''Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language'' is a 1997 book by

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, a ...

in which he explores the meaning, strengths, failings and beauty of

translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

. The book is a long and detailed examination of one short translation of a minor French poem and, through that, an examination of the mysteries of translation (and indeed more generally, language and

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

) itself. Hofstadter himself refers to it as "''my ruminations on the art of translation''". The title itself is a pun, revealing many of the themes of the work: ''le ton beau'' means ‘the beautiful tone’ or ‘the sweet tone’, but the word order is unusual for French. It would be more common to write ''le beau ton''. A French speaker hearing the title spoken () would be more likely to interpret it as ''le tombeau de Marot''; where ''tombeau'' may mean ‘tomb’ (as per the cover picture), but also '' tombeau'', ‘a work of art (literature or music) done in memory and homage to a deceased person’ (the title is intended to parallel the title of

Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...

's '' Le Tombeau de Couperin''). In a further play on the title, Hofstadter refers to his deceased wife Carol, to whom the book is dedicated, as ''ma rose'' ("my rose"), and to himself as ''ton beau'' ("your dear"). At the surface level, the book treats the difficulties and rewards of translating works (particularly poetry) from one

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

to another. Diverse translations (usually to English) of a short poem in Renaissance French,

Clément Marot Clément Marot (23 November 1496 – 12 September 1544) was a French Renaissance poet. Biography Youth Marot was born at Cahors, the capital of the province of Quercy, some time during the winter of 1496–1497. His father, Jean Marot (c.& ...

's ''A une Damoyselle malade'' (referred to as ‘''Ma mignonne''’ by Hofstadter), serve as reference points for his ideas on the subject. Groups of translations alternate with analysis and commentary on the same throughout the book. However, Hofstadter's reading of the idea of ‘translation’ goes deeper than simply that of translating between languages. Translation between frames of reference — languages, cultures, modes of expression or, indeed, between one person's thoughts and another — becomes an element in many of the same concepts Hofstadter has addressed in prior works, such as reference and

self-reference Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philoso ...

, structure and function, and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

. One theme of this book is the loss of Hofstadter's wife Carol, who died of a

brain tumor A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seco ...

while the book was being written; she also created one of the numerous translations of Marot's poem presented in the book. In this context the poem, dedicated to ‘a sick lady’, gained yet another deeply tragic and personal meaning, even though the translations were started long before her illness was even known (Hofstadter went on to follow with an even more personal book titled ''

I Am a Strange Loop ''I Am a Strange Loop'' is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a ''strange loop'' to explain the sense of "I". The concept of a ''strange loop'' was originally developed in his 1979 book ''Gödel, Escher, Bach''. ...

'' after the death of his wife).

References

External links

Site with complete works of Marot, plus many other French poets
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ton Beau De Marot, Le 1997 non-fiction books Linguistics books Philosophy books Cognitive science literature Books by Douglas Hofstadter Basic Books books Translation publications

See also

References

External links