Glossary entry (derived from question below)
French term or phrase:
Feu sur la démocratie, feue la démocratie
English translation:
Death to democracy, democracy is dead
Added to glossary by
liz askew
Jul 17, 2022 08:27
1 yr ago
50 viewers *
French term
Feu sur la démocratie, feue la démocratie
French to English
Art/Literary
Government / Politics
Help!
I'm translating a book about Athenian Greece and can't figure out a way to render this pun. Any ideas? Full paragraph below (it's talking about what Critias has written on his tombstone):
L'inscription ne souffle ici mot de Critias, fondu dans la masse anonyme des oligarques tombés à ses côtés, lors de la bataille de Mounychie ; seul un lecteur particulièrement attentif peut éventuellement détecter une allusion voilée au défunt, en repérant, dans l'épitaphe, la reprise d'un vers de Solon, lointain parent de Critias : en son temps, le législateur s'était targué, lui aussi, d'avoir « contraint le peuple ». L'image donne toutefois à l'épitaphe unecoloration fort sinistre, bien loin de l'esprit de compromis solonien : la « contrainte » n'est ici rien d'autre que la destruction pure et simple du peuple, comme si l'hubris démocratique ne pouvait être contenue que par une violence plus grande encore. *Feu sur la démocratie, feue la démocratie !*
I'm translating a book about Athenian Greece and can't figure out a way to render this pun. Any ideas? Full paragraph below (it's talking about what Critias has written on his tombstone):
L'inscription ne souffle ici mot de Critias, fondu dans la masse anonyme des oligarques tombés à ses côtés, lors de la bataille de Mounychie ; seul un lecteur particulièrement attentif peut éventuellement détecter une allusion voilée au défunt, en repérant, dans l'épitaphe, la reprise d'un vers de Solon, lointain parent de Critias : en son temps, le législateur s'était targué, lui aussi, d'avoir « contraint le peuple ». L'image donne toutefois à l'épitaphe unecoloration fort sinistre, bien loin de l'esprit de compromis solonien : la « contrainte » n'est ici rien d'autre que la destruction pure et simple du peuple, comme si l'hubris démocratique ne pouvait être contenue que par une violence plus grande encore. *Feu sur la démocratie, feue la démocratie !*
Change log
Jul 21, 2022 21:35: liz askew Created KOG entry
Proposed translations
+6
1 hr
Selected
Death to democracy, democracy is dead
my take
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Note added at 1 hr (2022-07-17 09:40:34 GMT)
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Liberation of Dogma: Faith, Revelation, and Dogmatic ...
https://books.google.co.uk › books
Juan L. Segundo · 2004 · Religion
That is understandable, since from the beginning of part 2 of this book, ... In a book meant to sound the alarm, Feu la Chrétienté [Christianity deceased], ...
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Note added at 1 hr (2022-07-17 09:40:34 GMT)
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Liberation of Dogma: Faith, Revelation, and Dogmatic ...
https://books.google.co.uk › books
Juan L. Segundo · 2004 · Religion
That is understandable, since from the beginning of part 2 of this book, ... In a book meant to sound the alarm, Feu la Chrétienté [Christianity deceased], ...
Peer comment(s):
agree |
Carol Gullidge
: Ilike your version; also considering "To hell with democracy, democracy is dead", which is just another way of putting it - although maybe not suitable for a tombstone!
1 hr
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agree |
AllegroTrans
1 hr
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agree |
Anastasia Kalantzi
: Oui, c'est justement ça, feu,-e, en tant qu'adjectif est synonyme d'une Démocratie Défunte.https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-histoire-des-idees-... ! à noter: le terme d'ancien Grec 'hubris':blasphème:Gr.:ύβρις.
2 hrs
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agree |
Conor McAuley
: I came up with some contradictory evidence, but you're right, I think. Most people are paradoxes, exhibit contradictory behaviour in some way. Also, you've got a Greek on your side! :-)
3 hrs
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agree |
Emmanuella
7 hrs
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agree |
Yolanda Broad
10 hrs
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3 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
Comment: "Thank you, this was helpful!"
