[HN Gopher] The writers who translated Goethe became some of the...
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The writers who translated Goethe became some of the best writers
in English
Author : drdee
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-03-02 04:38 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neh.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neh.gov)
| Veen wrote:
| An interesting fact I learned recently: Xi Jinping is huge Goethe
| fan.
|
| https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n11/edward-luttwak/goeth...
| Borrible wrote:
| Of course, admiring German classic is something of a necessary
| prerequisite for Chinese career bigwigs.Must have something to
| do with Hegel and Marx.
| bcbrown wrote:
| It has nothing to do with Hegel and Marx in this case, if you
| read the article. Around the time of the Cultural Revolution,
| Xi was banished to "a miserably poor mountain village", where
| the only book available was Goethe's Faust, which he reread
| until he knew it by heart.
| croes wrote:
| Goethe as a scientist led to
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetheanism
|
| and anthroposophy which led to so many anti vaxxers in Germany.
| Borrible wrote:
| Thank God, nobody was inspired by Newton's occultism.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studie...
|
| Or, say, Jack Parson's for that matter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer)
|
| Oh, wait, there was Ron.
| croes wrote:
| And how many anti vaxxers are based on that or have state
| funding for their schools?
| Borrible wrote:
| Can't be bothered to look up what they say about
| vaccination , but Scientology for example has obviously
| other priorities anyway.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_status_of_Scientology_i
| n...
| wnscooke wrote:
| There was once a Kazakh translation of Faust, by Goethe, that I
| found in Almaty in the late 90's, made some photocopies, then
| lost those. How in the world could I ever find this book again
| (now that I'm not in Kazakhstan, much less Almaty)? Is there a
| Goethe repository somewhere?
| egberts1 wrote:
| CSU, Sacramento (California) has a section of Goethe's works
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Things like this have a wistful tragedy for me. There's a book
| I read as a child that had one particularly beautiful
| description of the protagonist eating some toast with
| blackberry jam. I have no idea what the rest of the book was
| about, what genre it was, the author, nothing except for a
| clear recollection that there was a very cozy scene about jam.
| It feels so easy to come across books or works that leave an
| impression on us somehow, but it's even easier to lose touch
| and then potentially never come back to them again. Thankfully
| the internet can be astonishingly good at identifying these
| things. I'd suggest asking your question on reddit or a forum
| somewhere. I've found a couple of things that I was sure would
| be lost forever thanks to helpful internet strangers.
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| Could you be thinking of Bread and Jam for Frances? I had
| completely forgotten about this book until I read your
| comment and it popped back into my head. Frances jumping rope
| and eating toast and jam. It's weird the way our brains can
| remember random things from decades ago.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/911579.Bread_and_Jam_for.
| ..
| urubu wrote:
| There seems to be a Kazakh translation by a guy called Medeubai
| Kurmanov.
|
| See:
| http://www.rusnauka.com/9_NND_2014/Philologia/6_162301.doc.h...
|
| Quote: 'The first part of tragedy in Kazakh language was
| published in 1969. The full translation of Goethe's drama poem
| "Faust" was edited in 1983. The translation of "Faust" into
| Kazakh language in Germany was marked. Klaus Schneider in his
| book <<Alma-Ata. Kasachischer Fruehling>> writes with delight
| about Medeubai Kurmanov. Many warm words are written about him
| in the reporting of Rut Kraft <<Fruechte aus Alma-Ata>>.
| Medeubai Kurmanov is selected the honorary member of Goethe
| International society.'
|
| Maybe the Goethe-Institut in Almaty knows more.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| gutenberg project?
| yorwba wrote:
| I found a version you can read online:
| http://kazneb.kz/site/catalogue/view?br=1110185 I don't know
| Kazakh, so apologies if it turns out to be in the wrong
| language. It doesn't seem to be Russian, at least.
| copperx wrote:
| It follows that those that are porting the GNU coreutils to Rust
| will become the best programmers in the world.
| cafard wrote:
| The author says of _Middlemarch_
|
| """ As a consequence, Will exchanges the questing pursuit of a
| meaningful life for the settled, trivial existence of a
| bourgeois, a fate incompatible with his previous identity "as a
| kind of Shelley" or "a Byronic hero." """
|
| My recollection is that he ended up as a Member of Parliament.
| The life of a back-bencher, as I suppose he must have been, is
| not world-historical, but hardly trivial, particularly not in
| comparison to the dabbling in painting etc. he had done before.
| DC-3 wrote:
| If you believe that Will had the potential to become a great
| artist or philosopher - and whether you believe this depends on
| your reading of the text, since I believe it is left somewhat
| ambiguous whether he was truly gifted or simply a high-grade
| dilettante - then you should probably consider the life he
| settled for to be underwhelming.
