{"id":698,"date":"2009-09-26T18:11:37","date_gmt":"2009-09-26T16:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/?p=698"},"modified":"2009-09-26T19:54:30","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T17:54:30","slug":"unendlicher-humor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/?p=698","title":{"rendered":"unendlicher humor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today, pondering the very odd choice of the word Spass in the title of the recently released German translation of Infinite Jest, I googled the background, and found several disconcerting things. The first being a review in a German liberal newspaper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, that was almost as cluelessly stumbling through the cultural and philosophical themes of the book as it was blatantly ruining the reader’s experience by providing most of the major plot points. This, I imagine, was meant to reassure the paper’s audience that the reviewer indeed has read the work under discussion, but considering that the interplay of narrative, suspense and resolution, or lack thereof, is a defining feature and an integral part of what the book is about, this is more knuckleheadedness than I would expect from a national paper. Though I realize that this may be only because I’ve been away from the country for such a long time.<\/p>\n

I also found that indeed Unendlicher Spass is not the classical German translation of Hamlet’s lament. That would have been “unendlicher Humor” from August Wilhelm Schlegel’s translation, which to my ear is infinitely more pleasing. Spass corresponds roughly to Fun in english, and carries completely inappropriate connotations of recent pop culture. To my surprise, and slight shock, I also came upon a post by the translator himself explaining his choice of Spass over Humor, pointing to the evocation of Spassgesellschaft as a positive. The word Spassgesellschaft to me represents a critique of entertainment’s pervasiveness on the level of a book by Neil Postman dumbed down to a soundbite and a headline phrase, and the whole complex of ideas represented by it is diametrically opposed to what Wallace was after in Infinite Jest. The book is brimming with reflective discourse and encyclopedic distractions that want to avoid easy questions or answers, and the word Spass with all its connotations to me undermines the whole enterprise.<\/p>\n

Of course I’m also riled up because this touches on my pet peeve, the German obsession with dubbing every bit of foreign entertainment, and the devastation it wreaks on the art it mangles – just try watching a dubbed episode of the Sopranos without putting your own feet in concrete and jumping off the Palisades, I dare you. This has always infuriated me, from the moment when I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and realized with a jolt I was watching a movie very different from Ritter der Kokosnuss (Knights of the Coconut), and not simply because there was no Eukalyptusbonbon am Stiel in Arthurian legend.<\/p>\n

Also, of course, this tangles quite a bit with the very mixed nuts kind of feelings I have about contemplating leaving the US to return to this Germany place. Macadamia or low grade peanut? You tell me.<\/p>\n

All of which is of course, completely incidental to the translation under discussion and quite unfair. For what it’s worth, here’s my reply sent to the German translation’s website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Oje. Ich befinde mich in der Sonderposition, Infinite Jest parallel zum Erscheinen seiner \u00dcbersetzung in Deutschland gelesen zu haben, und deren Rezeption parallel zu meinem eigenen Entdecken des Werks zu verfolgen, die \u00dcbersetzung selbst aber leider gar nicht zu kennen. Von Anfang an habe ich mich \u00fcber die Titelwahl gewundert, und dieser Kommentar macht es mir leider auch nicht verst\u00e4ndlicher. Infinite Jest hat doch im Englischen auch einen altert\u00fcmlichen und biederen Klang und ist zudem ein Verweis auf einen literarischen Klassiker. Das \u00dcbersetzerproblem, den verwendeten Ausdruck kontextualisieren k\u00f6nnen zu m\u00fcssen, ist zwar nachvollziehbar, aber Unendlicher Humorist w\u00e4re gegangen, wenn auch zugegeben ganz nicht so sch\u00f6n wie der Spassmacher, und am Unendlichen Jim f\u00fchrt ja ohnehin kein Weg vorbei.<\/p>\n

Das Hauptargument gegen den Spass ist f\u00fcr mich aber nicht, dass es eine bessere Wahl gegeben h\u00e4tte, sondern eben just der Anklang an die Nullvokabel Spassgesellschaft, den Sie mir unverst\u00e4ndlicherweise loben. \u201cSpassgesellschaft\u201d ist, was misanthropische Kulturkritiker aus dem Sack holen, wenn ihnen sonst nichts einfallen mag, und dieser Anklang holt meines Erachtens den komplexen Zielpunkt des Romans auf ein Reflektionsniveau, das Wallace selbst sorgf\u00e4ltig vermieden hatte, und nicht nur aus stilistischen, sondern vor allem aus werkimmanenten Gr\u00fcnden.<\/p>\n

Ausserdem, um mit einem anderen Klassiker zu reden: Jeder Versuch, die Biederkeit zu vermeiden, indem ihr Anschein vermieden wird, f\u00fchrt nur um so tiefer in die Biederkeit. Will sagen, dass mir der Spass unendlich viel biederer klingt als Schlegels Humor, oder, wenn schon weg von Schlegel, warum nicht \u201cUnendliche Komik\u201d, mit einem endlosen Komiker?<\/p>\n

Jetzt hab ich ein bisschen ein schlechtes Gewissen, weil ich von der \u00dcbersetzung buchst\u00e4blich nur den Titel kenne, und hier rummaule, ich hoffe, Sie nehmens mir nicht krumm. Die \u00dcbersetzung ist in jedem Fall ein unfasslicher Verdienst. My hat\u2019s off to you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


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Today, pondering the very odd choice of the word Spass in the title of the recently released German translation of Infinite Jest, I googled the background, and found several disconcerting things. The first being a review in a German liberal newspaper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, that was almost as cluelessly stumbling through the cultural and philosophical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,65,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deutsch","category-englisch","category-infinite-jest","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genista.de\/engine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}