VARIETY
GIDE'S HAMLET
When
Hamlet
opened in Paris
after the war, I was asked by the
French Radio to interview the
translator, Andre Gide. At that
time, November, 1946, I was study–
ing at the Sorbonne, and finding
everyone very kind to the handful
of Americans left in Paris after the
army's departure. The interview
was arranged for me by Made–
moiselle B., and on the second of
November, at eleven o'clock in the
morning, I appeared in Andre
Gide's sixth floor apartment on the
Rue Vaneau, eager to discuss with
Gide the old problem of Hamlet,
the true Northern hero, whose cou–
sin and rival Siegfried was now
deep in the doldrums.
Andre Gide greeted me in Eng–
lish, simply, warmly, in grand–
father style. He recognized my
uniform, and addressed me by my
military
title.
We entered his study,
in
whose great window I saw the
Eiffel Tower, the Dome of the In–
valides, and the ash-dark line of
the Bois de Boulogne under a
dove-gray sky. Gide put a stick of
wood on the dying fire, and asked
me whether I had seen the play. I
told
him
I had been to see it
with several American friends, who
had found a number of strands
213
in the play unusual. He became all
ears. They thought, I said, that the
Horatio-theme had been given
more prominence than it needed,
and the evil men less villainy than
the action intends. Gide smiled,
and the eyes under the bushy eye–
brows looked sharp and clear. "Do
you think I am wrong in consider–
ing my translation of
Hamlet
the
best
in French?" he asked. I as–
sured him that having read only
one other translation, reputed su–
perior, I found his so much more
luminous and flexible that I
thought it a masterpiece,
et d'une
splendeur!
"How could it be other–
wise?" I asked. "You are not a
professor turning one counter into
another; you are a writer recreat–
ting language. Your
Hamlet
is not
a mere translation: it is a re-think–
ing, a re-feeling, a re-nerving of
the play." Upon this Gide, who
had by now slipped into French,
complained that the American edi–
tion of his translation had printed
the French opposite the English
line for line, giving the effect of a
blank verse rendition. It was most
unfortunate that the American
reader should receive any such im–
pression. His translation into
French prose in no sense intended
the effect suggested.
He left the room to fetch a copy
of the American edition, which I
had not yet seen. I noticed that his
walls were lined with contempor–
ary French books, and that in the
next room his secretary was busily
