Monsieur Vénus: roman matérialisteMonsieur Vénus: A Materialist Novel R <scp>achilde</scp> : Monsieur Vénus: roman matérialiste. Edited by M <scp>elanie</scp> H <scp>awthorne</scp> and L <scp>iz</scp> C <scp>onstable</scp> . (MLA Texts &amp; Translations). New York, Modern Language Association, 2004. xliii+212 pp. Pb $9.95.R <scp>achilde</scp> : Monsieur Vénus: A Materialist Novel. Translated by M <scp>elanie</scp> H <scp>awthorne</scp> . (MLA Texts &amp; Translations). New York, Modern Language Association, 2004. xlii+211 pp. Pb $9.95.

Until now, the text of Rachilde's Monsieur Vénus to which we have had access is that of the first French edition, published in 1889 with its famous preface by Maurice Barrès. It was, however, the Brussels pornographer Brancart who originally published Monsieur Vénus in June 1884. No doubt anticipating the legal troubles which soon followed — Rachilde was fined and given a Belgian jail term (unserved) — she made certain cuts in a second Belgian printing and in the 1889 French version. Thanks to the present Hawthorne-Constable edition, we now may read, in reasonable, paperback format, Rachilde's original words. This new edition restores at least three important deletions, including an entire short chapter and an important reference to necrophilia on the very last page. Introduction, notes and critical apparatus (almost identical in the French and English versions) present cogently the biographical Rachilde and the modern feminist revival of interest in her works. Yet some will question the editors' claims for her place in literary history. Was she ever a ‘mediator of the aesthetic and intellectual ideas of her time’? Certainly, it is not clear either that her fiction was widely read or that her literary criticism was respected. Jules Bertaut (1909), among others, pictures her as ‘tout à fait en marge’, notorious not through good literature, but via scandal. The translation, a complete reworking of an out-of-print 1929 text by Madeleine Boyd, is very welcome, but the task was an ungrateful one given the uneven tone of the novel which shuttles between overwrought ardour and heavy-handed confrontation. The uneducated Jacques Silvert thus asks at one point, ‘And what matters the sex of these caresses to our delirious passion?’. It is Rachilde who did this, not the translator. Elsewhere, however, there is a mid-Atlantic problem at work in the translation. While one character interjects ‘what a ninny’ and ‘by Jove’, another says ‘jeez’, and the coarse Marie Silvert sounds very American saying, ‘nice try’, and ‘you gotta be kidding’, before reverting to the Brit ‘you can shrug all you want, you lot’. Still, it is the scandalous premise of Monsieur Vénus that counts, not its stylistic finery.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.