Toby Gelfand (University of Ottawa Press). I am suspicious of people with neat handwriting. If one has the time to legibly record one’s ideas then perhaps one doesn’t have enough of them, is my thinking. By this standard, Jean-Martin Charcot, the father of neurology, would be above any reproach. During his career, Charot’s clinical acumen generated no fewer than twelve partly or wholly owned eponyms now listed on Wikipedia, while Charcot in Morocco displays samples of a largely unreadable calligraphy suggestive of a busy brain.
Charcot in Morocco, by University of Ottawa historian Toby Gelfand, is based on a travel diary Charcot wrote in 1887. The book is slight, but heavy with ideas of language, history and culture.
Gelfand gamely provides his English translation of Charcot’s diary and the presumably painstaking transcription of the scarcely decipherable French original, letting the reader examine his choices as a translator. For example, a group of “scelerats” at a penal colony “auxquels on donnerait le bon Dieu sans confession” become “rascals … who looked like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.” Is the true grain of Charcot obscured by the brush of translation? Surely yes: the translator must contribute something. But it starts one to thinking about clarity.
And there are some provocative obscurities. Why did Charcot record this specific trip? What was Gelfand’s reason for sharing this record?
The answer to the latter question might be revealed in the introduction: Gelfand seems preoccupied with Charcot’s own apparent fascination with Moroccan Jews. Careful to avoid excessive postcolonial hand-wringing, Gelfand even prefers not to use the term “anti-Semite” at all. But in calling Charcot a “Semitist,” referring to a condescending and Eurocentric interest, there is an approbation of which Edward Said would have approved.
Charcot never misses a chance to describe someone as “un juif” (and is equally thorough in his use of “maure” and “arabe”). His most involved passage, a stunningly detailed description of a Jewish wedding, seems at least faintly supercilious. Or am I simply sensitive to the issue — is my reading obscured — because Gelfand brought it up first?
The trouble may be that, as is customary, I started with the introduction. Perhaps Charcot in Morocco is most legibly enjoyed as I have described it here: have a look at both the French and English texts, and save the introduction for last.