Writing Japonisme: Aesthetic Translation in Nineteenth-Century French Prose by Pamela A. Genova (review)

This book is a fascinating and genuinely intermedial study that explores the relationship of Japanese visual art to French prose writing in the second half of the nineteenth century. Pamela A. Genova develops the notion of 'aesthetic translation', the process by which writers transform 'the principles and praxis of one art form (visual art) into another (prose)' (p. xiv), using theoretical templates taken from translation studies. But before going on to show how these intermedial 'translations' play out in the works of specific writers, Genova takes time to sketch out the complex trope that is Japonisme: although purely visual in origin, it was a movement that grew quickly to encompass diverse genres, art forms, and audiences at various societal levels, cross-fertilizing the imaginations of artists, critics, boutique-owners, and bibelot-fanciers alike. 'Aesthetic translation', Genova argues, was the act whereby writers such as Edmond de Goncourt, J.-K. Huysmans, Émile Zola, and Stéphane Mallarmé—her four chosen authors—took inspiration, both thematic and formal, from the field of Japonisme for their own critical and creative works. Goncourt, a passionate collector as well as a knowledgeable critic, adopted from Japanese art (among other things) the aesthetics of spontaneous gesture and of the bold yet understated brush strokes that characterize centuries of Japanese painting, and attempted to incorporate verbal versions of these into his prose style. Huysmans was particularly attracted to the Japoniste predilection for fragmentation, ornament, and artificiality, and adapted these to his own medium through experimenting creatively with syntax, vocabulary, and imagery. Zola, another enthusiastic collector, found inspiration in aspects of Japanese culture as diverse as woodblock-printing, Shinto pantheism, and perspective rendered with plunging views; these take on verbal form within the essays of Mes haines and Mon salon. As for Mallarmé, Genova uncovers, in her close readings of his musings in Crayonné au théâtre, a number of creative interpretations of Japanese artistic principles. She also shows how his life-long attempts to capture the evanescent moments of human life were enhanced by the same aspirations embodied in particular forms that he found in the art of Japan. Genova's concluding 'Coda' discusses a useful taxonomy of cultural appropriation, attributed to Elizabeth K. Mix, that distinguishes between 'literal', 'transformative', and 'referential' appropriation; it might have been useful to have had these earlier in the study, although—as with all such taxonomies—none of her writers would have withstood neat categorization. This chapter also suggests, interestingly, that the notion of 'Japan' for the West—the original inspiration for fin-de-siècle Japonisme—may, having gone through a variety of developments and transformations over the course of the tumultuous twentieth century, 'have come full circle' (p. 231), back to that of Japan as a source of innovative aesthetic inspiration. Genova's study is a thorough and erudite account of Franco-Japanese intercultural and intermedial interactions during the heyday of Japonisme, and shows convincingly how Japonisme continues to shape those same interactions today; it should be read by all those interested in Franco-Japanese relations, nineteenth-century French literature, and the beguiling products of intermedial experimentation.