Comments on: Aus krummem Holze

By: Henry (not the famous one)

Henry (not the famous one) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 22:17:31 +0000

In case you missed it: Andrew Lloyd Webber says that his next project will be staging The Master and Margarita as an opera. http://www.andrewlloydwebber.co.uk/sections/news/newsdb.php?article=13&section=news. Perhaps he’ll do it in the original Russian—but it will still be his music.

By: Martin Walker

Martin Walker — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:18:53 +0000

“It took me a year to read the Tin Drum in German and actually enjoyed the translation better.” Oh no, that’s one of the worst translations I’ve ever taken a brief & disgusted look at. It makes the beginning of the work sound like Chandler or something, instead of the gnarly post-Jean Paul thing it is.
Immanuel Kant oben (29 Aug) sollte zunächst mal die deutsche Interpunktion lernen: da gehört ein Komma hin.

By: Mischa

Mischa — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:37:22 +0000

When I was a philosophy student at Oxford many of my German fellow undergraduates would admit they found it easier to read Kant (_and_ Hegel, for the few people who did read him) in English rather than the original German. There is a certain intricate elegance to very long German sentences (Thomas Mann, W.G. Sebald—and Kant) if they are well-written which sometimes makes them hard to follow and is not usually carried over into other languages. And rightly so, because they just don’t have the same effect in, say, English or French.

By: gr

gr — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:53:40 +0000

German students don’t read Kant in English (that is, they are certainly not made to read Kant in English rather than German in a course at a German university).

However, I’ve heard many people say in Germany (and I’ve made the experience myself, as a native German speaker) that the Kemp Smith translation of the Critique of Pure Reason is very helpful for understanding Kant. But this applies only to the Kemp Smith in particular, not to English translations of Kant in general. Some current standard English translations of some Kant texts are most definitely not helpful in the same way. So what you’ll hear in Germany is not that Kant is clearer in English than in German but rather that Kemp Smith was an exceptionally gifted translator (and by therefore inevitably: commentator) of Kant.

By: astrongmaybe

astrongmaybe — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:09:30 +0000

#65 Yes. And this is true of many of Berlin’s ‘quotations’, which often ‘improve’ on the originals—that is, tend to be both more elegant, and more striking.

Berlin should be taken with some skepticism. I saw a talk a couple of years back which showed fairly conclusively that, contrary to what he let on, his knowledge of Hamann and Herder was rather limited. The killer example given was a particular quote of Herder’s which Berlin used and reused as epitomizing Herder’s supposedly Counter-Enlightenment worldview. It turned out to be taken spectacularly out of context: rather than the telling aphorism IB claimed it to be, it was a single line plucked from a bizarre and atypical love poem to Herder’s wife (in which he was impersonating a glow-worm [sic]). None of that would matter so much, except that on Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, Berlin is still taken as gospel by many. Maybe we shouldn’t so quickly “pardon him for writing well”.

By: Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:09:07 +0000

Ich ziehe es vor Crooked Timber auf französisch zu lesen.

By: Henry (not the famous one)

Henry (not the famous one) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:12:31 +0000

And while we’re talking about Marx, he found it necessary to invent, not mistranslate, Hegel’s most memorable quotation.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 02:21:06 +0000

“Again, not to denigrate the Berlin quote, but it’s really Berlin, isn’t it, not Kant? Berlin by way of Kant?”
Yes. And this is true of many of Berlin’s ‘quotations’, which often ‘improve’ on the originals—that is, tend to be both more elegant, and more striking.
In the particular case of the Kant quote, I think this is pardonable, since Berlin is clearly using it as an aphorism, for his own purposes, and not seeking to convey or comment on Kant’s exact meaning. In other cases, when his expressed purpose is to portray or interpret the thinker he’s, erm, creatively quoting, it may be a bit more dubious …
(That said, as those who’ve read the preface to the Berlin collection that takes its title from the ‘crooked timber’ quote will know, Berlin’s ‘quote’ seems to itself be a refinement of a similarly loose translation by Collingwood, whose version was much the same as Berlin’s, but had ‘cross-grained’ instead of crooked. The book’s epigraph, by the way, is the original German, with a literal translation).
And, while we’re talking about Berlin, and related to Ingrid’s question: Berlin himself read Marx mainly in Russian translation, and appears to have prefered reading Hegel in French to either the original German, or English translations.
As for Germans reading Kant in English translation, I’ve heard that too, but can’t vouch for it. I did once find myself in a seminar, though, where the (English) professor said he found it easier to read Hegel in German, and one of the students (who was German) said she found it easier to read Hegel in English. Something about Hegel, I suppose.

By: Anderson

Anderson — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 22:00:59 +0000

Thanks, Aidan!

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:38:20 +0000

Anderson, #62: If you are really curious, try de.etc.sprache.deutsch. The below should do as an initial question, if your German is limited; it may be that you’ll get responses in English, if you’re lucky.

Hallo,

wir diskutieren gerade bei Crooked Timber, einem englischsprachigen akademischen Blog, über den Satz Kants „Aus so krummem Holze [ja, genau, “Crooked Timber”], als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden“ ( http://crookedtimber.org/2006/08/25/aus-krummem-holze/ ) . Da hat jemand einen Kommentar geschrieben, worin er uns das Gerücht erkzählt hat, dass „Deutsche Studenten lesen häufig Kant in Übersetzungen, da diese Übersetzungen klarer sind.“

Niemand konnte bei uns diese Geschichte weder bestätigen noch verleugnen; weißt jemand hier mehr darüber?

Grüße,

Anderson

By: Anderson

Anderson — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:33:57 +0000

Okay, but does NOBODY have the scoop on whether German students really read Kant in English?

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:29:01 +0000

Ah, but it makes it that much harder to believe someone well-known is Irish when they don't drink themselves to death.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:51:02 +0000

It’s wrong to judge the Irish simply from their drunkenness, filthy appearance and laziness. Many are quite bright.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:40:01 +0000

John Emerson, #57: Really? Was Beckett Irish?

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 17:49:53 +0000

Bi 53: That sounds like Chang Chung-yuan’s “Tao: A New Way of Thinking”, which rendered almost everything with an interpretation.

There’s a dogma in Chinese studies that no poetic translation can be accurate and no accurate translation can be poetic (or even readable). Edward Schafer enforced this dogma, which probably traces back to a 50s dispute between Schafer’s teacher Boodberg (a Russian emigre Orientalist) and Kenneth Rexroth.

I base this conclusion on a snide comment Rexroth made on St. Petersburg military schools—which is where Boodberg (like the composers Musorgsky, Cui, Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakoff) received his early education.