{"id":50266,"date":"2013-04-10T10:56:15","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T14:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=50266"},"modified":"2013-04-10T16:24:37","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T20:24:37","slug":"decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/","title":{"rendered":"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"marcel_schwob\"<\/a>It is 1891. Marcel Schwob, a well-know author, meets a \u201cgirl of the streets\u201d in the rain, in a slum of Paris. Her name is Louise, and she is sick with tuberculosis. He takes her home and cares for her. He writes her stories—fairy tales—which she loves. They grow close. Louise shows Marcel the beauty of innocence. Two years later, she dies. He is crippled by his grief. For six months, he doesn\u2019t write.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then, he publishes <\/em>The Book of Monelle, a groundbreaking work of decadence. An assemblage of fairy tales, nihilist philosophy, and aphorisms tightly woven into a tapestry of deep emotional suffering, it becomes the unofficial bible of the French Symbolist movement. Schwob influences writers and thinkers from Alfred Jarry to Andr\u00e9 Gide to St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9 to Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Bola\u00f1o. Translated obscurely into English in 1927,<\/em> The Book of Monelle all but falls into obscurity shortly thereafter.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, thanks to a new translation by Kit Schluter,<\/em> Monelle<\/a> is once again available in the States, with a biographical afterword. In addition to his translation work, otherwise focused on Pierre Alferi, Amandine Andr\u00e9, and Danielle Collobert, Schluter is a poet and an editor at CLOCK Magazine and O\u2019Clock Press, and will begin his graduate studies at Brown in the fall. We met to talk at a caf\u00e9 in New York’s West Village.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why don\u2019t you start by telling me how you found Schwob\u2019s work and what drew you to it?<\/b><\/p>\n

I studied in Paris for a little bit in early 2010, and went to work in Tours, a city southwest of Paris, for about a month in the summer. I lived with my friend Sylvain Burgaud, who the translation is dedicated to, and a dear friend Bruno Chartier. Sylvain and I worked in these vineyards outside of town, trimming grapevines for about ten hours a day. Then we\u2019d go to this bar at night called Le Serpant Volant, or the Flying Snake. The bartender, a wonderful person named Omar, when he found out that we were translating each other\u2019s poems, offered us the second floor of the bar as a translating space in the evenings. Sylvain and I were translating almost every night, my first experience with the frenzy of translation and its conversations, obsessing over single words.<\/p>\n

One weekend, we went out to his house in La Roche Bernard, and we were translating a poem of mine, which is called \u201cJournals<\/a>.\u201d We got to a passage and he asked, Have you ever heard of Marcel Schwob? I said, No, definitely not. And he said, Well, you need to read him, because you write a lot like him. I said, Okay, fine. Show me the book. I was really excited, and a little flattered.<\/p>\n

So, he went and got the book. I read one sentence, or two sentences, from \u201cThe Words of Monelle.\u201d It was, \u201cAnd Monelle said again, \u2018I shall speak to you of moments,\u2019\u201d but in French, and something like, \u201cLove the moment. All love that lasts is hatred.\u201d It\u2019s a little adolescent, isn\u2019t it? But it really spoke to me, so I said, \u201cSylvain, will you loan me this book? I want to translate it into English.\u201d But he wouldn\u2019t lend me the book because he\u2019d lent it out so many times before to people who didn\u2019t return it. When he asked for it back, they had already lent it to someone else! That\u2019s my favorite part of the whole story—that Sylvain couldn\u2019t lend me the book because he had lost it so many times by way of lending. So I went to a place in Tours when we were back, and picked it up. It\u2019s called Le Livre. It\u2019s a great bookstore.<\/p>\n

Did Schwob write that section later, \u201cThe Words of Monelle\u201d? Because I know that he wrote the stories of the sisters of Monelle while Louise was dying, right?<\/b><\/p>\n

He began writing stories for Louise at the very end of his writing of Mimes<\/i>, while she was relatively healthy. Over the course of about two years, he continued to write her stories that declined in joy, increased in darkness. By the time he wrote \u201cThe Words of Monelle,\u201d Louise was, I think, less than a month away from death. The sections afterward were written just before Louise\u2019s death, and then after about a six-month period of silence, he began writing those stories again.<\/p>\n

The story surrounding the book is a very tragic one, and I think you need to have that story in order to understand the book. But it\u2019s not a mourning diary or a mourning novel, exactly. How would you characterize it?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, I think it was composed as a book of mourning, or a book that began as a work of joy that, because of the circumstances, declined into a space of mourning. And I think that\u2019s an interesting way to read the book—following the chronology of the composition of the stories, which tells a completely different story than the way that it was published. It\u2019s just like a chute, a decline, a total cascade.<\/p>\n

