Dickens in 1945. Neither Maurois nor
Alain were great critics of English literatu
re, but they were men of talent and genui
ne culture and they kept Dickens and his
works present on the French literary sce
ne. Distinguished work has been produced
lately by Jean Gattégno - originally a
Lewis Carroll scholar - and especially by
Anny Sadrin, while my own writings on
Dickens bridged the gap between the two
generations.
The name of Pip unquestionably rings a bell
In the twentieth century, even before
television became the decisive factor of
popular culture that it is nowadays, the
screen played its part in keeping literary
works alive before a large public. The
great film version of David Copperfield
starring, among others, Freddie Bartholo
mew and W.C. Fields - an immortal Mi-
cawber - was highly successful and influ
ential in my country as elsewhere before
the Second World War, and after that,
David Lean's two superb Dickens films,
Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, were
again much admired and enjoyed. The
advent of television, i.e. of a cinema
screen in practically every home, has
increased this trend. One French producer
of remarkable talent, Claude Santelli, is a
Dickens fan and has produced several
Dickens films for television; Santelli ser
ves only the greatest authors, and his two
long suits seem to be, in about equal pro
portion, Maupassant and Dickens. The
video-cassette trade has again enhanced the
part played by literature made visible as
against books that are merely read.
One way or another, Dickens has been on
the whole much admired by the French
reading public. I revert to the reading
public resolutely now, because I have
devoted much of my own time and energy
for half a century to literary translation,
and the purpose of so much labour is of
course to have people actually read foreign
works. A translator is an interpreter,
offers her or his own interpretation of a
book; still, a printed translation done with
a modicum of expertise and conscientious
ness is bound to be less tendentious and
reductive than any film or television serial.
Dickens cannot be said to be a really
popular author in France at the present
time. He is by no means a best-seller. The
sales figures are inexorable, as Dickens
himself well knew, for he was keenly
sensitive to them. Those for the much
praised Pléiade series are as follows: one
volume is issued every month; mostly of
works by classical authors, French, for
eign or ancient; once included in the se
ries, they are not allowed to go out of
print; the editions are textually ambitious
where French works are concerned, and in
all cases plenty of information is supplied
in the form of prefaces, introductions,
critical notices and annotation; the price is
high by French standards; on an average a
volume sells for 400 FF, or roughly 40;
but that is for a book bound in real leather
and comprising some 1 500 pages, or
matter corresponding to between three and
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