what are your favorite books in terms of prose? curious after you wrote about how many modern writers lack a sense for good writing, which i’ve also felt for years. so who do you think writes especially beautifully :-)
(Warning: long post ahead pondering what is perceived as beautiful prose in English vs French!)
The first books that came to my mind are the ones listed below, and it got me wondering why they were all by French authors, when I read a lot in other languages. I think even if you can read foreign literature fluently, it’s easier to detect & appreciate beautiful prose in your mother tongue, not just because you know it so intimately (so you know how many different ways there are to convey an idea and why this particular way was a great choice in this context), but also because languages develop their own criteria of what constitutes good writing, and we aren’t really taught about this—we're taught about our own language's criteria for good prose as if they were universal and objective, and it can be hard to move beyond that, especially when you're happily lost in a book and not actively trying to analyse the subtleties of the writing.
At the risk of giving the least hipster answer ever I really like Victor Hugo's writing because there are whole passages that sound so good I need to go back and re-read them to figure out what's happening in terms of plot (usually nothing, so it's ok), because I was too busy enjoying the flow of language the first time around (my favourite of his is The Man Who Laughs)
I read Pierre Assouline's 500-page book about the Book of Job even though I have little interest in biblical analysis or religious history, because there were sentences that were so pleasantly paced and balanced I just got carried by the momentum...
I love Annie Ernaux's writing in Les Années even though I'm not a fan of her other books, because the sentence construction and rhythm are so perfectly suited to the theme of the book.
I find Anatole France's books rather dull but the language is hypnotising (I talked a bit in this post about how his grammar is graceful as a dance...)
^ looking at this I realise I always come back to movement—grace, balance, flow, rhythm (not the pace of the story but of each sentence), and I know these are the criteria that French deems Terribly Important. I mentioned at the end of this post how (and why) English tends to be less interested in the motion of language and more in the imagery; in Goodreads reviews by native English speakers, beautiful writing is more likely to be described as ‘vivid’ than melodious. That's not to say English speakers can't appreciate (or prefer!) other kinds of prose, obviously, it's just, in broad strokes, what each language likes to focus on (at the present time.) There's a lot of appreciation in English for the kind of prose that you could easily make a moodboard out of—evoking sensations, colours, atmosphere—while French highly values the kind of prose that you can easily trace out in the air, with your hand rising and falling, tapping the beat, following grammatical twists and turns.
That's just my understanding, but it's something I notice a lot because I like to read French books along with their English translation (and conversely), to see how translators handle a tricky turn of phrase, or what I would have done differently. And it happens time and time again that the English translation lovingly preserves the imagery of a French sentence (even when a metaphor is difficult to translate) while coldly abandoning the rhythm and sound (even when there are easy English equivalents). Meanwhile French translators often completely ignore (or miss out on) subtle sources of mood and imagery because they are too busy picking the words and sentence structure that sound or flow best. It's really quite funny when you start to notice it.
I would have dozens of examples if I actually took the time to note them as I read, but just two recent ones off the top of my head—
I'm currently reading Sylvain Tesson's La Panthère des neiges (The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet in English) (I needed a 'cold’ book during the heatwave...) At one point the author draws a comparison between religious worship and observing wild animals. For an example of what I was saying re: "tracing out sentences in the air", there's the sentence "La prière s'élève, adressée à Dieu." The two halves are 5 syllables - 5 syllables (6-6 if you read it formally.) The last word of the first half is "s'élève" — "rises". The last word of the second half goes down, since it's the end of the sentence. There's a clear rising and falling motion to it, which is also perfectly balanced in terms of syllables / rhythm; it makes a nice symmetric pattern in the air.
Now, the translation aspect—you've got the sentence "A genoux, on espère sans preuve." Then, shortly afterwards: "A l'affût, on connaît ce que l'on attend." The author is comparing the acts of kneeling (to pray) and lying in wait (to watch animals); so he chose phrasings and sentence structures that create a clear symmetry ("A genoux" / "A l'affût", 3 syllables, starting with the same sound, followed by a comma, then “on” + verb + clause.) The English translation? "To kneel is to wait in expectation without proof" [...] "Lying in a hide, the object of the wait is known."
Now the two sentences have different grammatical structures, they don't contain the same pronoun and don’t start with the same sound or phrasing even though the translator could have chosen to write "Kneeling" and "Lying" to preserve a tiny bit of the original intent. The translation obliterates the similarities of sound & rhythm in the grammar and word choice, which were here for a literary purpose—to link and compare two concepts.
On the other hand, every sentence in the book that's ripe with vivid imagery of wild animals is very conscientiously translated. In the next page, Tesson describes yaks as "taches de jais saupoudrant—", the English translator: "[the yaks] appeared as jade smudges scattered—" It's word for word ! The translator clearly thought visually striking phrases are essential and must be preserved as faithfully as possible, but phrases that are striking on an auditory / rhythmical level are less important (or less likely to be appreciated by an English-speaking reader.)
I was reading The Bear and the Nightingale last year and I remember a contrast so blatant it made me laugh—the sentence "The ground was thick with snowdrops" in the original, was translated in French as "Le sol était parsemé d'une nuée de perce-neige." (The ground was scattered with a mist of snowdrops.)
In terms of French prose, this is good! In terms of faithful translation of English prose, this is bad! The translator went for the complete opposite when it comes to imagery—"thick" which evokes weight, vs. the weightlessness of "scattered" and “mist.”
But you know what? "Parsemé" and "perce-neige" have the same syllable count and nearly identical consonant sounds— [p]-[sə]-[m] / [p]-[sə]-[n]. It's pleasing to the ear and symmetrical. The “mist” bit might seem unnecessary (you could say “scattered with snowdrops”) but it was added because it contributes to this—rather than having two similar words right next to one another, they are now the last word in the first and second half of the sentence, making each half end on a similar sound, like poetry. The two halves "le sol était parsemé" and "d'une nuée de perce-neige" have 7 syllables each (with a mute e, the way most people would read it.) So the sentence sounds nice and is well-balanced, and what could be more important than musicality and balance?? Surely not imagery.
It's good writing in terms of what French deems important. It's terrible at preserving what the original English deemed important—"thick" associated with snowdrops as if the flowers were an actual blanket of snow—this evokes weight and quiet—the next sentence then opens with the trill of a bird, and the light, airy sound feels all the more vivid thanks to this clear contrast.
Which is obliterated by the French translation. But the French sentence flows nicely, and it really highlights what each language finds beautiful and essential, in terms of prose. I mentioned in this post that one of the reasons French takes up more room as a language is that it loves grammatical redundancy while English hates it—and I think it's because expanding or repeating a grammatical structure can add symmetry and balance, while it dilutes / drowns out the imagery. I don't think translators make an active choice all the time to overlook one aspect of the prose and pay more attention to another—I think as they mentally chew on the original text and try to come up with the best equivalent, they instinctively tend to fall into this pattern of favouring their language’s Good Writing criteria (probably because it’s assumed readers favour them as well.)
I should write these kinds of examples down in some Word doc, because they’re everywhere, and while there are so many writing styles and translation styles in both languages, there really is a pattern here—French being obsessed with balance and assonance, i.e. the beauty of motion & sound (which are twin concepts when it comes to language), how to make the flow of a sentence linger in your mind; English being obsessed with the beauty of imagery, the ways to make it 'pop', how to make an atmosphere linger in your mind.
Sorry for this very long answer that only briefly touched on your question, but I really love to observe the ways people use their languages so similarly yet differently!
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janainaart
