New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-06-11
PROBABLY it would not do to turn
the too expressive Gaspard' lit

and everybody is looking for Gaspard,
because Gaspard knows what everybody
ought to do. Gaspard is having trouble
with one of the railway employees, who
dislikes the song that Gaspard has beer
singing. The song begins, 'The station.
master is cuckold" The passage
reads
Always Gaspard. And the newspaper man
was looking for him. too He reentered the
station and saw Gaspard wranglng with an
employe The latter had thought it injurious
to the railway company that Gaspard on get
ting out of the train, should sing to the tune
Of the Little Ship: ~ est cocu le chef de
CARE" and he had remarked in loud voices
There's a regiment for you. As soon as
Frenchmen get to be soldiers they become dis
gushing
Become what?" Gaspard had replied. ere
peat it if you'd like me to eat your liver
BY what caprice of modesty should it
be turned into this:
Even the Journalist was looking for him. lie
went back 10 the railway station and found
Gaspard arguing with an employee. The latter
had resented the fact that Gaspard had entered
the station singing at the top of his voice an
old marching song. the first line Of which con-
tanned a doubt as to the faithfulness of the
station masters wife
There you are. As soon as a Frenchman
puts on a military coat, he loses all sense of
decency."
"An sense Of what? Repeat it, and III eat
you up" said Gaspard.
However, modesty accounts FOR only
a small part Of the translator's devia-
tions, which are due mainly, it would
seem, to a spirit of verbal independence.
He hates to be bound down to the text.
1t is not because he is lazy, for he t9kes
more pains in trying to escape from the
author than he would have had to take
in following him. He will peg away at
metaphor till he has got it all into nat
ter of fact, and he will work just as hard
to get matter of fact into metaphor. He
thinks the author pig-headed in the nat
ter of style.
so that's the way the fellow wants to
put it, is it?" he says to himself. "I'I
teach him." and he will tear out every
concrete word of the phrase and make
it a soaring generality. Take this pas
sage, for example, in which the author
permits himself to be little fanciful:
It was Paris bursting into the provinces. A
stone skipping on a pond, reed-pipe hooking
a big bass drum, scarecrow in a field Of cab
bages-it was the humor of the people, saying
Don't leave me out Of your baggage" 1t was
the self-love of the country, sometimes swag-
gering, oftener ironical, never fiat, always
silent, the droll gesture on the battlefield, a
brush of the wings of victory, the tone beht-
ting the end of the war, assumed at the very
beginning.
None of that, says the translator to
himself, and coldly, as if taking away
child's playthings, he reduces it all to
this:
Typical of all that TO come, this was
the spirit of Paris asserting itself in the prov
inces-the frank gayety and ever undismayed
cheerfulness; laughing at the battle, scofhng
at the enemy, trying out the joke of the end
of the war before it even had begun.
Gaspard is Partisan snail-vender of
the rue de la Gate, which is full of
monographs and smells Of fried pota-
toes. He is big enough to make
game of little men and to hold
his own with the others; has
the hands Of a man who does not
work with his head, but a head that
knows how to make his hands serve him;
sharp eyes, self-satisfed bit of mus
tache, and long nose with a twist to
the left. Having an uncommon knack
for taking care of other people as we'll
as of himself, he naturally takes the lead
everywhere. He can do everything ex-
cept keep silent, and he can express ade-
quately every emotion except fear.
Curses, jokes, billingsgate, the slang of
the trenches, the slang of the rue de la
Gate, popular songs, are jolted out of
him at every lurch of the cattle train
that takes the regiment to the front.
Hit by piece of a German shell, he
talks as copiously as he beeds.