Translating Kafka: Will Self, Anthea Bell, Joyce Crick, Karen Seago and Amanda Hopkinson
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- Read Will Self in the LRB: lrb.me/g80
Will Self talks to leading translators about the complexities of Franz Kafka’s German. The panel comprises Will Self, Dr Anthea Bell, Dr Joyce Crick, Dr Karen Seago and Professor Amanda Hopkinson.
The discussion formed part of Will Self's digital essay project on Kafka for the London Review of Books: thespace.lrb.co...
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So glad I found this gem.
Many thanks for making this available.
Over the years I've loved reading Kafka, although I'd be far too working class and intimidated to sit in such a lecture theatre.
Also re humour in Kafka and especially reading The Castle, I remember being surprised to finding myself laughing in places. I wondered if it spoke to me more being from a quite oddly anachronistic background in the rural north of England. There was a juxtaposition of absurdity and reality, but whilst laughing I didn't really ponder, or care, if Kafka intended me to find it funny. It just touched on my own deeper sense of curtailed self and the familiarity of a kind of personal grotesque.
Now I don't feel so daft for laughing. It might have even been in the right places!
Dr.Anthea Bell - I've spent my whole life wondering about the genius that translated Goscinny & Uderzo, fanboy happiness!
As a non native English speaker, to read Bell & Hockridge's translations of the Asterix albums was a tremendous pleasure. I wasn't aware that a lot of the humour poured forth from Dr. Bell's pen. I also learnt the nuances of conversational English through these translations.
"We've been framed, By Jericho!"
What an astounding linguistic wit!
After watching this harping on humor in Kafka, I'm reminded of something I just read... "After all, crying and laughter have their common wellspring in all-consuming despair." from Melancholy (Laszlo Foldenyi). I think you just need to have the right understanding (like the younger German-speaking woman in the audience). Maybe Will is close with the laughter at the end of a dark tunnel metaphor...
Thanks for this. Marvellous.
It surprises me to hear that Will Self doesn't 'get' the funny side of Kafka...considering that his own characters (Zac Busner comes immediately to mind) quite often derive a lot of their humour from the dislocated pomposity of 'official' or pseudo 'scientific' language in order to shore up the incongruities of their own world view and position. That is the humour in Kafka. It is this official, pompous use of the language in rendering banal and with a patina of common sense that which is nightmarish or irrational. This is why many draw comparisons between Kafka's use of language and his foreshadowing the language of Nazi propaganda. I think it has to borne in mind that Kafka was lawyer, and much of his circle like Brod had a legal background, and would have had this appreciation of the vagaries and and idiocies of the officialdom of the austro hungarian empire of their time. I can quite easily imagine him and his circle laughing at such things, if read by Kafka in a kind of world weary, 'psudeo' official sort of way. There is also playing with the bourgeois concerns in Kafkas work (i.e. upon finding himself 'monstrous vermin' all Gregor can do is worry about getting work and what his boss will say about his lateness) in contrast with the irrational and the truly surreal. It is funny, but it is 'laughter in the dark' and serves to underline the true hopelessness and horror of his characters situations.
+BelatedCommiseration Glad someone else has highlighted the 'bourgeois concerns', that was my first thought - i find Gregor's response at the beginning of Metamorphosis hilarious. And there's nothing physical about it at all.
Well...dunno about that! But I do like me an opinion every now and then, and I hope they are well considered...annoys me going over old comments though because there's always spelling and grammar errors, which would probably not be the case if I was truly as well read as I like to think I am, although this comment of mine wasn't too bad in that regard...oh well...anyone can type accurately...but I do it with wonderful expression! One has to keep science for ones life don't you find? :P
I found Kafkas short stories far less humorous than his full length novels; especially the castle made me burst out with laughter at times; I remember K. sitting on the secretaries bed in the middle of the night, or his helpers at times and how he treats them like animals. But they are right, it is a very satirical and visual thing for me as well, that's also why I love Kafka so intensely I think.
The castle is a slapstick farce where the author is taking the pi55 out of the reader
I have Ernst Pawel’s The Nightmare of Reason but the text is too small to read so this vid was very useful. Many thanks. RP
I find physical comedy extremely funny, whether real or animated. I watched Aristocats recently, and couldn't stop laughing hysterically, especially at the scenes with Edgar and the dogs.
funny how that can keep you in childhood, or is it.
