Le Malade Imaginaire/The Imaginary Invalid

In 2016, Constance Congdon published her adaptation of Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, which has been produced quite a bit recently. She had commissioned me to do an annotated "literal" translation from the French. This was her working style with Virginia Scott on other Moliere plays, including Tartuffe and The Misanthrope. I modeled my annotated version on one that Virginia sent me. Virginia didn't want to do the annotated version for Imaginary Invalid because she had done her own adaptation of it at some point and felt that she would get stuck on choices she had already made, rather than presenting a range of choices for Connie.

Congdon's adaptation (The Imaginary Invalid by Moliere, adapted by Constance Congdon, based on a new translation by Dan Smith) is available through Broadway Play Publishing here: https://www.broadwayplaypub.com/the-plays/imaginary-invalid/ I have made my annotated translation available on my academia.edu site.

It has been a lot of fun to revisit this project. I was contacted by Elyse Anoush (@elyseanoush on twitter) from A Noise Within about using some content from the annotated translation in their Study Guide and was happy to give permission for that. The production there was very well-received, with good reviews in the Los Angeles Times and a nice article in American Theatre magazine.

I was also contacted by Cindy SoRelle (@turguous on twitter) to write a program note for a production at McLennan College, which I'm posting below:

Translating Molière’s Wit and Style

Molière’s wit and style are tied to questions of form. Several of his plays are written in rhyming alexandrine verse. For those plays, translators must make decisions about preserving the rhythm and rhyme, and about whether these formal considerations should be prioritized over meaning and syntax. The Imaginary Invalid is a comedy-ballet, a hybrid genre combining prose dialogue with musical interludes. These musical numbers include a pastoral celebration of Louis XIV (cut from this adaptation) and a nonsensical medical initiation ceremony in Latin. In the duet sung by Angélique and Cléante, the lyrics are meant to be insipid and ridiculous; Constance Congdon uses rhyme to develop this silliness.    

Humor can be especially difficult to translate, because jokes often rely on cultural knowledge and linguistic quirks. Molière’s initial audiences would have been familiar with the kinds of treatments proposed by doctors in this play. They would have immediately understood the irony of the name Monsieur de Bonnefoi (Mr. Goodfaith). They might also have grasped that the name Diafoirus referred to diarrhea; Congdon has changed this character’s name to “De Aria” to make this clearer to English-speaking audiences.

Often comedy arises from inappropriate use of language or breaches of decorum. Characters like Argan shift from polite conversation to violent rage, while characters like Claude de Aria demonstrate social ineptitude by lacking control of language. Molière’s characters speak quite formally in some situations and much less formally in others. Capturing these various levels of formality is another important task for the translator interested in wit and style.