Jean Dayre as a translator

Abstract

The French comparatist, Slavish polyglot, teacher and most deserving promoter of Croatian literature into the French culture, Jean Dayre (1892—1912), published two extensive selections oi works i'roin Croatian literature for the French public. The author begins by comparing the original texts with Dayre’s translations, and then finds the place those translations hold in promoting Croatian artistic prose in general, into the fund of traslated literature of other cultures, especially of the French culture. The author studies Jean Dayre’s mentality as a translator from the aspect of the demands placed before a modern literary translator. Jean Dayre does not have many philological, »scholarly« preoccupations. He communicates with the average Frenchman, who is to obtain a clear, lucid and exciting view into an »exotic« literature of which he knows little. Thus Dayre is consciously free of many pretensions. He forgoes historical and local colour whenever the presentation of that level would necessarily be complex, clumsy and »professional«. In his selection of sitories he prefers those with regional characteristics, but he does not translate dialects. Fie does not shrink from interfering with the integrity of the text: in his introduction he, promised that 'the Anthologie would mot contain one single weak page. In some places his additional explanations are included in the original text (A. Nametak: »The Sun«). But Dayre possesses a virtue that is the most precious in translating: creative intuition- His translations are distinguished by a modern flexibility of discourse and an outstanding identification with the characters: he turns the storytelier’s third person singular into first (Kozarac: »Three Days with his Son«). Fie bears in mind that »the world of the French reader« may be short in connotations, and feels tree to use French connotations (Andrić: »In Prison«). He is not only relaxed, but also subtle.