Third excerpt

This early passage describing Elias Rukla’s morning could prove to be somewhat emblematic for Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translation, as Solstad wastes little time establishing his style:

Det skulle ikke forundre meg om det ble regn, tenkte han, og hentet sin sammenleggbare paraply. Han la den ned i veska si, sammen med hodepinetablettene og noen bøker. Han sa farvel til sin kone, påfallende hjertelig, og i en tone som virket ekte, og som sto i sterk kontrast til hans irritable og hennes nok så dratte ansiktsuttrykk. Men slik var det hver morgen, med den største møye samlet han seg til dette hjertelige «ha det bra» som en gest til denne kvinne han i årevis hadde levd tett innpå, som han følgelig måtte kjenne en djup samhørighet med, og selv om nå i det store og det hele bare kunne kjenne rester av denne samhørighet, så var det maktpåliggende for ham hver morgen, gjennom dette muntre, og likestilte «ha det bra», å uttrykke at i djupet av sin sjel så mente han at intet var forandret mellom dem og selv om de begge visste at det overhode ikke stemte overens med de faktiske forhold, så måtte han tvinge seg selv, for sin anstendighets skyld, opp til de høyder hvor denne gest var mulig, ikke minst fordi han fikk tilbake et farvel i samme liketille og ekte tonefall, som virket dempende på hans uro, og som han ikke kunne unnvære. (Solstad 1994, 5–6)

With long phrases with plenty of clauses, a direct, hectic, and informal tone, Solstad opens his novel as he means to go on, at least from a stylistic point of view.

35 Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s rendition of this passage reads as such:

Ça ne m’étonnerait pas si le temps se mette à la pluie, songea-t-il. Et d’aller chercher son parapluie télescopique qui rejoignit aussitôt, au fond du cartable, les cachets contre le mal de crâne ainsi que quelques livres. Il prit congé de sa femme, la gratifiant d’un « au revoir » d’une surprenante cordialité, sur un ton a priori authentique, en contraste criant avec la mine, chez lui irascible, chez elle passablement fourbue, qu’arborait le visage. Il en allait ainsi chaque matin, néanmoins. Non sans se faire violence, il s’évertuait à lâcher un amical « porte-toi bien », comme un geste a l’attention de cette femme dont il partagé depuis tant d’années l’intimité et avec laquelle, conséquemment, il s’obligeait à éprouver une profonde affinité, et, quoique en l’instant présent il ne ressente guère, dans l’ensemble, que les simples reliquats de cette affinité, il mettait un point d’honneur à manifester tous les matins, avec ce « porte-toi bien » aussi enjoué que spontané, le fait que, au plus profond de son âme, rien selon lui avait changé entre eux, et ce, quand bien même tous deux savaient pertinemment que cela ne coïncidait en aucun cas avec leur relation effective ; malgré cela, il sentait forcé, par décence envers lui-même, de s’astreindre à ce geste, sans le faire pour autant franchir d’improbables limites, une auto-injonction pas si accessoire, puisque lui-même se voyait en retour gratifier d’un « au revoir » dispensé sur le même ton spontané, authentique, qui avait l’art d’atténuer son inquiétude et dont, tout bonnement, il ne pouvait se passer. (Solstad 2008, 9–10)

As has been the case with the other examples, the rhythmic patterns have been altered through changes in punctuation. In addition to alterations made to the comma pattern, a semicolon is added in the excerpt’s thirteenth line. However, the most intrusive change in this passage must be the deviating periods. In the sixth line, Coursaud adds an entirely new

period, creating a contrast between introducing the word ‘goodbye’ and the reflections upon it. Whether or not Solstad initially had specific reasons for keeping the two clauses intended in a single sentence is a matter of interpretation. However, Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s

rendition makes such interpretations more difficult. A more complicated case is the removal of the period in the second line of the excerpt and inserting one in the first. The two phrases are about the same length as in the original, but with an altered structure. Again we have to ask, with Solstad’s original text being so stylistically concise, are there not consequences to altering the syntactic relationship between these phrases?

