—117→ —118→ —119→
J. M. Cohen is already known for his translations of Galdós Tormento, Rojas' La Celestina, and Cervantes' Don Quixote; Leland H. Chambers discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the last named effort, compared with that of Putnam and Starkie, in YCGL, XVI (1967), 79-84. Now Cohen's rendition of Miau, first published by Methuen in 1963, has been available since 1966 as number L 181 in the popular series The Penguin Classics. It is easy enough to cavil at the faults of this English version, but far harder to match its general soundness. If we keep in mind the fact that the vogue of the great Russia novelists of the nineteenth century in the English-speaking world today is the direct result of a few key translations, we will be very grateful indeed for Cohen's choice of this masterwork with its attractive qualities. At last Galdós can be introduced to the educated public, and especially in comparative courses on realism, in a convincing way. Perhaps this example will encourage further attempts soon at Englishing Fortunata y Jacinta, the Torquemada tetralogy, and other major novels.
Unfortunately, however, Cohen has undertaken certain arbitrary and ill advised changes. He joins original chapter 30 to original 29, causing a confusing shift in numbering in all that follow. He similarly joins two originally separate paragraphs (p. 208). It is as if he wants to exercise some sort of editorial function and suddenly does so with a nervous gesture. No explanation is given for his procedures, nor are there any footnotes to help readers with difficult names and terms or to point out inherently difficult Spanish expressions. The sole justifiable transpositions occur when Cohen reparagraphs dialogue according to English practice. Of quite a different order are a number of deliberate alterations which gravely transgress against Galdós original style. For example, Cohen rewrites the powerful lines with the immediacy of stage directions in the scene in church in old chapter 32 so that they sound like ordinary narrative description.
| Obras Completas, V, 647 | ||
| Cohen, 208 | ||
Whereas Galdós' prose is rich in shifts of tone and form, Cohen's tends to lack analogous distinctions and to sound all virtually alike. He habitually resists reproducing Galdós longer sentence structures and prefers to chop them up into shorter units. He generally shuns participial and absolute constructions, although Galdós is fond of —120→ them. Sometimes it is necessary and proper to recast the nineteenth-century syntax, but all too often the result is a wooden twentieth-century normalization.
The effects of imposing norms are drastically evident in many passages of dialogue or monologue, where Galdós uses various devices to characterize the person uttering a sentiment; for instance, in Victor's thoughts in the final paragraph of chapter 20. Sometimes Cohen intervenes to the extent of suppressing phrasing through which the author makes an obvious ironic comment. This happens, for example, when he omits the entire clause «y diciéndoles que si seguían así no ganarían el infierno» (V, 647) from a rhetorical question and answer, perhaps out of a misdirected urge to improve on Galdós by eliminating «redundancy» (p. 207). Of course, simplistic normalization obliterates ironic overtones for the reader, whether the translator is aware of them or not. Not only syntax, but vocabulary goes dead in the following typical bit of narration because Cohen ignores the purpose of the adverbial phrases, the use of tense, and the diminutive object:
| Abelarda estaba tan sofocada, que si no se desahoga, si no abre al menos una valvulita, revienta, de seguro. |
| V, 608 | ||
Abelarda gasped for breath. She was so overcome by her feelings that she would have choked if she had not given herself the relief of a word. |
| Cohen, 126 | ||
Although Galdós here manifestly regards his fictional creature with distance, in Cohen's version she acquires an aura of dramatic dignity-lent by the more stereotype «improved» language. Consciously or unconsciously, the translator shies away from Galdós' generally more forceful and metaphoric usage. Could it be that on occasion he deems Galdosian reality to be too familiar and, indeed, puzzlingly vulgar, offensive to presumed canons of taste? For whatever reason, Cohen seems bent on ennobling all manner of discourse and making Galdós' prose as uniform as possible. Thus Doña Pura's henpecking -though filled in Spanish with exclamations, religious references, and sundry images- gains in English a measure of roundness from definitely more polite conversation:
| V, 561 | ||
| Cohen, 29 | ||
Even Galdós' direct statements about the matter, as narrator, can be modified so as to sound more gentlemanly:
| V, 586 | ||
| Cohen, 81 | ||
Space forbids citing many similar instances of loss of metaphoric color, frequently through misguided normalization. One last example must suffice to show how, in the aggregate, they counteract Galdós' vivid irony and mask his fine differentiations of character. In the nightmarish scene of original chapter 32, Abelarda is seething with homicidal anger at her visionary little nephew and says out loud, among other things: «Farsante, pinturero, monigote, me las pagarás... Sal ahora con la pamplina de que ves a Dios... Como si hubiera tal Dios, ni tales carneros...» (V, 649). Cohen renders this: «You liar, you conceited young buffoon, now I'll pay you out. Just you begin telling me that nonsense now about seeing God. As if there were such a thing as God anyhowh» (p. 212). The impact of the colloquial phrase tales carneros on the lips of a frustrated and temporarily insane nobody, engaged in the act of murder, stems from its multiple references. On the simplest level, it is associated with the expression No hay tales carneros, «There is no such animah» (or literally, «There are no such sheep»). But on the level of religious metaphor, which runs in leitmotifs throughout the novel, we think of a sacrificial animal such as the Lamb of God. The word carnero, however, is not warm or gentle, but defiant and even blasphemous, as well as crude, in the given context. And, moreover, it conveys an ominous note as homonym of carnero, «burial place, charnel house.» Other underground associations with the ideas of flesh and blood, slaughter, and so on, are possible through the suggestive power of the first two syllables carne-. Cohen's «anyhow» reduces the violence explicit in the common expression and eradicates one disturbing detail which contributes to the overall terror. Of course, Galdós paints the occurrence with such intensity that momentary reductions in the translation cannot ultimately diminish it.
Despite recurrent lapses into a pale literalness of the kind illustrated above, the Cohen version of Miau is a commendable accomplishment and fills a pressing need.
S.U.N.Y., Binghamton