Pierre u Jean is the Maltese translation from the French of Guy de Maupassant's (1850-1893), naturalist or psycho-realist novel, Pierre et Jean. This novel, published in 1888, the author's fourth novel is arguably his greatest.
Pierre et Jean is an intensely personal novel that plays itself out in a close and intimate circle. It is the study of jealousy, suspicion, and love within a family. The fraternal love that Pierre Roland, a young doctor, feels for his younger brother Jean has always been tinged with jealousy. But when a lawyer arrives at the house of their parents, to declare that an old family friend has bequeathed his entire fortune to Jean, this envy rapidly becomes an all-consuming force. He doesn't understand why and methodically, like a detective, he sets to lay bare a terrible secret with serious repercussions within the family. Despising himself for the resulting hate that he feels, Pierre roams the streets of the seaport of Le Havre alone, desperate to come to terms with his brother's success. The explosive passions that result are presented with the greatest delicacy and most consummate artistry.
Maupassant is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories, about 300 of them, are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s. Some 50 of his short stories have been translated into Maltese by the consummate translator Professor Anthony Aquilina, but this is the first of his six novels to be translated into Maltese.
Here, the translator, Joe Pulè, as in his first translation from French, Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin, (Ittri mill-Mitħna Tiegħi - Horizons - 2019), succeeds in creating a respectful balance between fidelity to the author on the one hand and a flowing interpretation on the other hand, which captures the energy and texture and voice of the French text and replicates them in Maltese, drawing on all the resources of the language. This is so in the narrative, in Pierre's constant reflections, in the dialogue, and the descriptions of the sights and smells of a busy seaport.
Maupassant's influence on the translator can be recognised in the latter's collection of short stories, Amsterdam u Rakkonti Oħra, published by BDL publishing earlier this year.
This volume includes Maupassant's preface to Pierre et Jean, Le Roman (The Novel), in which he develops his theories of the novel, and describes how Flaubert taught to see and write. He stresses that a novel should not be a perfect imitation of life, but a reconstruction using words, characters, and a narrative. A writer, he believes, should carefully pick the appropriate moments of their characters' lives to create a story, discarding the numerous day-to-day occurrences which serve no use to this purpose. However, Maupassant paradoxically admits that some ideas in this essay can contradict "the psychological studies" in Pierre et Jean, which means that it was not intended as a preface to the novel, which can be read and appreciated independently of it.
Pierre u Jean is published by Faraxa Publishing in the series Traduzzjonijiet FARAXA.