Bewildering Stories discusses...
Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé’s
Le Portrait du Louvre
with Patricia Worth
The Portrait in the Louvre appears in issue 1075. The translator answers a query from the Managing Editor concerning her opinion about this story from the late 19th century.
[Patricia Worth] What do I think of “Le Portrait du Louvre” ? I loved the illustrated edition, which helped me imagine the story in English. I enjoyed translating the lonely life of the curator, his discomfort among other humans, his poor, unschooled youth, which led him to wish he could escape his miserable life and live in the richness of the paintings.
I was never sure whether he was mentally disturbed or just easily deceived both by the cruel, conceited woman and by the movements of light in the galleries at night. But then there comes a point where the reader wonders whether he actually does belong in the paintings with his “friends.”
Best of all is the twist at the end, where what seemed completely irrational for most of the story turns out to be true. It’s not uncommon for someone to be so attached to a fictional character that he/she wants to be that person, living in that era. For years as a young girl I wished I could be Jane Eyre and living in the mid-1800s. “Le Portrait du Louvre” is a story where the desire is fulfilled.
Also enjoyable was the Louvre itself. I’d been there but, during the translation process, I had to research the galleries and was surprised to find they are no longer set up as they were in the 19th century. The famous paintings mentioned are no longer in the same places on the walls. Fortunately, the old floor plans of the galleries are available online, which helped me imagine the movements of the curator.
Regarding the challenge question: “Why isn’t the curator given a name?” One thought is that names humanize characters, but he wasn’t actually human so didn’t need one.
[Don Webb] Thank you for your perspectives and insights, Patricia. You point out a truly Bewildering extra layer of meaning in this curious short story. Readers are always called upon to imagine the characters and settings in any prose fiction they read. Readers’ mental imagery will be more or less accurate, but that’s normal.
Occasionally, readers may imagine themselves as a character in a story. Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn come to mind as classics as well as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. That, too, is quite normal. De Vogüé takes the process a step further: we see this fictional character so caught up in the artwork he deals with that he is carried away by his own imagination; the paintings become alive to him and, by implication, so does his own image to some who may contemplate it. The self-centred woman can’t see it, of course, but nobody would want to be like her, now would they?
And maybe that’s why de Vogüé’s character has no name and comes from a humble background. If even one so anonymous and undistinguished can appreciate art, isn’t art accessible to everyone? In that regard, the translation is titled quite accurately as “The Portrait in the Louvre.” But the original title is literally ambiguous: “The Portrait of the Louvre.” The title can be interpreted as all-inclusive; the author shows us not only one portrait but what one might experience at many places in the museum.
