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Wormeley.)
    Comparing the different translations of Goriot is a kind of fascinating archaeological exercise. To get a feel for what the present translation offers, it might be useful to look at a sample from some of the others available. The idea is not to demonstrate the superiority of the current translation (although I believe it to be the equal of any published English version of Gofiot), but rather to see how translators at different moments in history have chosen to approach and interpret the task of translating Balzac. In the following sentence, Eugène has just returned, at two o’clock in the morning, from Madame de Beauséant’s ball, and resolves to spend the night studying in order to make up for lost time.
    It was the first time that he had attempted to spend the night in this way in that silent quarter. The spell of a factitious energy was upon him; he had beheld the pomp and splendor of the world (translated by Ellen Marriage, p. 40).
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    He was going to remain awake all night for the first time in that silent quarter, for the sight of the splendors of society had magically given him a burst of artificial energy (translated by Marion Ayton Crawford. London: Penguin Books, p. 57).
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    For the first time, he was about to sit up all night in the heart of this silent neighborhood, for the sight of such social splendor had so enthralled him that he felt deceptively energetic (translated by A. J. Krailsheimer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 29).
    The translations by Marriage, Crawford, and Krailsheimer were first published in 1901, 1951, and 1991, respectively. A number of slight but significant differences reveal divergent philosophies of translation over the course of one century. Most interesting, I think, is that while all three translators retain the word “splendor” (a key Balzacian term; see Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes [A Harlot High and Low] ) , Marriage alone respects a crucial detail of the original when she writes “splendor of the world.” Crawford and Krailsheimer speak instead of “the splendors of society” and “social splendor,” which are slightly but significantly inaccurate. Certainly, Eugène is dazzled by the wealth and refinement of the society he encounters at the home of the Vicomtesse, but what he has beheld there, and is in thrall to, is the splendor of a world (les splendeurs du monde) . By the time Crawford and Krailsheimer set about translating Père Goriot, Balzac’s name had become synonymous with the representation of social scenes and social struggles.
    Their translations seem to want to push this vision of Balzac, as though they sought to bring out the authentically Balzacian in general (the preoccupation with the social) rather than the particularity of Rastignac’s experience. Yet it is important to realize that from Rastignac’s point of view the newly discovered home of Madame de Beauséant is a whole world, distinct in every respect from other worlds (such as that represented by the Maison Vauquer), sufficient unto itself, containing everything.
    There are other interesting differences among the three versions. The “quarter” in which Ellen Marriage’s Eugène lives remains a “quarter” in Crawford but with Krailsheimer in 1991 it has become a “neighborhood,” the word “quarter” apparently being by then a bit archaic or too foreign. (Yet we know little of the neighbors except that they are anything but neighborly : They are represented here by the lodging-house of the shadowy Buneaud.) Marriage breaks into two sentences what is only one in French; further, she alters the punctuation of the original, making a semicolon do a good deal of conceptual labor (something Balzac rarely does, shunning even commas). In this, she is perhaps guilty of prettifying what was not so pretty; in common with almost all translators of Balzac, she has taken some license