How were the stories organized for the book?<\/b><\/p>\n

After Schwob had completed all the stories, he went back and changed their titles to divide them into homogeneously titled sections, like \u201cOf Her Emergence,\u201d \u201cOf Her Flight,\u201d all that, which gives the book a very tempered feeling\u2014like a book based very much in reason and logic, and aesthetic decisions. But the book didn\u2019t have that to begin with. It was just a set of short stories that he happened to have written for this certain person. They were randomly composed. So at the very end he went back and he divided them into sections. He created a character, Monelle, who would unite all the stories by way of their rearrangement. In other words, if you were to read all the stories in the order of their original composition, you would not have the sense that the book is united at all. There\u2019s no union, there\u2019s no through-line. And so by creating these titles and rearranging the book, he made Monelle the center, whereas before she was just another sister.<\/p>\n

The stories of her sisters, he changed those titles, as well?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, for example, before Schwob reworked the book, \u201cThe Disappointed,\u201d which appeared originally in The King in the Golden Mask<\/i>, is called \u201cBargette,\u201d \u201cThe Selfish\u201d is called \u201cThe Crabs,\u201d \u201cThe Voluptuous\u201d is called \u201cBluebeard\u2019s Little Wife,\u201d \u201cThe Dreamer\u201d is called \u201cThe Seven Jugs,\u201d \u201cThe Fated\u201d is called \u201cThe Lady in the Mirror,\u201d \u201cThe Perverse\u201d is called \u201cThe Girl of the Windmill.\u201d All these stories were first published without relation in <\/i>the \u00c9cho de Paris<\/i>.<\/p>\n

So, you see, if you had a book with stories called \u201cBargette,\u201d \u201cThe Crabs,\u201d \u201cBluebeard\u2019s Little Wife,\u201d \u201cThe Seven Jugs,\u201d \u201cThe Lady in the Mirror,\u201d \u201cThe Girl of the Windmill,\u201d and \u201cThe Green She-Devil,\u201d you wouldn\u2019t have as clear a sense that these characters are being used to access a commentary on human nature, which is exactly what Schwob ended up doing with them. If he hadn\u2019t changed the titles, the book would be much more like his other books, which are simple collections of disparate short stories linked by themes.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s a sort of inevitability in the way these stories are titled now, which turns out to be incredibly appropriate, because the characters\u2019 attributes are intrinsic to their natures. \u201cThe Faithful,\u201d \u201cThe Dreamer,\u201d for example. And their fates seem to follow inevitably from this characteristic. <\/b><\/p>\n

Definitely. Schwob was always doing that. He was always reducing people\u2014I don’t mean that pejoratively, of course\u2014to these essential qualities. His first collection is called Double Heart<\/i>, and the book is a study of dualism—cruelty and pity, good and evil, black and white. I mean, the same themes that run through this book. He wasn\u2019t much older when he wrote this book. He was only twenty-seven when it was published. The King in the Golden Mask<\/i>, his second book, is all about the way that identity is a mask over our \u201ctrue\u201d selves. Everything is very deliberate in his work. Nothing is there without a reason for being there. The imagery is very carefully chosen.<\/p>\n

He wrote these stories for a person who, if she wasn\u2019t a child, was very childlike. At times, they read like very dark pieces of children\u2019s literature. Taken together, do you think that The Book of Monelle<\/i> has a moral of some kind? <\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, absolutely. It goes back to the idea that The Book of Monelle<\/i> is an aesthetically anesthetized rearrangement of a lived experience. If you read the stories as they\u2019re written, what you\u2019re essentially told to do is struggle against the inevitable, to struggle against the fact that loss is permanent. The final words that Schwob ever wrote toward this story are, \u201c\u2018Monelle!\u2019 I cried, \u2018Monelle! In the white kingdom is Monelle!\u2019 And the white kingdom appeared barricaded by whiteness. Then I asked, \u2018Where is the key to this kingdom?\u2019 But she who was speaking to me remained silent.\u201d And then, in this silence, he stopped writing the book, and he rearranged it. And that, now, is the second-to-last story, which comes before the story \u201cOf Her Resurrection,\u201d in which the narrator is led away by a character named Louvette, essentially a replica of Monelle, toward a place of hope.<\/p>\n

