17-10-2003, 21:05
Lisant un ouvrage du critique et traducteur Jacques Barzun, intitulé <i>An Essay on French Verse</i>, j'ai eu la surprise de trouver le passage suivant, qui devrait faire sursauter tout lecteur de l'essai de Tolkien <i>English and Welsh</i>. Au sujet de l'association du son et du sens dans une langue, on lit(p. 51) :<p><i>Onomatopoeia is a fiction. I discovered its illusory character when many years ago a Japanese friend with whom I often discussed literature told me that to him and some of his English-speaking friends the most beautiful word in our language was cellar door. It was not beautiful to me and I wondered where its evocative power lay for the Japanese. Was it because they find </i>l<i> and </i>r<i> difficult to pronounce, and the word thus acquires remoteness and enchantment? I asked, and learned also that Tatsuo Sakuma, my friend, has never seen an American cellar door, either inside a house or outside the usual two flaps on a sloping ledge. No doubt that lack of visual familiarity added to the words appeal. I concluded that its charmlessness to speakers of English lay simply in its meaning. It has the </i>l<i> and </i>r<i> sounds and </i>d<i> and long </i>o<i> dear to the analysts of verse music, but it is prosaic. Compare with celandine, where the image of the flower at once makes the sound lovely.</i><p>Si c'est une coïncidence, elle est extraordinaire !!<p>Moraldandil