Frederick’s Comments (group member since Jul 01, 2008)

Frederick’s comments from the In Defense of Lowe-Porter group.

I just noticed your message today. Sorry for the delay of six months!
Your question is a good one. Which book is this chapter in? H.T. Lowe-Porter translated five or six of Mann's books.

Our Grand Dame of a translator has been given a makeover. I've translated her image (which had been that of an Edwardian clay pipe with a face) into that of Margaret Dumont, Groucho, Harpo and Chico's foil in DUCK SOUP, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA and other great movies. She called herself "The best straightwoman in the business." Who better than she to be the face of a translator whose image eludes the web?

Here's a little parody I wrote a while back. (It was 1987.) I have to set it up first: The premise is a writer has sent his manuscript to a bunch of dead writers. And he's gotten a few answers. This is one:

LETTER TO CHARLES SATTERTHWAITE PENWRIGHT (Upon Receipt, in the Beyond, of his Manuscript)

88 Roundabout Road

Circles-Within-Circles

December 17th, 1987

To Mr. Charles Penwright:

May I convey my hope that my translator, that good Anglo-Saxon woman, will convey, in her turn, my meaning, as I trust she will?

I had been more than exceptionally busy answering, having finished reading them, the letters which lay in a pile upon my desk, when, ultimately, I arrived at yours, which, by mischance, I had left unread at the bottom of that pile.

Can I hope to tell you what it is to hold the pages graced by the graphite from your pencil? Can I impress upon you what it was like to read those grace-notes of language? Well, just as Mephistophiles described Hell to Faustus, I'll attempt to give you a sense of what I went through. Prepare yourself to be prepared.

I refer not merely to the faded quality of the graphite when I say that what you write is substantially light. And just as your pencil's particles sparkle with, at best, a dull lustre, so do the words shaped in its trail as it travels across the page. Your writing is lightweight and dimly lit, as paradoxical as that may seem to you to be.

But I do make appeal to you that you not be overwhelmed by these truths I so crudely utter. Life is made of such paradoxes as that one to which I have made reference at the end of the above paragraph. Should we not call it; life; ironic? You, perhaps, should, in your secret heart, think of life as so; for such a revelation of reflection might show, if abashedly, in your sentences.

I imagine, as I imagine one must, simply put, imagine, that you dislike me for saying what I have, in so many words, said. Please forgive once more my necessary crudeness.

And please, once more again forgive me, as I have neglected to put at the beginning of this letter, as would be customary, this question to my addressee: How are you? Perhaps there is something of poetic justice in my being made by the forces of nature to look bad when I put such a question; such a formality of courtesy; at the end of this epistle. It is just that, Penwright, I was in an enthusiastic rush to express my, and I find myself obliged to use the word, though to you it must be of but slight significance, contempt.

I am, as ever,

Thomas Mann






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Oh, Miss Lowe-Porter, you smell like a brand-new haircut!

I scoured the net for an image of Mann's translator, but couldn't find one. I scoured my conscience to find a scruple about finding an image I could swipe. No scruple existed. The picture you see came up on a search i did for "Edwardian Lady + Image." I've always pictured H. T. Lowe-Porter this way. I'm not sure she'd have liked being represented as a disembodied head which may or may not be some sort of pipe and may, for all i know, be Queen Victoria (who SHOULD have been surprised to find herself called "Edwardian," or very worried) but I'm pleased to have a picture representing, if not replicating, her.

I shall quote at length from David Luke's introduction to his 1988 translation of DEATH IN VENICE AND OTHER STORIES. Starting at page xiv, he says: "The first English translation was by Kenneth Burke (Knopf, 1925); in 1928 Secker published Helen Lowe-Porter's version, which has ever since then, until very recently, enjoyed the protection of exclusive copyright. Like all her translations of Mann, as is increasingly recognized, it is of very poor quality. To offer now a new English edition of this and six other stories therefore needs little justification. I feel bound, however, to put on record a few examples that will illustrate the linguistic inadequacy of the hitherto accepted sole mediator of Mann's collected works to the English-reading public..."
Michael Cunningham, in his introduction to Michael Henry Heim's 2004 translation (published by Ecco/Harpercollins), is quite clear about his belief that no single translation of anything is definitive. He points out that "Any assertion that a translation can be rendered 'accurate' if its blatant errors are corrected underestimates the art and magic of translation." Cunningham does make this point, however: "Heim's DEATH IN VENICE is, generally, a more lyrical, sympathetic book -- a slightly more intimate and personal book -- than Lowe-Porter's rather stern, disapproving one. Lowe-Porter gave us a clownish, foolish Aschenbach -- a figure who would not seem out of place in a Fellini movie. Heim also gives us a man in the throes of passion, and treats him with a respect that passion deserves."
Well, I read the Lowe-Porter DEATH IN VENICE about fifteen years ago and felt that H. T. Lowe-Porter had translated the very essence of tragedy.
Proust's translator, C. Scott Moncrieff, gets treated the same way Lowe-Porter does, and it's interesting to note that Moncrieff and Lowe-Porter worked during the lifetimes of the authors they translated. Would it be too harsh of me to say that, when a work is subject to translation, the dissatisfaction a later generation has with the sensibilities of an earlier one is rather too conveniently blamed on the original translator and not the author? Do the French, for example, blame the first French translator of Hemingway for Hemingway's macho posturing? Certainly, English-speaking readers attack Hemingway himself for that. This is because there's no translator standing between Hemingway and us.
In another post, I'll go into detail about the differences between Jefferson S. Chase's 1999 translation and the others. Chase's introduction seems to champion a way of translation completely opposite to the way David Luke translates.
Now, a little Contrast 'n' Compare: What follows are three different translations of the opening paragraph of Mann's short story, TONIO KROGER:
Here's Luke: "The winter sun was no more than a feeble gleam, milky and wan behind layers of cloud above the narrow streets of the town. Down among the gabled houses it was damp and drafty, with occasional showers of a kind of soft hail that was neither ice nor snow."
Here's Chase: "The winter sun appeared as but a weak spot of brightness over the cramped city, milky-white and dull behind layers of clouds. It was wet and drafty in the narrow gable-lined streets, and a kind of soft hail, neither ice nor snow, fell intermittently."
Here is Lowe-Porter: "The winter sun, poor ghost of itself, hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud above the huddled roofs of the town. In the gabled streets it was wet and windy and there came in gusts a sort of soft hail, not ice, not snow."
Now, I do not know German, but if Lowe-Porter came up with "poor ghost of itself," I'm prepared to say she's enhancing the original somewhat. But both Luke and Chase use an indoor word for an outdoor phenomenon when they use "drafty." Lowe-Porter uses "gusts." If Mann's original description was an equivalent of "drafty," I can imagine Lowe-Porter's idea was that there was no way to make the English language conform to it without the prose seeming bizarre. And I think "drafty" is a bizarre concept when applied to wind going through an alleyway or between houses. In a hallway inside a house, "drafty" makes sense in English, but not when applied to the outdoors. I'll also say that Lowe-Porter achieves a hushed effect which is pure poetry.