I was going to mention that! The book is so nihilistic, and then it ends on this strangely positive note. I mean, there\u2019s destruction everywhere, but they\u2019re reunited, at least partially. The other day, you told me that a particular passage in \u201cThe Dreamer\u201d was the hardest to translate. What was that passage and why was it the hardest?<\/b><\/p>\n

I think the second paragraph of \u201cThe Dreamer\u201d was the most difficult for me because its language is very typically Schwob, which is to say that it’s based on borrowing and recycling complex material from other, sometimes very remote, places. This passage seemed so strange to me. At first I had a hard time believing the sense of what I was reading, and later that I was translating the right thing, because the language felt so certain of itself, but so bizarre in its content. For example:<\/p>\n

\n

The green pitcher must have been closed by a great brass seal marked by King Solomon. Age had laid upon it a coat of verdigris; for, long ago, this pitcher had dwelt in the ocean, and for several thousand years it contained a genie, who was a prince. A very young and wise girl would break the spell beneath a full moon with the permission of King Solomon, who gave the mandrakes their voices.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And so, you translate a passage like that and you think, \u201cHe couldn\u2019t possibly be saying that. It\u2019s too strange.\u201d It comes out of nowhere. But what I realized was that all of those strange stories were coming from 1,001 Nights<\/i>, from the Bible, from the 1,001 Nights<\/i> story \u201cAladdin,\u201d for instance, where you get the images of \u201cruby fruits, amethyst plums, garnet cherries, topaz quinces, opal grapes, and diamond berries\u201d\u2014very difficult language clusters to translate, for me, personally. I realized that in order to translate this book, and in order to translate Schwob in general, I would have to rely heavily on reading in other places, and look for the moments in those texts that he had been reading in French and bringing into this book by way of borrowing. Sometimes he would even plagiarize almost whole passages.<\/p>\n

In this book?<\/b><\/p>\n

Not in this book, although he does quote de Quincey by using a French translation of an English sentence. I didn\u2019t get the reference until after the book came out. I can\u2019t tell you which. It\u2019s my big regret!<\/p>\n

But in Imaginary Lives<\/i>, for example\u2014his book of the biography of the particular, which was later picked up by Borges in A Universal History of Iniquity<\/i>—he\u2019ll plagiarize almost whole texts. It\u2019s something like a collage that he makes, of biographies that he encounters. He finds the moments when the biographer is achieving an attention to the particular that he sympathizes with, and he\u2019ll just basically take the passage.<\/p>\n

You compared translation to photography in one of your poems.<\/b><\/p>\n

Translation and photography have mechanics that, to me, are analogous, in that you have a source\u2014an image, a totality\u2014and the difficulty is bringing that totality into another medium, as well as you can possibly do it. And the printed image of the text, for me, becomes especially important during translation. In order to translate a poem or a story, that is, you need to have all of the material \u201cvisible\u201d\u2014in other words, to keep it all in mind\u2014in order to ensure that there aren\u2019t inconsistencies in vocabulary, and that the tone remains consistent throughout. An original text is to translation as physical reality is to a photograph of that reality, in that the translation will never be equal to the original. It will invoke the original, in a sense.<\/p>\n

But then again, that\u2019s sort of a tragic way to think of translation, and a simplification. It would drive a translator crazy to believe that a translation will never achieve independence, or autonomy from the original work. In translating, then, what you hope to do—aside from help spread a work into another language\u2019s reading culture—is make a text that will evoke an equivalent emotional resonance, an equivalent visual resonance, within the social spaces of the target language. It\u2019s sort of an art of equivalences, but the equivalent is never exact. It\u2019s the art of fudging equivalences, to make it seem right.<\/p>\n

You have a very different process when you\u2019re writing poetry, of course. Can you talk about that?<\/b><\/p>\n

Translation and writing original material are like evil twins. They\u2019re very related, they exist within the same space, but to me, poetry is a space within which to unlearn habits, to reengage a present that is vital and new. Translation is an art by which you engage with those practices through another person\u2019s work, another person\u2019s perspective. And you learn about them secondhand—you\u2019re not the one going through the creative process as a means of pure discovery. The material has been discovered. The choices have been made. To me, the responsibility of the translator, or the task of the translator, is to bring those discoveries into another language, and share them. I like to think of translation as a selfless practice.<\/p>\n

Schwob published The Children\u2019s Crusade<\/i> four years after The Book of Monelle<\/i>. In a way, it\u2019s similar in its concern, but Monelle<\/i> is a much more personal work. Do you think Monelle<\/i> is his most personal work?<\/b><\/p>\n

