Peeking Under the Covers

  Chapter 1 continued... “I beg you, aunt, to accept my proposal without doubt,” she continued, nevertheless. “I know very well that Maman will be happy to receive a telegram telling her that I will soon kiss her in a few days.” “That’s very true,” said Madame Arnay, no longer protesting. “Your uncle is going to Paris tomorrow for a shareholders' meeting. You should travel with him. It would be...” She corrected herself without even noticing. “It  will  be convenient that way.” From the depths of the armchair in which she was curled up, Madame de Berly nodded. “It is indeed the best combination,” she said. “Suzy is reasonable. She doesn't care too much about your worldliness and won't complain about being in her dear home. Isn't that true, Suzy?” “Oh, certainly,” replied the young girl, with an imperceptible bitterness in her voice. No doubt she was reasonable, as Mme. de Berly said so well. After all, she only possessed the wisdom of her eighteen years, which no one se...

  Chapter 2 continued... Suzy began to scribble a letter to her mother, one full of tender words in which she poured out her loving heart. A letter filled with stories told with mischievous humor. She was so absorbed in her correspondence that she started when Germaine called out to her from the next room. “Suzy, are you ready? The first bell will ring soon!” “No, not yet,” Suzy said, quickly shoving her unfinished letter in the depths of her blotting paper. “But I won’t be much longer!”  In fact, a quarter of an hour later, Suzanne was dressed and standing in front of the mirror. She cast a last glance of inspection at her pale grey, yet simple, dress draping her pretty, young figure and giving her a supple and slender look. As Suzy had no reason to judge herself excessively, she smiled slightly in approval as she contemplated the image reflected back at her. She attached little importance to her pretty face. In short, since nature had given it to her, she was not otherwise a...

As I explained in my first post, "Exploring the Public Domain," I'm adding in slight detours as I go along with my weekly posted translations. This week, two artists and their work were mentioned early on in Chapter 1: Kate Greenaway and Gustave Courtois's Hercules at the Feet of Omphale . In the scene where Suzy goes to retrieve her hat from the lime tree, she is described as appearing " simply delightful with her thin brown head buried in an immense hat worthy of a Kate Greenaway vignette" (Nissen). I looked at several different pieces of work from Kate Greenaway and decided that this solitary young woman from Greenaway's book Marigold Garden  (1885) to be a simple depiction of what Suzy may have looked like, but perhaps a year or two older since she is eighteen in Suzy's Dream . Perhaps you sense a familiarity with Greenaway's work, since she is best known for her children's book illustrations. I recognize imitations of her paintings from...

  Chapter 1 continued: Germaine showed not a bit of bitterness over her defeat in the match. Not that she enjoyed the indifferent nature of her sister Madame de Berly, but she was incapable of being passionate like Suzy. Worldly amusements alone had the gift of entertaining   Germaine, as such amusements seemed to supply the happiness she needed for her frivolous nature. “Well, Suzy and Germaine, have you finally decided to be done?” Mme. de Berly called out, her tone chilly. “I'm literally frozen!” “We’re coming straightaway, Marthe,” cried Germaine, who was occupied by putting back in order the slightly wrinkled folds of her tennis skirt.  Suzy went to find her hat hanging from a branch of the lime trees. She paid little attention as she put it on, but there were fortunate coincidences when it came to her appearance. Suzy, even with her hair tousled in disarray, appeared simply delightful with her thin brown head buried in an immense hat worthy of a Kate Greenaway vign...

SUZY’S DREAM   Chapter 1   A brisk breath of air whisked through the branches of the lime trees shading the sandy space of the tennis court. A few yellow leaves fluttered down, cutting golden spots against the blue-hued horizon. While sitting nonchalantly in her garden armchair, young Madame de Berly glanced through a magazine. She shuddered a little, and, with a chilled gesture, clasped the fine woolen shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She raised her head, and her gaze fell on the tennis players. They did not seem to suspect that the end of this day in September, beautiful as it was, had a sudden coolness that announced the approach of inclement days to come. “Are you almost finished?” Mme. de Berly asked with her usual tone of indifference. “It's half-past four and it’s starting to get cold.”  A burst of laughter, cries and shrieks, interspersed with the ups and downs of the game, answered her question. “Cold, Marthe? Why didn't you want to play with us? Is it because...

In the next post, I will start posting my translation, but before I get to that, I'd like to explain a few issues I ran into when translating and exploring Le rêve de Suzy ( Suzy's Dream ). As I mentioned in my last post, I explained that Henri Ardel's novel was pretty much written with an omniscient POV, although the story isn't as problematic as some other novels I've read written with that type of POV. I'll break down other issues I ran into: Exclamation Points -- I haven't researched whether what I came across in this novel was common for the time or not, but there were a few continuous problems I found with punctuation. One was the usage of exclamation points (!). They. Are. Everywhere. And that's no joke. Almost every piece of dialogue is bogged down by exclamation points. After a while, I couldn't tell what was supposed to be taken as a yell or an exciting moment or just a quiet thought. Also, exclamation points show up in what I think was pr...