/lit/ - Literature

>>22487331
From Cosima's diaries:

>In the evening finished the Grimm essay; R. disputes the glorification of the English language in it; he says the only language which can be recognized as really beautiful is the one which is still attached to its roots, and it is a false optimism which induced Grimm to say that the mixing of the Latin and Germanic languages had produced perfection; such mixtures, R. says, are an evil, and the purer a language remains as it develops, the more significant it is. “Of course,” he concludes, “Grimm had given up all hope of a German culture (and one can’t blame him), and he was glad that at least one severed tribe had managed to get as far as the English and their culture had done.”

>In spite of a violent headache, R. spoke a lot with me early this morning about the German language, which has in his opinion not yet displayed all its riches, “for Lessing, finding it in the state it then was, constructed words based on foreign conceptions, which then dominated everything. It is fortunately true that these constructions were in the spirit of the German language, but the language has not yet undergone a development coming from its own roots.”

>At lunch the statement of the gladiators—“Morituri te salutant”—cropped up. — The word morituri cannot be expressed in other languages in a single word; the German language has lost these potentialities because it took its cultivation from the languages of the Latin countries, that is to say, from the languages based on Latin in an emasculated form.

>Then, in all seriousness, he talks about the German language, its arrested development, the great intellects searching around for foreign models—“Is it still possible now to return to the source, to think again about the wealth of inflections, etc.?”

>Prof. N. departed, having caused R. many difficult hours. Among other things, he maintains that the German language gives him no pleasure, and he would rather talk Latin, etc. R. mentions his own rules for treating the German language, says one should first look to see whether a foreign term is completely necessary to express the sense; if it is, then use it boldly, and untranslated.

>The German language, he says, is now the only one which, as J. Grimm says, can be studied physiologically, not just in order to speak it or to read the classical writers (in contrast to French, English, and Italian).

>In the evening, coming back to the German language, he says the spirit of the language does not allow one to express oneself just in short sentences, the art lies in being clear and definite within the encapsulated structure of German.

CONT

>>22483248
From Cosima's diaries:

>The German language, he says, is now the only one which, as J. Grimm says, can be studied physiologically, not just in order to speak it or to read the classical writers (in contrast to French, English, and Italian).

>In the evening, coming back to the German language, he says the spirit of the language does not allow one to express oneself just in short sentences, the art lies in being clear and definite within the encapsulated structure of German.

>When I come down to supper, [R.] says, "I have been pursuing philology." He has looked to see how the passage in which Luther translates the word "barbaros" as "undeutsch" appears in Greek, Latin, English, and French—French the least felicitous with the abstract word "barbare," which is also so ambiguous, the English somewhat better; but Luther is splendid! R. cannot stress too strongly what this touch means to him; he returns to it once more late in the evening and says: "These young people! Do you remember how I once showed that passage to [Erwin] Rohde and Nietzsche, and they saw nothing in it? Such lack of understanding and imagination!"

>At lunch R. said that W. v. Humboldt was driving him to despair with all his drivel about his ideas, excellent as these may be in themselves. He also expresses his antipathy toward the English language; the fact that in it a Shakesp. has emerged does not disturb him—that is an anomaly; but imaginative writing is possible only in a language in-which one feels every word to be alive. The German language is still half alive. He cites the verb “sprechen’’ [“to speak”] as a living word, whereas “reden” [“to talk”] is a constructed, dead word. I think I understand correctly what he then added: that English was a created language (under H. VII), since before that time French was spoken, and that Shakespeare was able to work creatively with a language in the process of creation, rather like Dante; however, by the time the mixtum compositum was finally established, poetry was already dead.

>>21010491
>Luther had to translate the eleventh verse of the fourteenth chapter of the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. Here the Greek word "barbaros" is applied to him whose tongue we do not understand; the Latin translator—for whom the word had already lost its Greek significance and become a mere synonym for uncivilised and lawless foreign races—sets down a half unmeaning "barbarus", no longer to the point. All subsequent translators, in every language, have followed the Latin example; especially weak and formal seems the French translation of the text, "Si done je n'entends pas ce que signifient les paroles, je serai barbare pour celui a qui je park; et celui qui me parle sera barbare pour moi"—from which one might deduce a maxim that governs the French to this day, and not to their advantage, in their judgment of other nations. Even in this connection, on the contrary, Luther's rendering of "barbaros" by "undeutsch" gives a milder, unaggressive aspect to our attitude towards the foreign. To the dismay of all philologists he translates the verse as follows: "If I know not the meaning (Deutung) of the voice, I shall be undeutsch to him that speaketh, and he that speaketh will be undeutsch to me."

>Anyone who carefully collates the Greek text with this frankly faithful rendering, will perceive that the latter gives us its inner meaning even more aptly than the original itself, for it sets "Deutung" and "Deutsch" in direct relation; and, kindled to a deep sense of the treasure we possess in our language, he will surely be filled with unspeakable sorrow when he sees its value shamefully debased. Yet it was recently said*[by Nietzsche] that it would have been better if Luther had been burned at the stake, like other heretics; the Romish renaissance would then have taken root in Germany as well, and raised us to the same height of Culture with our reborn neighbours. I fancy this wish will strike many as not only "undeutsch", but also "barbarous" in the sense of our Romanic neighbours.

>>20203100
Luther's.

>Luther had to translate the eleventh verse of the fourteenth chapter of the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. Here the Greek word "barbaros" is applied to him whose tongue we do not understand; the Latin translator—for whom the word had already lost its Greek significance and become a mere synonym for uncivilised and lawless foreign races—sets down a half unmeaning "barbarus", no longer to the point. All subsequent translators, in every language, have followed the Latin example; especially weak and formal seems the French translation of the text, "Si done je n'entends pas ce que signifient les paroles, je serai barbare pour celui a qui je park; et celui qui me parle sera barbare pour moi"—from which one might deduce a maxim that governs the French to this day, and not to their advantage, in their judgment of other nations. Even in this connection, on the contrary, Luther's rendering of "barbaros" by "undeutsch" gives a milder, unaggressive aspect to our attitude towards the foreign. To the dismay of all philologists he translates the verse as follows: "If I know not the meaning (Deutung) of the voice, I shall be undeutsch to him that speaketh, and he that speaketh will be undeutsch to me."

>Anyone who carefully collates the Greek text with this frankly faithful rendering, will perceive that the latter gives us its inner meaning even more aptly than the original itself, for it sets "Deutung" and "Deutsch" in direct relation; and, kindled to a deep sense of the treasure we possess in our language, he will surely be filled with unspeakable sorrow when he sees its value shamefully debased. Yet it was recently said* that it would have been better if Luther had been burned at the stake, like other heretics ; the Romish renaissance would then have taken root in Germany as well, and raised us to the same height of Culture with our reborn neighbours. I fancy this wish will strike many as not only "undeutsch", but also "barbarous" in the sense of our Romanic neighbours.

>>20203100
Luther's.

>Luther had to translate the eleventh verse of the fourteenth chapter of the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. Here the Greek word "barbaros" is applied to him whose tongue we do not understand; the Latin translator—for whom the word had already lost its Greek significance and become a mere synonym for uncivilised and lawless foreign races—sets down a half unmeaning "barbarus", no longer to the point. All subsequent translators, in every language, have followed the
Latin example; especially weak and formal seems the French translation of the text, "Si done je n'entends pas ce que signifient les paroles, je serai barbare pour celui a qui je park; et celui qui me parle sera barbare pour moi"—from which one might deduce a maxim that governs the French to this day, and not to their advantage, in their judgment of other nations. Even in this connection, on the contrary, Luther's rendering of "barbaros" by "undeutsch" gives a milder, unaggressive aspect to our attitude towards the foreign. To the dismay of all philologists he translates the verse as follows: "If I know not the meaning (Deutung) of the voice, I shall be undeutsch to him that speaketh, and he that speaketh will be undeutsch to me."

>Anyone who carefully collates the Greek text with this frankly faithful rendering, will perceive that the latter gives us its inner meaning even more aptly than the original itself, for it sets "Deutung" and "Deutsch" in direct relation; and, kindled to a deep sense of the treasure we possess in our language, he will surely be filled with unspeakable sorrow when he sees its value shamefully debased. Yet it was recently said* that it would have been better if Luther had been burned at the stake, like other heretics ; the Romish renaissance would then have taken root in Germany as well, and raised us to the same height of Culture with our reborn neighbours. I fancy this wish will strike many as not only "undeutsch", but also "barbarous" in the sense of our Romanic neighbours.

>nazism
>uhh im thinking based

>nazism
>uhhh yeah im based?

>>18354020
They are.

Name a more important philosopher of aesthetics during the 19th century.