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

[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."