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Mademoiselle de Malepeire by Fanny Reybaud,: Translated by Barbara Basbanes Richter

Di Barbara Basbanes Richter

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Lunghezza: 163 pagine2 ore

Editore:: Bancroft Press
Pubblicato:: Oct 6, 2020
ISBN:: 9781610885225
Formato:: Libro

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Barbara Richter uses her considerable skills as a modern translator and writer to bring Fanny Reybaud's captivating French novel to the English-speaking world for the first time in more than a century.

This1854 novel focuses on a portrait of Mademoiselle de Malepeire, which hangs in Dom Gérusac's home in the countryside of southern France just before the first French Revolution. Noted for her beauty, Mademoiselle de Malepeire had been painted by her well-to-do suitor, who was enthralled with her beauty and able to disregard her cold and haughty demeanor. Her eventual love story is pieced together in Dom Gérusac's home as many unexpected guests join him, and Mademoiselle de Malepeire's dramatic new identity is revealed.

A fast-paced and delightful mystery, Reybaud's novel, in Richter's hands, is a clever, inspiring gem that can still pull at the hearts of 21st century people, and perhaps, in this newest translation, will revive interest in Reybaud, once a bestselling French female novelist and considered the equal of fellow female French novelist George Sand.

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Mademoiselle de Malepeire by Fanny Reybaud,: Translated by Barbara Basbanes Richter

Di Barbara Basbanes Richter

Lunghezza: 163 pagine2 ore

Descrizione

Leggi altro

Editore:: Bancroft Press
Pubblicato:: Oct 6, 2020
ISBN:: 9781610885225
Formato:: Libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Barbara Basbanes Richter

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Mademoiselle de Malepeire by Fanny Reybaud, - Barbara Basbanes Richter

Translator

Introduction

Sweeping pastoral descriptions, an emphasis on intense emotion, and a celebration of individualism are hallmarks of the Romantic literary movement. All are present in the novel Mademoiselle de Malepeire, penned in 1854 by Fanny Reybaud, a bestselling French writer who wrote no fewer than thirty novels, in addition to numerous short stories and poems.

At its zenith, her popularity extended well beyond the borders of her native country. Many of her works were translated into Spanish, English, German, and even Arabic: Mademoiselle de Malepeire was translated by a Syrian publisher in the late 1850s to meet the demands of a growing female readership in that country.¹

During her heyday, Reybaud frequented literary salons with the likes of Honoré de Balzac, Frédéric Mistral, and Alphonse Daudet. In her writing, Reybaud remained faithful to the written tradition of Provençal storytelling—an oral, conversational style with opposing voices and differing opinions that is at once accessible and immensely readable.

In the 1923 introduction to his translation of Charles Baudelaire’s poems entitled The Task of the Translator, German literary critic Walter Benjamin wrote that a translation comes later than the original, and since the important works of world literature never find their chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life. Mademoiselle de Malepeire has been translated into English a few times: first, in 1880 as The Portrait in My Uncle’s Dining Room by Lady Georgina Fullerton (D & J Sadlier & Co.), then in 1905 by Remus Foster (Neale Publishing) as La Belle Paysanne. The novel was even the victim of plagiarism in 1884. A story in the April 5th, 1884 edition of The Saturday Review entitled Ethics of Plagiarism called out a Mr. Charles Reade for taking full credit for a story appearing in Harper’s Magazine entitled The Picture, wherein an aptly named Mademoiselle de Groucy rebuffs her betrothed and weds her peasant lover Flaubert instead.

In the interim, however, this book has otherwise gone unnoticed other than serving as reference material for scholarly papers. Now, in 2020, this little story is worthy of a new treatment. Without giving too much away, this twisted, nineteenth-century romance opens by describing a captivating painting of a beautiful aristocrat, which subsequently inspires a young scholar to discover the subject’s true identity, only to find a French Revolution-era tale of murder and deception instead. While unraveling the mystery of the painting, the story also subtly examines the proper role of a woman in society—in other words, Mademoiselle de Malepeire feels surprisingly relevant today. Would it be too far afield to suggest that Oscar Wilde, a noted Francophile and fluent French speaker, had Mademoiselle de Malepeire in mind, in part, while crafting The Picture of Dorian Gray?

