‘Shot down in flames…’ is a phrase from aerial warfare

It is now used when an opponent in an argument is totally defeated, with nothing remaining of his position. This is more complete, more utterly annihilating, than the old word from duelling which the Germans used to use: ‘Herz-stosz’, heart-thrust. That meant the final blow that demolished the opponent; that killed him. There was, in duelling, a weak convention that the more skilled fencer would not use the Herz-stosz, but would be satisfied with merely inflicting a surface wound.

No one could be censured for using it; a duel was a matter of honour, and as such, was only subject to the personal feelings of the men concerned, Still, even if the Herz-stosz has been used, the opponent still remains (though dead) and can at least have a dignified burial. After being shot down in flames, on the other hand, nothing is left.

The tradition of duelling, whether in the air or on earth, is now prohibited by law, but it survives in a certain form among reviewers of books or musical and dramatic performances. Faced with what he regards as a really bad production, the critic feels it his duty (and also clearly all too often a pleasure) to give it a Herz-stosz, or even to shoot it down in flames. To read such reviews gives an unpleasant feeling, and I have never come across them in Japan. Of course, my experience is limited, but on this point I believe that the Japanese attitude is much more civilized: if a thing is bad, they just ignore it rather than display bad taste in vilifying it.

It can be otherwise here. I have read a review in a science journal of a newly published book on physics. The reviewer pointed out three mistakes, added that there were a number of others, and concluded: ‘In short, this is a bad book, and I do not advise anyone to buy it.’ That was a real heart-thrust, after three minor wounds.

As an example of shooting down in flames, I can quote a recent review (in a top-ranking journal) of a translation of a French book on Ancient Greece. The reviewer was given a page and a half, as the original French work was, as he pointed out, of great importance and value. In the first half of his review he discussed its contents in appreciative terms. Then he trained his guns, anti-aircraft guns, on the translators.

He begins by quoting a sentence of the original, from page 2 of the preface, which describes a modern ethnologist as completely at home in ancient Greece. The French continues: ‘à la façon d’un ethnologue qui, parti dès l’âge d’homme lointaine explorer une terre Mointaine, ne l’aurait plus jamais quittée at en comprendrait tout le people’, and the reviewer gives his own correct translation of the passage: ‘like an ethnologist who went off to a distant country as soon as he grew up, and never left it.’ In this book, he continues, this appears as ‘like an ethnologist who, beginning with the dawn of civilization, sets out for a distant land, he would never abandon his quest.’ The reviewer comments sarcastically, that this mistranslation contains two appalling mistakes, such as one might find in a high-school student’s work. (‘As soon as he grew up’ has become ‘since the dawn of civilization’, and ‘never left it’ has become ‘would never abandon his quest’.)

Then the reviewer lists seven blunders in translations of single words and phrases, such as ‘guérisseurs’, translated as ‘warriors’ when it should be ‘healers’. He is right, certainly, that this is a high-school blunder; the word ‘guerre’ is the well-known French word for war, and ‘guerrier’ is a warrior. The translators have confused this with the entirely different word ‘guérir’ meaning to heal, with its derivative ‘guérisseur’, a healer.

Then whole sentences are quoted which have been misunderstood. He, the reviewer, lists a number of them, and sums up his conclusions on the translation of this important French text by the French historian Louis Gernet. His own English is a good example of biting academic style, including a final gibe at the ignorance of the translators:

‘To go on with this sort of thing appeals to the taste for low comedy, but really it is a serious matter. Did nobody at the University Press which published this book, did none of the six people who are thanked in the translators’ acknowledgement, read as far as the second page, and wonder about the extraordinary sentence I have quoted? (They might also have wondered what was meant, on the same page, by the statement that Gernet ‘wore the cravat of Lavalliere’.  (‘La cravate Lavalliere’ is the sort of floppy bow-tie which all Frenchmen used to wear in English comics, named after Louise de la Vallière, mistress of Louis XIV).  ‘If the works of French academics are to have the effect in the English-speaking world which they should have, it must be accepted that translating them is a difficult and exacting business. On this evidence an English reader could hardly be blamed for deciding that Gernet’s thought was maddeningly unintelligible’.

My impression is, that a Japanese academic journal would not publish this sort of attack. They would normally ignore the existence of a bad piece of work. If, as in this case, the original of a translation, was important, in itself, so that the existence of the translation had to be acknowledged, then the reviewer would say something like, ‘The reader must be warned that the translation is not necessarily always reliable.’ That one sentence says all that the long critical review says, and says it with much more taste. Every informed person knows just what it means.

The most furious shooting down in flames that I have come across recently was in the review of a Promenade Concert in London, in which the famous conductor Riccardo Muti conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony. This review, of just 500 words, appeared in The Times the next day. The English is not exactly easy: the innuendo of ‘provided they be felt’ implying that clearly they were not felt and that the performance rendering was wholly insincere, and the sarcasm of ‘a virtue more to be feared than admired’, may not be immediately understood as such.

When I read this review, I got hold of the BBC tape recording of this concert, and compared Muti’s treatment with that of Karl Böhm, the doyen of conductors. Muti’s was slower in the last movement (which the critic was mainly concerned with), and while I recognised that his rendering did sound exaggerated, I also felt that it was, as a matter of fact, faithful to the music. Because this music is itself exaggerated. As the critic himself admitted, it is hysterical. I did not find all that difference in the renderings.

In my programme in the Japanese Service of the BBC, I quoted from this review, and then played to the listeners two minutes of the Muti, and then two minutes of the Böhm, to let them judge for themselves. I cannot do that here, but it is pleasant to record that at the concert the next days by the same orchestra under the same conductor, the audience began clapping as the orchestra made their appearance, and the conductor received an ovation before a note had been played. The audience evidently included many from the previous night who did not agree with the critic’s views.

I know that Japanese scholars and writers and politicians can quarrel as furiously as those of any other country; when they are really roused, they can pursue a vendetta with a vindictive implacability almost unrivalled. But they seem to keep a certain restraint in expression, at least in formal public expression.

The British politicians and academics attack, and occasionally as in the reviews which we have seen, they use the public occasion to destroy an opponent, to shoot him down in flames so to speak. But still, they feel they have to justify themselves by giving facts; even in the music review, the critic made some technical criticisms on the basis of fact but do not contain anything personal. That would be regarded as very bad taste, and would not find a publisher easily.

The French much more easily lose all sense of restraint. Not too long ago, a quarrel between a French Government Minister and a famous writer descended to a slanging match, complete with an accusation of sexual inadequacy allegedly derived from a remark made by the opponent’s son. Even the French press, which had revelled in the exchanges, admitted afterwards that they had gone rather too far.

After all, it is not necessary for a critic to use abusive words, nor indeed many words at all. Bernard Shaw, who was a very fine music critic and dramatic critic, once wrote a review of a play, in the usual 500 words, but consisting of a long description of the theatre, which had recently been re-decorated. Some of the alterations he approved, but he made some adverse comments on others, and suggested improvements.  At the very end, he wrote: ‘On the night when I visited the theatre, there was apparently a play being performed, but it was of no interest.’

© Trevor Leggett