Jean Paul
Richter always writes too much. The texts he publishes are a
continuous overflow of images, sensations, ideas. This may be a
reason why Jean Paul, very popular until about 1810, was nearly
forgotten in Germany after his death in 1825. Not so in the rest of
Europe.
Jean Paul
deeply influenced Italian modernist Carlo Dossi, whom Italians do not
care about, and the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, of whom Danes
think he were a theologist. You do not need to be translated in order
to be misunderstood.
Both
the Dane and the Italian read Jean Paul, an author hard to understand
for a native speaker, in German. Probably these men did not study our
language at a German cultural institute.
Nowadays
studying German beyond the Bratwurst
and
Heidi
Klums seems
to be unzumutbar.
That is the reason we have translations even of Jean Paul´s most
particular work, the Vorschule
der Ästhetik.
In English this “preschool” becomes a “school”. I understand,
you want to avoid indirect routes. But what if this being indirect
was part of Jean Paul´s game? Who cares! Here Jean Paul talks about
aesthetics, that is philosophy, a field where only the contents
counts. But the publishers add two new elements to the title. “Jean
Paul Richter´s School of Aesthetics”, okay, like XY´s tomato
soup, and “Horn of Oberon”. The modest “preschool of
aesthetics”, transformed into “Horn of Oberon: Jean Paul
Richter´s School of Aesthetics”. Find the difference. Or, rather
imagine the consequences: “What are you reading?” – “Horn of
...”.
But
in the translation of the text, normalization rules. This is Jean
Paul without Jean Paul.
Unless he writes plain sentences, everything
moves smoothly.
Der
Verstand und die Objekten-Welt kennen nur Endlichkeit.
"The
understanding and the object-world know only finitude”. Ja.
Hier
finden wir nur jenen unendlichen Kontrast zwischen den Ideen (der
Vernunft) und der ganzen Endlichkeit selber.
"In
the romantic we find only the infinite contrast between the ideas (or
reason) and all finitude itself”.
Clearer
for the reader, not hurting anybody, “in the romantic” instead of
“here”.
Now,
Jean Paul soars into the air:
Wie
aber, wenn man eben diese Endlichkeit als subjektiven Kontrast jetzo
der Idee (Unendlichkeit) als objektivem unterschöbe und liehe und
statt des Erhabenen als eines angewandten Unendlichen jetzo ein auf
das Unendliche angewandte Endliche, also bloß Unendlichkeit des
Kontrastes gebäre, d.h. eine negative? Dann hätten wir den Humor
oder das romantische Komische.
"But
suppose just this finitude were imputed as subjective contrast to the
idea as objective contrast, and instead of the sublime as an applied
infinity, now produced a finitude applied to the infinite, and thus
simply infinity of contrast, that is a negative infinity. Then we
should have humour or the romantic comic”.
Well,
the rhetorical question is transformed. Fine. But what happened to
the verbs unterschöbe und liehe? “were
imputed”? Jemandem etwas unterschieben (simple
infinitive instead of the hypothetical form used by Jean Paul), for
example a murder, means “to pin a murder on somebody”. This is
not a simple imputation. We could call it irony, but only in the
German version.
