la rochefoucauld 1-50

MAXIME. Jamais neuve mais toujours consolante. MAXIM. Never new but always consoling. МАКСИМА. Никогда не нова но всегда утешительна. — Gustave Flaubert, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues

This publication inaugurates the translation of the maxims of François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld in their final and definitive edition of 1678. It will reproduce the text according to the 1967 Garnier publication, juxtaposed with its maximally faithful rendering into English and Russian. The ensuing triangulation is meant to enable the bilingual reader to overcome the hesitation imposed by the literary form of these moral precepts, penetrating their philosophical content. To this end, the translations are biased towards literal accuracy, to serve their purpose through simultaneous reference to the original text.
    Alongside with the fragmentary thoughts of Pascal, published posthumously in 1670, the maxims of La Rochefoucauld, polished and arranged over a decade, enter the canon of Western philosophy as seminal corpora. The arrival of these texts in the wake of inauguration of philosophical modernity by Descartes, complements his revolution in metaphysics and epistemology, with the first significant contribution to the understanding of emotions since the classical antiquity. The lapidary form of the moral maxim is an essential complement to Socratic dialectic that refers to its digested origins in the fragmentary remains of Milesians, Ionians, Pythagoreans, and Eleatics. No better pedigree could be wished for in accounting for a literary genre within philosophical disciplines.
    The final edition will incorporate critical and analytic supplements built upon the tables and commentaries supplied by the author and his contemporaries, and aiming to account for three centuries of plaudits and rebuttals. All readers of this draft are invited to contribute by commenting on the texts and their translations.( Read more... )

Crossposted to larvatus, old_french_lit, philosophy, and ru_translate.

	François de La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales, édition de 1678	François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections or Sentences and Moral Maxims, edition of 1678	Франсуа де Ла Рошфуко, Размышления или Предложения и Моральные Максимы, издание 1678 года
	Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que des vices déguisés.	Our virtues, more often than not, are but disguised vices.	Наши добродетели — это чаще всего не что иное как замаскированные пороки.
1	Ce que nous prenons pour des vertus n’est souvent qu’un assemblage de diverses actions et de divers intérêts, que la fortune ou notre industrie savent arranger; et ce n’est pas toujours par valeur et par chasteté que les hommes sont vaillants, et que les femmes sont chastes.	What we take for virtues is often but a collection of diverse acts and diverse interests, which fortune or our ingenuity arrange together; and it is not always through valor or through chastity that men are brave, and that women are chaste.	То, что мы принимаем за добродетели, нередко оказывается сочетанием разнообразных действий и разнообразных выгод, искусно подобранных судьбой или нашей сноровкой; так не всегда благодаря доблести и целомудрию мужчины бывают доблестны, а женщины целомудренны.