/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17694007]

What's the best english translation of his Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

[Anonymous No.17694055]

>>17694007
Is there another translation besides Princeton? The book was also highly kino btw.

[Anonymous No.17695320]

>>17694007
>translation

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.17695341]

I personally really liked the Thomas Carlyle translation.

[Anonymous No.17695355]

>>17694007
ew, what kind of fucking pleb do you think i am, that i would even touch a filthy translation let alone READING one. vae pudor. kill yourself immediately for shame
>>17695320
this. don't make me vomit

[Anonymous No.17695382]

>>17695355
>>17695320
Ah yes, let me just quickly learn German, French, Latin, Greek, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Chinese, Classical Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan and Finnish to read all the stuff I want to read

[Anonymous No.17695487]

>>17695382
Yes.

[Anonymous No.17695967]

>>17695382
why not?

[Anonymous No.17696173]

>>17695341
what did you think of the book, frater?

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.17696239]

>>17696173
Definitely one of my favorites though I can see why a person wouldn’t like it.

Whoops, wrote a whole post explaining the major parts I like but realized a number of you would fine the spoiling of it to be distasteful. On a colder more abstract level, the characters feel absolutely alive, the story told in the beginning concerning the puppets absolutely gets you into the world, from there you will have a slice of life, an adventure, a romance story, duty, the debate and question between material wealth and art, a constant theme of Family, friendship, and above all my favorite portion would be the miniature “confession of a beautiful soul” which in much regards explains so much of goethe’s ideas concerning human character, beauty, the soul and nature that I am surprised it isn’t studied more often. Only near the end does the plot kinda go haywire but prior to that the relationships prior become very entertaining. You’re basically going to go through a ton of emotions and intellectually you’ll probably come out impacted in a positive way. I definitely recommend it though many will find it too slow.

[Anonymous No.17696281]

>>17696239
it is actually also one of my favorites and i agree with you about the "confessions" and the rest. i'm glad you liked it. people often complain about the prose being dry but i didn't feel that way. could you maybe post those spoilers in a spoiler tag?

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.17696359]

>>17696281
This is better in pastebin, wouldn’t want the anons to ruin their enjoyment.

https://pastebin.com/qShkGhms

But yeah, I basically enjoyed it so much that I wrote a full novella as a love letter to it.

[Anonymous No.17696453]

>>17696359
thanks, this revived some memories. in fact Wilhelm Meister is the only book i look back at fondly every now and then to enjoy the memories. as you said, the characters felt so alive and events seemed so real, that it felt like my own real world experiences, not Wilhelm's. I would gladly take a look at that novella if you are willing to share. also, Goethe wrote another book about Wilhelm's later years, but in his own words it's one of his most difficult books.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.17696529]

>>17696453
Yeah I know of the journeyman years. Ive yet to tackle it but I look forward to it. I don’t get why more people don’t read or speak of it. I think a lot of people give goethe lip service or only read Faust when he has so many works like green serpent and the lily which are just absolutely the highest gold standard.

Here’s the little novella, note there will be some minor spelling errors and grammatical stuff, and the poetry can be better. I’m definitely going to go back and try to refine it at some point. The image of the main character is actually a photo of goethe which I manipulated and softened.

https://pastebin.com/WmmA7dET

Why do you think it’s not so well loved and praised? I think maybe because it’s not so epic in aesthetic or fantastical as Faust.

[Anonymous No.17696571]

>>17696529
Looks interesting, thanks for sharing. I think Schopenhauer answers that question well here (as you might know, it was also one of his most favorites):
>Where we were looking for pleasure, happiness and joy, we often find instruction, insight and knowledge, a lasting and real benefit in place of a fleeting one. This idea runs like a bass-note through Goethe's Wilhelm Meister; for this is an intellectual novel and is of a higher order than the rest.

>A novel will be of a high and noble order, the more it represents of inner, and the less it represents of outer, life; and the ratio between the two will supply a means of judging any novel, of whatever kind, from Tristram Shandy down to the crudest and most sensational tale of knight or robber. Tristram Shandy has, indeed, as good as no action at all; and there is not much in La Nouvelle Heloïse and Wilhelm Meister. Even Don Quixote has relatively little; and what there is, very unimportant, and introduced merely for the sake of fun. And these four are the best of all existing novels.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.17696590]

>>17696571
Yeah I’ve read Schopenhauer and I actually decided to read the work based on his recommendation. In general his tastes and the authors influenced by him have a pretty high aesthetic value.