This site uses cookies.
Some of these cookies are essential to the operation of the site,
while others help to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used.
For more information, please see the ProZ.com privacy policy.
English translation: He who loves by rules hardly loves at all.
04:42 Jun 28, 2022
French to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature / Literature
French term or phrase:Que celui aime peu, qui aime la mesure
I'm working on an English book where I encounter the French quote "Que celui aime peu, qui aime la mesure" by La Boëtie. This quote is provided right after the chapter's name "Architecture and Passion", not in a specific passage, so I have no better clues to guess its meaning. The machine translation from Google seems obscure to me. Can anyone please help explain the general meaning of the quote? Thank you in advance.
Explanation: Not only has the line been mangled, as Phil pointed out, but in addition it has to be understood as line 2 in a couplet at the end of a sonnet:
"Toi qui oys mes soupirs, ne me soys rigoureux Si mes larmes à part toutes miennes je verse, Si mon amour ne suit en sa douleur diverse Du Florentin transi les regrets langoureux, Ni de Catulle aussi, le folatre amoureux, Qui le cœur de sa dame en chatouillant lui perce, Ni le savant amour du demi-Grec Properce, Ils n’aiment pas pour moi, je n’aime pas pour eux, Qui pourra sur autrui ses douleurs limiter, Celui pourra d’autrui les plaintes imiter : Chacun sent son tourment et sait ce qu’il endure Chacun parla d’amour ainsi qu’il l’entendit. Je dis ce que mon cœur, ce que mon mal me dit. Que celui aime peu, qui aime à la mesure."
This throws a more specific light on what the second line is getting at, although the link between the 2 lines is not straightforward.
However, if you read through the sonnet a few times the gist becomes clear: he's comparing his feelings to those expressed by various writers. Although Petrarch wasn't in fact a resident of Florence, I think Florentin transi probably refers to him rather than Dante, partly because Petrarch basically invented the idea of obsessive unfulfilled love, but also because Montaigne and La Boëtie had a "thing" about Petrarch: check this out: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6Z6npg_ks6UC&pg=PA122&lp...
I think, on reading this, I come to the conclusion that, more than anything, à la mesure refers to an idea of "convention", rejecting it in favour of individualism regarding sentiment, an appropriately humanist attitude.
As the main body of the poem suggests, particularly by the line in the past historic immediately preceding the couplet, these poets of old loved above all in their own way.
My first thought was "He who loves by the book hardly loves at all", but I think it is more general than that: an appeal to unconstrained feelings.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 8 hrs (2022-06-28 12:55:36 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
A note on the metre: these old French poems do in fact scan perfectly, according to rigid rules, right up until the 20th century, including for example every poem Baudelaire ever wrote. But you have to be aware that the e muet is **voiced**, according to the rules: in particular it is **not** pronounced when elided due to a following vowel.
The final line therefore scans thus:
Que celui aim-euh peu (stressed, caesura), qui aim-a la mesure
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 9 hrs (2022-06-28 13:46:58 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
It might be helpful to read the two "mon"s in the penultimate line as being in italic: "I talk about **my** feelings", with reference to no-one else's...
Thank you so much for your enthusiastic answers. I feel grateful and enlightened! I actually edited the footnote following your suggested translation, and I think somehow in Vietnamese it still fits the context so the additional note may not be necessary. But I will definitely re-read the section to verify my thought and will add a note as you suggested if needed. Anyway, thank you @Mpoma again and everyone else for your answers and explanations!
For some strange reason the post I posted yesterday in reply to your question has disappeared!
I pointed out that the French simply contains no notion of "measuring love", either in the original La Boëtie/Boétie line or in the mangled version which Zweig uses, misreading, misquoting and misunderstanding the French line.
For the sake of understanding of your readers it would be best to use my suggested translation in my previous post, which is a faithful translation of the French as written.
But if I was going to put a footnote with any Vietnamese translation, I would feel obliged to add "... [Lưu ý: Zweig dường như đã trích dẫn sai và hiểu sai lời thoại của La Boëtie.]".
If my editors then objected to this, because it perhaps suggests Zweig was a more fallible human being than they would like, I would reply that it is valuable because it shows the psychological reality: Zweig, from the evidence of the German text I glanced at, had some pretty strong ideas about things (e.g. Dostoievski) and these may have clouded his outlook to the extent that he read the quote he *wanted* to read, not what was there!
Hmmm. "Moderation" and "measurement" are really quite different concepts. In particular, the latter implies self-consciousness while the former references a scalar quality.
But that ain't the main problem: la mesure in the misquoted line is clearly an abstract noun or quality, making reference to the character of the criticised person concerned. Whereas you (and the other answers) are choosing consciously to shoe-horn this word into applying only to the style of loving, for which there is simply no textual justification!
And in fact the fact of its being mangled adds to the gobbledygookedness of the entire line: La Boëtie's line clearly talks of a manner of loving, whereas the mangled line talks about loving something, namely "moderation".
It is pure interpolation to choose, as you and all the other answers do, to *restrict* this "tendency to measure" of the criticised individual to their style of loving: insofar as the gallimawfrey into which Zweig has transmogrified this line makes any sense at all, we are only authorised to assume the person concerned is excessively level-headed in every way.
If you love in moderation, you might be said to love in a measured way, and that is not nearly as far from measuring out your love as a pernickety legal translator might think... :) To 'measure out' in this sense is of course to dispense something in measured quantities.
You can't really translate this line without translating the entire sonnet. The best would be to leave it in French with a gloss, as you intend to.
