Thanks to the online literary journal Bewildering Stories, I’ve just had another translated story published. “Café Brébant” appeared online on Monday and it’s free to read. The editor, Don Webb, has included a challenge question with it, an added bonus he provides with every piece he publishes. Readers might need to skim the story a second time to find the answer to his challenge. He saw something in the story that I didn’t, so even I had to read through it to find the answer.
It’s something special to be published in this journal. It means the editor found my piece “thought-provoking”, as he explains on his info page:
What does “Bewildering” really mean? One thing it does not mean: “befuddling.” We do not like literature that is meaningless or self-contradictory or that asks the readers to do the writing for the author. What “Bewildering” does mean is “unconventional” and “thought-provoking.”
The original story was written in 1882 by Théodore de Banville. In French it is “Chez Brébant”, which I translated as “Café Brébant”. This was, and still is (see photo above), a restaurant in Paris called Café Le Brébant, or simply Le Brébant. I shortened the title for the benefit of English-language readers.
The principal characters are a man – young, handsome and rich – and a hag – old, really old, ancient. It’s a fairy tale that plays with a certain shallow quality of Parisian life in the late 19th century. The story begins in a neglected junk shop, and the painting above, “Bal masqué à l’opéra”, gives a hint of how it all ends.
If you’re a writer (or translator) of short stories and are discouraged by rejections, don’t think you should give up submitting your work to journals. Let me encourage you. I spent four years submitting this translation to fourteen other journals before it was accepted by Bewildering Stories.
This is the fourth of Banville’s stories I’ve translated and had published. You might also enjoy reading the others:
“Fire Stealer” published by Bewildering Stories
“The Lydian” published by Black Sun Lit
“The Ragpicker” published by The AALITRA Review
Let me know if you read any of Banville’s works in English, or even in French.
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