4.5. Visuals

Sterne does not draw the reader’s attention to the surface of his writing only by breaking the illusion of the narrative by insertions or by exposing the ambiguity of the language he is using. Every now and then the reader is made aware of the book as a physical object. Sterne uses conventional typographical devices to their limits and adds some idiosyncratic ones.

Sterne had strong ideas about the presentation of his book: In a letter to Dodsley he suggests he will ‘print a lean edition, in two small volumes, of the size of Rasselas, and on the same paper and type’ and ‘as I live at York, and shall correct every proof myself, it shall go perfect in the world, and be printed in so creditable a way as to paper, type, &c’ (Sterne : 80, 81). It seems a pity that in many aspects modern editions do not follow the first ones.

In his article “Tristram Shandy as an aesthetic object” de Voogd argues convincingly that the book’s ‘verbal and visual elements are so intimately interwoven that they form an aesthetic whole’ (1988: 383-4). When language is not enough, Sterne turns to visuals. It might be too far fetched to draw parallels between polysemic Chinese characters and Sterne’s wriggles, but sinologist Golden’s ideas that ‘Western thought [...] seeks to fix and to define meaning once and for all and at all cost, [...] to describe the world with sequential and unambiguous language’ (Golden 1996: 281) are thought provoking applied in this context. It may well be that Sterne was not bothered by such constraints, and he was only trying to do something that had never been done before, to be as original as possible to keep his readers guessing (cf. Milic 1971).

The printed Finnish Tristram Shandy is a beautiful book which repeats many of the visual elements of the English. As it was published by a commercial publishing house, it was not seen fit to reproduce some features of the original. In fact I was not aware of the importance of them myself at the time and relied on one volume modern English editions. The visual appearance of Tristram Shandy is, nevertheless, an integral part of the book, and these decisions must not be taken light-heartedly, certainly features which were idiosyncratic when the English was published should be considered very carefully. The only aspect which has undergone a total overhaul since the publication of the Finnish book is the visual appearance. The first volume which forms the appendix of this study (TSF/R) looks nothing like the printed book (TSF/P).

4.5.1 Type

The contemporary editions of Tristram Shandy were set in Caslon Pica (de Woogd 1988: 386) and seem to contain practically every type in the printer’s box. As was customary at the time, the letter s only occurs at the end of a word and is otherwise represented by ſ. The dedication, which was added to the second edition, is printed in bigger type that the actual text, with four different font sizes appearing on the first page. The actual text prints all names in italics except when they appear in small capitals for greater emphasis; italics is also used for foreign quotations and emphasis. There is text in Greek and Latin, and the marriage settlement contains phrases set in gothic type.

Most modern editions reproduce the variety of type, but Caslon typeface is not normally used. De Voogd (1988) argues that this is a shame as the type that Sterne himself chose is ‘a highly irregular letter, more suitable for poetry than prose [...] one reason why the pages of Tristram Shandy have their nervous look’ (386) The type of the printed Finnish book is a neutral Bembo, even if Caslon is available for printers (145). Such types are not widely used any more like they were in the eighteenth century, and it can be argued that it would be anachronistic to use this typeface, but in TSF/R I have, nevertheless, used a Caslon font.

Greek appeared in the TSF/P as a facsimile from the Norton edition, in my TSF/R it is typed in because of technical reasons, even if facsimile is perhaps a better solution. Sterne’s mistakes are retained in both.

Italics are sometimes added to the Finnish to introduce a strange word like humorit ‘humours’ where Sterne has none, and names are not italized, but on the whole italizing follows the original. In my TSF/R chapter headings follow the original in type and are not italized like in the printed Finnish book, but the Finnish word luku ‘chapter’ is so short it cannot possibly be shortened in the way chapter is shortened to chap. Already in the printed version Gothic type is used in the marriage settlement but the obsolete letter ſ does not appear in either.

Different sizes of type are followed more faithfully in TSF/R than in TSF/P.

