The magic mountain mann5/30/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He has smoothed out Mann's periodic sentences so that they do not read choppily (Lowe-Porter's translation often does) and has replaced Lowe-Porter's sometimes delicate avoidances. Woods has carefully evaluated these contrasts and chosen a style that neither simplifies nor complicates. While the novel is not impenetrable in German, it is very discursive and swings between being flip (especially regarding the hero Hans Castorp) and ponderous (in the philosophic paragraphs that discuss Life and Nature). Mann might be thought of as a kind of philosopher-jeweler who looks at his characters and their situation as though he were examining a faceted gem. "The Magic Mountain" is not a traditional late-19th Century narrative but an acute analysis of human beings under threat of death. Therefore, tone is crucial in properly translating the novel. The novel has a narrator, a nameless spirit who looks down on the happenings at the Berghot sanatorium with benign amusement, displaying the "Olympian hauteur" that George Steiner complained about in Mann's works. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |