We all tend to
show off when writing. And novels provide a huge opportunity. Having scanned my
novel, Blest Redeemer, in draft Plutarch asked if I wasn’t
overdoing the French phrases? Was un
mauvais quart d’heure (literally: a bad quarter of an hour; idiomatically:
an unpleasant experience) necessary given that the scene wasn’t set in France?
I agreed and substituted.
In 1921 they did
things differently. Aldous Huxley’s novel, Crome Yellow, is not only stuffed
with unexplained French (and Italian) material but includes several
untranslated stanzas of a French folk song. Did readers simply skip these
passages back then or were they all polyglots?
My second novel, Risen
on Wings, is set in France and the French language is one of the characters. In
revising the MS recently I displayed all the French in italics and now the
pages have an accusatory look. Suppose it had been set in Russia? Perhaps the
book will go down well in Bordeaux.
BEETHOVEN’S
violin concerto is a violent, heart-wringing piece of music. Mrs RR and I heard
it yet again recently, with the Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons directing the
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and another Latvian, Baibe Skride (a woman), sawing
the fiddle. What was unusual was Skride’s comparatively limited dynamic range
(ie, softest to loudest) which meant that many melodic lines ended very, very
quietly.
I remember skipping the French and Italian phrases in Chrome Yellow. But in those days I didn't fancy myself as a linguist. Now that I do I tend to worry about showing off, which is what I still think Aldous Huxley was doing.
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