4.5.2. Punctuation

Finnish punctuation differs from the English and I have followed Finnish conventions throughout the book, as this seems to me to be part of the translation into Finnish. Even if Finnish does not relish long sentences quite the way English does, the sentence structure in the Finnish translation, however, is very similar to the English. I am of the opinion that a full stop is more than a punctuation mark, it delimits a sentence, and a sentence has strong rhetoric and semantic significance in any given text, and particularly in Tristram Shandy.

The most striking feature in Sterne’s punctuation are his dashes. Not only are they longer than normal, they also vary in length, from 3mm to 3cm (de Voogd 1988: 387), and on average there is one in every three lines (ibid). The Shandean dash is a challenge for the translator. Some early Italian translators (or their publishers) (Santovetti 1996: 84) and one modern Spanish translator (Pegenaute 1994: 33) seem to have reduced their number, and the modern Catalan translator claims that retaining them ‘– eludes the difficulty of interpreting them and may be confusing for the modern reader (Mallafré 1997: 111). Critics seem to prefer translations which have retained them, regardless of target language (Santovetti 1996: 84, Pegenaute 1994: 33, Soupel 1999-2000: 153, Franssen 1995: 119). I have not reduced their number as I felt they are an integral part of Sterne’s style and do not seem any stranger in Finnish than they do in English. The length of the dash is a problem. I have not been able to establish the reasons behind the varying size and rather suspect purely typographical concerns might have decided the length, that is to say, they fill the space in a particular justified line. TSF/P has a standard length dash, and technical difficulties prevented from varying their length in TSF/R as I would have wished.

The dash, it can be argued, is very important in creating the breathless style which gives the reader an impression of real life. Hnatko (1971) points out that what has been called Sterne’s conversational style since Hazlitt (1819: 488-489), is actually not due to Sterne’s grammatical structures which are in fact much more complicated than those of speech.

A great deal of complexity and rigidity of structure is concealed in the typographical representation: the great number of punctuation marks – especially dashes – all give the impression of the lesser coherence and greater inconclusiveness of recorded spontaneous talk. (Hnatko 1971: 232)

Holtz (1971) feels that the dash is best described as ‘gesture’ which conveys ‘the presence of the talker – the implicit substructure of tone, accent, rhythm, gesture, and expression’ (252). He also points out that without the dashes the text becomes colourless and lame. Virginia Woolf (1932) argues that Sterne’s ‘ punctuation is that speech, not writing, and brings the sound and associations of the speaking voice with it ‘ (96).

4.5.3. Graphic symbols

Letters and punctuation marks are not enough for Sterne. He uses asterisks to mark words that are left out – mainly because they are deemed unprintable. In the first volume they all stand for names which Tristram wished not to reveal. Sometimes it is possible to guess what the asterisks stand for, sometimes it is not. In the sixth volume Tristram calls them stars or lights which he hangs in ‘some of the darkest passages’(TS 383). In chapter four of volume one the page is divided with the words Shut the door and two long horizontal lines on each side (In TSF/R the cumbersome ‘Sulkekaa ovi’ for Shut the door in TSF/P has, by the way, been replaced by the more idiomatic and shorter ‘Ovi kiinni’). A couple of times in later volumes Tristram employs an index finger to make a point (as in TSE 165). When Dr. Slop crosses himself, this is marked with a cross (TSE 86), which follows the practice of some Catholic missals

With the use of graphic symbols the reader’s attention is drawn to the fact that communication between two minds takes place by marks on the page. These marks are mainly words made up of letters, but they can also be other kinds of symbols which have either formal or expressive value or both and can to which can both emphasize or explain the message conveyed in words (Holtz 1971).

The graphic symbols that Sterne uses have been reproduced as such in the Finnish Tristram Shandy.

4.5.4. Volumes, chapters, pages

Tristram Shandy was published in nine slim octavo volumes, most containing less than two hundred pages, each page no more than twenty two lines, with ample margins. There is an empty line between paragraphs, and the right hand corner of every page contains a catchword anticipating the first word of the next page. Footnotes are printed with a smaller type and sometimes run over several pages. The illustrations here come from Glasgow University Website.

