The publishers of La Vache enragée (the title is idiomatic French for being destitute and was used for a short-lived humorous journal published in Paris in 1896) were less inhibited than Gollancz was forced to be. The English edition, the translators explained, had had to resort to dashes for many swearwords (some quite mild) but they had restored these words in full in the light of the author’s indications. Orwell’s French was good, but where he used French in his English text the translators sometimes made this more colloquial. In addition, Orwell added explanatory footnotes for the French readers, evidently in answer to questions posed by the translators, and they themselves added footnotes (explaining, for example, the meanings of public houses and public schools and that traffic in England drove on the left and not, as in France, on the right).
This variety of material enables something of the original tone of Orwell’s book to be recovered, but it is not always possible to make clear-cut decisions as to what to include and what to leave out. It is not always plain which are Orwell’s additional footnotes to the French translation (moreover, for this edition, they have to be translated back into English),1 and the filling in of blanks presents a number of problems. Thus, on page 143, line 23, the English edition has a dash, the French has ‘sacrées’, but the Proof has ‘f——’. The French here, and elsewhere, is not an equivalent of what is suggested by the Proof–e.g., page 146, line 29, where the Proof again has ‘f——’, while the French has ‘sale’ (‘filthy’). Blanks in the English text may be replaced in French by obscenities, remarkably mild expressions, or by nothing at all. Among words introduced into the French text are: sale, dingo, chier, foutre, sacré cochon, couillons-là, sacr…, salauds-là, vache.
This edition is circumspect in completing blanks, not out of prurience, but on grounds of textual uncertainty; only those footnotes are added which can reasonably be assigned to Orwell; and the more colloquial French of La Vache enragée has been adopted in the light of Orwell’s approval of the French translation and bearing in mind his wish that Spanish names in Homage to Catalonia should be regularised in any later editions. A full explanation of what has been done will be found in the Textual Note to the Complete Works edition, I, pages 217–30 (Secker and Warburg, 1986). That edition also gives footnotes found in the French edition that are not included here.
PETER DAVISON
Albany, London
I
THE RUE DU COQ D’OR, Paris, seven in the morning. A succession of furious, choking yells from the street. Madame Monce, who kept the little hotel opposite mine, had come out onto the pavement to address a lodger on the third floor. Her bare feet were stuck into sabots and her grey hair was streaming down.
Madame Monce: ‘Sacrée salope! How many times have I told you not to squash bugs on the wallpaper? Do you think you’ve bought the hotel, eh? Why can’t you throw them out of the window like everyone else? Espèce de traînée!’