Moliere’s Wit Compromised in the Renditions of Tartuffe

1 Moliere’s Wit Compromised in the Renditions of Tartuffe Moliere’s plays, especially Tartuffe, are difficult to render into English. Moliere employs Alexandrine, a unique form of verse in French, consisting of twelve syllables and usually a caesura after the sixth syllable which is quite different from the English version of Alexandrine that has six iambic feet and a caesura after the third foot. So it becomes difficult to use the rhyme in English. Besides, the rendition of Tartuffe in another language blows away the wittiness of Moliere.

There are a number of other issues beyond the poetic ones that affect the renditions, especially when Tartuffe is to be enacted on stage. In case of plays, the perception about what can be performed dictates the course of translation. The performance fluctuates from one location and period to another location and period. Noel Peacock categorizes translators as conservationists, who try to retain all the attributes of the original work, though in a slightly modified form; modernizers, who change quite a few parts of the original to suit the present times; and the post modernizers who dismantle and restructure Moliere’s Tartuffe though they do use some of the original material (1994).

The American exercise of staging Tartuffe is often predisposed towards expansive and ludicrous comedy; to such an extent that the audience can make out that it is just a sham. Most of the substance of Moliere’s work goes astray when it is performed just for fits of laughter. The analysis of personality becomes an exercise in futility in such performances. According to Copley, the adaptations of Moliere’s works have altered the poetic writer into a supplier of travesty (1960). This could apply to the stage performances of Tartuffe too! There is an alternative available to the translators. It is to write the play in the seventeenth century English,

2 the time in which Tartuffe was originally written. But this alternative is never used because writing English of that time is an overwhelming assignment and the audience too may not like it.

The translators, who exercised restraint in rendering Tartuffe, in keeping with the politesse of their time, could make quite witty comedies. Like the original Tartuffe, these versions were a bit lewd but still not offensive to conventional standards of decency. But a majority of the English versions of Tartuffe use explicitly vulgar language in which the wittiness of Moliere is swapped with obscenity. A case in point is Moliere Tartuffe, a translation by Ranjit Bolt (1991). Bolt employs rhyming couplets in explicitly vulgar and everyday use language which totally distorts the original work of Moliere.

Some translators like John Wood (1959) have chosen prose over poetry for translating Tartuffe into English. These versions of Tartuffe, though easy to follow, are uninteresting and lack Moliere’s humor. The free verse poetry forms of Tartuffe that can be found on the internet are quite banal. Only a small number of translations of Tartuffe, such as Maya Slater’s Moliere: The Misanthrope, Tartuffe and Other Plays (2001) have accurately rendered Moliere’s verse style into English. Some others who have used the free verse form Morris Bishop (1957), whose rendition of Tartuffe is coarse but humorous, and Hampton (1983), whose work gives an unpretentious and a relaxed impression. These free verse translations make reading easy but are not as polished as Moliere’s original work.

The correct employment of the words is not only a rendition matter in Tartuffe, it is also the distinct, unifying idea of the play. In Moliere’s Tartuffe, Tartuffe makes use of his words to control people, obscuring his deceitful nature by superficial godliness. Orgon and Madame Pernelle, who are quite naïve, are fooled by his language; but Dorine and Elmire, who are quite astute, are wise to his words and can make out his intents. So any rendition of Tartuffe should be

3 accurate enough to express the mannerisms employed by Tartuffe in deceiving and influencing people.

It is even more complicated to translate Tartuffe’s words which narrate his pretentious religious principles. The meanings of these speeches of Tartuffe usually go adrift when rendered into twentieth century English. An example of this problem can be seen in the translations of the words which Tartuffe uses to assure Elmire that an affair with him will not be immoral if it is not revealed to anyone. These words are: Enfin votre scrupule est facile à détruire: Vous êtes assurée ici d'un plein secret, Et le mal n'est jamais que dans l'éclat qui'on fait; Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l'offense, Et ce n'est pas pécher que pécher en silence. (Act IV, sc, 5) Maya Slater translates these words as: Well, anyway, your scruple's easy to allay.

You can be sure your secret won't be disclosed: No wickedness exists until it's been exposed.

Its public outcry gives a crime its origin, And if you sin in silence, then it's not a sin. (2001) The same words are translated by Christopher Hampton as: Anyway, I can easily remove your scruples: this will be completely secret, I can assure you, and the only evil is to make a great noise about things.

What constitutes the offense is public scandal.

Sinning in silence is no sin at all. (1991)

4 If we compare the two different translations we can see that they both lend meanings to Tartuffe’s words that are quite different from the original. The two versions even differ with each other in the third line of this verse. This shows how taxing it is to convert Moliere’s portrayal of Tartuffe’s religious pretensions into English. The two translators in question here may have translated the verse in such a way just to make it more meaningful to the English speaking audience.

