324
PARTISAN REVIEW
And if the reader follows the writer's advice and goes back to the
text, in the state of mind that permits him to linger in it, leisurely,
looking up and around, yet staying conncctcd, it may be the first
indication of a successful day.
Peter Handke was fortunate that Ralph Mannheim, one of the great
translators of this century, translated most of his prose texts over a period
of more than a quarter century. However, Mannheim died after
completing
Tiredness
and
The Successful Day,
and the final editing was
done after his death. It is quite revealing to compare his approach to
Krishna Winston's translation of
The Jukebox.
Goethe, the difficult
almighty father figure, always, overshadowing Handke's (as any other
German language writer's) aspirations, distinguished three kinds of
translations: The first comparable to getting the reader acquainted with a
foreign country, its prime purpose information rather than poetic vision.
The second effort adapts and appropriates the foreign material. A quasi–
naturalization process, aimed at eliminating cu ltural differences as much as
possible, also seems closest to the American spirit. The third stage, further
elaborated by Walter Benjamin in his seminal essay on translation, creates
a third work as it were, that stands on its own, with its own unique
language and poetic sweep, thereby expanding both languages.
Mannheim, having accompanied Handke throughout his writing career,
has been able to develop in step with the writer towards the third stage.
There is a distinct Handke tone, a characteristic vocabulary in his
translations, which are no longer just faithful equivalents, but literary
works in their own right. As a brilliant thinker on his own terms -
Mannheim is the only translator of Heidegger who accomplished the
task without footnotes - he could work with a completely self-assured
ease shortening lengthy German sentences with complex philosophical
propositions, simplifying idioms and rearranging secondary clauses
without sacrificing their meaning or the overall rhythm - a lightness, so
essential to Handke's aesthetics and ethics as a writer. He knows when to
usc
holy
and not
sacred,
when a
Bote
is not the messenger in the Greek
tradition but a biblical herald, the (Kantian)
Ding Tag
appears
philosophically not only correct but elegant as "the object named day."
A couple of substantial errors which reverse the intended meaning could
be due to Mannheim's often radical transformation of syntax and idioms,
in the interest of both precision and lucidity; in some instances they seem
to
have been perhaps misread or misunderstood in the process of the
posthumous editing. Krishna Winston's translation, by contrast, is faithful
to
a fault. Not a nuance in the winding sentence structure is missed. The
result is oddly distanced and labored. Hers comes closest to an "essay" as
