A spell-binding, riveting book that has a commanding story line as well as being, now, well written. It’s a good thing it barely stretches 100 pages, as it’s almost impossible to put down once one starts reading.
The unrelenting insistence of Wiesel’s narrative, to demand the reader’s complete attention without letup is matched by one of Imre Kertész’s books. “Kaddish For A Child Unborn”, first published in 1990 and translated into English in 1997. It is 95 pages of straight stream of consciousness: no chapters, no paragraphs, all monologue. He mentally puts forward all the arguments, to his wife and his friend, why he can’t consider bringing a child into a post-holocaust world.
It is a more powerful rendering.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
It might be
interesting to go back to the earlier translation to see what he was
complaining about, and the reason he was so happy with his wife’s
translation. I’ve become interested in
translators because of another book, apropos to this month’s subject: to wit,
“An Unnecessary Woman” written by Rabih Alameddine. The protagonist is a Beiruti woman who
devotes her entire adult life to translating books, certain books, 37 of them
as her story ends.
The
holocaust features heavily in a few of these 37 books. One of specific interest when reading
Wiesel’s “Night”, is the Hungarian Imre Kertész’s “Fateless”, published in
1975. This is a fictional memoir about a
14 year old boy who is sent to Auschwitz, also spending time in Buchenwald. Rather than a Yiddisher, Torah-touting, Jew,
this kid is a denier: he’s not that Jewish, isn’t religious; and actually
thinks the work camps are a pretty good idea given the world-wide depression,
and anyway everyone knows the bad guys are the Gypsies. The environment is the same as for Wiesel,
but their experiences are polar opposites.
Both wind up in an infirmary as the war ends: Wiesel flees the camp with
the SS out of fear of being shot; Kertész finds the softer beds and better food
[he fools the guards by talking to his dead bed-mate to obtain double rations]
too hard to give up and is liberated.
I’ve obtained
the earlier translation of “Night” and the difference is night and day. Below is the first paragraph of the book:
original translation on the left, latest one on the right.
The changes
are from writing 101: active instead of passive or conditional verbs; no
“very”s; clear sentences rather than reading like a computer translation from
the German. Rodway’s translation
phrasing was clumsy.
Translated
from French by Stella Rodway, 1960[see 1 below]
[1]
They called him Moishe the Beadle, as though he
had never had a surname in
his life.
He was a
man of all work at a Hasidic synagogue.
The
Jews of Sighet—that little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood—were
very fond of
him.
He
was very poor and
lived humbly.
Generally my fellow townspeople, though they would help the poor, were not particularly fond of them.
Moishe
the Beadle was the exception.
Nobody ever felt embarrassed by him.
Nobody ever felt encumbered by his presence.
He was a past master in the
art of making
himself insignificant, invisible.
They
called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a
surname.
He
was the jack-of-all-trades in a Hasidic house of prayer, a shibl.
The
Jews of Sighet—the little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood—were
fond of him.
He
was poor and lived in utter penury.
As
a rule, our townspeople, while they did help the needy, did not particularly
like them.
Moishe
the Beadle was the exception.
He
stayed out of people’s way.
His
presence bothered no one.
He
had mastered the art of rendering himself insignificant, invisible.
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