Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts by Roland Barthes (review)

The French original of this volume was previously reviewed for this journal by Sam Ferguson (Album: inédits, correspondances et varia (Paris: Seuil, 2015); reviewed in FS, 70 (2016), 126–27); I thus refer the reader to that review for the form and contents of the book. This English edition contains most of the same material, with a few exceptions; notably, although it does offer the first English translation of materials pertaining to Barthes's late Vita nova project, it includes only eight sketches that first appeared in volume v of the Œ'uvres complètes (ed. by Éric Marty (Paris: Seuil, 2002)), and not the additional twenty-odd index cards found in the French Album. In general, this English edition seems rushed. Instead of updating bibliographical notes with details of English translations, we are given here the same information as in the French original; odd, given this effort was made for the translations of Barthes's Collège de France lectures, published in the same series. Moreover, where the French original's footnotes referred readers to other parts of the work, page numbers in the English have been consistently replaced with crosses — indeed, a risqué 'XXX' ('see the letter to Vinaver from the preceding year, p. XXX', p. 323). The translation is mostly elegant, fluid, and Jody Gladding seems to have privileged ready readability. She tends to shorten Barthes's sentences, frequently replacing (semi-)colons with full stops. If some of the élan of Barthes's prose is thereby dampened — for Chantal Thomas, Barthes's idiosyncratic use of colons is 'un moyen de rapidité' (Pour Roland Barthes (Paris: Seuil, 2015), p. 126) — this decision surely belongs to the translator's prerogative (although a translator's preface might have been in order). Unfortunately, there are other issues with the translation that move beyond questions of (in)fidelity, into inaccuracy. While the shorter letters are often well rendered, much of the more emotionally or conceptually complex material is blighted by contresens: in 'The Future of Rhetoric' (1946), for example, 'Les déterminations idéologiques d'une œuvre ne sont que secondes' (p. 138 of the French) becomes 'The ideological determinants of a work are not merely secondary' (p. 104); in the same paragraph, 'On ne peut à la fois vouloir tout soumettre à l'Histoire, et prétendre, soi, la dominer' becomes 'One can simultaneously want to subjugate everything to History, and claim to dominate it.' Some mistranslations defy physical laws: thus we learn in one of Barthes's early letters of Jean Jaurès's gift for writing from beyond the grave ('Also wonderful are the pages he wrote in four days of war (and his death)' (p. 4) for 'Sont aussi admirables les pages qu'il a écrites à quatre jours de la guerre (et de sa mort)' (p. 30 of the French)); and in the introductory Chronology, of Barthes's knack for being in two places at once ('Teaches classes in Paris broadcast from New York University' (p. xxvi) for 'Enseigne à l'antenne parisienne de l'université d'État de New York' (p. 19 of the French)). Proofreading and copyediting should have caught these — as they should an especially conspicuous oversight, a bold sub-heading awkwardly reading 'Author of the Theater' (p. 90) for 'Autour du théâtre' (p. 121 of the French). Minor and major faults are too frequent for this edition to be considered as reliable as might be reasonably expected from a major university press; here's hoping greater care will be taken for any future English versions of Barthes's correspondence and inédits.