If there are any natural French communicators out there who are willing to help me with some translation: Mostly dealing with Sartre, poetry, and french language and style please let me know here or pm.
Hasn't the whole of Sartre's oeuvre been translated to English already? I can do some translations but probably not poetry. I'm not a pro, but if you want an idea I've translated this Cioran documentary (turn CC on):
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
I think I was high on coffee doing a million things and this idea popped into my head and I got a little bit ahead of myself.
It is more so I want translations from English into French. First thing I should probably do is pick up a French copy of Being and Nothingness and have some fun and go from French to English but I have not done that yet. Being and Nothingness is easy because it is in the title. It has been a while since I read it but I have been half assedly trying to learn French but more so am fascinated by the French language and how they communicate certain things so eloquently. Reading Being and Nothingness and Flaubert in French (as well as functioning in French in Paris) are "on my bucket list" as those things sound more fun than killing myself.
la espirit de escalier (which I will probably experience after clicking post)
la petit mort
really too many to list.
But, ok...
Basically, if Sartre, Flaubert, and Nabokov could sit in a room together and discuss: how would they translate these words into Sartre's French?
transcendence
God (as in "the divine," "the unexplainable," Ganesh, Jesus without religion, the big bang, evolution, nature, sun, stars, etc.)
goodness
truth
bad faith
actor (as in his waiter as acting as a waiter example)
The existing
The lacked
The lacking
authentic
authentic self
art
...
Now, that I am thinking about it there are so many ideas + concepts + language in that book that are awesome this could be tricky.
Pretty much just diarrhea of the keyboard here. If anyone wants to discuss translating ideas above or any Sartre ideas or just any awesome examples of french language that would be fun.
ps. will def check out that Cioran docu when I have an hour or so of focused attention.
Sartre is mentioned in the documentary btw. It doesn't tell the whole story of Cioran and Sartre but it's a big part of how he saw him and French existentialism at the time. What the documentary leaves out is that he did end up conversing with Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at some point and he liked Sartre as a person a lot. Also, "Searching for Cioran" by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston has a really nice bit dedicated to Cioran's early French period and sitting next to Sartre at the Café de Flore, you can read about it here (page 3 to 5).
all of these are pretty straight forward I think. Sartre isn't inventing new words to refer to them.
transcendance
Dieu (le divin, l'inexplicable)
bonté or bienveillance
vérité
mauvaise foi
acteur
l'existant
le manque / "manque d'être" (the lack of being)
L'authenticité (authenticity) - authentique (authentic)
le soi authentique/l'être authentique
l'art
As for "awesome examples of French language", almost every aphorism of Cioran is one such example. He was a far better writer than Sartre. He is considered by many to be one if not the greatest writer of French prose of the 20th century. If I didn't know French I would learn it just to read him!
Here's Cioran's little analysis of Sartre in his "Short History of Decay":
He tries everything, and for him everything succeeds; nothing of which he is not the contemporary. So much vigor in the artifices of the intellect, so much readiness to confront all the realms of the mind
and of fashion-—from metaphysics to movies—dazzles, must dazzle. No problem resists him, no phenomenon is foreign to him, no temptation leaves him indifferent. He is a conqueror, and has but one secret: his lack of emotion; nothing keeps him from dealing with anything, since he does so with no accent of his own. His constructions are magnificent, but without salt: categories swell with
intimate experiences, classified as in a file of disasters or a catalogue of anxieties. Here are ranged
the tribulations of man, as well as the poetry of his laceration. The Irremediable has turned into a
system, even a side show, displayed like an article of common commerce, a true mass product of
anguish. The public delights in it; the nihilism of the boulevard and the bitterness of the café feed on
it.
Thinker without fate, infinitely empty and marvelously ample, he exploits his thought, wants it to
be on every mouth. No destiny pursues him: born in the age of materialism, he would have followed
its facility and given it an unimaginable extension; out of romanticism he would have constituted a
Summa of reveries; appearing in the world of theology, he would have wielded God like any other
concept. His skill in confronting the great problems is disconcerting: everything is remarkable, except
authenticity. Basically non-poet, if he speaks of nothingness, he lacks its shudder; his disgusts are
pondered; his exasperations controlled and invented after the fact; but his will, supernaturally
effective, is at the same time so lucid, that he could be a poet if he wanted to, and I should add, a
saint, if he insisted. . . . Having neither preferences nor oppositions, his opinions are accidents; one
regrets that he believes in them; only the movement, the method, of his thought is of interest. Were I to hear Mm preach from the pulpit I would not be surprised, so true is it that he locates himself beyond all truths, masters them, so that none is necessary or organic to him. . . .
Advancing like an explorer, he conquers realm after realm; his steps no less than his thoughts are
enterprises; his brain is not the enemy of his instincts; he rises above the rest, having suffered neither
fatigue nor that vehement mortification which paralyzes desire. Son of a period, he expresses its
contradictions, its futile dilation; and when he flung himself forward in its conquest, he employed so
much pertinacity and stubbornness that his success and his renown equal those of the sword and
rehabilitate the mind by means which, hitherto, were hateful or unknown to it.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
I am still working through Tolstoy's essays, Jane Austen, Gogol, Dickens, Flaubert, Neitschze but Cioran is def bookmarked. Will fit in nicely when I get back to working through some more Joyce and Beckett.
If we are not going to have an LP meetup at Stanhope's collective in Arizona maybe we should try Cafe de Flore? One of the best croque monsieur and ambience I have experienced in my life. Everyone and anyone is invited.
Also, for learning French: Besides recklessly up and moving to Paris or Provence and sleeping with a native, what is the best way to learn French as a beginner?
I am guessing good private instruction from a native speaker who I get along with mixed with group recitation and private studying?
Maybe that is obvious?
I am just writing it out to organize my thoughts?
Yes, Cioran is a better writer than Sartre. That is clear just from short excerpts. I would like to learn French so I can read Cioran and Flaubert in French and be able to function in Paris and Provence even if it takes me until age 50. By 60, I may have more free time or I may not or I may be dead or I may not have many brain cells or I may die today but it is something to do for now.
United States. Jan 05 2015 13:15. Posts 8506
