New Translation Of The Greatest Love Story Ever Written

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 81, 11 August 1950, Page 6

New Translation Of The Greatest Love Story Ever Written

The claim is often made that “Manon Lescaut” is the greatest love story ever written, and certainly the claim is just if it means that no other book has told with more poignancy the tortures that love can inflict upon the human being, writes J.E.J. It does not need too close an acquaintance with a worthless woman to appreciate the depths of feeling in every line of Prevost’s story. Opera, play and recently a controversial film has made the story of Manon familiar to other than readers of the classic, the story of a monk who runs away from his priestly vocation, is imprisoned, who cheats at the gaming tables, who tricks Manon’s rich lovers, who becomes a fugitive for the love of a woman who betrays him time after time.

He becomes a social failure and outcast on account of Manon, whom he cannot understand or is afraid he understands only too well. Mr L. W. Tancock, in his grand translation of Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost, evaids the two pitfalls of the translator. He avoids the archaic mannerisms and period tricks in search of the phoney historical atmosphere, ’ but he also avoids, too, colloquial English which so frequently gives to English historical films spoken in Americanese that high air of complete improbability. His translation is in good, simple English which other translators might study with profit.