Reception History of Jane Austen - 19th-century European Translations

19th-century European Translations

Austen's novels appeared in some European countries soon after their publication in Britain, beginning in 1813 with a French translation of Pride and Prejudice, quickly followed by German, Danish, and Swedish editions. Their availability in Europe was not universal. Austen was not well known in Russia and the first Russian translation of an Austen novel did not appear until 1967. Despite the fact that Austen's novels were translated into many European languages, Europeans did not recognise her works as part of the English novel tradition. This perception was reinforced by the changes made by translators who injected sentimentalism into Austen's novels and eliminated their humour and irony. European readers therefore more readily associated Walter Scott's style with the English novel.

Because of the significant changes made by her translators, Austen was received as a different kind of novelist on the Continent than in Britain. For example, the French novelist Isabelle de Montolieu translated several of Austen's novels into a genre in which Montolieu herself wrote: the French sentimental novel. In Montolieu's Pride and Prejudice, for example, vivacious conversations between Elizabeth and Darcy were replaced by decorous ones. Elizabeth's claim that she has "always seen a great similarity in the turn of minds" (her and Darcy's) because they are "unwilling to speak, unless expect to say something that will amaze the whole room" becomes "Moi, je garde le silence, parce que je ne sais que dire, et vous, parce que vous aiguisez vos traits pour parler avec effet." ("Me, I keep silent, because I don't know what to say, and you, because you excite your features for effect when speaking.") As Cossy and Saglia explain in their essay on Austen translations, "the equality of mind which Elizabeth takes for granted is denied and gender distinction introduced". Because Austen's works were seen in France as part of a sentimental tradition, they were overshadowed by the works of French realists such as Stendhal, Balzac, and Flaubert. German translations and reviews of those translations also placed Austen in a line of sentimental writers, particularly late Romantic women writers. However, a study of other important dimensions of the French translations, such as free indirect discourse (FID) do much to nuance our understanding of Austen's initial "aesthetic" reception with her first French readership. Austen uses a narrative technique known as free indirect discourse (FID) to represent Anne Elliot's consciousness in Persuasion. Indeed, the portrayal of the heroine's subjective experience is central to its narration. The frequent use of FID imbues Perusasion's narrative discourse with a high degree of subtlety, placing a huge burden of interpretation on Austen's first translators. Recent studies demonstrate that FID from Persuasion was translated extensively in Montolieu's La Famille Elliot. Indeed, Montolieu was aware of the propensity of Austen's narrator to delve into the heroine's psychology in Persuasion as she comments on this in the Preface to La Famille Elliot. She characterises it as "almost imperceptible, delicate nuances that come from the heart": des nuances délicates presque imperceptibles qui partent du fond du cœur, et dont miss JANE AUSTEN avait le secret plus qu'aucun autre romancier. Montolieu's extensive translations of Austen's FID demonstrate that she was in fact one of Austen's first critical readers, whose own finely nuanced reading of Austen's narrative technique meant that her first French readers could also share in Anne Elliot's psychological drama in much the same way that her English readership could.