Some considerable lexicographical shifts are happening in this passage as well. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s chosen vocabulary is more formal than the one found in the source text;

the French translator makes use of a more literary language. ‘Tenkte’ is substituted for

‘songer,’ a verb closer in meaning to the English ‘ponder,’ ‘sa farvel’ is translated by the passé simple conjugation ‘prit congé’ and then as the participle variant ‘la gratifiant.’ In the ninth line, we see a formal negation in the phrase ‘ne ressente guère,’ eschewing the more common ‘ne ressente pas’ for its more literary equivalent. It is worth considering that the negation ‘ne… guère’ is very rare in colloquial French, where one would use ‘ne… pas’ in its

36 place, almost no matter the context. While the two mean the same thing, the one chosen by the French translator is by far the more literary expression, which inevitably affects the tone of the novel.

In this passage, a literary device employed by Dag Solstad is the repetition of Elias Rukla bidding his wife farewell. As was the case with Lyngstad’s translation, the repetitive elements are absent in Coursaud’s version. In the source text, the passage opens and ends with the more formal ‘farvel,’ while the repetitions throughout the body are the more informal ‘ha det bra.’ This oscillation between formal and informal language might have significant symbolic potential, as it might illustrate something about the relationship between the protagonist and his wife. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s lexicographical shifts significantly alter the relationship between the formal and informal variants. The initial farewell is rendered as the quite formal ‘prit congé’ in Coursaud’s version. The second, ‘au revoir,’ is employed with a nominal grammatical function, rendering the passage more descriptive, separating the narration from the protagonist’s enunciation. Coursaud alters Solstad’s repetitive pattern; the following instances of ‘ha det bra’ are substituted for ‘porte-toi-bien,’

before the final ‘au revoir’ ends the passage. Coursaud disregards that the initial ‘farvel’ was replaced by ‘prit congé,’ he does not mimic the repetition, ignoring Solstad’s literary

technique.

There are several significant differences between Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s Honte et dignité and Sverre Lyngstad’s Shyness and dignity. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud takes much greater liberties in his rendition, employing a vocabulary that is further removed from the original text’s radical conjugations than we saw in the English translation. The usage of the imparfait du subjonctif and the passé simple particularly stands out, as neither are used in standard, colloquial French, the registry which would most likely be closest to Solstad’s original. These are not the only examples of a misaligned registry, as the French translator also uses more formal forms of negation and employs what seems to be a more conventional narrator, distanced from the story. While Sverre Lyngstad’s conventionalizing moves

rendered the novel in a more descriptive language, Coursaud’s conventionalizing moves is more directed at the spatial and temporal distance between the narrator and the protagonist.

However, before anyone gets the impression that Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s version of the novel is the target-oriented alternative to Sverre Lyngstad’s source-adaptive rendition, I would mention that one could argue for the opposite as well. The most prominent example of Coursaud being semantically more similar to Solstad than Lyngstad was, is the case of ‘elev.’

The French ‘élève’ corresponds more closely to the Norwegian ‘elev’ than ‘pupil’ does, the

37 etymological connection being the apparent reason. Nevertheless, this example poses

questions of the utility of a discussion of approximation to the source text is particularly necessary or even a productive endeavor.

Despite the significant differences between the English and French translations, their obvious similarities cannot be ignored. Jean-Baptiste Coursaud presents us with a more traditional narrative form, with more distanced narrator obliterating much of the interiority of Solstad’s original narration. Add to this, Coursaud makes use of a more literary language registry through the employment of traditional narrative verbal forms. There are as many similarities as there are differences between the two: not only do they present heterogeneous products, the relationship between them is itself heterogeneous. What remains to explore is if this heterogeneity extends to Jean-Baptiste Coursaud’s translational enterprise.