Review of The Mills on the Floss: George Eliot & Le Moulin sur la Floss

Writing to her first French translator, Francois d\u27 Albert-Durade, in 1865, George Eliot remarked on how little known his translations appeared to be in France, since she was always being approached by people who wanted to translate her works into French. After her death d\u27 Albert-Durade\u27s La Famille Tulliver: ou le Moulin sur la Floss did go on to be reprinted several times from the late nineteenth century onwards, but it has now been superseded by a new translation by Alain Jumeau which will have more appeal to modem readers and will certainly reach a far wider audience than d\u27 Albert-Durade\u27s original version, since it appears in Gallimard\u27s popular paperback series \u27folio classique\u27. Professor Jumeau, who teaches at the Sorbonne, presents his translation with the same kind of apparatus as British paperback editions: a succinct introduction; an account of the composition and reception of the novel; notes; bibliography; and a chronology of George Eliot\u27s life. The French student or general reader will be well served by this edition, and those who wish to study the novel in greater depth can turn to Jumeau\u27s monograph, which is primarily aimed at advanced students of English preparing for the Agregation (quotations from the text are thus all in the original without translation). Jumeau presents a lucid survey of the novel and the critical issues that it raises, with a bibliography of modem criticism which is extensive though not comprehensive (some well-known articles, for instance by Nancy Miller and Jules Law, are omitted). He draws interestingly on Bachelard\u27 s L\u27 eau et les reves in his discussion of the symbolic function of water, and, taking his cue from Marcel Proust\u27s affection for the Mill, finds illuminating parallels not in A. la recherche but in the earlier unfinished work Jean Santeuil. Otherwise the terms of his discussion are set by anglophone criticism. It is not surprising that Jumeau exploits Proust\u27s interest in George Eliot (his chapter on the use of the past in the Mill is entitled \u27A la recherche du temps perdu\u27), since it must provide a useful point of entry for a French readership. It is noticeable that the back cover of his new translation features Proust\u27s observations on George Eliot\u27s sense of the mysteriousness of human life and the life of nature, her awareness of the \u27mysteres sublimes auxquels nous participons en le sachant aussi peu que la fleur qui pousse\u27. The eloquent enthusiasm of a great modernist should help this fine new translation find the readers it deserves