“So. Translate the first chapter of Alain-Fournier from French to English, or do not return next Saturday. The author needs no parochial schoolchildren to disfigure his truth, but I need you to proof you do not waste my time. Go.

are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing.

Madame Crommelynck did a tobaccoey croon to show her delight. “You are a polite thirteen-year boy who is too timid to cut his umbilical cords! Except”—she gave the page a nasty poke—“here. Here in your poems you do what you do not dare to do”—she jabbed at the window—“here. In reality. To express what is here.” She jabbed my heart. It hurt.