Now, more than 166 years since it first appeared in print, Mademoiselle de Malepeire has returned. I translated this book into English for contemporary readers in the hopes that Reybaud will be rediscovered while also creating a fuller understanding of nineteenth-century feminism and of the history of women writers in France. It is time we rediscovered a writer who earned fame and critical acclaim while blazing a trail for future women writers and who helped legitimize regionalist Occitan (southwestern French) literature as well—though it didn’t come easily.

How did Reybaud, once considered the equal of fellow female French novelist George Sand (née Amandine Aurore Lucille Dupin) and beloved by her readers, go from being the darling of French literary circles to total obscurity? By November of 1870, when Reybaud quietly died, unmourned and unnoticed in a remote corner of southwestern France, Napoleon III had suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of Otto von Bismarck in the Battle of Sedan, assuring a Prussian victory and the fall of the Second Empire. In short, there were other pressing national issues occurring on the eve of her death, yet twenty-seven years earlier, Reybaud had made the rounds of the glittering Parisian literary circuit and dazzled everyone she met.

In his autobiography, The True Story of My Life: A Sketch, Hans Christian Andersen recounts meeting Reybaud at a soirée in the winter of 1843:

At the Countess ——’s, where I met with Balzac, I saw an old lady, the expression of whose countenance attracted my attention. There was something so animated, so cordial in it, and everybody gathered about her. The Countess introduced me to her, and I heard that she was Madame Reybaud, the authoress of Les É, the little story which I had made use of for my little drama of The Mulatto. I told her all about it, and of the representation of the piece, which interested her so much that she became from this evening my especial protectress. We went out one evening together and exchanged ideas. She corrected my French and allowed me to repeat what did not appear correct to her. She is a lady of rich mental endowments, with a clear insight into the world, and she showed maternal kindness towards me.

During her active years, Reybaud found success writing in a style of Romantic Regionalism—in this case, telling Provençal tales in French rather than the colloquial langue d’oc while still retaining the local aesthetic that linked these stories to their region. It could also be argued that her work paved the way for more well-known (and male) Provençal authors, such as her contemporary Alphonse Daudet (Lettre de mon moulin), Occitan writer and Nobel Prize winner Frédéric Mistral—his narrative poem, Mirèlo (1859), chronicles the fates of two star-crossed Provençal lovers of different social strata—and Jean Giono (Colline). Reybaud’s stories sparkle with southern French charm, and yet, since her death, Reybaud’s considerable body of work remains virtually unknown and unread.

Much of what’s known about Reybaud is due to the efforts of Yvonne Knibiehler, a professor at the University of Aix-en-Provence, who has spent her career studying the history of women and maternity. The following short biography of Reybaud owes much to Kniebiehler’s insightful introduction written for a 1990 reissue (in French) of Mademoiselle de Malepeire, published by Actes Sud.

Born in the city of Aix-en-Provence on December 15, 1802 to Dr. Arnaud and Therese Rourse, Josephine Antoinette Henriette Fanny Arnaud appeared destined to live a traditional bourgeois life. However, Fanny’s parents separated shortly after her birth, and she was sent to a Carmelite convent in Aix, where she lived for nearly eight years. Her education at the convent left an indelible mark on her future writing—cloisters, in particular, figure prominently in Reybaud’s works as a place where her heroes take refuge from life’s slings and arrows. Girls cloistered at the convent were invited to keep a daily journal, a habit that helped the young Fanny cultivate her writing style.

Fanny left the convent to live with her father in 1819. During her absence, the doctor’s household had transformed into a meetinghouse for young liberals opposed to the second White Terror who celebrated the constitutional Charter of 1814, a declaration of equality before the law and freedom of the press. Fanny participated in these lively debates, reading influential books and making lifelong friends, some of whom later resurfaced and encouraged her to pursue a career in writing.

Eventually, Fanny began frequenting salons hosted by her uncles in Marseille, then a bustling maritime port city, and word of her beauty and charm spread. At one glittering gala, she caught the attention of Charles Reybaud, the son of a sugar factory owner. Passion ruled the day, and they wed in the spring of 1822. The couple set up house in Marseille shortly thereafter, and their son Emile was born on March 9, 1823.

