Quotations and Literature Forum

Thought I would start something a little different.

What is your faveorite book from translation? By that I mean, a faveorite book that was not orignally written in English, but translated from a different langauge.

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Every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Every man, every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise.
Robert De Niro, Cape Fear

Le Ventre de Paris by Emile Zola

(The Belly of Paris)

Zola wrote a long series of novels relating the stories of the Rougon- Macquart family, set in mid nineteenth century France. The Rougons were the rich and "respectable" part, the Macquarts poor. It is a brilliant series and gives so much social history as well as following all the different family members and their destinies.
The book I have chosen gives the picture of a family life in and around the great markets of Paris known as "Les Halles", which have sadly disappeared today.

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The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
e e cummings (1894 - 1962)

I like the Every Man's Library and Vintage Classics' translations of Dostoevsky's works. I'm currently on "The Idiot".

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"I learned to stick up to myself today, you're not angry are you?"

I might have to go with Dante's Inferno.

I also read this little Hindo story I read, that I picked up, called The Ashes of a God.

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Every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Every man, every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise.
Robert De Niro, Cape Fear

The relationship between literature and religion has sometimes been one of hostility, sometimes one of which they have occupied separate worlds. Today the relationship is at once more intimate and more complex. This lecture will explore the various ways in which literature enriches and deepens a religious view of life. At the same time it will suggest that
literature itself might be a critique from the outside.
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jackspar.

What?

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"I learned to stick up to myself today, you're not angry are you?"

Many of the translations from the Russian of Dostoyevsky were by Constance Garnett. These are starting to show their age now. I have never liked any of the American translations of Dostoyevsky. I don't know whether it is because the nuances of American English are more difficult for me to detect. Some US translations of other writers & works are superb (the Lattimore translation of the Iliad as opposed to the Penguin E.V. Rieu) but for some reason I find the translations of FD difficult. I think the David McDuff & David Magershack translations of Dostoyevsky are superb.

I believe there is a new translation of the Devils but I am not sure who by. I have read an Eva M. Martin translation of the Idiot but I didn't think it was particularly good. Her Russian is probably far superior to mine but I found it hard work. The Magarshack one is far better.

I have an art deco copy of Boccaccio's Decameron (late 1920s) translated by John Payne. I believe it is the poet John Payne, but I am not totally sure. It is a Blue Ribbon Books edition with illustrations by Steele Savage.

I have to say Anna Karenina. Absolutely sensational.

I would suppose Haruki Murakami has a decent pair of translators working for him, Jay Rubin, especially. And I don't remember the other guy's name.

Works in Hindi and Urdu turn out pretty badly in English because of the nature of the languages. Meanings that are to be conveyed in a much more standoffish, business-like manner than in Urdu where the words themselves are evocative and lilting.

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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.