|
| You can probably name half a dozen great writers or great
| painters of the Victorian era without pausing for breath, but
| can you name even one back-bench MP? Perhaps this is because,
| especially in the time of _Middlemarch_ , Britain's democracy
| was only just struggling out of the dark ages (the Reform Act
| is in fact a major plot point), and was still far from the
| (mostly) accountable and representative system it is today.
| Most likely the life of an obscure MP was in fact rather more
| trivial (and for that matter, rather more bourgeois) than it is
| today.
|
| Of course, perhaps you consider Will to have simply reached his
| ceiling, as a bright but decidedly non-genius young man.
| Certainly the reader is left with the impression that while he
| may be impressive in his own way, the obscurity of Will's later
| life is something less of a tragedy than the obscurity of
| Dorothea's, whose brilliance seems rather more unquestionable.
|
| However, although it may be the lesser tragedy, I think when
| considered in view of the broader themes of the book, one must
| consider Will's comfortable irrelevance to be an
| underachievement. Recall the title - 'a study of provincial
| life'. Recall also how the ending dwells on the nature of a
| parochial existence; 'there is no creature whose inward being
| is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies
| outside it'. It seems to me - and this reading is not uncommon
| - that if Eliot intended to leave the reader with any lasting
| impression, it would be this: that even if a person has a very
| great talent, potential, or even genius, and even if they also
| have the temperament to put it to work, without a societal
| scaffold that is willing to support their growth they are
| doomed to languish - to settle.
|
| For these reasons I think the author of the article is right -
| Will did choose a trivial existence, neglecting his potential,
| and to refer to his prior travails as simply 'dabbling in
| painting' is to discount what should be regarded as the
| embryonic stages of his curtailed development into an artist of
| real stature and significance.
| Borrible wrote:
| "America, yours is the better lot
|
| Than is our continent's, the old.
|
| You have no ruined castles' rot
|
| Nor marbles cold.
|
| Nor is your inner peace affected
|
| In your present active life
|
| By useless thought which recollected
|
| Lead to useless strife."
|
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as quoted in Christian Melz "Goethe
| and America" in The English Journal 38 (1949): 248.
|
| Well, as Faulkner wrote in 'Requiem for a Nun': "The past is
| never dead. It's not even past."
|
| ------------------------------------------------------
|
| And now let's see if that Deepl.com AI will become a great writer
| in the future:
|
| "America, you have it better
|
| Than our continent, the old one,
|
| You have no ruined castles
|
| And no basalts.
|
| You do not disturb in the interior,
|
| To living time,
|
| Useless remembrance
|
| And futile strife."
|
| Hm, there is still a lot to be desired. But probably a lot better
| than me.
| zwieback wrote:
| Nice. Here's the German version:
|
| Amerika, du hast es besser
|
| als unser Kontinent, der alte
|
| Hast keine verfallenen Schlosser
|
| und keine Basalte.
|
| Dich stort nicht im Innern
|
| Zu lebendiger Zeit
|
| Unnutzes Erinnern
|
| und vergeblicher Streit.
|
| It rhymes so I'd say the first translation you posted has an
| edge. The second half of the AI creation sounds poetic but
| completely misses the meaning. I think Goethe is trying to say
| that the young US isn't weighed down by history as was Europe.
| Of course that completely changed with the civil war.
| Borrible wrote:
| Let's see what Google translate has to offer:
|
| "America, you have it better
|
| than our continent, the old one
|
| Have no decayed locks
|
| and no basalts.
|
| Don't bother you inside
|
| At living time
|
| Useless memory
|
| and futile quarrel."
|
| Well, there is room for improvement.
|
| I guess there is already a research paper out there that
| proves, if you noodle it through various translation programs
| and languages often enough it has to converge to
| incomprehensible babble below elementary school level.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Indeed, that is an apt quote for today's world.
|
| Looking at the meaning instead of the form - Jefferson may have
| said similar about Washington's doctrine about entangling
| alliances, "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all
| nations - entangling alliances with none."
| Borrible wrote:
| Which is fine for those that are exceptionally lucky to be
| ressourcefull, rich, strong and safe. So, not for everyone.
| jcims wrote:
| GPT-3 shows some promise:
|
| I am an artificial poet. Please request a poem and I will do my
| best. Q: Please write a poem in the style of
| Goethe that starts with "America, yours is the better
| lot Than is our continent's, the old." A:
| --------generated--------- America, yours is the
| better lot Than is our continent's, the old.
| For you have Liberty's bright torch And our world's
| dull night doth fold.
| Borrible wrote:
| Yes, but how do we know, GPT-3 not just copy/pasted someones
| anglistics homework?
