THE MAN BEHIND THE FEMINIST BIBLE
By RICHARD GILLMAN; RICHARD GILLMAN IS A FREELANCE WRITER WHO GREW UP IN NORTHAMPTON, MASS., WHERE HE WAS A NEIGHBOR OF H. M. PARSHLEY.
Published: May 22, 1988, New York Times
LEAD: The spring of 1953 was an exhilarating time for the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. His freshly printed American edition of ''The Second Sex'' by Simone de Beauvoir made the New York Times best-seller list and appeared on the way to being considered the most ambitious and brilliant study of woman ever written.
The spring of 1953 was an exhilarating time for the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. His freshly printed American edition of ''The Second Sex'' by Simone de Beauvoir made the New York Times best-seller list and appeared on the way to being considered the most ambitious and brilliant study of woman ever written. For similar reasons, the period was a highlight in the life of a zoology professor, H. M. Parshley, even though his name as translator and editor of ''The Second Sex'' had inadvertently been omitted from the volume's dust jacket. But then, Alfred Knopf had told him earlier that ''translating has always been dog's work - never well paid and seldom if ever bringing the translator any glory.''
Today, 35 years after that auspicious publishing event, not only has little glory accrued to Howard Parshley, but he has become a controversial figure among de Beauvoir scholars, some of whom consider his translation sexist. It is an arresting paradox in view of the fact that Parshley was not only the translator and editor of ''The Second Sex,'' but probably the book's most important proponent this side of the Atlantic. He figured heavily in the Knopf decision to publish an American edition, and then struggled to keep the translation essentially true to the original.
When his translation was published, de Beau-voir herself was especially happy. As she later wrote in her autobiography, ''Force of Circumstance'': ''With spring [ 1953 ] came a great satisfaction: 'The Second Sex' appeared in America with a success unspoiled by any salacious comment'' - so much unlike its 1949 reception in her native France, where its dim views on motherhood and marriage had been violently attacked by the church as well as the political left and right.
In fact, many American reviewers were highly impressed by de Beauvoir's monumental and compelling case: that throughout history woman had been given second place by a male-dominated culture, relegated to such a state of dependence that her ability to transcend herself was tragically limited. The French writer argued that women could and should be independent associates of men, on a plane of intellectual and economic equality.
In its comprehensive presentation, citing biology, history, psychology and myth preparatory to scrutinizing woman's contemporary situation, de Beauvoir's argument would be translated into more than a dozen languages and, a decade later, strongly influence the beginnings of the women's liberation movement in the United States, as well as around the world. Paperback sales of the American edition of ''The Second Sex'' reportedly have passed the million mark and the book is an important resource for women's studies courses.
Nonetheless, Margaret Simons, a professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University, is quite dissatisfied with Parshley's translation. One of his more outspoken critics, she conducted an intensive textual study of the American edition and wrote in a 1983 women's studies journal that more than ''10 percent of the material in the original French edition had been deleted, including fully one-half of a chapter and the names of 78 women in history.'' She went on to claim that ''these unindicated deletions seriously undermine the integrity of de Beauvoir's analysis'' of several important topics.
Ms. Simons felt so strongly about the deletions she tried to persuade Knopf to publish an expanded, fully translated version of the volume. Knopf turned her down because, as Ashbel Green, the firm's vice president and senior editor, says: ''Our feeling is that the impact of de Beauvoir's thesis is in no way diluted by the abridgment.'' Knopf also said no to Ms. Simons' request that the rights to reprint the book be given to another publisher for republication purposes. Mr. Green explains. ''It's a very successful book that we want to continue publishing.'' As a result, Ms. Simons says she is now compiling all the deleted portions and working on an analysis of them for publication by a university press.
