[J. Epstein 2] C. K. Scott Moncrieff

 

 

Joseph Epstein, The ideal of Culture: Essays (2018)

 

결국, 도서관 책은 반납하고, 이 책을 샀다.

'Introduction'에 이어 열세 편의 'Culture' 에세이, 스물네 편의

'Literary' 에세이, 그리고 'Jewish'에 관해서 일곱 편, 'Masterpieces'에

대해서 스무 편, 저자가 여든을 맞으며 쓴 "Hitting Eighty"까지 모두

예순세 편의 에세이를, 여유롭게, 생각날 때마다 한두 편씩을

메모는 안 하니 밑줄도 치면서 읽고 싶어서 였다.

 

아래는 에세이

"C. K. Scott Moncrieff" 에서:

 

"Translations, like lovers, the old saw has it, are either

beautiful or faithful, but they cannot be both. In his

translation of Proust, Scott Moncrieff went,

without hesitation, for the beautiful.

 

"He published the occasional negligible poem,

but the superior poems of Wilfred Owen persuaded him

that poetry was not his line. 'I don't write good poetry,'

he wrote to his friend Edward Marsh,

'and fortunately I knew it.'

 

'The sound of a translated text, its cadence, he felt,

was of primary significance.... In this he would have

agreed with Robert Frost, who wrote: 'The ear is

the only true writer and the only true readers.'

 

"Of his own French, Scott Moncrieff said, 'I know

comparably few French words and no grammar, ... Yet

he turned out a translation of Proust that most

Proustolaters -- this reviewer among them -- find

unsurpassed and probably unsurpassable.... Joseph

Conrad ... held he preferred his translation to Proust's

original.... F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed that 'Scott

Moncrieff's Proust is a masterpiece in itself.

"Scott Moncrieff was able to bring off hisastonishing translation because he was attunedto the sensibility of Proust in a way that perhapsno contemporary translator can be."