Entry tags:
wednesday book is historical
Poet and Merchant, A Picture of Life from the times of Moses Mendelssohn, Berthold Auerbach, translated by Charles Timothy Brooks. As I mentioned last week, this was recommended as a ``bad biographical novel from the 19th century'', but it's actually really good! I don't know to what extent it accurately portrays its historical setting of German Jewish communities in the 1700s, but the protagonist has in common with the author that he was originally intended to be a rabbi but chose instead to take a secular literary path, which adds resonance and depth to the story. This is also the sort of story which takes the opportunity to insert historical figures whenever plausible; this requires some suspension of disbelief but is still fun. And the scenes at Moses Mendelssohn's salon are both enjoyable philosophical debates and well-integrated with the larger story.
Much of it has the feel of the sort of biographical novels that I enjoyed reading as a kid, but there are also some serious themes about Jewish life, anti-Semitism and assimilation. Ephraim Kuh, the protagonist, comes across as a kind of Jewish Hamlet, painfully aware of the injustices of the world but unable to do anything about them. I also liked the female supporting characters, who though not as thoroughly sketched or as deep thinkers as Ephraim, all come across as people in their own right -- there's a fun scene where the characters discuss the newly-published Werther.
This was translated into English by Charles Timothy Brooks, a Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist who translated a bunch of German literature. It has some issues as a translation with using Christian religious terminology in Jewish contexts. The introduction to Brooks's collected poems contains the line "A series of translations of Berthold Auerbach's novels led to a correspondence in which the less amiable traits of that eminent author were displayed.", which makes me very curious to know what complaints Auerbach himself had about the translations.
Much of it has the feel of the sort of biographical novels that I enjoyed reading as a kid, but there are also some serious themes about Jewish life, anti-Semitism and assimilation. Ephraim Kuh, the protagonist, comes across as a kind of Jewish Hamlet, painfully aware of the injustices of the world but unable to do anything about them. I also liked the female supporting characters, who though not as thoroughly sketched or as deep thinkers as Ephraim, all come across as people in their own right -- there's a fun scene where the characters discuss the newly-published Werther.
This was translated into English by Charles Timothy Brooks, a Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist who translated a bunch of German literature. It has some issues as a translation with using Christian religious terminology in Jewish contexts. The introduction to Brooks's collected poems contains the line "A series of translations of Berthold Auerbach's novels led to a correspondence in which the less amiable traits of that eminent author were displayed.", which makes me very curious to know what complaints Auerbach himself had about the translations.