Volume 42, Number 1 · January 12, 1995
Balzac's Genius & Other Paradoxes
By Simon Leys
Balzac: A Life
by Graham Robb
Norton, 521 pp., $35.00
Arthur Waley said that he preferred to read Dickens in Chinese translation (Dickens's first Chinese translator was indeed an exquisite writer). I wonder if Balzac does not also belong to the category of writers who actually benefit from being translated: I suspect that his visionary imagination would remain unaffected by the transposition into another language, whereas it would be relatively easy for tactful translators to soften the jarring notes and straighten the blunders that, in the original, frequently jolt the reader or threaten, at the most dramatic moments, to set off anticlimactic laughter.
Review, 3339 words
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