Tag: translations
Buchrezension: „The Translations of Seamus Heaney“, herausgegeben von Marco Sonzogni
Zwischen dem Graben von Kartoffeln und dem Ausgraben der Toten brachte Heaney Material aus verschiedenen literarischen Unterwelten wieder zum Vorschein und half dabei, sie mit seiner Stimme, seinem Dialekt und seiner Zeit bekannt zu machen. Um zu verstehen, wie sehr er dies getan hat, kann es aufschlussreich sein, zwei Übersetzer gegeneinander auszuspielen. In Richard Howards Übersetzung von Baudelaires „Le Squellette Laboureur“ (einem etwas blutigen Gedicht über die Bewunderung anatomischer Zeichnungen in einer Buchhandlung an einem Pariser Kai) sind die Figuren
When a Novel Reimagines a Nation
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The idea that novelists might partake in the project of nation-building by reimagining the past in order to create the possibility of a shared future dates back to at least Walter Scott. But some of the most artistically successful examples come from post-colonial Africa, where belief in the meaning of arbitrarily drawn borders can require an unusual stretch of the imagination. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ousmane Sembène, and
A New History of the Decoding of the Rosetta Stone, Reviewed
In 1798, Napoleon, with some four hundred ships, set sail across the Mediterranean, bound for Egypt. He had a practical purpose: he wanted to kick the English out of the eastern Mediterranean and block their lucrative trade with India. But he was also interested in Egypt itself, which his idol Alexander the Great had conquered in 332 B.C. By the nineteenth century, Egypt was no longer the glamorous prize it had been for Alexander. It was a backwater, hot, dry,