Parbleu!

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A book written completely in an unknown tongue tends somewhat to lack interest. The average American will go docilely to listen to a play in Russian or Italian or French, though the nicer turns of phrase leave him relatively cold. There are always redeeming features. There are the coiling hands of Duse. There is the highly cultivated naturalness of the Moscow players. There are the snakes and daggers and dark shadows of the Grand Guignol.

A library differs from a theatre. The printed page is not particularly enlivening unless you can read what is printed thereon. After all, most books are only sparsely adorned with illustrations. The reading matter persists in obtruding itself. The same person who will march rejoicingly off to a performance of Ghosts in Italian prefers to read it in an English translation It rather than an Italian text or the original Scandinavian. We may be stirred to. the depths by The Cherry Orchard as performed by the Russians; a perusal of the same play in its mother tongue may be accomplished without agitation.

On the other hand, we do like our English diluted. A few words here and there in italics harm no one and give the reader a good deal of innocent pleasure. French is the most accustomed seasoning. A good round French oath makes all the difference, particularly in a detective story. Arsene Lupin is nowhere so redoubtable as where he breaks into his native idiom. A good part of the art of translation consists in knowing when not to translate. The result is that practically any current translation from the French reads like a perfumery advertisement on a theatre program.

Though French, wielded by such masters of the interposed Gallicism as W. J. Locke, Booth Tarkington, Leonard Merrick, is the most insidious invader of the English novel, the other tongues are not backward in their occasional donation of a cryptic phrase. Villains are at almost any moment likely to break out with a brisk donner-wetter. What would a volume by Fannie Hurst be thought of without an occasional lapse into some good expressive Yiddish? Haunch, Paunch and Jowl is plentifully spattered with the colorfully Hebraic.

All this is partly true for the perfectly sound artistic reason that it helps you remember that a Dago is Italian, a Grand Duke Russian, a Sheik Arabic, a waiter French. It keeps you from losing sight of the environment in which the events narrated take place. But an even more fundamental reason is that we like to be able to convince ourselves of familiarity with the unfamiliar. The French phrase becomes a mark of confidence in us and in the extent of our linguistics--particularly if it is discreetly translated in the next sentence. It is just one more of those little touches that make us feel fifty per cent cleverer than anyone else thinks us.

J. A. T.