(urth) BotNS in German
Dan Rabin
wolfe-lists at danrabin.com
Sun Dec 5 21:23:31 PST 2004
Hmpf MacSlow asks about the familiarity of the word "barbican" to
native speakers of English. It's a really important question,
because Wolfe's use of unfamiliar words and neologisms is an
essential part of the style he adopted for _The Book of the New Sun_.
It gives a feeling of remoteness in time and place.
Wolfe discusses his choice of words in his "translator's notes" at
the ends of the volumes. These are worth considering.
I've noticed several categories of odd words in TBotNS. I'll comment
on how these categories affect me as a native reader of English with
a good vocabulary, born and raised in the United States of America in
the late 20th century:
1. Authentic English archaisms, especially from subjects no longer
much studied. "Barbican" is in this category, as are "falchion" and
"destrier". I have to look these up, but it's possible to get a lot
from context, such as "barbican" and "bartizan" being parts of
defensive walls, "falchion" being a type of sword-like weapon,
"arbalest" being something like a crossbow, "destrier" having the
role of a horse, and so forth. Is "hetman" in this category?
2. Derivations from Latin or Greek scientific terminology, such as
"baluchither" from "baluchitherium" or "smilodon" taken as is.
"Arctother" might be in this class. These are decipherable if one
has seen the science. Here the effect is that things from our
fossilized past are everyday animals in Severian's time and place.
Wolfe-as-"translator" comments on this technique.
3. Latin and Greek neologisms or rarities, such as "alghedonic"
("pain-pleasure"), "chrisos" ("gold"?), "archon" (ruler), "cacogen"
("ugly origin"?), "hierodule" ("holy slave") Wolfe-as-translator
says he uses Latin to represent languages that seem learned but
extinct to Severian (as in the name "Terminus Est"). Unfamiliar
words with classical roots can at best be decoded by present-day
readers--they give the feeling that Severian's environment retains
much that is ancient, like coming across a Greek or Roman ruin in the
middle of a European town (something we don't have here in America).
It's worth noting that English went through a period a few hundred
years ago of introducing Classical terms into the language, many of
which have fallen by the wayside, but many of which remain. I have
the impression that German prefers not to make Classical borrowings,
but the cultural relationship of Classical civilization to the
reader's milieu is probably much the same for German as for English.
4. Authentic religious and philosophical terms: "theodicy",
"theanthropos", "monstrance"; occasional Hebraisms ("Adonai"). I'm
not familiar with Christian theology, but here again I'm generally
able to deduce the subject of discourse from context without being
precisely correct.
Now I have a question: is "pinakotheken" recognizable in contemporary
German? If so, it certainly shouldn't be translated as itself! It's
very obscure in English, and serves to give the feeling that
Severian's mileu has some very unfamiliar names for very familiar
things. Odd, though, that the word occurs near the episode in
Ultan's library, which is called a "library", not a "bibliothek".
Since we've discussed Tolkien recently, it's worth noting that
A. Wolfe corresponded with Tolkien concerning the etymology of "warg",
B. Tolkien played this game of preserving linguistic relationships
across a "translation", except he actually invented some of the
languages of the imaginary locale. He knew that a Gondorian accent
in Westron sounded archaic and elevated to Hobbits of the Shire, and
he knew that Galadriel's chant "Namarie" was in a poetic register of
Quenya. Nobody like Tolkien, not in _my_ Book of Gold anyhow.
-- Dan Rabin
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