autant que faire se peut

I saw this expression in a vocabulary list. It means "as much as possible." I would just use "autant que possible." I would appreciate an explanation and seeing the above expression used in a sentence. Thank you.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on March 21, 2012 at 1:52pm

I probably don't understand it any better than you but I would analyse it in my head like this.

autant que as much as faire se peut is possible (I think "se pouvoir" or "il se peut" means "it is possible")

That comes to "as much as it is possible to do" which is a long winded way of saying " as much as possible" or "autant que possible."

Maybe there is more to it than that -it seems (to my mind ) an old fashioned expression .

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 21, 2012 at 3:56pm

Now I think about this a bit more, I think there are two possibilities.

It could be that "se pouvoir" used to be commonly used as a kind of 'pseudo-passive' as you suggest. (It isn't nowadays-- "se pouvoir" is usually impersonal, "Il se peut que...", though you'll sometimes hear "Ça se peut".)

However, French used to allow so-called 'clitic climbing', as in modern Spanish. So that e.g. "Je peux le faire" or "Je le peux faire" were once both possible. (This still happens in Spanish and Italian today.) So it may be that this isn't actually "se pouvoir" as such, but rather a variant of "peut se faire" > "se peut faire". Either way, it equates to essentially the same interpretation.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 21, 2012 at 3:53pm

The thing you need to understand is "autant que faire se peut" isn't contemporary French: it's a fixed literary expression. To a French speaker 400 or so years ago, on the other hand, it would probably have seemed like normal, everyday French, but nowadays it sounds decidedly literary/antiquated (cf fixed expressions in English such as "it was ever thus" or "cometh the hour, cometh the man"). I'm not exactly sure why this particular French expression survives, but the usual mechanism is that e.g. a translation of the Bible or a popular poet happened to use it.

I don't think it's used terribly much: if you Google it, you'll find that the first few pages are actually about people discussing the expression or the occasional use as the title of a film/song. There are few 'normal' uses of the expression.

If you need to translate it, then maybe something like "inasmuch as is feasible". Otherwise, I wouldn't worry too much and just stick to normal versions such as "autant que possible" or "dans la mesure du possible".

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Permalink Reply by Lanfeust on March 22, 2012 at 12:09am

Just to say that this expression is still used nowadays, and not only literary :)