at small parties there isn't any privacy
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: English, French, Russian
I’ve been reading a lot of Fitzgerald lately, having recently picked up a Viking Portable Library anthology of his work. I highly recommend it as a physical book, it’s genuinely a pleasure to read. And although I hardly ever read introductions and almost never before the actual work, I enjoyed the one included from John O’Hara.
My first and last acquaintance with Fitzgerald before this was high school Gatsby, which was more enjoyable and interesting than many required reads but did not leave a huge impression beyond “boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past.” This time around, Gatsby hit significantly harder, and as a novel I had significantly more complex feelings about it. I won’t share those here as that isn’t the point of this, but I will recommend revisiting Fitzgerald if you had the same lackluster school experience as had I.
This edition of the newsletter will cover a passage I find representative of Fitzgerald’s aesthetically pleasing prose. He uses the English language in a way that goes down smooth but sneaks in so much meaning - his prose is truly crafted, in a way that’s comforting in something this short and jaunty. We’ll look at the original English (as included in this Viking Pocket Library edition) as it relates to a French and a Russian translation.
Text and translation
“Anyhow, he gives large parties,” said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete. “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
Quoi qu’il en soit, il reçoit beaucoup de monde à la fois, fit Jordan en changeant le sujet avec un dégoût bien urbain pour le concret. Et moi j’aime les grandes réceptions. Elles ont un caractère si privé. Dans les petites, il n’y a jamais d’intimité.
Translation by Victor Llona[Semi-literal: Whatever it be, he receives much of the world at one time, said Jordan in changing the subject with a very urban disgust for the concrete. And me, I like large receptions. They have a character so private. In the small ones, there is not at any time intimacy.]
– Как бы там ни было, – сказала Джордан, меняя (из воспитанной неприязни к однозначности) тему, – он устраивает большие приемы. А я люблю большие приемы. Они так интимны. На малых совершенно невозможно уединиться.
Translation by S. Ilyin[Semi-literal: “However it was,” said Jordan, changing (from a well-bred aversion to things having one meaning) the theme, “he puts on large receptions. But I love large receptions. They’re so intimate. In small ones it is completely impossible to seclude [onesself].”
This won’t be nearly exhaustive because to be exhaustive would be exhausting, but there are particular parts of these sentences I’d like to dissect - namely ‘urban distaste for the concrete’ and ‘at small parties there isn’t any privacy’. Unlike previous editions, I will split my analysis up by line.
“Urban distaste for the concrete”
One of the remarkable passages from John O’Hara’s introduction to the Viking anthology dealt with Fitzgerald’s knack for writing ‘real people.’ It’s an interesting trait to the prose, I suppose it ties in with the feeling I get of Fitzgerald’s sentences being laid out in the way that people think. Or at least in the way I think. His real people are embodied in the shells of characters which are given just enough shape to remind of an archetype, but little enough decisive detail that we can fit our own ‘real people’ into them without damaging the conceit of the character. In the same way, his sentences give direction, suggestion, but often require supplementary effort to arrive at a conclusion. I love this about Fitzgerald, the dividends paid on the time you spend with the work.
“Urban distaste for the concrete” follows this system of gentle nudging: the sentiment on the surface is that fashion in cities is leaning toward the ephemeral, the multifaceted. It flows smoothly into the argument that old-stock suburbia is resigned to tired norms, or into a picture of suburban ‘rootedness’ and youthful urban upheaval. Less charitably, it points to an urban delight for fads, particularly those social and philosophical. The urban Jordan is painted in any case as a peacemaker, gently coaxing away from the conflict brought by nailing something down and having to deal with its presence.
Victor Llona mirrors Fitzgerald’s structure and wording almost exactly with his “un dégoût bien urbain pour le concret.” However, there is one word of interest to me, his “dégoût.” Yes, it is a word for ‘distaste’, but more than that it is the word for ‘disgust’. Dégoût leans more closely to English disgust in its etymology as well as in its uses. As a rule of thumb, an accent circumflex over the ‘u’ in French replaces an ‘s’ after that same letter. Dégoût comes therefore from dégoust, which is glaringly similar to disgust (the root ‘gust’ also meaning taste, as in ‘gusto’). And in meaning, dégoût captures both distaste and disgust, but at least personally it has always seemed to be more extreme than the English ‘distaste.’ This is a small axe to grind, but perhaps a fun one. One with a fancy design on the handle or something.
