57 interpretations of Jane Eyre

The Conversation has a fascinating article on Jane Eyre translations and how '57 languages show how different cultures interpret Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel' by the creator of the Prismatic Jane Eyre website, Matthew Reynolds.

This changes how we think about Jane Eyre. What was a thoroughly English book – anchored to Yorkshire and published in 1847 – becomes a multilingual, ever-changing global text, continually putting down roots in different cultures. In Iran there have been 29 translations of Jane Eyre since 1980. When Korean is taught in a school in Vietnam, a translation of Jane Eyre is on the syllabus, as an example of Korean literature.
It also changes how we have to study the novel. I couldn’t hope to grasp Jane Eyre as a global phenomenon by myself, so everything I have found out has been thanks to a group of 43 co-researchers in many different countries, as part of the Prismatic Translation project. [...]
You can see this right away from how the title gets re-moulded into different shapes. In Japanese in 1896 it became Riso Kaijin (An Ideal Lady – translated by Futo Mizutani), in Portuguese in 1941 it was A Paixão de Jane Eyre (The Passion of Jane Eyre – translated by “Mécia”). In Italian in 1958 it became La porta chiusa (The Shut Door – translator unknown) and in Turkish in 2010 it was rendered as Yıllar Sonra Gelen Mutluluk (Happiness Comes After Many Years – translated by Ceren Taştan).
My favourite of these metamorphic titles is the Chinese one invented by Fang Li in 1954 and copied by almost every Chinese translator since: two of the characters that can make a sound like “Jane Eyre” can also mean “simple love” – so the title says both those things together: Jianai.
Even small linguistic details can go through fascinating transformations. Take pronouns. In English, we only have one way of saying “you” in the singular. But even languages that are very close to English, such as French, German or Italian, do something different. They have a distinction between a formal “you” (vous in French) and a more intimate kind of “you” (tu). So in those languages there is the potential for a really important moment in the novel which simply can’t happen in English. Do Jane and Rochester ever call each other “tu”? [...]
The most famous sentence in the novel: “Reader, I married him”, is also one of the most provocative, as translations can help us see. In Slovenian – as researcher Jernej Habjan tells me – it becomes the equivalent of “Reader, we got married”. Meanwhile, all the Persian translations we have seen so far have squashed Jane’s self-assertion – they give the equivalent of: “Reader, he married me”. Even today, Jane Eyre has a radical power. It will generate ever more translations.

As said above, the article is based on the also fascinating website Prismatic Jane Eyre, which we have recommended here before, which has all sorts of resources, from interactive maps (by country and 'density' of translations to time maps) to lists of translated titles and a long etcetera. Well worth your time!

In The Times. author Jessie Burton has selected her 'five best books about... female friendship', including

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
As a novel that is mainly about a friendless outsider, Jane Eyre is not the most likely candidate for a portrait of feminine friendship. But! Inside this book is one of the most tender, truthful depictions of one girl meeting another, being treated with love and growing as a result. The direness of Jane’s early life is briefly paused when she encounters Helen Burns, a doomed fellow inmate at Lowood School. True, Helen is pious to the point of masochism, but she shows Jane something no one else has: that she is worthy of love and attention. It takes Mr Rochester an aeon to realise this; Helen sees it in an instant. Of course, because she’s in a Brontë novel, Helen is too good to live, and her loss is Jane’s first lesson in true heartbreak.

iNews reviews a new Penguin audiobook of Villette read by actress Charlotte Richie (of Call the Midwife fame), which would 'see the average Brit through eight weeks of cooking'.

I have known a fair few failures in life - from getting 2/100 in a maths exam to having such an appalling sense of direction that I failed to find my own front door last week (I was sober) but the one that plagues me most is being so behind on classic novels.
I spend so much time keeping up with new writing that I’ve neglected Dostoyevsky, Melville and the Brontës. So listening to Call the Midwife actress Charlotte Richie read Charlotte Brontë’s lesser-known novel Villette was a hugely enjoyable experience on my morning commute on trains so packed that I could not stretch out my arms to open a book.
George Elliot called Villette “a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre”, and after hearing the beautiful, bold tale of unrequited love this week, I entirely agree. (Kasia Delgado)

Financial Times reviews the book Dark Skies: A Journey into the Wild Night, by Tiffany Francis.