Despite outward appearances of domestic bliss, all was not cheery in the Reybaud household, and Fanny seemed fated to repeat the plight of her parents. She filed for a judicial separation in 1825, but the court’s ruling ended only their obligation to cohabitate.² During the three short years of their marriage, Charles, it appears, had been incredibly jealous, a heavy gambler, and a notorious skirt-chaser. Despite his departure from Marseille to explore the Far East, Fanny found herself not completely free of her husband, who enlisted his brother Louis to keep watch over her. Exasperated and overwhelmed, Fanny and son Emile returned to the place of her birth—Aix-en-Provence.

Though demoralizing, this crisis kick-started Reybaud’s literary career. Unlike George Sand, whose first novels were a passionate defense of love and the rights of women over the sanctity of marriage, Fanny took a more discreet position. Where Sand incorporated much of her personal love and strife into her work, Reybaud’s characters do not relive her own experiences. Perhaps, in the beginning, writing was a distraction and a diversion for Reybaud, much as it had been during her time with the Carmelites. The power of the pen eventually overcame her, and Reybaud began leading a double life: playing the role of devoted mother by day, then writing in isolation long into the night.

Even then, Reybaud had no interest in publishing, and wrote to a friend that I would not like anyone to think that I am motivated by ambition; I have too much antipathy for women who make books. It’s worth noting here that at the start of the nineteenth century, girls were raised to become good wives and mothers with the ideal of glorified maternity in full swing. What’s more, female writers and artists were belittled by most members of society.³

In spite of her own attitude towards women writers, Fanny eventually showed a manuscript to a friend she had met in her father’s salon—journalist and historian Francois Mignet, a longtime friend of the editor of the esteemed literary journal La Revue des Deux Mondes, Adolphe Thiers, who was later president of the Third Republic. Encouraged by Mignet, Reybaud published La Protestante in 1827. It was a total failure, but undaunted, she returned to work and released a medieval novel titled Elys de Sault, which was just as poorly received as the first book.

Reybaud’s third attempt fared better. In the early 1830s, insurrections along the Pyrenees made big news in France. Capitalizing on the wave of Hispanophilia sweeping the country, Fanny wrote The Adventures of a Renegade under his Dictation, published in 1836.⁴ It is a story she claims in the novel’s introduction to be based on the actual life of a young Spanish officer forced to flee the country. Whether this young officer was a legitimate runaway or merely a figment of Fanny’s imagination is unclear—a contemporary review of the novel asked the same question—but regardless, Fanny had finally found her breakout success.⁵

After the novel’s triumph, the public clamored for Reybaud’s books, and that same year she turned out Pierre and The House of Saint-Germain. A flurry of novels followed, as well as a warming of relations with her estranged husband, who, during his time in the wilderness, had converted to Saint-Simonisme, an ideology that touted faith in industry and science as the way to societal equality. In her free time, Reybaud became a regular on the fashionable Parisian and Aixois literary circuits, with assistance from her longtime advocate Mignet.

By 1840, Reybaud was a frequent contributor to La Revue des deux Mondes, still under the direction of Thiers, and it was here that Mademoiselle de Malepeire first appeared in two installments between December 1854 and January 1855.

Reybaud continued writing, and even though her star seemed to fade by 1860, publisher Louis Hachette released nine of her works for his Bibliothèque de Chemins de fer, a selection of popular books printed in a travel-friendly format.

In 1870, Fanny Reybaud died in a small village near Nice, with hardly any family to grieve her absence—Charles had died in 1864, and her son Emile passed away in 1874.

Reybaud’s papers and correspondence were given to her granddaughter, Marie, who left Provence soon after she was married and was never heard from again. Following World War I, a great nephew tried to reconstruct Reybaud’s original workroom, but upon his death, her house was abandoned and the contents dispersed to the four winds.

Chapter One

When I was in school—it’s been at least thirty years since then—I spent a part of my summer vacations with an uncle on my mother’s side who lived in a lovely country home in upper Provence, just a few miles from Piedmont. This uncle was a

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Informazioni sul libro

Mademoiselle de Malepeire by Fanny Reybaud,: Translated by Barbara Basbanes Richter

Azioni libro

Descrizione

Azioni libro

Informazioni sul libro

Mademoiselle de Malepeire by Fanny Reybaud,: Translated by Barbara Basbanes Richter

Descrizione

Informazioni sull'autore

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