Night Thoughts

[amie-de-rimbaud.livejournal.com]

 Has anyone ever read Young's Night Thoughts, which Camille supposedly took with him into prison? I just bought myself a mid 19th c. edition on Ebay for $10 and my feelings about reading it are difficult to put into words.

Do you know if he possessed a copy in the original English, or if it was a French edition?

(I know I already posted about my man tonight--don't you know it's a Camille attack rrrrrarrggggh!)

Comments

[amie-de-rimbaud.livejournal.com]

Oh, besides his immaculate Latin, I don't know what other languages he knew other than French, if any. I know that Marat's English was excellent (misatheredpanda posted a bit of his English writing), so I guess that I just assumed that it wasn't out of the question for a well-educated (ahem, brilliant) 18th c. Frenchman to know English. But then, I really don't know. You're probably right, though--and it was probably more appropriate (and natural) that the final piece of literature for him to read would be in his own language.

Sorry for being stupid--I should have thought a little more about it.

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

It's not stupid - personally, even with translation available, I sometimes like to give the original version a try. You made me now think whether modern languages were taught at Lycée Louis-le-Grand at the time Camille was a student there. Not out of question, as it is the time when modern languages were being introduced to school. We'd have to check how "conservative" they were at the time, but in my opinion it might be a trace worth following for itself.

[(Anonymous)]

I find it highly improbable that English was taught in the Louis-le-Grand. Marat and Danton (who also spoke English) were exiled in England for a time.

[elwen-rhiannon.livejournal.com]

Mhm, too early for me. But theoretically not entirely impossible, which means it'd have to be checked. And it's an interesting task - *how* to prove whether Camille Desmoulins knew English, or any modern foreign language, well enough to read literature in original.

[nirejseki.livejournal.com]

Well, Marat was a Swiss whose father was a teacher of languages, then proceeded to live in England for quite a few years even before the Revolution, so no matter how bright Camille is, the comparison isn't really apt. I think it's more likely that Camille had it in French, simply because there's a difference between having some knowledge of a language and reading a book in one! My parents have been in the US for over twenty years and spoke English almost fluently even before that - and they still prefer to read English book translations rather than the book itself.

(Besides, I would imagine you'd take something comforting to prison - not something you'd have to struggle with, or to curse about the fact that you don't have a dictionary for a difficult word...^^)

[amie-de-rimbaud.livejournal.com]

Touché. What you said makes perfect sense. I'm in the middle of a 700 pp. Camille biography, and I've already been through the detailed sections on his education--no mention of English studies. *Palm face* I think that maybe I drew the conclusion because I was secretly pleased at the idea for some reason.