|
| By the way, it claims to be a poet.The term has its origin in
| the Greek poietes, from poein, poiein "to make, create,
| compose," which implies an agent. So who is the maker,
| creator, composer here?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Here's a lineage of energy that should interest hackers
|
| Goethe -> Mary Wollstonecraft -> Mary Shelley -> Byron & Percy
| Shelley -> Ada Lovelace
|
| Ada got inspiration from the romanticism of Byron which burned
| brightly in the circle of influences of the Shelleys who were
| interested in animism (proto-neurology). Shelley's interest in
| animist-necromancy and artificial minds created by electricity is
| rooted in childhood trauma of her mother (Wollstonecraft) dying
| in childbirth. Mary sought a way to revive her spirit though
| science. Maybe, like all hermeneutic interpretations it's fuzzy,
| but there's a trajectory from the Greek influences on German
| philosophy to the imaginings that underpin the computer age.
| croes wrote:
| Here my shortened version for pandemic-affected
|
| Goethe -> Rudolf Steiner -> Bodo Schiffmann -> anti-vaxxers
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| Surely you forgot Nietzsche, and also about 100+ years
| between Steiner and Schiffmann.
| croes wrote:
| Therefore the word "shortened".
| zwieback wrote:
| Ouch. On a more positive note: Goethe -> George Eliot ->
| "browser"* -> the WWW
|
| * Bullet 12 in here:
| https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/538298/facts-about-
| georg...
| georgia_peach wrote:
| Of course Rudy isn't going to be a popular person on a tech
| board:
|
| " _And from the earth will well up terrible creations of
| beings who in their character stand between the mineral
| kingdom and the plant kingdom as automative beings with a
| super-natural intellect, an immense intellect. When this
| development takes hold, the earth will be covered, as with a
| web, a web of terrible spiders, spiders of enormous wisdom,
| which however, in their organisation don't even reach the
| plant status. Terrible spiders which will interlock with each
| other, which will imitate in their movements all that which
| humanity has thought of with their shadowlike intellect that
| was not inspired by a new imagination, through that which is
| to come through Spiritual Science. All man's thoughts of this
| kind, which are unreal, will come alive. The earth will be
| covered with terrible mineral-plant like spiders, which will
| link up with empathy but evil intention._ "
|
| - R. Steiner, 13 May 1921
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| It sounds like a description of the Internet.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| This part is evocative of AI for me:
|
| > will imitate in their movements all that which humanity
| has thought of with their shadowlike intellect that was
| not inspired by a new imagination
| smegsicle wrote:
| unpopular? i would counter that anyone who understands
| technology and _doesn 't_ consider it to be inherently
| slightly evil, probably doesn't believe that evil exists,
| at least in the traditional sense.
| croes wrote:
| Still no reason to follow the austrian version of L. Ron
| Hubbard
|
| "Rudolf Steiner believed that illnesses have their
| meaning in karmic events. Fever, for example, could help
| children to settle into their bodies. Those who had done
| things wrong in previous lives might have to make up for
| them through illness - and those who inoculate themselves
| could become deaf to the karmic message."
| georgia_peach wrote:
| Why beat on Rudy for karma? I think your beef here is
| with every religion of the East.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| The same argument could be made against imprisoning
| serial killers.
| croes wrote:
| My beef is with people that make measle parties because
| they think it's good for children go through an illness.
|
| With people that say I don't need vaccines I have a
| immune system.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| " _...I have told you that the spirits of darkness are
| going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be
| dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all
| inclination toward spirituality out of people's souls
| when they are still very young, and this will happen in a
| roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are
| vaccinated against one thing and another; in future,
| children will be vaccinated with a substance which it
| will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make
| them immune, so that they do not develop foolish
| inclinations connected with spiritual life - 'foolish'
| here, of course, in the eyes of materialists._ "
|
| - R. Steiner, 27 October 1917
|
| Safe and EFFECTIVE!
| bencollier49 wrote:
| That's an effective and viral message because it plays on
| the fears of people who have spiritual inclinations. Of
| course in reality, it's remarkably evil in its effects.
| How many people have died or been disfigured as a result
| of failure to vaccinate thanks to this claptrap? Spirits
| of darkness indeed, the greatest of which have a
| reputation for clothing themselves in light.
| croes wrote:
| Sounds like Scientology
| servytor wrote:
| A kingdom of spiders, reminds me of "Deepness in the Sky".
| I will always think about how cool it is that space-
| arachnids, led by Sherkaner Underhill, managed to outsmart
| the 'Focused' Emergents.
| DC-3 wrote:
| This argument might hold up better if Ada Lovelace were a more
| important or foundational figure. In reality, although
| undoubtedly bright and an intuitive 'computational thinker', as
| far as I know her contribution did not have a great influence
| on any later work and would probably be almost entirely obscure
| were it not for the significance of her being a woman.
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