Dothraki, Klingon, Na'Vi, Sindarin… Does that ring a bell?
Posted by Michel Morvan on
Dothraki , Klingon , Na'Vi , Sindarin … Does that ring a bell?
Yes, probably… This brings to mind Game of Thrones , Star Trek , Avatar or The Lord of the Rings ! Because these are languages invented for these works of fiction, languages that did not exist before they were (almost) created from scratch for the needs of the series or film! Disorienting the viewer, creating a strange effect in order to increase their immersion in a fictional universe, these are some of the objectives sought…
But the disadvantage of these constructed languages, of course, is that they are not understood, and the viewer, if he wants to follow the dialogues, the action, is obliged to read the subtitles displayed in his language!
Fréville, in his novel Genesis of Fit-ce-Monde , succeeds in the feat of avoiding this pitfall. By a clever twist of a few words in the sentence or a few common syntactic turns of phrase, he creates an exotic language full of images with a scent of yesteryear, whose initial meaning is enriched with new connotations, but which one understands at first reading!
A good example is worth a thousand words, here is the beginning of the novel:
"The river had been damaging the bridge for three days. It had rained hard from the thirteenth to the twentieth of Navet . In addition, digging had resumed near the Versevieille mines, releasing many crystal bobettes that the river used to attack the piles, as if to avenge the mountain. It planted them abruptly in the wood then let the fine sand rub on either side of the chipping ."
No need for a dictionary to feel transported immediately into a strange universe, but also to see – our imagination piqued by the iconoclastic writing creating its own phantasmagorias – the devastating storm of a strange land .
Do you still have enough candor to appreciate Fit-ce-Monde, a land of obscure traditions , bizarre customs and daily enchantments ? A naïve , baroque and disconcerting literary creation, which skeptics and small-timers will hate !
