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/lit/ - Literature

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13378056 No.13378056 [Reply] [Original]

>The Buddenbrooks

Anybody here read it? Thoughts?

>> No.13378167

Bumping this thread. I'm curious too.

>> No.13378369

Well i've now read a decent chunk of Mann: Death in Venice , A Man and His Dog , Buddenbrooks , The Magic Mountain , Faustus , Felix Krull, and two essay collections and of them Buddenbrooks is probably my favorite, or at least up there with Faustus. It's got strange undertones of Dickens, or Victorian fiction in general, and is likely the reason why people still call Mann a Romantic writer.

But I'd say It's premise of a rich family that grows poor throughout multiple generations because it becomes too cultured and too educated and too soft to succeed in business is still original. And it's got the kind of exhaustive attention to detail that Mann has in his later fiction.

It's Good. Get the Woods translation.

>> No.13378544

>>13378056
Yeah it's great and I went to Lubeck while I was in Germany just to see the town where it took place even though it's never explicitly stated, very quaint place. It's a little bit of Mann apeing Tolstoy but I don't know if the translator was just a genius or what but it's not nearly as tiring as any of Tolstoy's novels to read and the chapter with Johann in school is unironically pure kino

>> No.13378851

>>13378369
>Get the Woods translation
I have a used copy of the Porter translation
should I just shoot myself?

>> No.13379254

>>13378851
Its lighter and I suppose "easier" to read but I wouldn't say its head and shoulders above the Porter translation.

>> No.13379278
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13379278

>Thomas Mann was 25 when he wrote Buddenbrooks

>> No.13380913

>>13378851

And here is why asking for advice on lit is such a crapshoot.

Dont listen to >>13379254 . One of the many features of Mann is his Baroque , or maybe more appropriately biblical, style. This is much more pronounced in later work, particularly Faustus , but is present in the early stuff aswell. Emulating it is a true challenge for the translator and is something Wood's doesn't bother with. Porter on the other hand did, which result's in her translation having a very 'translatory' feel. Many long words, one on top of another, so dense that i had real trouble following them. This deadly in The Magic Mountain but my not be so for Buddenbrooks.

It's also worth remembering that for a while EVERYONE read the porter translation and they seemed like it

>> No.13380921
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13380921

>>13379278

>> No.13380968

I just started reading it. Finished the first part, love it so far, the dinner scene was pretty cozy but I'm going to have to look up some stuff regarding the historical backlog like the German and Prussian customs union.

>> No.13381010

>>13378544
Lübeck is pretty, but it's kind of silly that they have a reconstructed version of the house as museum. It really looks out of place to me, almost more than the shitty post-war new buildings.