Just read Dr Anthea Bell's translation from the German of All For Nothing. Wonderful.
Coincidentally, Brecht said Chaplin got closer to a pure expression of Epic Theatre than even he managed to.
Amanda Hopkinson says that Einstein's comment "The human mind isn't that complicated" was upon a novel of Kafka's. I heard, many years ago, that Einstein said "Nothing is that complicated" after reading "The Interpretation of Dreams" by Freud.
Can anyone settle this?
Dear Joyce Crick, I hate to say it but I sure wish I had a word processor copy of The Interpretation of Dreams so that I could substitute "puzzle of dreams" everywhere it has "problem of dreams"
I have read The Trial, two or three times, and still find it rather disappointing. The Castle, I think, is quite brilliant, and often, utterly hilarious. Metamorphoses, I thought, was a pile of shit. He wakes up one morning to find that he has turned into an insect, or whatever, but is most worried about how he is going to get into work. Hysterical. More like, mildly amusing, for about two seconds. Will Self is a legend, in his own lifetime. Love him or hate him. One cannot ignore him, he has such a presence, or fail to have an opinion about him, one way or another. Did not rate The Book Of Dave all that highly, but the trilogy, Umbrella, Shark and Phone, was quite brilliant, well worth the effort, in my opinion. ✌️
Who ties your shoelaces?
different nations have different sense of humor ... my first reading of kafka was in czech and i found it funny, not lol-funny but funny... german sense of humor is closer to czech sense of humor than to english sense of humor ...
many expressions/idioms are word by word the same in czech and german ... example>> du kannst mir auf den buckel steigen | muzes mi vlezt na zada/hrb...
are you describing irony or sarcasism as character of humor
Anthea Bell. I always wanted to ask her .. why Getafix and not Panoramix? And yes, as Will Self confirms, I did read Kafka in my teens. Metamorphosis in German at the age of 17.
Ironization, or as Orwell called it at the time "double think" - began with the German's almost note for note imitation of British colonialist practices in the 19th century.
Without on my phone it and my then my and I can ❤. do do a video video chat and on your own and
Somebody give this guy a knighthood.
He may not accept it but you and I can give him the honour in the deserved spirit....
I see he dressed up a little for the occasion. Complete disrespect for the hosts. Should have been put back on the bus!
I think what Self is missing is a sense of humour.
Google Will Self and Shooting Stars.
If you need to explain to someone why the court official throwing all those lawyers down the stairwell in The Trial is funny, then there's a pretty good chance that same someone is completely lacking even the slightest hint of a sense of humor. And yet, in this case, he still seems to really enjoy listening to himself talk. What a stodgy windbag!
Well firstly, he's only being honest. Secondly, if situation is the only thing that transcends language barriers, Kafka evidently did not write universally humorous situations (not the way Heller did, for example), otherwise more non-German speakers would have found him funny.
This is like a mockumentary about a beleaguered, teacherly malcontent watching the last vestiges of his childhood amputated by a committee of comically unimpressed, clinically depressed aunts.
Kafka doesn't use pantomime as much as, which Dr Anthea Bell pointed out, absurdity. Will Self is just bloody condescending and ignorant here.
It is hard to listen to Will Self--here is a man whose politics are wretched and odious. And here is a man whose non-fiction writing goes from wrong-headed to empty-headed. and whose fiction continues to deteriorate. I no longer mistake his style for thoughtfulness---,
Very hard to listen, to his self-admitted density (more like a stubborn sense of deterministic thinking). Just hammering away, asking for more people to explain things to him over and over.
He ( Will Self ) certainly seems well read.
I'm puzzled as to why you commented on Self's writing. Even if I had read it, and hated it, I can't imagine being moved to tell the world. I do think that he was over-amplified in relation to the other speakers, and tended to go on a bit about the humour in Kafka. But otherwise, I think he did a very good job of guiding the discussion.
My thoughts exactly. Self is unbearable.
The obvious question is, why did you listen to him?
Pretentious, as hell!