Other scholars disagree with Ms. Simons' interpretation, among them Deirdre Bair, the author of a biography of Samuel Beckett. During a recent phone conversation, Ms. Bair, whose biography of de Beauvoir will be published next fall, said that Parshley ''was actually a kind of hero.'' She based her judgment largely on a study of Parshley's correspondence about ''The Second Sex,'' which was also shared with this writer by Parshley's daughter, Elsa Brown of Amherst, Mass. Ms. Bair took pains during our talk to correct the impression held by Ms. Simons and her colleagues who, she says, ''seem to have inadvertently laid all the blame for the cuts on Parshley.''
No one denies, of course, that Parshley shortened de Beauvoir's masterpiece. In his correspondence with Alfred Knopf and others at the New York publishing house, Parshley refers specifically to cutting or condensing the equivalent of 145 pages from the original two-volume, 972-page French edition. However, to judge from his letters, Parshley's regard for the book was such that, had it been left solely to him, he might have included everything of the original edition. When Knopf asked him, on the basis of his reading of the first volume, if he thought the book should be published in America, he answered that he found it ''a profound and unique analysis of woman's nature and position, eminently reasonable and witty, and it surely should be translated, together with the second volume, if the quality is maintained.''
That was in August 1949, two months after Volume One of ''The Second Sex'' appeared in French bookshops. Later in August, Knopf traveled to Northampton, Mass., to discuss the book further with the 65-year-old Parshley, who was the chairman of the zoology department at Smith College. At that meeting, Parshley, who had never translated French except for his own reading pleasure and who knew the language solely from Boston Latin School and his undergraduate years at Harvard, expressed interest in translating the work if Knopf decided to publish it. In November, Knopf acquired American rights to ''The Second Sex,'' plus de Beauvoir's agreement in principle to consider textual changes, and asked Parshley to do the job.
Why Parshley? What credentials did this zoologist have that one of America's most distinguished publishers would seek - and accept - his judgment on a book which promised, on the basis of its French reception, to elicit perhaps as much bitterness as praise?
It is not clear how or when Knopf and Parshley became acquainted. However, during the 20's, several of Parshley's articles had appeared in The American Mercury magazine, produced by Knopf, H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. Mencken, who befriended Parshley and had him sit in and play double bass at Mencken's legendary Saturday Night Club in Baltimore, very likely brought the two men together. In the next two decades, Parshley's growing reputation as a science writer with considerable knowledge about sex gave the publisher ample reason to think him a good choice to assess as well as translate de Beauvoir's book. In fact, the closer one looks at Howard Madison Parshley's life, the more he seems to have been ideally suited, if not destined, to shepherd ''The Second Sex'' into America.
Born in Hallowell, Me., in 1884, the son of a Baptist minister and a mother who was a pianist, Parshley was a bright student. He spent three years at the New England Conservatory of Music while at the same time doing undergraduate work at Harvard. By the time Harvard gave him a doctorate in science in 1917, he had become an agnostic, and during the 20's he indicated his social and philosophical stance by writing in The American Mercury: ''I don't believe in Prohibition, censorship, religion or co-education. I believe that most intelligent people are well-intentioned and that improvement in mundane conditions will come only through the increase of scientific knowledge among such people.''
Indeed, Parshley revealed a kind of crusader's streak for getting the scientific word out to the public. He wrote the script for and also co-starred in the 1931 Universal Pictures film ''The Mystery of Life,'' which traced the history of evolution. His co-star was no less than the famed Scopes ''monkey trial'' lawyer Clarence Darrow. He also wrote the volume ''Science and Good Behavior'' (1928), in which he discussed science's ''inevitable influence on the new ethics'' in such areas as religion, drinking, sexual behavior and reproduction. Five years later, his book ''The Science of Human Reproduction: Biological Aspects of Sex'' became a forerunner of the illustrated, truly scientific sex manual for the lay person and was hailed by the birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger for its ''straightforward thinking.'' Moreover, from 1924 through the next two decades, he took every opportunity to express his opinions on sex and other favored subjects as a book reviewer for The New York Herald Tribune.
At Smith College, Parshley - known variously as Howard, Parsh and Doc to friends and colleagues - established a reputation as a first-rate teacher of entomology and genetics. In addition, he managed to meet a busy schedule as double bass player for three symphony orchestras.
