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

[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.