First Orwell my parents gave me, in the country, when I was 12 or so, in French, translated as La Vache Enragée,* the old Gallimard edition, falling apart. I can still smell the warm paper (it was a hot summer near Montélimar) and see the dust motes in the sun rays in the book-lined passage to the bedroom, where i usually sat on the floor to read...
Et qui c'est, le Baron de Marbot?
* as in "manger de la vache enragée", being seriously skint
Marbot was an officer in Napoleon's army and after the restoration. His father was a general of division in Italy when Napoleon was First Consul. He was an an aide de campe to various marshals in Germany, Spain and Portugal and commanded a chasseur regiment from 1812-1814.
The memoirs saved my life when I was imprisoned in a chateau in Brittany as a youth. They were the only thing I had to read.
Marbot sounds WONDERFUL! Also, MUST pass on the tip (assuming she hasn't read it; she seems to have read EVERYTHING) to artaxastra, who has a couple of Napoleonic novels down the road in her historic cycle.
(Having read it, is Conan Doyle's Gérard a charming fiction, or has it got some basis in history? Haven't re-read it but it was another of the books my father gave me early on in French translation, and I remember loving it at the time; Gérard and Gil Blas de Santillane were my two favourite rogues..)
"Manger de la vache enragée": haven't heard it in quite a bit; my parents used it. It was the original translation's title (that has been changed in a new translation; like the new English-language Proust it may be more accurate but it's not a patch on the earlier one); can't recall when that came out in French first, possibly immediate postwar.
"postwar" meant the book, Orwell not necessarily having been deemed of translation pre-Animal Farm. The expression is much older; I'll try & trace it .
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-10-14 02:48 pm (UTC)Et qui c'est, le Baron de Marbot?
* as in "manger de la vache enragée", being seriously skint
no subject
Date: 2008-10-14 03:00 pm (UTC)The memoirs saved my life when I was imprisoned in a chateau in Brittany as a youth. They were the only thing I had to read.
plus ca change..
no subject
Date: 2008-10-14 03:17 pm (UTC)(Having read it, is Conan Doyle's Gérard a charming fiction, or has it got some basis in history? Haven't re-read it but it was another of the books my father gave me early on in French translation, and I remember loving it at the time; Gérard and Gil Blas de Santillane were my two favourite rogues..)
"Manger de la vache enragée": haven't heard it in quite a bit; my parents used it. It was the original translation's title (that has been changed in a new translation; like the new English-language Proust it may be more accurate but it's not a patch on the earlier one); can't recall when that came out in French first, possibly immediate postwar.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-14 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-14 04:05 pm (UTC)*clickety-click-Amazonwards*
Moo
Date: 2008-10-14 04:06 pm (UTC)