Anyone familiar with French or the works of Georges Bataille?

[kestrell]

This is the epigraph to _The Encyclopedia of the Dead_ by Danilo Kis; I am including the translation given by Google, but it doesn't entirely make sense to me, so I wanted to make sure the translation was correct before I banged my head against it some more.

Ma rage d'aimer donne sur la mort comme une fenetre sur la cour.

["love my rage faces death as a window onto the courtyard"]

Comments

[fabrisse]

I went to another online translator and got "My rage to love faces death as a window on the court" which is a little better.

My personal translation is closer to "My passion to love gives me a window to the courtyard of death."

[negothick]

I'd say it's a play on "donner sur," "to give on--as a window gives on a courtyard". We actually have that idiom in English, rather affected English, anyway. I found a few uses of the phrase in Google books.

As for the translation, then it is thus, as fabrisse says more elegantly, "My passion for love gives on death just as or in the same sense as (in the idiom) a window gives on a courtyard.

[kestrell]

Thank you for the additional light cast on the wordplay--it definitely fits with the ironic playfulness of the writer.

[kestrell]

Both of those help a lot, thank you! One problem with the google translation was it was a bit muddled regarding which was the subject of the sentence.

[siderea]

Why would it not be "the passion[*] of my love"?

Also, why is "cour" not "heart" like in a proper Romance language?

[* Moderns wouldn't use "rage" as "madness"?

See this is what happens when you pick up your French by immersion from Trouvere poetry.]

[kestrell]

I was hoping to hear from your troubador perspective. I'm saving this translation also. Bataille tends to be multi-layered in himself, and Kis is writing in the fabulous style of Borges, so I'm guessing that all of these interpretations could be possible.

[siderea]

Oh! Well, then, what my brain did confronted with that sentence was basically: "My rage of love gives over death, like a window on the heart. *nods* Everybody sees you're blown apart, everybody sees the wind blow, I'm going to Graceland, etc."

[kestrell]

That is even more intriguing, because it makes me think of rage as a tempest, or even a hurricane, equating the unbridled force of irrepressible human emotions to a natural event which is capable of being simultaneously both destructive and renewing, in that it sweeps away old structures and creates a space for something new, even as it churns up what was previously hidden beneath the surface.

[kestrell]

I meant to add, I had been thinking of rage in terms of human anger, something violent and destructive.

[fabrisse]

"Coeur" is heart in French -- same etymology but different word.

The "my" modifies the passion/madness/rage (I don't like rage as a direct translation in this context, but madness would work in place of passion) rather than the "love".

Of could work and I considered it, but using the infinitive has an implied "to" and with the rest of the context, I thought "to" was better. I actually like Negothick's "for" better than my original pass within the context.

[negothick]

And 'aimer' is both "loving" and [infinitive used as noun] "love". And English does use "rage" (otherwise a "false friend"/incorrect look-alike) in this sense, as in "The Great Gatsby shows us the 20s rage for wild parties."