56 mins
Fire on democracy, the burned-down democracy!
Ceci pour donner l'idée de quelque chose de complètement détruit, inutilisable, fini, tout en maintenant l'allégorie du feu.
Peer comment(s):
neutral |
Carol Gullidge
: "ma feue tante/soeur" means my LATE (i.e., dead) aunt/sister. nothing to do with fire or burning//maybe I'm being pedantic, but in any case this has no real ring to it :(
1 hr
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neutral |
AllegroTrans
: Sounds clumsy+second meaning of "feu" is late/dead/deceased
2 hrs
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neutral |
Tony M
: I agree with Carol and A/T about the correct meaning of 'feue' here — and also that this sounds clunky and un-idiomatic.
10 hrs
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+1
1 hr
Set light to democracy, democracy that no longer shines
You really need to refer to fire in some way, given the paragraph that precedes the one you quote (see image below). Context, context, context ...
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Note added at 1 hr (2022-07-17 10:01:29 GMT)
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Note added at 1 hr (2022-07-17 10:11:19 GMT)
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As Cyril Tolari suggests, the footnote (not accessible online) might shed more light on this.
Cyril got in before me about the agreement. I was delving into Grévisse when he commented. 'Feu' agrees when placed between the article and the noun: La feuE reine, ma feuE soeur, but Feu ma soeur, feu ses trois maris.
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Note added at 1 hr (2022-07-17 10:12:56 GMT)
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Or ... democracy that has burnt out.
This is starting to feel very topical, when 'democracy' is becoming something it was never intended to be.
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Note added at 1 hr (2022-07-17 10:01:29 GMT)
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Note added at 1 hr (2022-07-17 10:11:19 GMT)
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As Cyril Tolari suggests, the footnote (not accessible online) might shed more light on this.
Cyril got in before me about the agreement. I was delving into Grévisse when he commented. 'Feu' agrees when placed between the article and the noun: La feuE reine, ma feuE soeur, but Feu ma soeur, feu ses trois maris.
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Note added at 1 hr (2022-07-17 10:12:56 GMT)
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Or ... democracy that has burnt out.
This is starting to feel very topical, when 'democracy' is becoming something it was never intended to be.
Note from asker:
Yes, I agree that I need to keep the fire reference. How about 'democracy is dead, long may it burn' ? |
Peer comment(s):
neutral |
Carol Gullidge
: I appreciate your research, but sadly this has no "ring" to it!//by “no ring” I meant it’s unidiomatic - fire engine or no, it simply doesn’t work in English :((
48 mins
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The only ring it should have is that of the fire engine's bells.
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agree |
Wolf Draeger
: Maybe something along the lines of "Democracy alight indeed!" Writer's pun, not a stela inscription.
2 hrs
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neutral |
Anastasia Kalantzi
: Absolument d'accord avec Carol.
2 hrs
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4 hrs
May democracy be forever damned!
A bit of an allusion to the idea of being eternally condemned to the fires of hell, with no hope of rising from its depths, ever again.
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Note added at 6 hrs (2022-07-17 15:04:33 GMT)
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I think it might by quite acceptable, and maybe even preferable, to eliminate "May", and just say,"Democracy be damned forever!"
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Note added at 6 hrs (2022-07-17 15:04:33 GMT)
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I think it might by quite acceptable, and maybe even preferable, to eliminate "May", and just say,"Democracy be damned forever!"
Peer comment(s):
neutral |
Carol Gullidge
: This loses the original construction with the two clauses separated by that comma, along with any attempt at the original pun//nothing to do with me, but the author chose to create a pun with a rhetorical construction, both of which are missing here
1 hr
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To each HER own!/Based on what see in the linguistic discussion, not everyone agrees with you, anyway.
