Word: rhythm
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...COMPLETE LYRICS OF COLE PORTER; Knopf; 354 pages; $30 THE LYRICS OF NOëL COWARD; Overlook Press; 418 pages; $25 "Strange how potent cheap music is," wrote Noël Coward about one of his own songs. He was partly right: the melody and rhythm proved irresistible, but the lyric ("Some day I'll find you,/ Moonlight behind you") provided the real power. In an enduring song, notes beguile the ear; words build a home in the mind...
HOWEVER, the occasional beautifully-writes package and Cardinal's more striking images ultimately lift The Words To Say It above the level of most popular fiction. Translator Patrician Goodheart carefully reproduces the rhythm and atmosphere of the French. Particularly notable are the many passages evoking the life and color of colonial Algeria, where Cardinal lived as a child...
Marie Cardinal sits with her legs crossed on the couch, poised and self-possessed. The cigarette she lets droop between two fingers is the finishing touch on a carefully designed image. Now she gestures with it, now she flicks the ash away, emphasizing the rhythm of her words with precise movements. Author of 10 novels, Cardinal has had her greatest success with The Words to Say It, published in 1975. After winning the Prix Littre, the award given annually for the best medical arts book published in France, the novel has sold nearly two and a half million copies...
...have raised some objections about what they feel is a loose and even inaccurate translation by Patricia Goodheart, but Cardinal says. "I think it is a very good translation, I helped with a few words here and there. But Pat understood the most important aspects of the book--the rhythm, the sound it makes. After all, American is American, French is French. Sometimes you can't translate word for word. I don't feel I have been betrayed if the translation of song words is not exact...
...that the French have a habit of not editing at all, unless the author edits herself. I regarded Cardinal as a diamond in the rough to which I could bring my own talent as an editor and a writer. My effort was toward compression and toward establishing a rhythm which corresponded to the original at its best...