The Indiscreet Jewels (review)

94 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 7:1 elected to offer unmodernized and unnormalized texts of surviving holographs, reasonably arguing that degrees of formality and correctness in the manuscripts offer evidence of the writer's view of his relationship to the recipient. Sarah's holographs, they observe, preserve evidence of "her limited formal educational opportunities and of her attempts to overcome them. By contrast, once her published works had passed through the technology of print, the extent of her reliance on her brother and a network of other friends and acquaintances for editorial aid is permanently obscured" (p. xlvii). Sarah, whose slightly shaky but carefully formed penstrokes are illustrated in a photograph, would, I think, be both nervously delighted and amazed to see her words published alongside her brother's by Oxford University Press in such a learned and authoritative edition as Battestin and Probyn have now offered. Susan Staves Brandeis University Denis Diderot. The IndiscreetJewels. Trans. Sophie Hawkes with an Introduction by Aram Vartanian. New York: Marsilio, 1993. xlix + 285pp. ISBN 0-94141983 -5. The translator of Diderot's Indiscreet Jewels must be the very soul of discretion, for not only do we not know exactly on which edition(s) her translation is based, but we are also not given the reasons that make this new English translation necessary. Furthermore, we are not apprised of the principles on which the translator based her decisions. For example, in some cases titles are given in French and then followed by English translations while others are not translated at all. Some words, such as "allégorie," are followed by their translation (p. xiv), while others, such as "représentants," are not (p. xix). In the text, words such as "le bien-aimé" appear at one time in italics (p. xv) and on other occasions appear in translation as "the beloved" (p. xiv). Some words, such as "roman à clé," are not translated, perhaps because they have been adopted into the English language. The same hypothesis, however, would not necessarily hold for "gloire" and "philosophes." Similarly, "bonzes" is not translated but is defined in a note while other titles are simply translated in the text. This strikes me as a trifle enigmatic if not inconsistent. Again, the translator decided to translate the Latin and the Italian but not the Spanish sections of chapter 47. One might have expected to find either everything or nothing translated. The translation itself reads easily and does not have the vaguely stumbling quality which sometimes characterizes translations. One might quibble, on returning to the original, that "la sage" is not necessarily "prudent" (p. 3), that "entretient" and "is entertaining " are not always synonymous, and that a "coup de baguette" might be a "wave" rather than a "tap" of the wand (p. xiv). But these are minor quibbles. The translation is followed by helpful notes, which are brief, perhaps to a fault. If the intended readership for this volume is anglophone, then it might help to do more than identify names and sources. The indication that "Is it you Nerestan?" (p. 177) comes from Zaïre could be situated usefully in the text where it would add to the edification of the average reader. One might also mention notes which are missing. We are not told, for example, that Turcarès might refer to Turcaret, that Monomotapa comes from La Fontaine, or that the debate in chapter 16 likely concerns the quarrel between the Jansenists and the Jesuits over the billets de confession. Although it is not quite fair to REVIEWS 95 criticize a work for what is missing, if readers knew for whom the book is intended, they would be able to judge if the omissions are of superfluous material or not. The Introduction to the volume is actually an article written by Aram Vartanian for the 1979 volume, Enlightenment Studies in Honor of Lester G. Crocker. I liked this article when I read it then and enjoyed it again now, some fifteen years later. I am glad that it will now be available to a new generation of readers. The article is an attempt to account for the reaction to the Indiscreet Jewels in a political context. Vartanian explains how...