A Different ‘Darkness at Noon’

nybooks.com

32 points·lermontov··6 comments

Isn’t it odd that an article with in-depth discussion of a German-English translation does not feature any German?

> Meanwhile the “fever” Rubashov suffers during his interrogations is lowered to a “temperature,”

The German source is already represented in English! Yet this is a translation as well. The author presents his own translation as neutral. This is weird. Especially given that many readers that are interested in the subject will have some notions of German. And even readers with no knowledge whatsoever of German will be able to read through a text with some German words as long as they are translated as well. Why couldn’t the author write something like:

> The ‘Fieber’ Rubashov suffers from could easily be translated as ‘fever’, but the more moderate synonym ‘temperature’ is used.

At least the author should have given the German excerpts in notes, since the reader has no way to access this newly discovered German text.

That was the same thing I was thinking...

Where else but the NYROB can you get this level of erudition?

In the New Criterion. At least a few years ago this was true:

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Koestler-s-contradi...

Err, no. That is a straightforward book review, not an exhaustive treatment of how an undiscovered original manuscript of Koestler's was discovered in the archives, plus an in-depth examination of differences between the as-published English manuscript and the newly discovered German one, and a personal appeal to publishers, many of whom read the NYROB, to find a way to publish the new version.

One of my favourite novels. Highly recommended especially if you like books like Nineteen Eighty-Four.

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