Notes before and after French opera “Romeo and Juliette” at Geneva “Arena”, June-July 2001

Shakespeare… in French?

(Is it possible to translate genius?)

Evelina Rioukhina, UN/ECE

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not shoe his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliette and her Romeo.

C’est une paix bien morne que ce matin nous apporte
Le soleil, de douleur, ne se montre pas.
Partons, allons parler encore de ces tristes événements.
D’aucuns serons punis, d’autres pardonnés.
Au, jamais il n’y eut plus douloureuse histoire
Que celle de Juliette et de son Roméo!

For over a year I heard from more and more people about the tremendous success of a new French rock- opera “Romeo and Juliet”, about their tune “Aimer”, and this glory grows and grows. First it was my daughter who told me about this opera and about her classmates rendering of “Aimer”. I noticed that adults became increasingly fascinated by the performance, which started its triumph in Paris on 19 January 2000. Colleagues of mine tried to book tickets, but it is practically impossible, because everything is sold out for the next two years.

By chance we learned that a performance would take place in Geneva’s Arena at the end of June, and we were lucky to get tickets almost eight months in advance. Only few remained, although the performance was not even announced at that time.

So, we have been waiting for this great day, and all this time I was thinking: how come I will go to listen to what? To Shakespeare… in French? How is it possible? Is it possible at all? Why not in English, the mother tongue of the author who for me is one of the undoubted geniuses of the world literary heritage?

It so happened that I have been studying this author and his masterpieces all my life. I take his books with me wherever I go. For me he is a genius, and in whatever difficult moments I have, I open his sonnets, comedies or tragedies and find either reconciliation, or better understanding. And each time I discover a new guise, and the more I read, the more hitherto unfathomed depths I find. This is his secret, the secret of all genius, which is eternal and bottomless.

I was fortunate to have the chance to learn middle-age English. I have no difficulties in reading and understanding Shakespeare in the original, which I find is the best version. Having for long lived in the environment of writers and literary translators, I remember that we always argued about whether is it possible to translate genius, whether genius should be translated and whether it remains the same in translation, continuing on a plane of is own? Who amongst us could gather the courage not only to create rhymes but to assert that these contain the equivalence of the ideas in all their depth? I remember discussing the example of Nabokov (the creator of « Lolita ») who translated all his novels himself, and even so, the same novel was not really the same. It was not a translation, but a different novel written by the same writer according to the culture of the people into whose language he was translating. Tolstoi’s epic novel was translated as «War and Peace», where the author could not write in one language. It is virtually written in two languages. The translation of the very title provoked and still provokes such disputes in the world of literary criticism. The second word was translated as «peace» in contrast with «war». Or should a completely different word have been used?.

These are just small examples of how delicate and difficult the task is. When I prepared myself for this rock-opera performance, I studied a variety of translations of Shakespeare into French and was surprised to discover that most of the time the work was done by professional translators, rather than poets or writers. There are bilingual editions, and some very talented translations, especially by Jean Fuyier, Pierre Jean Jouve and George Pitoëff. I like the translation of the writer Yves Bonnefoy best (an extract of his work is given above). I read how enormous a task it was for him.

There are some very talented translations and perfect language that sometimes seem to exceed in nobility that of the original. I noticed this phenomenon in the translation of Shakespeare’s masterpieces into Russian.  Especially of his sonnets, that many of the outstanding poets of all times and tastes have attempted to translate, including the outstanding translation by Pasternak (author of “Doctor Zhivago”). They are my favourites translations, my favourite sonnets, but still translation is translation no matter how talented it is, and the original remains the original. The most demonstrative in this respect is a book that I recently found with Hamlet’s famous soliloquy in different translations by more than a dozen known authors. At best, they may have attempted, if not a literal translation, yet to convey the basic idea, but even this is questionable since each writer has a different understanding or perception. Can we really understand genius in all its depth?

No biography of Shakespeare was written during his life. Today little can be factually supported of what we believe to be the events of the life of William Shakespeare, and much debate continues to this day. No matter how controversial many events are, and even despite the speculations about whether it was he himself who wrote all these things, or somebody else, they are still genius and enrich world literature, even if, as now the critics say, he borrowed many of his ideas from others.

We also know that, the most excellent and lamentable tragedy of Romeo and Juliette, was not entirely of Shakespeare’s own invention. He wrote Romeo and Juliette in about 1595 based on Arthur Brooke’s poem “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet” (1592), which was itself a translation from the French short story by the 16th-century Italian writer Matteo Bandello. However, it is Shakespeare’s version which become a masterpiece of all times; it is he who raised eternal questions of passion, violence, vengeance, forgiveness, despair, hope, love, death, and it is his genius that will live throughout the centuries. When one watches ballet, the harmony of gesture and music, is the miracle above language, and the question of language does not appear. One just watches the interpretation of genius.

There have been many movie versions of the play. The most outstanding, and the closest to Shakespeare’s play, is the version by Franco Zefferelli, rewarded by the Oscars. The producer had the difficult task to preserve not only the language of the time, but to create the real atmosphere of the époque of Shakespeare, by architecture and by Italy’s renaissance masterworks. The famed balcony scene was filmed at the palace built by Cardinal Bourges in the 16th century. Capulet’s home was built by Pope Pius in the 1460s and Friar Lawrence’s church is the church of San Pietro, a national monument. No less magnificent is a recent version, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of the play. It was highly emotional, perhaps thanks to the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet who gave new breath to the tragedy, contemporising it in some way and making it more approachable to modern spectators. «Shakespeare in Love» gave still another understanding of the author and made us think and re-think, read and re-read, inviting us to come back again and again to the sources, to analyse again and again the originals and try to understand Shakespeare’s profound talent.

So I was anxious to know how the big night would turn out and what I would hear. The success of this performance suggested that there is a key to our understanding, but could I find the right door to open? Finally, the day came, and we arrived at the performance. The hall was overfilled, the people were more than excited in anticipation of some magic. I looked around and noticed the desire for this magic in the eyes around me. It was clear – they came to see something that I was not aware of. I had concentrated so much on how I would be listening to Shakespeare in French that I had definitely missed something very important.

The light went off. Exhilaration was in the air. A magic wand opened the curtains and then I saw a very handsome young man and a very beautiful young girl. They looked in each other’s eyes, they took each other’s hand, and they gave each other the shine of their smiles, the beating of their hearts, the symphony of their pure feelings. The sound of music filled the scene and the hall. And then they started to sing. They started to sing «Aimer». I looked around and then I understood that everyone around me came to see their dream, which was now coming true on the stage. And everybody dreams of beauty, of purity and at the sublime. Especially in feelings. Especially in love. Perhaps this is a feature out of time – people need this beauty, especially beauty in love. There are too many tragedies and misfortunes around, too much stress and tension in the modern style of life. The soul needs the purity, seeks the sublime, and longs for the beauty.

I was surprised that nobody was even asking or thinking about Shakespeare. It was not important for them. And suddenly all became so obvious, so clear to me. It was not Shakespeare at all, just something similar in the fibula (story). He and she. On the stage. Opening the galaxy of love to us. It just so happened that her name was Juliette; it just so happened that his name was Romeo. They are singing the ode to pure romance; they are singing the ode to the beauty of eternal love. And the best language for sublime love is French.