The meaning is something along the lines of restrained love is hardly any love at all, or to truly love someone or something is to give it/them one's all, to hold nothing back.
In the main text, I leave it in French, but I insert a footnote (like I do with other French texts throughout the book) to roughly explain their meanings in my language to help readers understand their relation to other paragraphs. If so, should I explain following your direction or can I translate based on Helene's translation? I personally like that poetic one, but I feel like your understanding fits the context better.
I just had a look at the German text by Zweig which follows that quote. It is talking about what an explosive, passionate character Dostoievski was (supposedly). One translation of mesure is "moderation". The French misquote could be translated as "Someone who likes an ordered life never loves properly". Perhaps that is indeed what Zweig thought the quote meant: this would be consistent with the content of these paragraphs.
But it is really quite far removed from La Boëtie's meaning. It wouldn't be the first example where a misreading of a foreign text has spawned its own misguided but sometimes inadvertently creative meanings which had nothing to do with the original writer's intentions.
Yes, definitely leave in the French! Let your readers figure it out for themselves!
Zweig wrote in German, and the original title of this book was Drei Meister. Balzac – Dickens – Dostojewski.. The book was translated in 1930, I assume that's what you're translating. This German version is available at Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36389/36389-h/36389-h.htm and the misquote can be found there, and attributed to "La Boetie" (not the correct spelling, which is either "La Boétie" or "La Boëtie" - but this misspelling *might* be the fault of gutenberg.org!).
On the balance of probabilities, Zweig will have had a chance to proof-read this before it was printed, so the fault must, IMHO, be attributed to him. I don't think he deliberately skewed it, so I think the thing should be translated, if at all, taking account of the whole sonnet.
But... given that the English version didn't bother translating it, maybe you should leave it in French (misquoted!) in your Vietnamese version. That's probably what I'd do, for an easy life.
Mpoma, the book in question is Three Masters: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky (Stefan Zweig) (English translation). Though it is in English, the quote is in French, and it is as I wrote in the question "Que celui aime peu, qui aime la mesure" (without "à", that's what I see from the digital version I have). This quote is shown is the chapter about Dostoevsky, specifically his duality nature in writings, and that part is named "Architecture and Passion." Do you think this is a deliberate misquote? If yes, how does it shift the meaning?
Hoang, see my answer: this is the final line of a sonnet by La Boëtie and as such part of the "French literary canon". La Boëtie is famous primarily by association with Montaigne, but this is probably his most famous (only?) quote.
You haven't said yet whether the book itself misquotes. The poem says aime à la mesure. If the book misquotes this potentially could be deliberate, in order to skew the meaning deliberately, although this seems improbable, particularly since your book is in English.
If not, the quotation is meant with reference to the sonnet and any valid answer must take this into account, not just translate it in isolation.
I don't think we should be holding a beauty contest for the best English rendition, since this will end up in Vietnamese. The asker just wanted to know what it meant.
The structure sounds like "archaic" French because it is, and there might have been some poetry-related constraints. My understanding: A more "modern" way of writing it would be "Qu'il aime peu celui qui aime la mesure !" (No "à" needed: aimer la mesure ~ être mesuré [reasonable/moderate/temperate/restrained]), ie how superficial love is from someone who likes moderation. If the actual quotation contains the "à" preposition, the meaning is indeed slightly different, and love becomes a countable noun, which is mean!
Thank you Helene. I understand the logic of cause and effect, but since I don't know French syntax and grammar, I don't know which order of clauses is correct. That's why I asked that question because I'm aware of the difference between two cases. Anyway, from your answer and Tony's, I understand the quote. Even better, I think I have an excellent translation into my language from your English translation.
"But should it be translated in that order, or should two clauses be reversed: He who cannot love deeply, measures out his love? Will it affect the whole meaning?"
Hoang, if you reverse the two clauses then yes, you change the meaning from
IF he (who) measures his love --> THEN he cannot/ must not/does not love very deeply
to
IF He (who) cannot love deeply --> THEN (he) measures out his love
Do you see the difference? In both cases, the first clause is the cause & the 2nd is the effect.
Thank you philgoddard and Helene Tammik for your help. This is an old book, and what I have is a digitized version, so the scanner/machine might miss the word. To Helene Tammik, your rough translation seem to fit the context, as the chapter discusses about how passionate a writer is in creating his artworks. But should it be translated in that order, or should two clauses be reversed: He who cannot love deeply, measures out his love? Will it affect the whole meaning?
For what it’s worth, I would translate it very roughly as “he who loves measures / to do things in a measured way, cannot / does not love very deeply”. So something about how passion and reason (measure) are mutually exclusive. I can kind of see how that might be relevant in your context — does it tie in with what follows?
Automatic update in 00:
Answers
2 hrs confidence: peer agreement (net): +4
who measures their love, doesn't love very much
Explanation: I think Phil and Helen have hit the nail on the head. The difficulty here is that you have to recognize the inversion of the sentence: in plainer language, it might have been 'qui aime à la mesure, aime peu' Obviously I've introduced a register shift with my 'doesn't love very much', just to give you the idea; the problem is that 'peu' in FR often translates with the notion of 'not much' in EN — is is perhaps less common to use 'little' in EN, except in such expressions as "little and often" etc.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 hrs (2022-06-28 07:15:36 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
I almost wonder if that initial 'que' isn't exclamatory: "How little he loves, he who..."
Tony M France Local time: 05:44 Works in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 128
Notes to answerer
Asker: Thank you very much for your explanation. Everything is clear to me now.
peer agreement (net): +4
