flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn) (03/25/84)
---
A two-part Masterpiece Theater series on Beatrix Potter begins
this evening.
Paul Jennings is an English essayist who has written some very
funny pieces; a collection was published by Penguin under the title
"The Jenguin Pennings." The following piece appeared in The Observer
in 1953.
Beatrix Potter Translated
It is difficult to decide whether translators are heroes or
fools. They are surely aware that the Afrikaans for 'Hamlet, I am thy
father's ghost' sounds something like 'Omlet, ek is de papap spook,'
and that an intense French actor, beginning Hamlet's speech to
Gertrude with 'Mere, mere,' sounds exactly like a sheep. In Denmark
the film King Kong had to be called Kong King because Kong means
'king' in Danish. Seeing a book in shops all over France with the
title 'Ainsi en emporte le vent,' like a line from Lamartine, I took a
long time to realize that it was 'Gone With The Wind.'
The racial realities of language have become mere intellectual
concepts to the translator. He floats over the world in a god-like
balloon. The babble of voices under the arches of teeming cities, the
infinite variations of uvula and hard palate, the words formed in
tribal battles and in tales over the winter hearth, float up to him in
a vague, jumbled unity, rich but disembodied, like a distant cooking
smell.
Paradoxically, the more a work expresses some special national
genius, the more it attracts translators. Until recently I had
thought the supreme example of this was Jabberwocky done into French,
German, and even Latin (ensis vorpalis persnicuit persnacuitque).
{the French and German versions appeared recently on the net} But now
I perceive that something even more secret and English has attracted
them: the children's books of Beatrix Potter.
Quite apart from their literary style, these have the same
'central' symbolic appeal as Jane Austen. Jemima Puddle-Duck, Mrs.
Tiggy-Winkle, Ribby, Duchess, and the rest of them live in a
transcendentalized English village, where shops with bottle-glass
windows doze in an endless summer afternoon, and nothing changes. No
one has heard of foreigners, just as the Napoleonic Wars are never
mentioned in Jane Austen.
The moment even the titles are translated we are very much
aware of foreigners, of Europe. Here are some:
FRENCH: Sophie Canetang (Jemima Puddle-Duck)
Noisy-Noisette (Squirrel Nutkin)
La Famille Flopsaut (Flopsy Bunnies)
Jeremie Peche-a-la-Ligne (Jeremy Fisher)
DUTCH: Tom Het Poesje (Tom Kitten)
Jeremias de Hengelaar (Jeremy Fisher)
WELSH: Hanes Dili Minllyn (Jemima Puddle-Duck)
Hanes Meistres Tigi-Dwt (Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle)
ITALIAN: Il Coniglio Pierino (Peter Rabbit)
SWEDISH: Sagan Om Pelle Kanin (Peter Rabbit)
GERMAN: Die Geschichte von Frau Tigge-Winkel
Dis Geschichte der Hasenfamilie Plumps (Flopsy Bunnies)
Who *are* these characters, we ask? Well may the inhabitants
of the Potter village peep from behind their dimity curtains as this
babbling procession pours down the quiet street. Here comes Sophie
Canetang, a Stendhal heroine, acutely analyzing love with a cavalry
officer and a petit bourgeois - but respectable compared with the awful
Mauriac Famille Flopsaut, festering with hate, ruining the brilliant
son who will never get to Paris; compared with the gaudy career of
Noisy-Noisette, the Mata Hari of te twenties, as depicted by Colette,
or the Maupassant Peche-a-la-Ligne, the quiet angler who pushes his
mistress's husband into the trout pool.
Behind these comes Tom Het Poesje, a kind of Dutch Till
Eulenspiegel, half jester, half highwayman, a doubtful figure in
leather jerkin, plaguing the burghers with rather unfunny practical
jokes. Then there is a momentary silence as Jeremias de Hengelaar, the
fourteenth-century mystic, shuffles by, pondering on the One.
What on earth does Dili Minllyn, thinking of the April clouds
sweeping over her white farmhouse on the green Welsh hill, of the
clock ticking on the silent dresser, have to say to Il Coniglio
Pierino, the swarthy Sicilian bandit, or to the Nordic hero Pelle
Kanin, seen through smoke and fire, howling songs against the northern
wind on long-prowed ships?
And who, in this village, is going to be interested in
the story of Frau Tigge-Winkel, the widow of a Prussian general who
revolutionized something or other in 1874? To say nothing of the
Hasenfamilie Plumps I.G., a lesser version of the Krupp dynasty, an
endless succession of stern characters extending the family factories
in the Ruhr...
Almost it is unfortunate that the children in the village, who
have one language and one vision, will not see them.