Absolutely. Schwob was famously upset whenever he was introduced as the author of The Book of Monelle<\/i>. Maybe it\u2019s because he had written so much else, and he wanted credit for that, but it seems to me that it\u2019s because The Book of Monelle <\/i>is an exceptionally personal book written by someone who wanted no place in his books. He wanted to compose books by means of quotation and citation and recycling. He was constantly masking himself. His subject position is one of loan, collage, theft. He was a scholar. He wrote about Fran\u00e7ois Villon, he wrote about Robert Louis Stevenson, he wrote about Paul Verlaine. But the other books still reek of Marcel Schwob. You can tell that he\u2019s the one writing them—he has a very distinct voice. But as for his personal life, there\u2019s no leakage. There\u2019s no space for it in the work. In a sense, it\u2019s like Schwob believed the personal life and the studious life were one in practice, but were meant to remain separate on the page. And this is the only book in which that prudence lapses. It\u2019s the only book in which he seems to address his own experiences beyond his studies, as far as I can tell.<\/p>\n

He was a very important figure during his lifetime. He was friends with and influenced many other writers. But he\u2019s virtually unknown in the Americas. Why do you think he\u2019s remained so obscure?<\/b><\/p>\n

There are so many answers to that question, none of which are \u201cright.\u201d But the source of that obscurity may be related to what I was just talking about, which is that no one, to my understanding, had really pursued composition as recycling, as collage, in the same way that he did. Which is, now, a principle method of composition, in the postmodern age.<\/p>\n

Do you think now is the right time for him, then?<\/b><\/p>\n

Could be. However, the material he was borrowing and working with, reassembling, is not exactly the perfect material to grab the minds of our generation at large, because it\u2019s the very slow, obscure, and esoteric material that is to a large extent being replaced, erased, and marginalized by the speed culture of globalized media, the Internet.<\/p>\n

Which is exactly where everybody is going to be reading this.<\/b><\/p>\n

Right! Can I take that back? Right now could well be the right time because of our digital access to all of the things he\u2019s citing, as books are growing dusty at the bottom of these massive libraries where no one knows where to find them. Right now, if you encounter a passage in Schwob that seems particularly enigmatic, you can go online and search around for its source. I admit to it. Come to think of it, I think Marcel Schwob would really like the Internet.<\/p>\n

Because he could cannibalize from it?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, because all of the fairy tales are there<\/i> now. All the history books are scanned as PDFs. I think he would regret to like it as much as he would, but he\u2019d be wild about it. He was a person who thrived on information. He lived in the archives of Paris. He spent all his time reading history books. He just absorbed information. That was an important part of his character.<\/p>\n

Why do you think he never wrote a novel?<\/b><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t answer for him, but it seems to me that all of his writing exists within the space of the \u201cstudy.\u201d He was a journalist. He wrote very short\u2014so many very short\u2014pieces of journalism. He kept wonderful diaries. His travels to Samoa in the last two years of his life, just before he died, when he went to go finally meet Robert Louis Stevenson, but failed because he was too sick \u2026 those journals are incredible studies. I think that he was most excited by creating tightly bound clusters of images that, perhaps, would have been exhausted over long-scale work. But I really don\u2019t know. I have no idea.<\/p>\n

