Fwd: one-handed quote search

[Chris Waigl]

Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>Subject:      Re: Fwd: one-handed quote search
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
>>>><<... que j'avais plus de trente  ans
>>>>avant que j'eusse jeté les yeux sur aucun de ces dangereux livres  qu'une
>>>>belle dame de par le monde trouve incommodes, en ce qu'on ne  peut les lire
>>>>que d'une main.>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Translation of  that last part (from Google Print):
>>>
>>><<... that I was more than thirty years old before I so  much as glanced at
>>>one of those dangerous books which one lovely woman of  the world finds
>>>inconvenient, so she says, because they can only be read  with one hand.>>
>>>
>>>
>>A good horrible example of what happens when you trust a machine  translation.
>>
>>
>
>This is not a machine translation AFAIK. This is quoted from Rousseau's
>"Confessions" as published in English translation by Oxford U. Press in
>2000. The translator was Angela Scholar, according to the publisher.
>
>
>
I would say that from the original, and not being intimately familiar
with Rousseau's style, I can't say with certainty if he is alluding to a
specific worldly lady of his acquaintance or referring to any worldly lady.

>From modern French, I would expect "les dames ..." for the latter,
though. The adjective "belle", too, makes me suppose that he is speaking
of a specific lady, whom he can't name for obvious reasons.

ADDENDUM: I looked up the original text in a different online edition,
and the "dit-elle" ("so she says") _is_ present in this version. Also,
the preceding passage contains a female allegory of "la Tribu" (the
tribe), a licentious woman who was prepared to lend him the offending
reading material. So he really had to make it clear that in the last
sentence of the paragraph, he was speaking of a specific, real lady:

----
A force de querelles, de coups, de lectures dérobées et mal choisies,
mon humeur devint taciturne, sauvage; ma tête commençait à s'altérer, et
je vivais en vrai loup-garou. Cependant si mon goût ne me préserva pas
des livres plats et fades, mon bonheur me préserva des livres obscènes
et licencieux: non que la Tribu, femme à tous égards très accommodante,
se fit un scrupule de m'en prêter. Mais, pour les faire valoir, elle me
les nommait avec un air de mystère qui me forçait précisément à les
refuser, tant par dégoût que par honte; et le hasard seconda si bien mon
humeur pudique, que j'avais plus de trente ans avant que j'eusse jeté
les yeux sur aucun de ces dangereux livres qu'une belle dame de par le
monde trouve incommodes, en ce qu'on ne peut, dit-elle, les lire que
d'une main.
<http://www.lettres.net/confessions/confessions.htm>
----

Chris Waigl

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