Found in
Translation: Simon Willis applauds a new version of Albert Camus's most
confrontational novel...
From
INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine,
September/October
2012
Author
ALBERT CAMUS
English
title THE OUTSIDER
Original
title L'ETRANGER (1942)
Original
language FRENCH
Translator
SANDRA SMITH
Existentialism
had its great theorist in Sartre and its great novelist in Camus, and
this is
still the book students turn to when they need a fix of
me-against-them. That's
partly because Camus looked worth emulating—a rakish romantic to
Sartre's
goggle-eyed nymphomaniac—and partly because as a novel "The Outsider"
is an attractive mix of pith and mystery. It has had several
translators since
Stuart Gilbert, who gave us the first English version in 1946. His
opening line
was "Mother died today", and as other translators followed suit it
began to look indelible. But this new translation, by Sandra Smith,
differs
from the first word. The question it asks is how to talk when we talk
about
mothers.
She opens
with "My mother died today", a small change which signals that
Meursault, Camus's narrator and one of fiction's coldest fish, might
not be
quite as cold as usual. Throughout the rest of the novel, he refers to
"mama" instead of "mother". This isn't just a question of
what the French word maman means. After he shoots an Arab on the beach,
Meursault's fate in court rests largely on the question of whether or
not he
loved his mum. He won't give anything away, which is where both his
problem and
his heroism lie. In 1955 Camus described Meursault as a man who refuses
to play
the game—a refusal which, as the terms get more affectionate, feels
more
potent.
This version
doesn't have quite the terse elegance of earlier translations, but with
a few
deft choices, Sandra Smith has made the battle lines between Meursault
and the
world starker. She's given a subtle twist to an old story.
Simon Willis
is apps editor of Intelligent Life
The Outsider
Penguin, out now
"Bữa
nay mẹ tôi mất"
(Aujourd’hui
maman est morte).