Being used to long, active days was an asset for someone setting out to translate ''The Second Sex.'' De Beauvoir herself later warned Parshley that the task would be ''un travail long et ardu.'' In November 1949, after persuading Knopf that the job could not be done in six months but would take at least a year ''if my will power and health hold out,'' Parshley began the process of turning Volume One into English.
It was the start of a passionate engagement, despite the fact that the first order of business was to identify text that could be cut or condensed. This wasn't an unusual move under the circumstances, says William Koshland, a former chairman of the board of Knopf, who remembers the production of ''The Second Sex.'' At the time, he explains, ''Knopf was a relatively small house, running on small capital. Translations were typically more costly than most original books because of the fee to a translator, as well as royalties to the author. If Knopf had produced a much longer book, it would have also involved a higher retail price tag that, as prices went in those days, could have been a deterring factor'' in sales. Furthermore, Mr. Koshland says, although Knopf had earlier published a de Beauvoir novel, ''she was still relatively unknown in America'' and, accordingly, somewhat of a financial risk.
Unfortunately, de Beauvoir would also remain relatively unknown to her translator. Despite his efforts to meet and discuss proposed revisions with her during two visits she made to the United States, he would never lay eyes on her. Furthermore, de Beauvoir would not be a very responsive letter writer, sometimes delaying for months her replies about textual changes.
A January 1950 letter to Blanche Knopf, wife of the publisher, who dealt with the firm's French books, indicates the pressure Parshley felt to reduce the text. Having lavished high praise on the newly arrived Volume Two, he wrote: ''I have found only two or three short passages that I would want to cut, but there are many that I think should be condensed more or less drastically. Altogether I estimate that hardly sixty pages could be saved in this way. This is not much of a reduction, but with the best will in the world I am unable to apply your injunction: 'cut, slash,' without eliminating what seems to me to be valuable and interesting.'' He continued: ''In answer to Mr. Strauss' [ Harold Strauss, editor in chief ] question: 'Is her stuff so closely reasoned that you can't leave any of it out?' I can say for the most part - yes.''
In April 1950, well into the translation of Volume One, and having received a generally positive response from de Beauvoir to his recommended changes, Parshley suffered a heart attack. Hospitalized, he propped himself up in bed after a couple of weeks and resumed writing the translation by hand. Before long he was back in the classroom and concert hall. On Oct. 1, 1950, he finished Volume One.
Although he often mentioned his pleasure from ''working out [ the French text ] and putting it into English,'' he also admitted it was demanding. As he wrote Blanche Knopf on June 15, 1951: ''The truth is that this work requires a degree of concentration which is hard for me to maintain for more than a few hours at a time.''
Parshley completed the translation on Aug. 7, 1951, his 67th birthday. He promptly mailed it to Harold Strauss, who had never shared Parshley's conviction about the book's importance. Strauss responded as follows, halfway through his reading of the finished second volume: ''My entire attitude toward the book has changed and I am now quite persuaded that this is one of the handful of greatest books on sex ever written. For this reason, you may be sure, I am unlikely to demand further cuts.''
''The Second Sex,'' after delays unconnected with Parshley's role, was finally published on Feb. 24, 1953. Parshley, who from the start had half-jokingly told Alfred Knopf that the book would mean he could purchase a new car, received a total of $2,975 for helping produce the 275,000-word volume. According to his daughter, Elsa Brown, he promptly went out and ''became a proud possessor'' of a second-hand Buick.
A couple of months later, he expressed his perhaps most revealing personal thoughts about ''The Second Sex'' in a letter to Abraham Stone, a longtime friend and co-author, with Hannah Stone, of the popular book ''A Marriage Manual.''
''I would never have undertaken the work,'' he wrote Stone , ''if I had not considered its . . . main message - 'transcendence' for women, too - not only morally and socially desirable but also too often denied in America. For every Dr. Hannah Stone or Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt there are, I thought, millions of women to whom de B.'s descriptions of the life of 'immanence' - of 'church, kitchen and children' - are more or less completely applicable, 'happy' as they may be in their situation.