Chapters do not start a new page before the last, ninth, volume. In volume four chapter twenty four is omitted and there is a gap in the pagination, as pages 147-155 are missing in the first editions, which results in the anomality of having an even page running on the right hand side to the end of the volume (de Voogd 1988: 385). Chapters eighteen and nineteen in the ninth volume are missing and there is a blank page under the chapter heading. The missing chapters appear later, between chapters twenty five and twenty six, with headings in gothic type.

 

In volume one there is a two-sided black page to mark parson Yorick’s death, and in the third volume there is a two-sided hand marbled page which Tristram describes as ‘motly emblem of my work’ (TSE 184). Volume six boasts a blank page on which the reader is invited to draw a picture of Widow Wadman.

The effect of the marbled page is practically lost if it is printed in monochrome, and even if it is printed in colour, the awesome experience of encountering a unique hand marbled page in the middle of a book is not there. The black page is less of a challenge to a printer and is normally in place in modern English editions. In his discussion of the black page Holtz points out that the effect is not only surprising and comic, comedy and tragedy are mingled like in the previous death scene and the ‘page-flipping reader’ is halted to contemplate on ‘ (1) Yorick’s grave and inscription, Alas, poor Yorick!, and (2) the general problem of getting such things on paper’ (1971: 250)

Some modern critics, including de Voogd (1988: 384), would like to take Tristram’s invitation to fill the blank page literally. Neither he nor New (1994: 129) nor I have come across a copy in which the reader has indeed done so. New gets quite worked up about the ideas of blankness in the literature he has read:

Perhaps the blank page really is a mirror: surely it reflects with absolute clarity the fondest dream of the modern theorist, an author who does not merely tolerate, but welcomes the invasive activities of the commentator. Here is censorship at the very edge of absolute power: we can make even a blank page speak our own favourite prejudice!’ (ibid: 128)

The Finnish Tristram Shandy was printed as one volume of 562 pages. Separate volumes were not even discussed with the publishers. It can be argued that a translation which does not come out in installations over the years is much better collected in one volume. Commercially this probably makes sense, but I am convinced the book would have more readers (or be read more by the same readers) if it was presented as slim volumes of fun rather than a bulky representative of the literary canon. De Voogd says he encourages his students to cut their English paperbacks into nine pieces (1988: 386).

Printing the book as one volume rules out reproducing Sterne’s reader-friendly pages. There are 36 lines on a page in TSF/P and nearly 70 characters to a line, an average of 2500 characters to a page, when the original has less than 900. Another problem arises with the missing ten pages, which are converted into eleven so that the right hand page can have an odd number 279, which destroys the joke.

The black, blank and marbled pages are in place in the Finnish book, but the marbled page is a feeble monochrome job which completely misses the effect of the original. It might not be commercially viable to include a hand-marbled page in a modern book, [1] but printing it in colour should not be a problem.

4.5.5. Images

For the second edition of his book Sterne managed to obtain a frontispiece from Hogarth, one of the best known artists of the time, depicting Corporal Trim reading the sermon to Walter Shandy, Uncle Toby and a sleeping Dr. Slop. Volume three has another frontispiece where the subject is Tristram’s is baptism. In volume one the lament ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ acquires a rectangular frame, but perhaps the most original pictorial effects are the wriggly lines in the sixth volume. Tristram presents them as graphic illustrations of his volumes so far and then adds a totally straight line as a model for what is to come. Another wriggly line in the ninth volume (TSE 506) represents the eloquent flourish of Trim’s stick to illustrate man’s freedom.  

The diagrams of Tristram’s narrative comment eloquently on one of the central themes of the book: how to tell a story without digressions (Holtz 1971) . Whittaker (1988) points out that at the same time as the images can make it more difficult to follow the story, they also ‘include us in the creative process’ by widening our involvement (65). But it could be said that mainly these drawings are, nevertheless, awesome and hilarious surprises for the reader turning the page.

Modern editions sometimes leave out Hogarth’s engravings, or print them with inferior techniques. The wriggly lines are normally in place, but as the pages tend to have a lot more text in them than the early editions, they are often too small for the page. Engravings by Hogarth are not included in the Finnish TSF/P but a reproduction appears in TSF/R. Finnish publishers do not take kindly to illustrations in novels. The wriggly lines are in place, but the size of the printed page distorts the proportions.