He [had] lost the hope he had cherished so dearly over the last few hours he had ended up clinging to it quite as much as to the hope of not being found out.* It wasn’t grief over the death of his mother that was sending him reeling and clouding his vision. He didn’t see in front of him the now ashen face of the deceased or call to mind the voice he would now never hear again or the gesture so often filled with affection for him. That old lady had died at a bad time, and her death made of him, once again, a contemptible, rapacious murderer.Italo Svevo's 1890 tale "The Murder on Via Belpoggio," available here, is the latest translation published as an e-book by Fario.
* Sentence revised in response to the observant comment below!
"He [had] lost the hope that, in just a few hours, he had cherished so dearly he had ended up clinging to it quite as much as to the hope of not being found out."
ReplyDeleteThe clause order in this sentence is confusing. "In just a few hours" seems to be in the wrong place. Is this a literal translation?
Yes, Paul, I was being too literal. I will have to change the file I uploaded as an ebook to read:
ReplyDelete"He [had] lost the hope that, for a few hours, he had cherished so dearly he had ended up clinging to it quite as much as to the hope of not being found out."
Or:
"He [had] lost the hope that he had cherished so dearly over the last few hours that he had ended up clinging to it quite as much as to the hope of not being found out."
In other words, the thought that his supposed noble motives might mitigate his crime was, for a little while, as much a comfort to him as the thought that he might not get caught.
Those are improvements, but I also think, for clarity, the "it" shouldn't be in any of the versions.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I finally got tired of WLF and don't plan to participate there any more.
The sentence is indeed a confusing one, and I may not have translated it particularly well, but without the "it" it would be both confusing and ungrammatical. Better would be to omit the "it" *and* the "he had cherished so dearly":
ReplyDelete"He [had] lost the hope that he had been clinging to as much as he'd been clinging to the hope of not being found out."
But then that wouldn't really be Svevo. Still, for me, the charm of Svevo isn't in the elegance of his sentences, and maybe not even in the effects of these pieces as wholes; it's instead in his sarcastic sensibility, which always shines through and has in no way become dated.
I still visit WLF regularly and don't imagine I'll stop anytime soon (unlike some people's posts there, mine, for all my best efforts, didn't seem to throw people into fits of hysterics), but I don't post there as regularly as I once did
You're the translator, and it's probably best to stick close to the original as long as it's intelligible; part of your duty is to convey any inelegance found in the original.
ReplyDeleteI may look at WLF occasionally but not post anything. The aggressive posters like Liam, Waalkwriter and Rumpelstilzchen pretty much ruin it for me, and most posts are too superficial to be of much interest. Eric seems to have gone on a long hiatus, and I think he has been unfairly attacked. The three I mentioned seem to feel entitled to act as thought police for the site. Stewart and Bjorn seem indifferent to what goes on there and are too cowardly to reprimand Liam, who unfairly gets a free pass by being conspicuously gay. Although there are quite a few well-read and intelligent people posting, my interest in literature isn't great enough for me to overlook the annoyances of the site.
Whereas of those three one could perhaps say, if one were inclined to be charitable, only that they are relatively well-read.
ReplyDelete