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Reference comments
1 hr
Reference:
see
Emmanuel Mounier : Feu la Chrétienté. (Éditions du Seuil, - jstor
https://www.jstor.org › stable
by J Lacroix · 1950 — La mort de la chrétienté n'est pas la mort du christianisme. ... ne peut être extrinsèque, ou même secondaire, pour une religion de l'incar nation.
so
feu la democratie = death to democracy
?
https://www.jstor.org › stable
by J Lacroix · 1950 — La mort de la chrétienté n'est pas la mort du christianisme. ... ne peut être extrinsèque, ou même secondaire, pour une religion de l'incar nation.
so
feu la democratie = death to democracy
?
3 hrs
Reference:
Critias & The Thirty Tyrants
Critias was a leader of the Thirty Tyrants, who took power in Athens after its defeat to the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War. Although the Thirty were defeated at Munychia, they didn't die there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Munychia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Piraeus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Munychia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Piraeus
4 hrs
Reference:
Critias (460—403 B.C.E.)
https://iep.utm.edu/critias/
[...]
A memorial was later erected to Critias and the Thirty depicting a personified Oligarchy carrying torches and setting Democracy on fire. An inscription on the monument’s base, as recorded by a scholiast, read: “This is a memorial of those noble men who restrained the hubris of the accursed Athenian Demos a short time” (scholiast on Aeschines, Against Timarchus 39). The price of this “restraint” was the lives of at least 1,500 Athenians (Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 35.4).
As Plato admits in his Seventh Letter, the extreme behavior of his second cousin Critias-along with another cousin, Charmides, the leader of the Ten who governed the Piraeus during the rule of the Thirty-effectively ended any thoughts he had previously entertained about a future political career (Plato, Seventh Letter 324d).
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Note added at 11 ώρες (2022-07-17 19:35:33 GMT)
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THE FIRST ANARCHIST, ATHEIST AND REBEL AT THE TIME AND MUCH MORE THAN SOCRATES HIS TEACHER (For those who love and withstand to read about Classic Antiquity)
In Critias' view, “A time there was when anarchy did rule / the lives of men” and the laws which were created by men to control society simply were ineffective. So “some shrewd man first, a man in counsel wise / Discovered unto men the fear of the Gods / Thereby to frighten sinners should they sin” and so the gods came to be the higher authority which would reward or punish people for what they did “secretly in deed, or word, or thought” (Baird, 47). There is no God to Critias, no divine will, no universal plan; there are only the strong who control the weak, and religion is the most effective tool the ruling class can use to maintain power and drive their agenda.
The following fragment comes from Critias' play Sisyphus, one of the few pieces of his works to have survived. If it were a letter from the man himself or an essay it would easy to conclude that he was an atheist, but the piece seems to be a speech of one of the characters in the play, and so it is less clear what Critias' actual views were. The charge that he was an atheist comes from later writers who still had access to his writings or contemporaries (like Xenophon, another of Socrates' students) who wrote about him. The following translation comes from Kathleen Freeman's Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers:
There was a time when the life of men was unordered, bestial and the slave of force, when there was no reward for the virtuous and no punishment for the wicked. Then, I think, men devised retributory laws, in order that Justice might be dictator and have arrogance as its slave, and if anyone sinned, he was punished.https://www.worldhistory.org/Critias/
[...]
A memorial was later erected to Critias and the Thirty depicting a personified Oligarchy carrying torches and setting Democracy on fire. An inscription on the monument’s base, as recorded by a scholiast, read: “This is a memorial of those noble men who restrained the hubris of the accursed Athenian Demos a short time” (scholiast on Aeschines, Against Timarchus 39). The price of this “restraint” was the lives of at least 1,500 Athenians (Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 35.4).
As Plato admits in his Seventh Letter, the extreme behavior of his second cousin Critias-along with another cousin, Charmides, the leader of the Ten who governed the Piraeus during the rule of the Thirty-effectively ended any thoughts he had previously entertained about a future political career (Plato, Seventh Letter 324d).
