Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's Preface
- Introduction: Broch, Our Contemporary
- I. Hermann Broch: The Critic
- II. Hermann Broch: The Novelist and Dramatist
- Inscriptions of Power: Broch's Narratives of History in Die Schlafwandler
- The German Colonial Aftermath: Broch's 1903. Esch oder die Anarchie
- Neither Sane nor Insane: Ernst Kretschmer's Influence on Broch's Early Novels
- Non-Contemporaneity of the Contemporaneous: Broch's Novel Die Verzauberung
- “Great Theater” and “Soap Bubbles”: Broch the Dramatist
- A Farewell to Art: Poetic Reflection in Broch's Der Tod des Vergil
- Poetry as Perjury: The End of Art in Broch's Der Tod des Vergil and Celan's Atemwende
- “Beyond Words”: The Translation of Broch's Der Tod des Vergil by Jean Starr Untermeyer
- Between Guilt and Fall: Broch's Die Schuldlosen
- Broch Reception in Japan: Shin'ichiro Nakamura and Die Schuldlosen
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index of Broch's Works
- Index of Names
“Beyond Words”: The Translation of Broch's Der Tod des Vergil by Jean Starr Untermeyer
from II. Hermann Broch: The Novelist and Dramatist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's Preface
- Introduction: Broch, Our Contemporary
- I. Hermann Broch: The Critic
- II. Hermann Broch: The Novelist and Dramatist
- Inscriptions of Power: Broch's Narratives of History in Die Schlafwandler
- The German Colonial Aftermath: Broch's 1903. Esch oder die Anarchie
- Neither Sane nor Insane: Ernst Kretschmer's Influence on Broch's Early Novels
- Non-Contemporaneity of the Contemporaneous: Broch's Novel Die Verzauberung
- “Great Theater” and “Soap Bubbles”: Broch the Dramatist
- A Farewell to Art: Poetic Reflection in Broch's Der Tod des Vergil
- Poetry as Perjury: The End of Art in Broch's Der Tod des Vergil and Celan's Atemwende
- “Beyond Words”: The Translation of Broch's Der Tod des Vergil by Jean Starr Untermeyer
- Between Guilt and Fall: Broch's Die Schuldlosen
- Broch Reception in Japan: Shin'ichiro Nakamura and Die Schuldlosen
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index of Broch's Works
- Index of Names
Summary
SINCE I AM A TRANSLATOR as well as a Germanist, I should like this article to call attention to the debt that all literature owes its translators, as well as its interpreters. The reputation of Hermann Broch in particular owes this debt of gratitude to the remarkable translation of The Death of Virgil created by the American poet Jean Starr Untermeyer. Her collaboration with Hermann Broch on the translation of Der Tod des Vergil constitutes one of the strangest and most fascinating literary partnerships of modern times. Much of their voluminous correspondence, mostly in English, from 1939 till Broch's death in 1951 is preserved at Yale University in the Broch Archive of Beinecke Library. Of the many women who played a role in Broch's life, Untermeyer's involvement with him is in some ways the most tragic. There are other moments in which it seems so neurotic as to be pathetic, or even comical. I will try to point out some of the high points, and low points, of their relationship. Those of us who have translated deceased poets often wish we could resuscitate them to ask them a few pointed questions. However, the case of Broch and Untermeyer represents a cautionary tale as to the vaunted advantages of working with a living poet.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Hermann Broch, Visionary in ExileThe 2001 Yale Symposium, pp. 217 - 230Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003