00e9ry occupies an ambiguous position in modern literary culture. In later life \u2013 after he\u2019d stopped writing poetry \u2013 he bestrode the French cultural scene like a colossus. The American poet and critic Yvor Winters called \u2018Le cimeti\u00e8re marin\u2019 and \u00c9bauche d\u2019un serpent\u2019 \u2018the two greatest short poems ever written\u2019. For T. S. Eliot, too, he was a giant. But I don\u2019t think he\u2019s read much in England now, except in specialist academic circles.
\nHis relatively slender output in verse consists essentially of three collections, the Album de vers anciens, 1890 \u2013 1900 (largely written between 1890 and 1892 but published in 1920, apparently with extensive revision), La Jeune Parque,<\/em> published in 1918, and Charmes, published in 1921. The Idea of Perfection presents the French texts in parallel with Rudavsky-Brody\u2019s English translation, interspersing selections from the poet\u2019s voluminous notebooks, in translation only. Rudavsky-Brody\u2019s introduction sets the work in biographical and literary context, discussing Val\u00e9ry\u2019s relation to the Symbolists, especially Mallarm\u00e9, and sketching out his extraordinary, even paradoxical poetic and intellectual ambitions.
\nThe passages from the notebooks were a revelation. I think the only bits of Val\u00e8ry\u2019s prose that I\u2019ve read before were famous quotations about literature in general and poetry in particular. Val\u00e9ry the thinker and Val\u00e9ry the extremely self-aware observer of his own mental processes are here, of course, but what I\u2019ve learned is that he also had spectacular gifts for observation and vivid, concrete description of the physical world around him. One paragraph will have to stand for many electrifying pages in which these different aspects intertwine:
\nCaught in the rain today, I recall that couple kissing and holding each other infinitely close in the rain one dark evening under the nearly invisible trees, in the All\u00e9e de l\u2019Observatoire. I remember speaking with Pierre Lou\u00ffs of the impression which that man and woman made on me, so unexpected, silent, clasped in their arms and so completely alone together on their dripping bench that they made me doubt the thunderous rushing downpour. For them, neither rain nor me.<\/em><\/p>\n

The poetry raises more complex issues. In his 1931 study Axel\u2019s Castle<\/em>, the great twentieth century American critic Edmund Wilson wrote, \u2018there has perhaps never been a poet who enjoyed the sensuous world with more gusto than Val\u00e9ry or who more solidly bodied it forth. In the reproduction, in beautiful verses, of shapes, sounds, effects of light and shadow, substances of fruit or flesh, Val\u00e9ry has never been surpassed.\u2019 I agree. Sometimes, however, enjoyment of that aspect of his genius is complicated by intellectual frustration. La Jeune Parque<\/em> or The Young Fate, a poem of over 500 lines, is notoriously difficult to grasp as a whole, sliding as it does between sensuousness and eroticism in its imagery and extreme abstraction in its apparent thought, presenting a kaleidoscope of shifting interpretative possibilities without a clear narrative or conceptual frame that will help the reader get them into focus. In Charmes<\/em>, there\u2019s a similar straining between concreteness and abstraction in the long and incomplete \u2018Fragments du Narcisse\u2019 or \u2018Fragments of \u201cNarcissus\u201d\u2019, though here again particular passages of sensuous description give me keen pleasure. That said, for me and I think probably for most new readers the easiest entry to Val\u00e9ry\u2019s poetry is through the short and medium length poems of Charmes, especially in French. The great \u2018Le cimeti\u00e8re marin\u2019 (\u2018The Cemetery By the Sea\u2019) is widely known, whether in French or in English. This poem is both wonderfully grounded in a physical and dramatic context \u2013 that of the poet meditating in a cemetery by the sea \u2013 and wonderfully sensitive in its tracing of the elusive movements of a mind confronting the limits of where the mind can go. Other poems, less robustly grounded, will perhaps seem mere elegant trifles to some readers; to others they\u2019ll seem as enchanting as the volume title suggests they should. Their meanings are often elusive, not so much puzzling as hard to pin down very definitely, working as they do through suggestion rather than statement and lending themselves to different levels of interpretation, often set in motion by the gentlest of hints. To me, such a hovering between meanings is a pleasure in itself, in the context of a short poem, and given the remarkable clarity of form and verbal grace of Val\u00e9ry\u2019s writing.
\nAdmittedly, if you don\u2019t read French enough to read the originals, perhaps with the support of the translations and a dictionary, much of this beauty will be lost on you. The special problems inherent in the translation of poetry become particularly acute in the case of a poet like Val\u00e9ry for whom the formal qualities of poetry were crucial determinants of content. Rudavsky-Brody\u2019s Introduction quotes Val\u00e9ry\u2019s famous definition of the poem as \u2018that prolonged hesitation between sound and meaning\u2019. Another much-quoted statement, \u2018A poet’s work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms\u2019, makes the point even more clearly.
\nWe can see different kinds of loss in translation by looking at the first stanzas of two sonnets. First, sound patterning and movement. In the first stanza of \u2018L\u2019abeille\u2019 Val\u00e9ry writes<\/p>\n

