Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff

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Scott-Moncrieff, around 1914/17

Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff (born September 25, 1889 in Weedingshall, Stirlingshire , † February 28, 1930 in Rome ) was a Scottish author and translator.

Scott Moncrieff has translated Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time into English.

Life

Charles Kenneth Michael Scott Moncrieff was born the youngest of three sons of the lawyer William George Scott Moncrieff (1846-1927) and his wife Jessie Margaret Scott Moncrieff (1858-1936). He attended schools in Inverness and Nairn and won a scholarship to Winchester College in 1903 . In 1907, while still at school in Winchester, he met Christopher Sclater Millard (1872–1927), author of the first bibliography of Oscar Wilde's works .

In 1908 he published his first short story "Evensong and Morwe Song" in a literary magazine published by himself in Winchester, in which he literarily processed the reprimand of a classmate from school for homosexual acts on a younger boy. The magazine was withdrawn by the school administration, the story was reprinted in 1923 as a private print in an edition of 50, but was not published during his lifetime.

After leaving school, he studied at the University of Edinburgh , where he graduated with degrees in law and English literature. He completed the subsequent MA course in Old English Language and Literature with honors. During his studies in Edinburgh he met Philip Bainbrigge, then an assistant at Trinity College, Cambridge and author of homoerotic poetry.

Scott Moncrieff served with the King's Own Scottish Borderers from 1914 to 1917 during World War I and was involved in the fighting in Flanders for over two years. In 1915 he converted to Catholicism . On April 23, he was seriously injured by friendly fire at the Battle of Arras and was unable to walk. Until the end of the war he worked in the War Department in Whitehall . He also wrote articles for a literary magazine published by GK Chesterton . At the wedding of Robert Ranke Graves with Nancy Nicholson in January 1918, he met the poet Wilfred Owen , whose works he held in high esteem. Through his ties in the War Office, he was able to find Owen a post in England and save him from returning to the front.

He met Eva Astley Paston Cooper through the young Noël Coward . Astley Cooper ran an open house at Hambleton Hall in the Midlands , where he was a frequent guest with fellow writers. Scott Moncrieff later dedicated the first volume of his Proust translation to Mrs. Astley Cooper. In 1919 his translation of the old French Chanson de Roland was published with a dedication to Wilfred Owen. In 1921 his translation of Beowulf was published. After the war, he worked for a time as the private secretary of the publisher and press tycoon Alfred Harmsworth and occasionally wrote articles for the Times . In 1923 he went to Italy because of health problems, where he lived alternately in Florence and Pisa and from 1928 in Rome. Scott Moncrieff died in Rome in 1930 at Calvary Hospital and was buried in Campo Verano .

Translations

In 1920 Scott-Moncrieff gave up his job at the Times to only work as a translator. By then he had already translated the Roland song and the Beowulf. In 1925 his translation of the correspondence between Abelard and Heloise was printed. Between 1926 and 1928 he translated novels and stories by Stendhal and Pirandello as well as Biron's memoires into English.

In 1922, with "Swann's Way" ( A côté de chez Swann ) began the publication of his translation of Proust's research under the title Remembrance of Things Past. Instead of translating the French title literally, Scott Moncrieff chose a quote from Shakespeare's 30th Sonnet as the title: " When to the sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon up remembrance of things past ". Proust congratulated Scott Moncrieff on his successful translation in a letter from October 1922, but was dissatisfied with the choice of both titles. The overall title was no longer ambiguous as in the original, and In Swann's Way the sense of the original title was wrong. Scott Moncrieff died before he could translate the last volume. In 1931 the last volume, transferred from Sydney Schiff under his pseudonym Stephen Hudson , was printed under the title Time Regarded . The volume was dedicated "To the memory of my friend Charles Scott Moncrieff, Marcel Proust's incomparable translator."

The Scott Moncrieff Prize

The Translators Association has awarded the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translations from French into English every year since 1965 . The award is endowed with £ 2,000. It is financed by the French Ministry of Culture, the French Embassy and the Arts Council of England .

Letters

  • Memories and Letters . Edited by JM Scott-Moncrieff and LW Lunn. London: Chapman & Hall 1931.

literature

  • Jean Findlay: Chasing Lost Time: The Life of CK Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator. Chatto & Windus, 2014, ISBN 978-070-118-107-9

Web links

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  1. ↑ JM Scott Moncrieff, .W. Lunn (Ed.): Scott Moncrieff: Memories and Letters'. 1930 p. 1
  2. ↑ CK Scott Moncrieff on Gayfortoday.Blogspot.de
  3. ^ D'Arch Smith: Love in Earnest . Pp. 148-50.
  4. ^ Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff, 1889-1930. Translator of Proust on Nationalgalleries.org
  5. ↑ Memories and Letters , pp. 92-3.
  6. ↑ Dominic Hibberd, Wilfred Owen: A New Biography . 2002, p. 215
  7. ^ Philip Hoare: Noel Coward: A Biography . University of Chicago Press 1998.
  8. ↑ Swann's Way by Marcel Proust. Translated from the French by CK Scott Moncrieff. New York, Henry Holt, 1922, full text
  9. ↑ It was not until 1992 that the title was changed to In Search of Lost Time in the revised version by DJ Enright .
  10. ^ Letter from Proust to Scott Moncrieff of October 10, 1922; National Library, Edinburgh
  11. ^ Lost in Translation: Proust and Scott Moncrieff
  12. ↑ The Scott Moncrieff Prize for French Translation English Pen Stuff, accessed March 28, 2019
  13. ^ The Scott Moncrieff Prize for French Translation. Retrieved March 28, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Scott Moncrieff, Charles Kenneth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish author and translator
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Weedingshall, Stirlingshire
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 1930
Place of death Rome