I have had the joy of discovering Honoré de Balzac; one of the few non-American authors I can bare to read. I love his wit and linguistic acrobatics. This got me thinking; do I hold in my hand Lost Illusions : a work by the celebrated French novelist Honoré de Balzac, or do I hold Lost Illusions : the masterpiece of Penguin Classics’ translator Herbert J Hunt?

I am sure that the bulk of the work was done by Monsieur B; the sentiment of what he is saying has to remain and I’m sure the translator won’t mind me not elevating them to the same lofty heights of literary genius that Balzac has achieved.

The next step into a piece of writing, which I often use as an explanation for my preference of literature over films, is writing style. Grammar dictates that the German language, for example, does not have the same number of possibilities for varied sentence structures as English. Authors who rely on this for rhythm, such as the Beat Poets, cannot therefore reach the same acclaim as in English speaking countries, one would assume.

Going back to Balzac, Wikiquote gives the user the opportunity to compare French and English versions of some of his most popular quotes. (This is a fantastic resource, which is well worth a visit. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac .) Whilst I shall come clean and say; I do not speak much French at all, merely enough to follow the occasional Francicism in Poirot; I could more or less understand what was being said where, and the tone and manner of main clause/subordinate clause as point/side-point remained. It was as if he was whispering the narrative to the reader behind a protective hand.

I would like to say; well done Balzac, and well done Mr Hunt; you have not just given me an understandable novel. But have helped preserve the spirit of one of the greatest writers of his generation.

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