Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Resvick, Jessica C

Titel

Faust: A Tragedy, Part I by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (review)

Ist Teil von

• Eighteenth - Century Studies, 2020-10, Vol.54 (1), p.225-227

Ort / Verlag

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Project MUSE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The renewing potential of translation—indeed, of any act of cultural transmission—lies at the heart of so many of Goethe’s works, and Stelzig has succeeded in crafting a vibrant English version of this masterpiece. Contrast this with Atkins (“If on a bed of sloth I ever lie contented, / may I be done for then and there!”) or Greenberg (“If ever you see me loll at ease, / Then it’s all yours, you can have it, my life!”).1 Another happy formulation comes in the “Prelude in the Theater,” where Stelzig’s internal rhyme (“Thus don’t spare me on this day / Either fine scenery or stage machinery,” vv. 246–47) captures the spirit of a line that in the original emerges rhythmically. [...]there is simply no English equivalent that will ever attain the canonicity of the original, which is so ingrained in the German cultural imaginary that it even serves, in lightly modified form, as the slogan for a drugstore chain: “Hier bin ich Mensch, hier kauf’ ich ein!” (Here I’m human, here I shop!”).