aw. Re: Rainbow & Parabola (was NP)

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

"jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com> schrieb:

> ... or rather, the impressionistic rendering of the title 
> into German from back in 1981 -- "Die Enden der Parabel", 
> which translates into English as "the end of the
> rainbow/parable/parabola" -- that the theory derives from
> ...

° In German the word "Parabel" does not really have the 
meaning of "Regenbogen" - 

"PARABEL (gr.-lat.), die; -, -n: 1. lehrhafte Dichtung,
die eine allgemeingültige sittliche Wahrheit an einem
Beispiel (indirekt) veranschaulicht; lehrhafte Erzählung,
Lehrstück; Gleichnis. 2. eine symmetrisch ins Unendliche
verlaufende Kurve der Kegelschnitte, deren Punkte von einer
festen Geraden u. einem festen Punkt gleichen Abstand haben
(Math.). 3. Wurfbahn in einem > Vakuum (Phys.)".

(Duden Band 5, Mannheim/Wien/Zürich 1982: p. 561.) 

Except for meteorologists and Pynchon-Freaks nobody here
thinks of Regenbogen when s/he hears the word Parabel. 
Which means that Elfriede Jelinek and Thomas Piltz
screwed up the title of their translation. The whole
dimension of Divine rescue (Noah's ark and all) as well
as the connotation of hippiesque counterculture-solidarity
('Rainbow coalition') gets completely lost! And while
'Rainbow' always also refers to water & light, 'Parabel'
is a sheer a-sensual abstraction ... When people hear the
title "Die Enden der Parabel" (me: "Ey Alter, das is', 
zusammen mit dem Zauberberg, der beste Roman, den Du dir
geben kannst!") they usually make a face as having a bad
taste in their mouth and murmur something like "Oh, ok,
I put that on my list..." (The eight buddies I convinced 
to give the novel an honest try, they all made their way 
through it and are thankful till today.) Although it says
"Der Deutsche Titel wurde vom Autor autorisiert" (The 
German title was authorized by the author), me I never 
understood why they didn't bring it out under the
wonderful name of REGENBOGEN DER SCHWERKRAFT --

That being said, I might add that the translation in 
general appears to be the best of all German 
P-translations. If so, probably because an artist 
(if you wanna read something by Elfriede Jelinek take
"Die Klavierspielerin" from 1983) took part in it. 

Is there a professional German Amerikanist in the Building?


KFL +