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Note added at 11 ώρες (2022-07-17 19:35:33 GMT)
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THE FIRST ANARCHIST, ATHEIST AND REBEL AT THE TIME AND MUCH MORE THAN SOCRATES HIS TEACHER (For those who love and withstand to read about Classic Antiquity)
In Critias' view, “A time there was when anarchy did rule / the lives of men” and the laws which were created by men to control society simply were ineffective. So “some shrewd man first, a man in counsel wise / Discovered unto men the fear of the Gods / Thereby to frighten sinners should they sin” and so the gods came to be the higher authority which would reward or punish people for what they did “secretly in deed, or word, or thought” (Baird, 47). There is no God to Critias, no divine will, no universal plan; there are only the strong who control the weak, and religion is the most effective tool the ruling class can use to maintain power and drive their agenda.
The following fragment comes from Critias' play Sisyphus, one of the few pieces of his works to have survived. If it were a letter from the man himself or an essay it would easy to conclude that he was an atheist, but the piece seems to be a speech of one of the characters in the play, and so it is less clear what Critias' actual views were. The charge that he was an atheist comes from later writers who still had access to his writings or contemporaries (like Xenophon, another of Socrates' students) who wrote about him. The following translation comes from Kathleen Freeman's Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers:
There was a time when the life of men was unordered, bestial and the slave of force, when there was no reward for the virtuous and no punishment for the wicked. Then, I think, men devised retributory laws, in order that Justice might be dictator and have arrogance as its slave, and if anyone sinned, he was punished.https://www.worldhistory.org/Critias/
Peer comments on this reference comment:
agree |
AllegroTrans
: sounds like an earlier Boris Johnson
1 hr
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Oh, that really sounded like a true hubris over Gods! The truth is that Critias was a trailblazer rebel at that time, and more than Socrates himself..
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agree |
Wolf Draeger
5 hrs
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Thanks.
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Discussion
https://www.politis.fr/articles/2017/03/feu-sur-la-justice-f...
On voit bien qu'il y a aussi le même usage du terme feu,-e en tant qu'adjectif justement tout comme dans les oeuvres littéraires citées par Tony.
"...Another odd detail: in old French, "feu" always accorded with the noun. A ministerial decree of February, 1901, sought to restore this convention, but it does not seem to have been successful. (I wonder will the spelling reform of the 1990s suffer the same fate?) Still, one occasionally finds in recognised authors "feu" in accord with the noun even before a title or a possessive adjective, e.g. "feue Mme de Cambremer" (M. Proust, Le temps retrouvé, I, 167) and "feue ma mère" (G. Bernanos, Un mauvais rêve, I, 4)...."
For me, the construction must be the same.
Presumably we can assume that the translation from Ancient Greek to modern French is OK, given that there's at least one top-class scholar involved, out of the two authors.
Two, the translation need not follow the two-clause construction of the French. What matters is conveying the pun, not clinging to the syntax.
I was curious, so I did some digging and found out that the two authors are very well-respected and that the book was very well-received by the general public in France.
Anyway, what my brief research brought up:
"His reforms failed in the short term, yet Solon is credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy. His constitutional reform also succeeded in overturning most laws established by Draco."
"Solon laid the basis for democracy through eliminating debt slavery. He also probably established the Council of 400. Also, he gave every citizen the right to appeal the verdicts of magistrates before the assembly. He is sometimes credited with introducing sortition [electing people using lotteries] as well, but that is doubtful."
Yet his epitaph contradicts the above. Very curious.
Could be wordplay (fire as a bringer of light) as mentioned by Woft via CadastreToulous, but it seems doubtful, and I don't think that was the Ancient Greeks' style. (And in that case, the writer here is completely wrong.)
Out of context, I would have translated, "Democracy is on fire, democracy is dead", in the way that Joe Biden is doing now, trying to save it.
As always, more context would not go amiss.
https://www.politis.fr/articles/2017/03/feu-sur-la-justice-f...
https://www.reddit.com/r/French/comments/fd93pt/til_the_adje...