In 1555, Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon led a French expedition to “the Land of Brazil.” He founded a colony, “Antarctic France,” in Guanabara Bay in what is today the city of Rio de Janeiro. The colony was short-lived, partly on account of the strong hold of the Portuguese but also on account of internal divisions among the French, who included both Catholics and Protestants. The five short years of French occupation constitute only a blip in the colonial history of Brazil—and yet the encounter between the Tupi people and their would-be French colonizers inaugurated a gorgeous, highly romantic body of ethnographic writing that helped to shape French letters. Probably the most influential text from the venture is Jean de Léry’s History of a Voyage, which inspired writers from Montaigne to Lévi-Strauss.
Léry has in fact been called the “Montaigne of travelers.” His work is not only a rich source for historical scholars of the colonial period but a stylistic marvel. Janet Whatley has managed in her new translation to maintain much of the charm of Léry’s prose. She has also provided a concise and helpful introduction that sets the History in context.
Translating Léry is a challenge—not only because of the peculiar beauty of his own language but because one of his themes is the difficulty of communicating across a linguistic gap. The most stunning moment in his text is a “colloquy” between a Tupi and a Frenchman, printed in the languages of both men. The colloquy takes a strange turn, as the Frenchman begins to speak as “native informant.” Life in France suddenly sounds wonderfully exotic in Tupi. Through bilingualism, Léry manages to invert the problem of the incomprehensibility of the ethnographic other. Fortunately, in translating the History, Janet Whatley makes available to English readers this remarkable dialogue, and Other Singular Things Completely Unknown over Here.
