Translating Holocaust Literature

157 Pages·2015·1.824 MB·English

by  Peter Arnds

Peter Arnds (ed.)
Translating Holocaust Literature
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Inhalt
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
AlanTurnbull
TheDresdenArchiveProject.Acontemporaryartwork . . . . . . . . . . 13
TaraBergin
TranslatingthePassionofRavensbrück:TedHughesandJ(cid:130)nosPilinszky 23
AlanaFletcher
TransformingSubjectivity:Sequesto(cid:192)unuomoinTranslationand
Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
BettinaStumm
CollaborativeTranslation:TheRelationalDimensionsofTranslating
HolocaustTrauma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Ga(cid:218)tanPƒgnyinterviewsFranÅoisRastier
WitnessingandTranslating:UlyssesatAuschwitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
RitaHorv(cid:130)th
“TheMagicalPropertiesofCreativeSameness:TheRoleofTranslationin
AnneMichaels’sFugitivePieces” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
StephanieFayeMunyard
BermanandBeyond:TheTrialoftheForeignandtheTranslationof
HolocaustLiterature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
AnnaNunan
TranslatingMonikaMaron’sPawelsBriefeasaPostmemorialHolocaust
Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6 Inhalt
RosaMartaGßmezPato
PoetryofMemoryandTraumaandtheirTranslation . . . . . . . . . . . 125
BastianReinert
TranslatingMemory.ActsofTestimonyinResnais,Cayrol,andCelan . . 139
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Introduction
In his testimony about his survival in Auschwitz Primo Levi insisted that “la
nostralinguamancadiparoleperesprimerequestaoffesa,lademolizionediun
uomo - our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a
man”(PrimoLevi,IfThisIsAManTranslatedbyStuartWoolf[London:Abacus,
1987]32).Iflanguage,ifanylanguage,lacksthewordstoexpresstheexperience
of the concentrationcamps, how does onewrite the unspeakable? How can it
then be translated? Martin Heidegger’s discussion in his Parmenides lectures
from1942/43oftranslation(Übersetzung,withthestressonthesecondsyllable)
asanactofÜbersetzen(withthestressonthefirstsyllable)impliescrossinga
rivertotheotherside,anareawherethetruthmayemergefromconcealment
andforgetting(Lethe).YetinPrimoLevi’smemoirtheactoftranslatinginthe
senseofre-presentingtheexperienceoftheLagertorelativesandfriendsback
homeintheunlikelycaseofsurvivalbecomesacollectivenightmare.Itreflects
oneofLevi’sworst fears for life after Auschwitz, that ofa prolonged isolation
withhismemories,anaptimageultimatelyfortheimpossibilityoftranslation.
Lager(camp)isoneofthewordsthatLevileavesun-translated.Thismaybedue
to the association with fields of flowers of the Italian campo, but such un-
translatability also extends to many other texts about the Holocaust. The
translation of a word like Ungeziefer (bug? cockroach? vermin? insect?) by
which Kafka describes Gregor Samsa in his story Metamorphosis is similarly
chargedinthecontextofracialmelancholiaandtheHolocaust.
Thelimitsofrepresentationandtranslationseemtobecloselylinkedwhenit
comestowritingabouttheHolocaust–whetherasfiction,memoir,testimony–
aphenomenonthecurrentstudyexamines.Whilethereisaspateofliterature
about the impossibility to represent the Holocaust (see, for example, Saul
Friedlander’s seminal Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the
FinalSolution,[Cambridge:HarvardUP,1992]),thereishardlyanyliteratureon
thelinksbetweentranslationinitsspecificlinguisticsense,translationstudies,
andtheHolocaust,anichethisvolumeaimstofill.
ThearticlesinthisbookhaveevolvedfromaconferenceIorganizedatthe
8 Introduction
TrinityLongRoomHubatTrinityCollegeDublininJune2013.Theideaforthis
event arose while I was working on the untranslatability of some of the vo-
cabularyinPrimoLevi’sIfthisisaman,Sebald’sAusterlitz,andFranzKafka’s
Metamorphosis, realizing that there are German words that are so closely as-
sociatedwiththeHolocaustandNationalSocialism’sbrandofbiopoliticsthat
theydefytranslationintootherlanguages.
OurkeynoteaddresswasheldbyvisualartistAlanTurnbull(Newcastleupon
Tyne)whosharedhisworkontheDresdenArchiveProjectwiththeparticipants.
Hefocusesonthetranslationofimages(postcards,Alan’sownpaintings,etc.)
overtime,frompre-wartopost-warDresden.Althoughnotdirectlylinkedtothe
Holocaust,thisprojectwillopenourvolumeonquestionsoftranslation,which
largelycentresaroundthetranslationoflanguage.
Inheressay“TranslatingthePassionofRavensbrück:TedHughesandJ(cid:130)nos
Pilinszky” Tara Bergin then explores the relationship between the poetics of
Hungarian post-war poet J(cid:130)nos Pilinszky and the literalistic approach of his
