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Sphinx
by Anne Garréta
translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
France



Sphinx is the remarkable debut novel, originally published in 1986, by the incredibly talented and inventive French author Anne Garréta, one of the few female members of Oulipo, the influential and exclusive French experimental literary group whose mission is to create literature based on mathematical and linguistic restraints, and whose ranks include Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, among others.

A beautiful and complex love story between two characters, the narrator, “I,�� and their lover, A***, written without using any gender markers to refer to the main characters, Sphinx is a remarkable linguistic feat and paragon of experimental literature that has never been accomplished before or since in the strictly-gendered French language.

-The porous membranes of Sphinx let it be a novel of openness, as if a living being, letting you in and out, affected and changed each time you begin or cease reading. Those membranes are all over, walls put up so they can be phased through. ~P.T. Smith in The Mookse and the Gripes

-At times a frustrating read, Sphinx unexpectedly prompts feelings of liberation, too. While je’s description of the first time they have sex—“Crotches crossed and sexes mixed, I no longer knew how to distinguish anything”—isn’t lush with details, it also doesn’t rely on gender tropes to move the action forward. It’s easier to focus on emotions as well, without associating them with female or male points of view. ~Jane Yong Kim in Words without Borders

The review above contains a rather large spoiler in that it reveals the oulipan constraint which it would be better for the reader to realise for themselves.

That said this is, as an introduction in the US version says, says, "the rare riddle that only makes you think harder after you know the answer.", and I would add also the rare case where translation actually adds to the novel, by giving another dimension to the riddle.

My problem though is that take the constraint away, and what is left wasn't a novel that I would have any interest reading.

Paul wrote: "My problem though is that take the constraint away, and what is left wasn't a novel that I would have any interest reading."

Actually, I found the novel well worth reading, constraint or no constraint.

Nicole wrote: "Paul wrote: "My problem though is that take the constraint away, and what is left wasn't a novel that I would have any interest reading."

Actually, I found the novel well worth reading, constraint..."
Yes it was more a comment on my personal taste than the absolute merit of the novel, but not my sort of novel at all sans Oulipo.

I cannot understand how this didn't make the shortlist!

Even though I didn't like it I thought it was nailed on for the shortlist, not least for the feat of translation. I do wonder how much the judges take the challenges involved in the T in BTBA into account.

Actually, I'm not sure how much of a feat of translation this book actually was. I've only read the original, but it seems to me that the feat is in the original writing and its chosen constraint. Given that French is a gendered language and English is not, I'm not sure how translating this book presents any more of a challenge that translating any other French novel into English. The work in the places where the two languages overlap is already done in the sentence building of Garreta, and where they don't overlap, English is neutral, so there's nothing to construct.

Nicole wrote: "Actually, I'm not sure how much of a feat of translation this book actually was. I've only read the original, but it seems to me that the feat is in the original writing and its chosen constraint. ..."

Fair point.

But the challenges are very different in the two languages and while Garreta in the original has the luxury of being able to alter the story and the words to avoid traps, the translator is much more constrained by fidelity to the original.

Nicole wrote: ""French is a gendered language and English is not""

True ... except in French the possessive pronoun takes on the gender not of the possessor but rather of the object - saying son bras or sa cuisse does not violate the constraint.

But in English the translator must avoid at all costs saying his or her arm or thigh, requiring Ramadan to invent completely new literary tricks.

One thing that is much easier in English is that in French, the author has to avoid the use of the passé composé. Simply saying "je suis allé" or "je suis allée" would immediately give the game away in a sense that "I went..." wouldn't in English.

To avoid the issue Garréta has her narrator "je" use two different tense form, the imperfect which works for repetitive actions (so she has her narrator talk frequently of their* habits) and another construction which doesn't exist in English, the passé simple.

[* note the artificial word "their" which I have had to use to avoid his or her]

This comes across as rather pretentious when used repeatedly so Garréta has (using her flexibility as author) assigned her narrator that characteristic to fit the Oulipan rule. Ramadan has no such literary device in English but wishes to preserve the narrator's pretentious character so has to resort instead to doing this by rather pretentious vocabulary.

It that sense I think the translation of this novel is far more interesting than many other novels on the short/long list.

Indeed for me most of the pleasure from the novel came from thinking about what Garreta had done and how Ramadan had adapted it - the story itself became rather second order.

Not to get all historical grammar on you, but while the French USE of the passé simple does not exist in English, the grammar itself is a preterite, equivalent to our past tense. What has become the French passé composé is now English's present perfect, a compound tense for nearer, but still past, events. Historically, the forms took on different usage destinies, but it's not correct to say that the grammatical preterite is not available to the translator of a French text.

It's also not the case that THIS French text is any different than any other French literary text, as the passé simple is the default tense for a novel, and the use of it in a literary, written form like this one is not at all pretentious; it would be weird if I were to go around SPEAKING in the passé simple, or to use it in emails to my colleagues, but a novel written in the passé simple is entirely unremarkable. Indeed, it would be strange if Garreta has opted to write a novel in the passé composé, and would attract a great deal more reader attention, possibly even feel intrusive.

The possessives are a local challenge for a translator, but I think personally that an anglophone readership has vastly exaggerated the formal challenges in both the original and the translation because it is smitten with the political implications of the choice of restraint. While I was reading the book I was struck by how normal the writing seemed (albeit of very high quality), and I think this is very much part of the Oulipian goal. The point is to draw the author's attention to form and structure and choice in writing, and the challenge is to make the constraint as UNobtrusive as possible, not to make it a glaring sign for the reader. While Garreta may also have a political agenda, she has been admitted to a group of writers whose primary concern is writing, and I find it sad that the discussion of this book outside of France cares only for her presumed gender politics.

Nicole wrote: "Not to get all historical grammar on you, but while the French USE of the passé simple does not exist in English, the grammar itself is a preterite, equivalent to our past tense. What has become th..."

Thanks - very helpful. My French is at schoolboy level (and that was 30+ years ago) so I took my grammatical comments from the translator's comments so happy to stand corrected.

And I agree it has attracted a lot of attention for the implied political agenda - which to be frank, at least in the UK/US is difficult to avoid given how gender and transgender issues are such a big political issue (see e.g. the US presidential election).

In my case, I focus on the translation / Oulipan choices because, to be honest, take those away and I had very little interest in the actual novel itself.

Paul wrote: "Nicole wrote: "Not to get all historical grammar on you, but while the French USE of the passé simple does not exist in English, the grammar itself is a preterite, equivalent to our past tense. Wha..."

This may actually be one of those cases where, even with a very good translation, it's just not the same. I was not that interested in the story, particularly the later portions in the US, but I was pulled along by the really beautiful writing. I think this is part of what makes me feel sad about the kind of attention that this book has been attracting (and similarly for Oulipo in general, where a lot the joy and play in language seems to get lost in translation).

I suppose a more optimistic person would just be happy that the book is attracting attention.

ETA: for the côté ludique, the of the papous dans la tête, a popular version of oulipo style literary and linguistic games which you can also listen to as a podcast on the if you're feeling frisky.