But here is where the Russian text comes in. It treats “distaste” more extremely, too - неприязнь is less than absolute English ‘disgust’ but more than ‘distaste,’ in a way I find interestingly French. Beyond that, though, the однозначность plays against an aspect of “the concrete” that I think is worth talking about.
Concrete isn’t a wishy-washy word like distaste. As an adjective, it very seldom takes a connotation outside the realm of ‘something metaphorically set in stone.’ That something that’s set in stone can be practically anything, as long as it does not change. Concrete things are tangible, they’re dependable, they typically don’t move. That connotation is not the connotation of однозначность. Однозначность quite literally means having one (одно) + meaning (значение), but that meaning isn’t necessarily dependable, nor is it always tangible. It is just countable, and the count is one. So where English Jordan has a distaste for being tied down, her Russian counterpart Джордан is apathetic toward things having just one facet or meaning. Similar, but not quite the same, and especially worth looking at in light of there being a Russian word конкретный (pr. ‘concretnyy’) [assimilated, I’m speculating, from the French concrèt] meaning ‘concrete’ in the same sense as the English adjective.
At the risk of becoming far too nebulous in my thoughts, I will venture one small guess into однозначность as a choice for a Russian translator given the availability of конкретный. I think perhaps it stems from the Russian view of high society as the ‘intellectual class’ (and vice versa). Specifically-Russian ‘intellectuals’ would have a much more understandable aversion to boring, one-sided things than they would to ‘facts of life’ or the ‘concrete’. The concrete is something of which you might not be allowed to be distasteful, in the societal memory of former Soviet states. Having the urban, high-society Джордан be apathetic to that which she can’t look at from different angles makes more sense as a Russian idea than making her distasteful of immovable objects. But I lack the experience and research to say this as anything other than a light musing.
“At small parties there isn’t any privacy”
For this phrase as for the previous one, the French translation follows much more closely the structure of Fitzgerald’s prose than does the Russian. However, I do want to pause for a moment on the meaning of the word “intimité.”
“Intimité” is privacy, in the way that ‘dégoût’ is distaste. There’s no cognate for privacy in French, no ‘privacie’. If you want to say something is private, you have the word ‘privée,’ but to my knowledge there isn’t a commonly used form for privacy as a noun. In that way, “intimité” is a very understandable choice. But it does piggyback the meaning ‘intimacy’ - not necessarily physical, but emotional. And I would argue that choice, a direct result of how the French language is structured, lends more nuance to Jordan’s words than Fitzgerald was able to find in English.
These double-meaninged French words are great for complex concepts like privacy at parties. Fitzgerald’s English-speaking Jordan couldn’t very well say there’s no ‘intimacy’ at parties - that carries the connotation of romantic closeness in English (although whether it did at the time I do not know). Privacy is lack of oversight of others on one’s emotions, here, and a French ‘privacy’ with the intimation of intimacy flavors it just slightly in that direction, in what I think is a very cool way.
As with the last phrase, Ilyin’s Russian translation is less literal. Jordan laments that it is impossible to “уединиться” (pr. ‘uedinitsa’) at small parties, to split off or go off into privacy. The root of this verb comes from ‘the state of there being one’, but broadly encompasses everyone in your small party that seeks to sequester itself, not just the one of ‘you.’ I’m not as interested in the meaning of the word by itself as I am with the structure of the phrase. In Russian, the privacy comes from the act of becoming private, versus from the state of there being privacy available. It’s a more self-powered privacy, more like “at small parties it’s impossible to get away.” A hint toward passivity on the English side, or toward taking matters into your own hands on the Russian.
As promised, those are the only phrases I’m going to touch on for now. Both of these are strong and interesting translations, and perhaps we will come back to them in the future. In the meantime, I genuinely do recommend giving Fitzgerald another read if your last experience was mediocre (or nonexistent!) - I enjoyed both Gatsby and Tender is the Night (although Tender is quite long and therefore a different sort of read).