A familiar mountain scaled anew
Mann’s masterpiece sparkles in a
newish translation
I first read
The Magic
Mountain in 1971, and have returned to it at
approximately seven-year intervals ever since. You do the math: it was time.
Each reading has put a different book before my eyes, but this time out, taking
it up almost exactly 35 years since my first ascent, I found myself unexpectedly
daunted, the familiar H.T. Lowe-Porter translation somehow more granitic and
unwelcoming than I remembered it. A couple of days later, at the home of my good
friend Rose Barquist, I noticed John Woods’ 1995 English version on the
shelf, and asked to borrow
it.
I’d looked briefly at this
edition shortly after it was published, and was repelled. I was accustomed to
Lowe-Porter’s stately cadences (it has been said that she contrived on
behalf of English readers to translate Mann—into German), and a check of a
couple of favorite passages in the new version made me flinch. I'm here to tell
you (all three of my regular readers) that I've changed my mind. Woods'
translation is an order of lit magnitude fresher than poor Helen Lowe-Porter's
received text, and I suspect that it's closer to the brisk humor of Mann's
original prose.
The story is simple,
although told at great length: Hans Castorp, a young, unremarkable marine
engineer about to begin his career, stops at a Swiss sanatorium to visit his
cousin, confined there for treatment of tuberculosis. His three-week visit is
extended longer...and longer...and longer until, another 360 weeks having
passed, the cataclysm of WWI ejects him from his alpine enchantment. I've never
been able to convey persuasively why I love this book, but it has been
enormously gratifying on every reading, and never as much so as on the one I
concluded last night. I recommend this translation unreservedly to the
first-time reader.
Posted: Wed - April 19, 2006 at 07:26 PM