Translation as hagiographical weapon: the French perception of Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield’s reputation in France has always been greater than in England. Since her untimely death in 1923, the French reception of Mansfield has idealised her persona to the extent of crafting a hagiography. In this essay I ask: what were the motives behind the French critics’ desire to put Mansfield on a pedestal and how do the translations of her work collude in the hagiography of her personality, thereby determining whether the beliefs and principles expressed in the original texts have been diluted or censored during the translation process. The French are not wrong to stress that her personality is to be found in her writing. It is simply that only certain facets of her personality are shown. We now know that the English works themselves had already been censored by her husband, the critic John Middleton Murry, who included nothing which would further stain his own tarnished image, or anything which would seriously condemn his dead first wife. There was a deliberate editing out of things distasteful, shocking, anti-French, colloquial, political, cruel, blasphemous and especially humorous. If the French version is also viewed as a severe bowdlerisation, one must ask what remained of the real Katherine Mansfield for the French audience to appreciate. In this essay I demonstrate how - factual and biographical distortions not withstanding - the Katherine Mansfield legend was dependent on the presentation of her art to the French reading public. The sharp-witted, sarcastic, comedienne perceived in her original writing becomes a dull, sober 'thinker' in translation. For when the translations of her stories, journal and letters are assessed together, perhaps the most overriding feature which seems to be lost in translation is the humour; for example in the idiolects of her characters, together with the humour through which she expresses herself in her personal writing. There is sadness and philosophising too, but these do seem to be able to make the journey from English into French, whereas the humour almost never does. The reintroduction of this humour into the translations would do much to introduce a saner, more down-to-earth, humorous writer to the French reading public