Better left buried?
According to Paul Duguid in his review of Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, in the July 7, 2006 issue of the TLS (not online):
Gutenberg offers some 17,000 “etexts”. Many seem unexceptional, but for some the need to avoid copyright entanglements has led contributors to resurrect editions which were better left buried. Its version of Pan, the novel by Nobel-Prizewinner Knut Hamsun, for example, puts William Wurster’s ridiculously prudish translation of 1921 before unsuspecting readers.
Leaving aside Duguid’s reference to W. W. Worster as “William Wurster” — he also refers to the film, A Mighty Wind, as The Mighty Wind; you can check that kind of stuff on the Internet, you know — this line made me wonder: what constitutes “ridiculous prudishness”?
So I got down my copies of Worster’s 1921 translation and MacFarlane’s 1957 translation and compared them line by line. I found four points of variation that could be considered relevant to a charge of prudishness:
Chapter 8:
Worster: “I lay my hand on her.”
MacFarlane: “And she is naked under her dress from head to foot and I place my hand on her.”
Chapter 32:
Worster: And Eva — Eva lay beside it, mangled and broken, dashed to pieces by the shock — torn beyond recognition.
MacFarlane: Eva laid beside it, crushed and broken, smashed by the blow, torn beyond recognition down her side and below the waist.
Postscript – Chapter 2
Worster: I might have listened much more, but I had to go.
MacFarlane: Glahn and Maggie were obviously awake and I could have overheard a great deal more, but I had to go.
But I suspect this is the passage Duguid had in mind, from Chapter 8:
Worster: “Tie my shoestring,” she says, with flushed cheeks …” The sun dips down into the sea and rises again, red and refreshed, as if it had been to drink. And the air is full of whisperings. An hour after she speaks, close to my mouth: “Now I must leave you.”
MacFarlane: “Tie my shoelace,” she says with flaming cheeks. And in a little while she whispers against my mouth, against my lips: “Oh, you are not tying my shoelace, you my dearest heart, you are not tying … not tying my …” But sun dips his face into the sea and comes up again, red, refreshed, as if he had been down to drink. And the air is filled with whispers. An hour later she says against my mouth: “Now I must leave you.”
And that’s everything I could find. Prudish, yes. But still, “better left buried”? If you’ve read Worster you know there’s incomparable poetry in his translations, and on many dimensions — there are literary qualities other than sexual candor; you’ll just have to trust me on that — they’ve never been bettered. I might argue you’ve never read Hamsun until you’ve read the Worster translations, which served as the English-speaking world’s introduction to Hamsun for more than a generation.
If Worster is the worst you can find in Gutenberg, then maybe I’m starting to believe in this Internet thing after all.
July 25th, 2006 12:59
Which has me scrambling back home to see which translation of “Pan” I happen to have! I certainly don’t recall that line “But sun dips his face into the sea and comes up again, red, refreshed, as if he had been down to drink”, which is enticingly loaded with innuendo. Then again, maybe my ridiculously prudish subconscious is blocking it from memory.
July 27th, 2006 19:19
So which is it? I don’t own the latest translation – Sverre Lyngstad’s.
July 28th, 2006 08:05
Just read Pan last week, as a matter of fact: the Lyngstad translation. In an attempt to be a good Nabokovian reader, I was going to reread my current copy, but now I shall change my direction slightly. The Worster translation, which I hadn’t known about, is my new text. Thanks for the timely report and the altered direction.
~Brian
PS The “sun dips his disk into the sea” before rising again in Sv. Lyn.’s translation…clever or plain?
July 28th, 2006 12:25
Ah — that’s great, Brian! Let me know what you think!
Re the sun: you remind me that it is somewhat unfair to have this conversation at all without looking at the Norwegian, but absent that, I have to say that I find Worster’s rendering less suggestive than either Lyngstad’s or MacFarlane’s but decidedly more beautiful. A matter of taste, perhaps …
July 29th, 2006 11:25
For anyone who likes a small dose of pleasure to accompany their eText reading — and who wants to engage the Worster text of Pan — I’ve loosely typeset the Gutenberg file and put it into a pdf (1mb). You can print it or view it on your screen. Sixty-four pages if you choose the former. The only thing I didn’t do was _italicize_ the non-English words. Enjoy.
http://www.the-antipodes.com/typeset/Pan-HAMSUN.pdf
August 3rd, 2006 17:47
My copy is the MacFarlane translation. I’ll have to thank my Scandinavian studies professor once again for exposing my once-innocent self to such titillating prose.
August 8th, 2006 15:56
Wotton of the Wise World!
I found your welcome web through an echte Walser Leserin (Echte wasn’t there) at the Zürich Archiv. I have Walserei to write, and can’t find an e-address in your wide world. As for W.W.W., I am across the Rhein from Mainz where Gutenberg is being toasted, and the attention paid by this thread to the weave of the (Italian e) translator’s text brings tears to this Weber’s eyes.
August 9th, 2006 10:47
Thanks for the kind words, Natan. Sadly, an echte Walser Leserin is not easy to find, though perhaps easier in your neighborhood than mine! My little Walser compendium is here, as you probably discovered:
http://goldenrulejones.com/?cat=6
Emails to GRJ go to goldenrulejones@yahoo.com. Happy to hear from you in this anniversary year!
Sam