Simone de Beauvoir\u2019s translators and the many critics have turned their disputes into a play where each acts the role assigned by theatrical clich\u00e9…<\/p>\n
\n\n\tAs translation contretemps go, the one surrounding French philosopher
\n\tSimone de Beauvoir (1908-86) and her foundational work of modern
\n\tfeminism, Le Deuxi\u00e8me Sexe,<\/em> first published in two volumes in
\n\tFrench in 1949, remains one of the most tempestuous and fascinating. For
\n\tdecades, Beauvoir scholars in the English-speaking world bemoaned,
\n\tattacked, and sought to replace the widely used 1953 translation by H.M.
\n\tParshley (1884-1953), a zoologist at Smith College who knew little
\n\tphilosophy or existentialism, had never translated a book from French,
\n\tand relied mainly on his undergraduate grasp of the language. A few
\n\tyears back, they succeeded in getting the rights holders, Gallimard in
\n\tFrance and Alfred A. Knopf and Vintage in the English-speaking world, to
\n\tcommission a new translation. Now that second version has appeared from
\n\tKnopf (The Second Sex,<\/em> by Simone de Beauvoir, “A New
\n\tTranslation of the Landmark Classic by Constance Borde and Sheila
\n\tMalovany-Chevallier,” with an introduction by Judith Thurman, “Complete
\n\tand Unabridged for the First Time”).\n\t<\/p>\n\n\tIf Knopf and its partners expected to be showered with feminist
\n\tappreciation, they’ve been sorely disappointed. The Norwegian Beauvoir
\n\tscholar Toril Moi, a professor at Duke and one of the foremost critics
\n\tof Parshley’s translation, savaged the new version in the London
\n\tReview of Books.<\/em> Francine du Plessix Gray, in The New York
\n\tTimes Book Review,<\/em> also expressed reservations. How everyone
\n\tinvolved got from vituperative discontent to hopeful triumph and back to
\n\tdiscontent makes an instructive tale in itself and offers some lessons
\n\tfor what matters and doesn’t in the evolution of a classic.\n\t<\/p>\n\n\tThe attack on Parshley’s translation began with Margaret Simons’s
\n\tgroundbreaking 1983 article, “The Silencing of Simone de Beauvoir: Guess
\n\tWhat’s Missing From The Second Sex<\/em>?” Simons, a philosophy
\n\tprofessor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, brought
\n\tmultiple charges against Parshley’s translation. First she pointed out
\n\tthe enormous cuts that Parshley, at the behest of the publisher, had
\n\tmade in the text. Simons noticed, for instance, that Parshley tended to
\n\tcut Beauvoir’s examples of women’s anger and oppression while preserving
\n\treferences to men’s feelings. She was the first to spot Parshley’s
\n\ttruncation by half of Beauvoir’s chapter “The Married Woman” and its
\n\telimination of Beauvoir’s supporting evidence. Simons also pointed out
\n\tsome fundamental philosophical errors.\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nLink<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Simone de Beauvoir\u2019s translators and the many critics have turned their disputes into a play where each acts the role assigned by theatrical clich\u00e9… As translation contretemps go, the one surrounding French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) and her foundational work of modern feminism, Le Deuxi\u00e8me Sexe, first published in two volumes in French in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koromo_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-blog","koromo-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/11807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/11807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}