Rich in literary references — to Tolkien, the Brontës, Edward Thomas, Tove Jansson — Dark Skies is also rippled through with memoir, with Francis exploring the roots of her love for nature in school trips and childhood holidays. (Suzi Feay)

The Telegraph and Argus reveals the team that will lead Bradford's bid to be City of Culture 2025. Executive director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum Kitty Wright is part of it.

Kitty Wright said: “Some of our cultural gems are outside the city centre – the Brontë Parsonage, Salts Mill, Ilkley Literature Festival, South Square Gallery. We are all Bradford – diverse, creative, innovative. This bid will have enormous benefits for people in the wider district.” (Emma Clayton)

The Telegraph and Argus also shows pictures of a

new Bradford themed library inspired by the city's famous buildings and people.
The library features pictures of the district's heroes such as the Brontë sisters; triathlon stars, Alistair Brownlee and Jonathan Brownlee; magician Dynamo and philanthropist Titus Salts. (Natasha Meek)

A wall has a fragment of Charlotte Brontë's famous poem Life on it. ('Rapidly, merrily,/Life's sunny hours flit by,/Gratefully, cheerily,/Enjoy them as they fly!')

The Yorkshire Post features 'the gardeners who look after the grounds of Yorkshire's stately homes'.

Scott Jamieson - Wentworth Woodhouse, Rotherham
[...] One of the delights of Scott's job has been uncovering hidden secrets of the gardens that had almost disappeared from local memory.
One of these discoveries was the contents of the Camellia House, which was built in 1817. The 200-year-old camellia plants had been allowed to grow through the remains of the roof and the building was in a dangerous state before Scott was finally able to access it and survey the species inside.
"The Camellia House is ripe for a project, although it's still in the formative stages. We took some photos of the plants and sent them to Chiswick House in London, which has a collection of camellias. An expert got in touch straight away and asked if she could visit. I was surprised she wanted to see 18 or 19 rather leggy camellias, but when she arrived she gasped and took a step back. She said it was like finding a first edition of Wuthering Heights - they're some of the first generation of camellias ever to have been brought to Britain. (Grace Newton)

RTCG (Montenegro) announces tonight's performance of  Dora Ruzdjak Podolski's Wuthering Heights in the big hall of the Bijelo Polje Cultural Center (8:00 PM). Another alert comes from Torino, Italy:

Torino Spiritualità 2019
Viaggiatori notturni
Teatro Gobetti
Sabato 28 Settembre 2019
Ore 15:00

Si potrebbe dire che la letteratura alterna, al propriovolto diurno, un profilo notturno, per non dire oscuro. Molti scrittori raccontano la parte in luce. Altri si immergono nelle tenebre, scendono nella notte della Storia, esplorano gli abissi più inquietanti dell’animo umano. Céline, Joseph Conrad, Emily Brontë erano grandi viaggiatori notturni. Ma lo è, più inaspettatamente, anche Alice Munro, a cui Nicola Lagioia, scrittore e direttore del Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino, dedica gran parte della sua lezione.

And still one more, in Red Deer, Canada:

FREE Alberta Culture Days Event - Literary Tea PartySaturday, September 28
1 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Cronquist House at Bower Ponds, Red Deer, Canada
Come to a tea party with the Brontë Sisters and enjoy free live music and entertainment.
Books and tea go together! This literary tea party with games and literary treats is cosponsored by Red Deer Public Library, PrimeStock Theatre, Central Alberta Refugee Effort, and Red Deer Cultural Heritage Society who operate the Cronquist House.

Variety describes actress Nichola Burley as 'an auspicious presence' in Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights. The Sisters' Room features Branwell's 'A Parody' spooky drawing as part of their 'Treasures from the Brontë Parsonage Museum' series.