An Homage to Jerome ─ Patron Saint of Translators

Chronologically among Larbaud's last works, the volume Sous l'invocation de Saint Jerome opens with this essay celebrating the exemplary figure and mighty achievement of the patron saint of translators: it was Saint Jerome who translated the Bible from Greek into Latin. To Saint Jerome the Christian West owes a large part of the Vulgate, its Book. In Saint Jerome all subsequent translators have had an ancestor and a model.

In France, Valery Larbaud occupies an important position in 20th century literature. Born in Vichy in 1881, he taught himself 6 languages at an early age and set out to bring world literature into French. He was the first to translate Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Butler, Walt Whitman, and James Joyce (supervising the French translation of Ulysses), among many others. A writer of poetry as well as innovative prose, Larbaud had his career cut short by a stroke, and spent his last 20 years confined to his home. He died in 1957.