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Herself an openly feminist and lesbian author and activist, Maria-Merc\u00e8 Mar\u00e7al became obsessed with the idea of lifting Ren\u00e9e Vivien out of the exile which is \u201cthe common lot of poets\u201d \u2013 an obsession that she transfers to one of the main active voices of the text, Sara T. The decision to create fictional biographers is a clever one: this is no dry, objective account of Vivien\u2019s life, but rather a vivid, impassioned quest to uncover her mystery and her legacy. The Passion According to Ren\u00e9e Vivien<\/em> is full of beautiful aphorisms (\u201cAfter all, perhaps glory is just a posthumous form of love: the only form with the capacity to raise the dead\u201d), and Mar\u00e7al sets out to give voice to an overlooked figure from recent literary history by writing a book about \u201cwomen who, like me, yearned for deep-rooted changes in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n This polyphonic text is part documentary, part biography and part love song to its subject. We discover much of Pauline\u2019s life through the eyes of Sara T., a 1980s Catalan documentary maker who becomes obsessed with giving voice to Pauline, and in particular Sara reveals the difficulties of piecing together all the details of Pauline\u2019s life to make a coherent whole. The other main source of information is Salomon R., a museum curator, and we also have letters from Pauline\u2019s lovers, as well as a more objective and omniscient third-person narrator from Pauline\u2019s own era, through whom we gain insight into her personal circumstances through observations of her entourage and conversations between courtesans. Though in some ways contemporary readers might find the main narrative\u2019s milieu less recognisable because of the relatively privileged lifestyle it details (for example, one character\u2019s great dilemma regards her \u201cunresolved doubts\u201d about an ivory statue in a museum, and Ren\u00e9e herself \u201chad the fortune to be able to torment herself with only metaphysical problems\u201d), the timeless and universal qualities of love, loss, desire, jealousy, sorrow and despair prevent the text from feeling dated or unrelatable.<\/p>\n My over-riding impression of the translation was that much time, energy and (if I may borrow from the title) passion has gone into making this work available to English-speaking audiences: it\u2019s clear just how much both translators care about this project. The writing is lyrical and eloquent, almost old-fashioned in its language choices, but not dated. It evokes a time of formality in turn-of-the-century Paris, and manages to sustain a formal and authentically period-appropriate narrative style throughout its 350 pages. This formality is also partly owing to a delicate attention on the part of the translators to favour terms that have French etymology, reflecting through this choice Pauline\u2019s own writing \u201cagainst\u201d English. In the whole book there were only a couple of instances when I thought something more modern might have crept in, but this may well be my own ignorance of when expressions became current in English \u2013 or it may reflect potential anachronisms in the original Catalan. Overall, there was something very nostalgic for me about reading this book: its turn-of-the-century style and references to 19th<\/sup>-century writers and culture took me back to my years studying French literature, and locating much of the narrative in Paris is always a way to tug at the nostalgia for me. All it takes is the street names and in my mind I\u2019m already there \u2013 so my only regret in that sense was the anglicisation of some of the street names \u2013 a number of the more recognisable ones remain in French, but elsewhere there are references to, for example, \u201cVend\u00f4me Square\u201d and \u201cthe boulevard of Paix\u201d, which for me snapped the nostalgic connection. But that\u2019s an entirely personal reaction, and for readers who don\u2019t know French \u2013 or don\u2019t know Paris \u2013 then this might, conversely, bring them closer to the text, particularly given the strategies of writing \u201cagainst\u201d English that I mentioned earlier.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll leave you with a little scoop that for me was the most fascinating thing about this novel: thanks to an interview with translator Helena Buffery (which you can read here in full next week), I discovered that the final chapter of The Passion According to Ren\u00e9e Vivien <\/em>is made up entirely of fragments of Ren\u00e9e Vivien\u2019s poetry. This section is breathtakingly beautiful, and the book is worth reading for this alone \u2013 not only its beauty, but also the skill of weaving together the (French) fragments to make a narrative (in Catalan) that is now translated into English. Within the fictional biographer\u2019s task, we are told that \u201cher verses were the autobiography of her soul\u201d, and so it feels appropriate to give the last word to Ren\u00e9e Vivien, via Mar\u00e7al, in a rendering by Buffery and McNerney:<\/p>\n \u201cI am of those laid low by light. Under the implacable face of day, memories devour me like abject vermin. And at dusk when I hear the groaning of the unfortunate land, I have felt in excess the horror of having been born. Who, then, will bring me the hemlock in their hands? Night slithers, slowly and subtly, toward the opal of the hill. The soul resuscitates in the tenebrous shadows.<\/p>\n \u2026 I will hurl myself into your eyes, where sadness rhapsodizes.<\/p>\n \u2026 Here, words do not hurt, Let us keep the doors closed. Souls without hope have the solitary pride of islands.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Translated from Catalan by Kathleen McNerney and Helena Buffery (Francis Boutle Publishers, 2020) This is a very different kind of novel from those I normally read for Translating Women, and will be a treat for anyone who enjoys creative biographies. The Passion According to Ren\u00e9e Vivien represents a literary project to uncover the hidden life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[185,357,409,507,595,949],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReview copy of The Passion According to Ren\u00e9e Vivien <\/em>provided by Francis Boutle Publishers<\/h6>\n