For great events, great language was needed. It recorded sweeping changes: kingdoms rose and fell, peoples were enslaved or freed. This fullness, overfullness, was endemic to the genre to which “Les Misérables” belonged, the nineteenth-century historical novel, a form that was immensely popular in its day. Even after the trims, his version is still more than twelve hundred pages long. “It is not uncommon to find eight or ten adjectives appended to a single noun,” Denny noted, with wonder. Or he said them too many times the first time. But others, he was not ashamed to say, were due to his feeling that the book was just too long-winded. Certain of them, he said, were for sense. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Ī few years ago, reading the introduction to an English-language version of Hugo’s “ Les Misérables,” I found the translator, Norman Denny, confessing that he had made a number of cuts in the French text.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |