GR translation: their furnished dustbin

[Michael Bailey]

Mike Jing wrote:

*V160.12-15, P162.38-41   He’d been out all day, the proletarian husband,
*>>* out pasting up bills to advertise some happy Max Schlepzig film fantasy,
*>>* while Leni lay pregnant, forced to turn when the pain in her back got too
*>>* bad, inside their furnished dustbin in the last of the tenement’s
*>>* Hinterhöfe.
*>>>>* The published translation thinks they were literally living in a dustbin,
*>>* which I find hard to believe. It gotta be a metaphor, right?
*>>* --*


*Deprecatory hyperbole, like in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” when
Martha walks into their house and says, “What a dump!” (Quoting a
movie)*

*Or any of a number of evocative nouns used to deprecate a small
apartment: cracker box, match box, shoe box, broom closet, probably
lots more.*


*Anyhoo, yeah, not a literal dump; not a literal dustbin. *


*But that is interesting about dustbins made of brick!*