A long post by Richard Schneider Italienische Christa-Wolf-Übersetzerin Anita Raja mit Goethe-Medaille geehrt
I did not know that Anita Raja (thought to be Elena Ferrante) had a Polish-Jewish mother, who spoke German to her surviving family but only Italian to her daughter.
See also Wikipedia article on Anita Raja.
Wendy Cope’s poetry is so popular that faber published her Complete Poems, first in hardback in 2024, then in paperback in 2025 (Upminster Library didn’t have a copy but it did have several copies of books by Pam Ayres). Her poems are easy to read and often witty, and show a mastery of verse forms. They are also autobiographical. Interviewing Wendy Cope.
In a Guardian article she wrote that in the 1980s she had a love affair with a German poet, who gave her a collection of Heine poems, the Penguin one with English prose translations at the foot of the page. I assume it was Harry Oberländer, who died in 2023, as there is a poem by him on page 215, “Lauda”, translated from the German by the author and Wendy Cope. And “Sonnet of ’68” also by Oberländer (which takes me back to my time as a student in Berlin in 1967/68). Oberländer studied sociology at Frankfurt am Main and met Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Joschka Fischer. Assuming several references are to him, he wrote his last book without capitalization.
Continue reading
When I started re-reading Der Zauberberg last year, I was disappointed that I couldn’t get an edition with bigger print. I have a Kindle version too. But it seems that now that Mann’s works are out of copyright, new editions have appeared. There is also an expensive volume full of notes (in German), and even a posh Reclam version. My edition was by S. Fischer Verlage, and now other publishers have appeared, and there are new translations coming out. I am not fully informed of the situation but here is a superficial account.
I saw ads for them when I was reading a Perlentaucher newsletter.
Suhrkamp Verlag Literaturklassiker von Thomas Mann in hochwertiger Neugestaltung
There are new covers by Andrew Davidson.
Der Zauberberg – Der Jahrhunder-Roman prachtvoll illustriert in einer exklusiven Schmuckausgabe (Reclam)
Thomas Manns Jahrhundertroman – erstmals als Retroausgabe im Taschenbuch (S. Fischer Verlage) – yes, there was no paperback before.
It can be read free of charge in Project Gutenberg too and in the German Projekt Gutenberg, which is apparently being restructured.
Is it normal for books to be so restrictedly available while in copyright?
I’m re-reading Der Zauberberg. It’s been a good fifty years since the last ‘read’, and I now know to take it slowly and with enjoyment.
The novel was published over 100 years ago, in November 2024. And two new translations are about to appear, one by Susan Bernofsky in the USA (translation only just finished), with W.W. Norton, and one by Simon Pare in the UK, Oxford World’s Classics, appearing on March 12th 2026. The Pare translation has an introduction by Ritchie Robertson, and detailed notes explaining the many cultural and historical references in the text. Sounds excellent, and I am looking forward to seeing what the reviewers say about the novel.
Thanks to the mysterious Neil Desperandum on Twitter for this.
Der Schimmelreiter was translated by Denis Jackson as The Dykemaster. See New Books in German. See also an earlier post. Denis Jackson died at the age of 84 in February 2020. Obituary in the Guardian.
Der Schimmel can mean mould or a grey horse.
Die drei Hunde is a fairytale by, or collected by, Ludwig Bechstein, whose stories sold better than the Grimms’ in the 19th century.
The hero kills a dragon and wins the princess with the help of three dogs, who in the English version are called Salt, Pepper and Mustard. Their German names are Bring Speis’n, Zerreiß’n and Brich Stahl und Eisen (Bring Food, Tear Apart and Break Steel and Iron).
I wonder who thought of the English translation? I wonder if it was Anthea Bell. Bell, Anthea, tr. Fairy Tales of Ludwig Bechstein. Ill. Irene Schreiber. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1967. She did translate Asterix very wittily.