Richard Wilbur was the first translator whose rendition of Moliere’s Tartuffe came closest to the original version. He has used a series of two-line verse units consisting of rhyming iambic pentameters to translate Moliere’s work (1963). His work has retained Moliere’s wit and this has led others to follow his footsteps. The most glaring dissimilarity between Wilbur's translation and the Moliere’s Tartuffe is that the unsophisticated love portrayed in the original is rendered by Wilbur as love for physical beauty. Wilbur has used the word, pulchritude, which stands for physical beauty. It looks as if it was selected so as to rhyme correctly. The word, pulchritude, is more overt and suggestive whereas the word temporal used in the original version is not so. The word, pulchritude, also fails in implying the religious pretense of Tartuffe to gain control over people. In many other lines, Wilbur has changed Moliere’s order of words to get a good rhyme and in the end he changes a negative feeling expressed by Tartuffe into a positive feeling. A similar but slightly better translation was later produced by Donald Frame (1967). Though Frame too has used a words which are either ambiguous or which do not exactly portray Tartuffe’s religious pretence, he has otherwise been faithful to the original version. But some of these words are not used in modern day English and hence are not appreciated by the audience.

The question therefore is, how faithful should the translators be to the original work of Moliere? Some translators believe that they should unbendingly write what they feel Moliere

5 wants to say while there are others who say that the translation should be such that the local viewers experience an effect similar to that experienced by the French audience when viewing the original work. Ranjit Bolt however says that Moliere’s Tartuffe is irrelevant to the modern day audience and he prefers to go adrift of the original to produce hysterics in the audience and get credit for a great performance. This may be all right for Tartuffe but may not work for modern day drama based on prose. Bolt believes that he would have been in trouble if Moliere were living (Logan 2003). Those who render modern day drama into English are more careful in their translations and their renditions are quite faithful to the original versions even though there are differences in some basic issues It can finally be said that most translators of Tartuffe employ manipulation to influence their audience. ‘Manipulation’ may be an unkind word; but can the distorted translations, meant to control the emotions of the audience and fool them in relating themselves with the characters in the play, be called anything else? The audience gets emotionally attached to the characters in the story without realizing it. Tartuffe begins as a comedy but ends on a serious note. The comedy too, is quite subtle. The translators only give emphasis to the comedy and downplay the seriousness and insightfulness Moliere’s Tartuffe. So most of the translations of Tartuffe are crude and highlight only one facet of the characters.

I believe that any translation for the production of Tartuffe has two likely purposes. It can be provided to stage production companies, allowing them to interpret it in different ways for various performances. Another purpose could be to provide it to the readers and let their mind's eye deliver an interpretation of the story and its characters. Moliere’s Tartuffe should be translated in the way fiction is translated so that it can be read by people who otherwise may not be able to see a stage performance. This would involve faithful translation of the verses in the

6 original version of Tartuffe so that the readers are not deprived of Moliere’s wittiness. The religious language used in Moliere’s time, that was quite scandalous at that time and would be so even today, should also be used correctly. The translations that exclude such a vital aspect of the original Tartuffe, become absurd. One of the best translations, therefore, is the one by Appelbaum with English translation on one page and the corresponding, original French version on the opposite page. In this way the reader gets the benefit of relating the two versions.

I am sure that there will be many more translations of Tartuffe in times to come because of the timeless appeal of the work and some of them will actually understand the original work to give renditions which have the wittiness of Moliere.

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Appelbaum, S. (1998). Tartuffe and the bourgeois gentilhomme. Mineola, New York: Dover

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Bolt, R. (1991). Trans. tartuffe. in two plays: Tartuffe/the sisterhood. Bath: Absolute Classics.

Copley, J.(1960). On translating molière into english. Durham University Journal, 52, 116-124.

Frame, D. (1967). Trans. tartuffe, or the imposter. in tartuffe and other plays. New York: Signet.

Hampton, C. (1984). Trans. molière’s tartuffe or the impostor. London: Faber and Faber.

Hampton, C. (1991). Tartuffe, or the imposter. in landmarks of french classical drama. London: Methuen.

Logan, B. (04/12/2003). Whose play is it anyway? Retrieved 04/19/2009, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2003/mar/12/theatre.artsfeatures.

Peacock, N.(1994). Translating molière for the english stage. Nottingham French Studies, 33, 83-91.

Slater, M. (2001). Trans. tartuffe. in moliere: The misanthrope, tartuffe, and other plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wilbur, R. (1963). Trans. tartuffe. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Wood, J. (1959). Trans. the misanthrope and other plays.. London: Penguin Books.