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Honors Thesis
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Sandrine Servant
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Vienna
1 2019-04-29T00:48:07-07:00 Sandrine Servant 5c2e19aad007c90d56dee4e8069be4be7bd025ce 33581 1 plain 2019-04-29T00:48:07-07:00 Sandrine Servant 5c2e19aad007c90d56dee4e8069be4be7bd025ceThis page is referenced by:
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2019-04-11T15:07:26-07:00
Jewelry Shop
6
Hugo Von Hofmannsthal
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2019-04-29T01:30:48-07:00
In Hugo Von Hofmannsthal's The Tale of the 672nd Night, we can argue that the uncanny appears as the main character, the merchant's son, enters the jewelry shop in a poorer neighbourhood of Vienna.
"And yet the intersection of two sordid streets suddenly seemed familiar, as in a dream. Walking on he came to a jeweller’s shop. It was a very dingy shop in keeping with that part of the city, and the window was filled with the kind of worthless trinkets that may be bought from pawnbrokers and receivers of stolen goods. The merchant’s son, who was a connoisseur of precious stones, could scarcely find a passably attractive stone among them.
Suddenly, his glance fell on an old-fashioned piece of delicate gold jewellery ornamented with a beryl, which somehow reminded him of the old woman. He had probably seen a similar piece in her possession dating from her youth. The pale, almost melancholy stone also seemed in some strange way to suit her age and looks, and the old-fashioned setting had the same air of sadness. So he entered the low-ceilinged shop to buy the piece. […]
He decided to purchase one more small thing and then leave at once.
[…] and paying for what he had purchased with a gold piece and a few silver coins, he showed some impatience to be leaving the shop. The old man did not say another word, and while he was selecting a beautiful piece of tissue paper and wrapping up the chain and beryl ornaments separately, the merchant’s son chanced to go up to the single latticed window and looked out." HOFMANNSTHAL, Hugo von, translated by J.M.Q. Davis. Selected Tales. Angel Books, 2007, p. 55-56.
In English, there is loss of meaning in relation to this specific plot point. In fact, in English the term jewelry shop can mean anything from a little shop in a bad neighbourhood to a really fancy one in one of the best. In his translation, J.M.Q. Davies uses the term "jeweller's shop", there is a nuance and it does bridge a certain gap in meaning. However, the image isn't as striking and feels almost clumsy and inorganic. The nuance is lost in English making the apparition of the uncanny less plausible or at least less intrinsically tied into the experience of the jewelry shop itself. Loss of meaning occurs because of translation here as a part of the novel and its message are unable to be translated accurately into another language.
En français il n'y a pas de problème de traduction. En effet, le mot brocante en français permet d'avoir accès à ce registre plus nuancé. L'utilisation du mot brocante permet au lecteur de facilement comprendre qu'il ne s'agit pas ici d'un magasin de bijoux haut de gamme mais plutôt d'un quartier très pauvre où le personnage principal ne devrait pas se trouver. L'utilisation du mot brocante permet aussi au lecteur de voir le changement qui se passe après le passage dans le magasin. On peut voir, un peu comme Valentin dans la Peau de chagrin, que le petit collier qu'il va acheter viendra changer la donne et modifier le cours de l'histoire, où l'étrange et le fantastique entrent en scène. De ce fait, on comprend que le fantastique en français est lié à la commodité et à l'expérience de la brocante. Cette nuance n'est pas perdue.
