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

What has been long overlooked in Japonisme studies, according to Pamela A. Genova's Writing Japonisme, is that aesthetic principles from the archipelago's visual arts made their way not only to the canvases of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists but also to the ink and plume of well-known authors of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French prose. Following the historicization and contextualization of Japonisme's influence on French visual art and art criticism in a section titled "Japonisme and the Ambivalence of Theory," Genova foregrounds her theoretical framework that addresses both subject and style of traditional Japanese visual arts. Through an interdisciplinary process which she calls "aesthetics translation," this study furthers the longstanding tradition of applying theory to artistic cross-pollination which, as it pertains to this work, "entails active exploration on the part of literary artists to interpret the modalities of visual art and adapt them to literary works" (35).

In her introduction, Genova carefully navigates through issues in literary translation, including recent paradigmatic shifts in understanding East-West "cultural differences" through nodes of Orientalist (which she importantly distinguishes from Japoniste) and post-structuralist thought and here cites key writers and scholars on literary translation such as Vladimir Nabokov, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida. Though not lacking interest, these sections, however, serve as a lengthy digression from her thesis in the section titled "Discursive Translation of Japonisme."

In the first chapter, titled "Edmond de Goncourt: Portrait of Artists," Genova uncovers Goncourt's relationship to Japonisme, which increases throughout the proliferation of his literary career. She deftly first brings to the fore several key aspects of the writer and art critic's artistic sensibilities, his interactions with Japonisme and how they shaped his Journal, the bizarre 1881 texte hybride entitled La Maison d'un artiste (81) and his biographies of Utamaro and Hokusai. Genova identifies Goncourt as well as the other three subjects of her study not merely as writers but as practitioners of écriture artiste, a term coined by the decadent poet Paul Verlaine which likens the role of a writer to that of a visual artist, thus providing an overarching character trait which situates them in a framework of creative permeability, linking the aesthetics of visual art to that of literature.

In the second chapter, "Joris-Karl Huysmans: Prose Painting and the Decadent Novel," Genova locates the Baudelairian notion of correspondances in Huysmans' decadent 1884 novel À rebours: "it is undeniable that the stylistic nature of language itself is a crucial matter in À rebours, and Huysmans explores this sphere in large part through the notion of Baudelairean synesthesia" (136). In the section "Language as a Space of Substitution," she elaborates on the idea that Huysmans found inspiration in Japoniste visual aesthetics, the evidence of which is prevalent throughout the novel.

In the third chapter "Emile Zola: Writing of and Writing with Art," Genova foregrounds the Naturalist novelist's "visual discursive stylistics" in Zola's own assertion of his style: "L'objet ou la personne à peindre sont les prétextes; le génie consiste à rendre cet objet ou cette personne dans un sens nouveau, plus vrai ou plus grand" (146). According to Genova, Japoniste aesthetics can be detected as early as Zola's fiery 1866 collection of art criticism essays entitled Mes haines, and are notably found in his 1872 and 1886 novels La Curée and L'Œuvre, respectively.

In the fourth chapter "Stéphane Mallarmé: Staging Japonisme," Genova investigates the Symbolist poet's consciousness of and affinity for Japoniste artistic principles that largely denounce the Realist school of visual and literary art. Though much scholarship has been dedicated to Eastern influences on his poetry, she disambiguates these influences in writings such as Crayonné au théâtre (1887) and even his short-lived editorial role in the fashion magazine La Dernière Mode (1874) which was in its frivolity antithetical to the bulk of the poet-philosopher's work.

Although it will be richly and progressively developed...