EnglishtranslatorTedHughes.UsingashermainexampleHughes’stranslation
of Pilinszky’s poem ‘Passion of Ravensbrück,’ Bergin outlines the process of
Hughes’stechnique,concentratingonhisbeliefthatarough,unrhymingversion
would be best suited to Pilinszky’s “poor” poetics, even if this meant being
unfaithfultotheformalandmetricappearanceofthesourcetext.Berginsug-
geststhatthede-regularising impactthatliteraltranslationcanhaveonatext
becameaneffectactivelysoughtafterbyHughes;onethatwouldnotonlyshape
howEnglish-speakingaudiencesperceivedPilinszky’sfirst-handaccountofthe
Holocaust,butalsoHughes’sownpoetry.Forevidenceofthis,sheconcentrates
onhiscontroversial1970collectionCrow,abookwithwhich,accordingtocritic
A. Alvarez, Hughes joined “the select band of survivor-poets whose work is
adequatetothedestructiverealityweinhabit.”
Inheressay“TransformingSubjectivity:Sequesto(cid:192)unuomoinTranslation
and Adaptation” Alana Fletcher mentions how Primo Levi writes in his 2002
retrospective, L’asimmetria e la vita (translated in 2005 as The Black Hole of
Auschwitz), of the voicelessness he and his fellow inmates at Auschwitz expe-
rienced,andhowacorrelativeneedto communicatethisdehumanizingexpe-
rience to others brought about the memoir of his year-long internment, Se
questo(cid:192)unuomo(DeSilva,1947)(BlackHole24).Afterthememoir’sreprintby
Einaudiin1957,bothitspopularityanddisseminationincreasedconsiderably.
The processes of translation and adaptation that occur after this point con-
sistentlyrevealoppositionsbetweenLevi’snotionthatanincreasedaccessibility
anduniversality isachievedthroughtranslationoftheworkintomultiplelan-
guages(asevincedbyhiscommentsinthePrefacetotheGermaneditionofhis
memoir [1961]), and his feeling that languagelessness is exacerbated by an
interchangeofmultiplelanguagesinwhichnoneexchangesthesamemeaning
Introduction 9
with another. A kind of personal revelation about the way language conceals
ratherthanrevealsseemstohavebeenpromptedbyGeorgeWhalley’sdramatic
adaptationofSequesto(cid:192)unuomofortheCanadianBroadcastingCorporation,
simplyentitled“IfThisisaMan”(broadcast30September1951).Oftheradio
drama,Leviwrote:“[Thecreators]hadunderstoodfullwelltheimportancein
that camp of a lackof communication, exacerbated by the lackof a common
language,andtheyhadbravelysettheirworkwithintheframeworkofthetheme
oftheTowerofBabelandtheconfusionoflanguages”(BlackHole26).Fletcher’s
article examines faultlines betweenthese two opposing view points ontrans-
lation and dissemination, focusing on differences between Primo Levi’s guid-
ance and reception of straight translations of the memoir into English and
German,andhisreceptionofitsmultilingualadaptionforradiobyWhalley,a
Canadian scholar and poet, World War II naval officer, CBC broadcaster, and
translator.
InhisprefacetoTheDrownedandtheSaved(1988),PrimoLevidescribesa
nightmarethatmany prisonersinAuschwitzshared:theyhad returnedhome
andbeguntotelltheirstoriesofsufferingtoalovedone,buttheirstorieswere
notbelievedandnotevenlistenedto.Intheworstcases,theinterlocutorturned
andleftwithoutresponse.Levi’sdescriptionsuggeststhatboththegoalandthe
challenge of translating Holocaust trauma into narrative form is that of rela-
tionshipandresponse.Survivorsrelate(tell)theirstoriesandinviterecipientsto
relate(connectandinteract)inresponse.Whilesurvivorsstruggletotelltheir
stories, the crisis of communicability often lies in the recipient’s inability to
receive, relate and respond to the survivor, resulting in a breakdown of com-
munity inthe act of translation.Bettina Stumm’s contribution“Collaborative
Translation:TheRelationalDimensions ofTranslatingHolocaustTrauma” fo-
cusesonthedialogicalandrelationalnatureoftranslatingtraumaintonarrative
andthecriticalroleoftherespondentinthatprocesstosuggestthatoneofthe
primary purposes of translation is to create or re-create community where
traumahasdestroyedit.ThroughtheworkofDoriLaub(Testimony,1992)and
Kelly Oliver (Witnessing, 2001), she suggests that the practices of relational
representationandresponseinvolvedintranslatinganexperienceoftraumainto
narrativecan aid in personal healing and community building. She addresses
how these processes function in practice by examining her own role as a re-
spondentinhercollaborativeworkwithalocalHolocaustsurvivor toprepare
hermemoirsforpublicationin2005.Inthisprocess,Stummtranscribedmuch
ofthesurvivor’sstory frominterviewsandtranslatedherbrokenEnglish(her
firstlanguagewasDutch)intoacoherentandchronologicalnarrativeaccount.
Through this dialogic process of narration and translation a relationship de-
veloped that not only challenged the incommunicability of trauma but also
openedaspaceforhealingandhope.