He wrote very long, novel-length studies on Fran\u00e7ois Villon. Very long studies. The first book he ever published was actually a study on French slang, dating back to Fran\u00e7ois Villon and the Coquillards. So, we know he had the attention span to write long works, but the long works he wrote were always scholarly, which I think is interesting. His attention was most excited by the scholarly. He lived in the library. He was, to borrow a French phrase, a library rat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Are you translating more of his works now?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, I\u2019m working on The King in the Golden Mask<\/i>, which is his second collection of short stories. There\u2019s actually a great quotation from Edmond de Goncourt, written in reaction to The King in the Golden Mask<\/i>. He can say it better that I ever would be able to—\u201cYou are the most marvelous, the most hallucinatory resurrector of the past: you are the magical evoker of antiquity, of that Heliogabalesque<\/i> antiquity to which fly the imaginations of thinkers and the brushes of painters, of mysteriously perverse and macabre decadences and of the ends of old worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is 1891. Marcel Schwob, a well-know author, meets a \u201cgirl of the streets\u201d in the rain, in a slum of Paris. Her name is Louise, and she is sick with tuberculosis. He takes her home and cares for her. He writes her stories—fairy tales—which she loves. They grow close. Louise shows Marcel the beauty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":486,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[10600,10604,5734,10605,2476,10602,10599,270,10603,10601,9480,6377,530],"class_list":["post-50266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-alfred-jarry","tag-amandine-andre","tag-andre-gide","tag-danielle-collobert","tag-jorge-luis-borges","tag-kit-schluter","tag-marcel-schwob","tag-paris","tag-pierre-alferi","tag-stephane-mallarme","tag-symbolism","tag-tours","tag-translation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDecadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter by Sarah Gerard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"April 10, 2013 \u2013 It is 1891. Marcel Schwob, a well-know author, meets a \u201cgirl of the streets\u201d in the rain, in a slum of Paris. Her name is Louise, and she is sick with\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter by Sarah Gerard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"April 10, 2013 \u2013 It is 1891. Marcel Schwob, a well-know author, meets a \u201cgirl of the streets\u201d in the rain, in a slum of Paris. Her name is Louise, and she is sick with\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-04-10T14:56:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-04-10T20:24:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"166\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"215\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sarah Gerard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sarah Gerard\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"17 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sarah Gerard\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/648ef6f727a9d9dea6baf35d16cfcc13\"},\"headline\":\"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-04-10T14:56:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-04-10T20:24:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/\"},\"wordCount\":3402,\"commentCount\":9,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alfred Jarry\",\"Amandine Andr\u00e9\",\"Andre Gide\",\"Danielle Collobert\",\"Jorge Luis Borges\",\"Kit Schluter\",\"Marcel Schwob\",\"Paris\",\"Pierre Alferi\",\"St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9\",\"symbolism\",\"Tours\",\"translation\"],\"articleSection\":[\"At Work\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/\",\"name\":\"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter by Sarah Gerard\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-04-10T14:56:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-04-10T20:24:37+00:00\",\"description\":\"April 10, 2013 \u2013 It is 1891. Marcel Schwob, a well-know author, meets a \u201cgirl of the streets\u201d in the rain, in a slum of Paris. Her name is Louise, and she is sick with\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/648ef6f727a9d9dea6baf35d16cfcc13\",\"name\":\"Sarah Gerard\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/721161c6fdaead5dabe9f14bc606090ed24b25dc1919695fc78bea102181ee5a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/721161c6fdaead5dabe9f14bc606090ed24b25dc1919695fc78bea102181ee5a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Sarah Gerard\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/sgerard\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter by Sarah Gerard","description":"April 10, 2013 \u2013 It is 1891. Marcel Schwob, a well-know author, meets a \u201cgirl of the streets\u201d in the rain, in a slum of Paris. Her name is Louise, and she is sick with","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter by Sarah Gerard","og_description":"April 10, 2013 \u2013 It is 1891. Marcel Schwob, a well-know author, meets a \u201cgirl of the streets\u201d in the rain, in a slum of Paris. Her name is Louise, and she is sick with","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2013-04-10T14:56:15+00:00","article_modified_time":"2013-04-10T20:24:37+00:00","og_image":[{"width":166,"height":215,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Sarah Gerard","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Sarah Gerard","Est. reading time":"17 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/"},"author":{"name":"Sarah Gerard","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/648ef6f727a9d9dea6baf35d16cfcc13"},"headline":"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter","datePublished":"2013-04-10T14:56:15+00:00","dateModified":"2013-04-10T20:24:37+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/"},"wordCount":3402,"commentCount":9,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg","keywords":["Alfred Jarry","Amandine Andr\u00e9","Andre Gide","Danielle Collobert","Jorge Luis Borges","Kit Schluter","Marcel Schwob","Paris","Pierre Alferi","St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9","symbolism","Tours","translation"],"articleSection":["At Work"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/","name":"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter by Sarah Gerard","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg","datePublished":"2013-04-10T14:56:15+00:00","dateModified":"2013-04-10T20:24:37+00:00","description":"April 10, 2013 \u2013 It is 1891. Marcel Schwob, a well-know author, meets a \u201cgirl of the streets\u201d in the rain, in a slum of Paris. Her name is Louise, and she is sick with","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/marcel_schwob.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/decadent-prose-an-interview-with-translator-kit-schluter\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Decadent Prose: An Interview with Translator Kit Schluter"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/648ef6f727a9d9dea6baf35d16cfcc13","name":"Sarah Gerard","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/721161c6fdaead5dabe9f14bc606090ed24b25dc1919695fc78bea102181ee5a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/721161c6fdaead5dabe9f14bc606090ed24b25dc1919695fc78bea102181ee5a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Sarah Gerard"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/sgerard\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/486"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50266"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50284,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50266\/revisions\/50284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}