Quelle, et si fine, et si mortelle,<\/em>
\n Que soit ta pointe, blonde abeille,<\/em>
\n Je n\u2019ai, sur ma tendre corbeille,<\/em>
\n Jet\u00e9 qu\u2019un songe de dentelle.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rudavsky-Brody translates this<\/p>\n

However keen may be your sting,<\/em>
\n However fatal, golden bee,<\/em>
\n I\u2019ve spread across my tender basket<\/em>
\n Only the merest dream of lace.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rudavsky-Brody\u2019s brisk pace gives a quite different feeling to the deliberate, step by step way in which Val\u00e9ry\u2019s poem advances across a series of pauses for qualification and emphasis, and he loses Val\u00e9ry\u2019s extremely rich sound patterning. This matters because the pattern itself is crucial to Val\u00e9ry\u2019s effect. The solid core of the stanza, and of the sonnet as a whole, is not what it says but the shapeliness of its metrical and stanzaic structure and the gracefully intricate unfolding of its sound. Meaning is an elaborate but elusive shimmering of suggestions around this core \u2013 a shimmering in which all the possible meanings, metaphorical suggestions and associations of the words used have their place.
\nThe first stanza of \u2018La ceinture\u2019 illustrates a different problem, this time to do with the play of suggestions itself:<\/p>\n

Quand le ciel couleur d\u2019une joue<\/em>
\n Laisse enfin les yeux le ch\u00e9rir<\/em>
\n Et qu\u2019au point dor\u00e9 de p\u00e9rir<\/em>
\n Dans les roses le temps se joue<\/em><\/p>\n

Rudavsky-Brody gives<\/p>\n

When blushing like a cheek, the sky<\/em>
\n At last admits the reverent eyes,<\/em>
\n And tipping toward a golden death<\/em>
\n Time plays a while among the roses<\/em><\/p>\n

Here, the problem is how to translate \u2018les roses\u2019 and \u2018le temps\u2019. In French, \u2018les roses\u2019 can refer to both different shades of the colour pink and rose bushes. Both meanings are important. The first develops the tender radiance of that sunset sky that has been metaphorically evoked in the first line. The second adds overtones of the erotic associations of roses in poetry, the soft skin of rose petals and roses\u2019 fragrant smell, which is like the perfume of the girl whose cheek is compared to the blushing sky. In English you have to go for one or the other. In French all these different meanings and associations radiate out of the same word, and that\u2019s how Val\u00e9ry\u2019s poetry works. The problem with \u2018le temps\u2019 is essentially similar \u2013 in English you have to choose between translating this as \u2018time\u2019 or \u2018the weather\u2019, but the scene Val\u00e9ry imagines is made up of both a time of day and the weather conditions at that time. We tend to think of English poetry as tending towards the concrete and French towards the abstract, but here the reverse is true.
\nHowever, the reader who can only read Val\u00e9ry in English will find a great deal to enjoy in Rudavsky-Brody\u2019s translations, and a fascinating introduction to a major poet in his selection of work. To finish, here\u2019s his version of \u2018Les pas\u2019 \u2013 \u2018The Steps\u2019. On one level, this is a rich and tender love poem in which the poet waits while his lover approaches but it\u2019s also often given an allegorical interpretation as a poem about inspiration:<\/p>\n

Your steps, the children of my silence,
\nSaintly, calmly approach the bed
\nOf my long waiting, with their stilled
\nAnd measured fall on the cold floor.<\/p>\n

How soft and how discreetly sound
\nYour steps, pure being, sublime shade!
\nO Gods… What promises of gifts
\nDraw close at last on your bare feet!<\/p>\n

Yet if on your advancing lips
\nYou would prepare, to pacify
\nThe thought-entangled dweller of
\nMy mind, the sustenance of a kiss,<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t rush that act of tenderness,
\nSweetness of being and not being,
\nFor I have lived in expectation,
\nMy beating heart became your steps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Val\u00e9ry, Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody (translator)\u00a6The Idea of Perfection The Poetry and Prose of Paul Val\u00e9ry: a Bilingual Edition\u00a6Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardback $54.50\u00a6 reviewed by Edmund Prestwich Paul Val\u00e9ry occupies an ambiguous position in modern literary culture. In later life \u2013 after he\u2019d stopped writing poetry \u2013 he bestrode the French cultural scene like a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nPaul Val\u00e9ry, Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody (tr.)\u00a6The Idea of Perfection The Poetry and Prose of Paul Val\u00e9ry: a Bilingual Edition\u00a6(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)\u00a6 reviewed by Edmund Prestwich - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11250\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paul Val\u00e9ry, Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody (tr.)\u00a6The Idea of Perfection The Poetry and Prose of Paul Val\u00e9ry: a Bilingual Edition\u00a6(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)\u00a6 reviewed by Edmund Prestwich - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paul Val\u00e9ry, Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody (translator)\u00a6The Idea of Perfection The Poetry and Prose of Paul Val\u00e9ry: a Bilingual Edition\u00a6Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardback $54.50\u00a6 reviewed by Edmund Prestwich Paul Val\u00e9ry occupies an ambiguous position in modern literary culture. 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