Title: English Modernism in German: Herberth and Marlys Herlitschka, Translators of Virginia Woolf
Abstract: The Austrian-born translators Herberth and Marlys Herlitschka exercised considerable influence over the reception of British modernist literature in German-speaking nations. From the 1920s to the 1960s they undertook translations of challenging modernist works, including the poetry of Yeats and the novels of Lawrence and Woolf. This article surveys their lives and work, with a focus on their post-war rendering of Woolf's final novel, Between the Acts. Here the Herlitschkas' translational choices reveal a desire for reconciliation and effect a softening of the political jaggedness of Woolf's Blitz-era narrative, to emphasize instead the formalist experimentalism which had characterized pre-war modernism. The Herlitschkas' translation of Woolf can be read as an act both of nostalgia and rehabilitation, and also as an image of their understanding of what ‘modernism’ – the modernism which they helped to create – should look like.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 4
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