« #A-006 »
Manette Salomon
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
|
|
PROJECT STATUS: This project is underway, but is seeking an editor and publicist. Using the links at left, apply to join the team and help make this book happen.First published in France in 1867, Manette Salomon is considered one of the classics of the art-in-fiction genre, if not the classic. Yet as far as we can tell, it has never before been published in English. It came twenty years before Zola's well known work, The Masterpiece (L'Oeuvre) and in fact at the time, the de Goncourts felt Zola's story too closely followed their own. In the book, he artist and protagonist, Coriolus, catches sight of Manette Salomon while traveling across Paris on an omnibus. "In the days that follow, he cannot get her out of his mind, so he sets about to search the city until he finds her." She becomes his model, and then his lover, but when they have a son Manette "now envisions herself as a wife, as a lady in society, and she no longer wishes to pose. By the end of the book, Manette has coerced Coriolus into forgetting his dream of becoming the great innovative leader among contemporary artists... and instead has gotten him to make easy, readily acceptable pictures, the kind of work for which there is a waiting clientele, cash in hand." (description from Hidden in the Shadow of the Master, by Ruth Butler) |
19th-century, Editor, Fiction, French, Paris, Publicist, Translation 
Reader Comments (3)
I'm very happy to see that you're working on a translation of Manette Salomon. I studied the book quite intensively when I was writing a master's thesis on "Emile Zola, Henry James and the artistic genius of the late 19th century" and think that it gives a very vivid, if idiosyncratic, picture of the artistic milieu of the time.
I've thought of translating the book myself in the past, just to have an English version out there, because I think it's a shame that this book (despite its unfortunate anti-semitic elements) has been allowed to sink into obscurity. I'd love to know more about the progress of this project.
Thanks Jane! We just yesterday received chapters 142 to 144 from Tina Kover (our wonderfully talented translator) and she now has only six more to go to finish the book. It's been a joy to read along with her as she makes this classic story magically appear in English for the first time and we can't wait to share it with everyone. (Like being an archaeologist unearthing an ancient relic that hasn't been seen for centuries.) We don't have an official publication date set yet, but look for it here and on bookstore shelves late next Spring.
I am ecstatic that you are giving the world Manette Salomon in English. As a major resource for the study of 19th-century art history, its accessibility in English will be a milestone. Wish I could share it with all the students who will be seeing the 2011 exhibition, "The Orient Expressed," wherein the Goncourts are depicted, cited, and possibly lurking in spirit ...