so many vaginas, stomachs, cocks, snouts, and flies you don’t know what to do with them … shovelsfull! … but hearts? … very rare! in the last five hundred million years too many cocks and gastric tubes to count … but hearts? … on your fingers!…
~Céline
Conversation
"flies?" not a body part. Guess I would have to find the original French to know why he mentioned flies (zippers, buttons or flying insects)?
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I assumed, looking at the context of how the word is used, he is talking about the kind with zippers or buttons on a pair of pants (or trousers)
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Yes that's how I interpreted it at first. Now I'm inclined to think it's about the flying insects. I haven't managed yet to Google that passage in the original French.
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Let me know if you find out. There are some atrocious translations of Celine's work floating around the Internet.
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I found the original passage and used Google Translate to get a literal translation. It doesn't tell me what kind of flies to imagine (Lord of the Flies or Sticky Fingers.) Somehow the word "flies" strikes me as incongruous (as does "gear ratio".)
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Thanks, Mr Ellis. But I'm gonna go with 'flies' as in 'zippers' on trousers as that fits the context of the quote.
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Now that I've seen the original I agree with your translation. Clearly, insects were not intended and 'zippers' goes better with the other items than 'gear'. Good translators often need to choose something better than what the French-English dictionary offers.
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Yes, sir, I agree. Language is a many-nuanced thing. To translate well, one must be familiar with the author's body of work and intent. Celine is the poster child for cynicism and pessimism. 'Journey to the End of the Night' is a masterpiece.
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Thanks for the recommendation. I'm not familiar with his work at all but hope to remedy that someday.
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Replying to
Ralph Mannheim's translation of "Journey" is pretty good. During the Nazi occupation of France, Celine collaborated with them & wrote some anti-Semitic tracts, which were so outrageous even the Nazi's rejected them. But this tarnished his image after the war.
Just giving you a heads up. Celine is the most pessimistic, cynical bastard I've ever read. Loved by many other great authors such as Bukowski, Kerouac, Wm Burroughs, and so on.