''I have not been too happy, myself, about the author's treatment of family life, and I was often tempted to soften her descriptions or insert qualifying footnotes. And the same with many of her remarks about 'conjugal' love and so on. But I had no difficulty in thinking of many actual examples of everything she described, and I thought she was presenting a point of view that needs airing.''
''Just last night,'' Parshley continued, ''I heard on Barry Gray's WMCA midnight program a discussion of the New York system of day nurseries by the man in charge of it, and I think that there one may see a hint of what de Beauvoir has in mind, in part, when she calls for the liberation of women.''
De Beauvoir's response to the book was contained in a letter to Blanche Knopf, which Mrs. Knopf shared with Parshley: ''I find the book superb. The translation seems excellent.'' Parshley must have been exceptionally gratified.
And yet, according to Deirdre Bair, who interviewed de Beauvoir extensively for her forthcoming biography, the French writer told her she had never read the American edition. Explaining that de Beauvoir's ''personal life was consuming her at this time,'' Ms. Bair speculates that ''she probably only thumbed through the book.'' And de Beauvoir's quoted praise? ''A white lie,'' says Ms. Bair.
The white lie was to remain a golden fact for Parshley. On the night of May 18, 1953, with sales of ''The Second Sex'' continuing to mount, its translator participated in a Smith College Symphony Orchestra rehearsal. Later, after retiring, he suffered a second and more severe heart attack. He died the following day, a little more than two months before his 69th birthday.
De Beauvoir died two years ago this spring at the age of 78, presumably quite unaware of who this zoologist was who brought her French classic to Americans, or of how much more ''long et ardu'' his efforts had been because of his conscientiousness. Instead, when Margaret Simons informed her in 1983 of the specific changes in the American text, de Beauvoir responded that she was ''dismayed to learn the extent to which Mr. Parshley misrepresented me.'' This, despite the fact that de Beauvoir had approved many of the changes and later gave Parshley what he construed to be ''carte blanche for minor condensations.'' But then, de Beauvoir in 1983 understandably could have forgotten the specific changes she had agreed to 30 years earlier.
Not that one cannot or should not argue with Parshley's translation. Beyond the matter of deletions, Ms. Simons, a philosopher, may be correct, for example, in finding Parshley not sufficiently informed on the Sartrean existentialism that shapes de Beauvoir's perspective in the book. Be that as it may, one cannot question Parshley's determination to be fully faithful to de Beauvoir's meaning, or deny that he brought considerable special knowledge of his own to the gargantuan task.
Even Ms. Simons acknowledges Parshley's contribution. ''We owe him and Alfred A. Knopf . . . a debt of gratitude for bringing out the first English translation . . . so soon after its publication in France,'' she wrote in 1983. ''But,'' she went on, ''neither the publisher . . . nor Mr. Parshley . . . anticipated the women's studies movement and the seriousness with which women would study feminist philosophy.'' This failure would not be surprising, since even America's feminist response to ''The Second Sex'' was not sounded till 10 years later with Betty Friedan's ''Feminine Mystique'' and the start of the women's liberation movement, suggesting that this kind of anticipation in 1953 probably would have required psychic powers.
Ms. Simons also notes that Parshley in his own preface to the volume ''reveals his warm and genuine appreciation for de Beauvoir's book.'' That appreciation clearly was extended to its author as well. Significantly, there is no evidence in all of Parshley's letters, despite his impatience with de Beauvoir for her poor communications, that he ever thought less than highly of her. One could wager that he liked her ''closely reasoned'' thinking too much for that. What's more, he still maintained his great fondness for increasing the public's scientific knowledge. And as one who he believed was offering ''a work of scientific and philosophical - as well as literary - importance,'' and about a subject he found very dear, Simone de Beauvoir had deeply and uniquely touched the crusader in him.