Another Great Books selection I had always wanted to read, and wow, it is indeed amazing. I tried a couple of translations: Kenneth Burke’s and H. T. Lowe-Porter’s. I noted some interesting differences:
- Burke translates “schwermütig-enthusiastischen Dichters” as “the heavy-hearted, enthusiastic poet,” which HTLP has as “melancholy and susceptible” (apparently the poet referred to is August von Platen-Hallermünde).
- In Aschenbach’s dream of ancient rites, Burke uses “the foreign god” vs HTLP’s “the stranger god.”
And one of the most haunting passages, after Aschenbach visits the barber:
- Burke: “It was raining sparsely and at intervals, but the air was damp, thick, and filled with the smell of things rotting. All around him he heard a fluttering, pattering, and swishing; and under the fever of his cosmetics it seemed to him as though evil wind-spirits were haunting the place, impure seabirds which rooted and gnawed at the food of the condemned and befouled it with their droppings. For the sultriness destroyed his appetite, and the fancy suggested itself that the foods were poisoned with contaminating substances.”
- HTLP: “It rained a little now and then, the air was heavy and turbid and smelt of decay. Aschenbach, with fevered cheeks beneath the rouge, seemed to hear rushing and flapping sounds in his ears, as though storm-spirits were abroad—unhallowed ocean harpies who follow those devoted to destruction, snatch away and defile their viands. For the heat took away his appetite and thus he was haunted with the idea that his food was infected.”
Other quotes
- Aschenbach’s longing to travel: “Desire projected itself visually: his fancy, not quite yet lulled since morning, imagined the marvels and terrors of the manifold earth. He saw. He beheld a landscape, a tropical marshland…”
- “His love of the ocean had profound sources: the hard-worked artist’s longing for rest, his yearning to seek refuge from the thronging manifold shapes of his fancy in the bosom of the simple and vast; and another yearning, opposed to his art and perhaps for that very reason a lure, for the unorganized, the immeasurable, the eternal—in short, for nothingness. He whose preoccupation is with excellence yearns fervently to find rest in perfection; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”
- Keeping the epidemic a secret: “So Aschenbach felt a dark contentment with what was taking place, under cover of the authorities, in the dirty alleys of Venice. This wicked secret of the city was welded with his own secret, and he too was involved in keeping it hidden.”