Abstract
What is the true language of Jaspers’ works in English? Why are Jaspers’ texts in English frequently regarded as unintelligible? How can a balance be struck between literary and literal translation? This chapter critically examines these questions in the light of selected examples of successful English translations. Furthermore, it shows how conveying the “otherness” of Jaspers’ thought is intrinsically linked to the editorial and interpretative decisions which reveal the profound implications of Jaspers’ central metaphors. Here, the question concerning appropriate language refers back to the age-old dichotomy of interpreting the message, yet without jeopardizing the originality of the linguistic idiom.
“… like such a bird was Hermes carried over the multitudinous waves.”1
“To be or not to be:” that was the question. Let us remark in passing that there were very great men who were existentialists, or rather, let us say with Kierkegaard, existent men without knowing it. … We see in the philosophy of the German philosopher Jaspers more intellectualized and generalized echoes of the same tendencies which were in Kierkegaard. It is no longer a question of relation to God and to Jesus Christ, but to an obscure background of which we have the feeling, but which we can never catch, except in partial and fugitive moments, so that finally we succumb and are in a certain manner the victims of a kind of shipwreck.2
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Notes
- 1.
Homer, The Odyssey, Book V, “Hermes and Calypso–Odysseus Released and Wrecked,” trans. Walter Shewring (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 56.
- 2.
Jean Wahl, “Existentialism: A Preface,” in The New Republic, October 1, 1945, pp. 442–444 (p. 442). [Henceforth cited as EP]
- 3.
Werner Brock, “Karl Jaspers and Existentialism,” in German Life and Letters, Vol. 17/4 (July 1964), pp. 289–303 (p. 303). [Henceforth cited as KJE]
- 4.
Richard F. Grabau, “Preface,” in Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence, trans. Richard F. Grabau (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), p. xviii.
- 5.
Further in reference to moral attitudes or imperatives “The Act of Choosing Oneself,” see Kurt Salamun, “Karl Jaspers on Human Self-Realization”, in Karl Jaspers’s Philosophy Expositions and Interpretations, eds. Kurt Salamun and Gregory J. Walters (New York, NY: Humanity Books, 2008), pp. 243–262 (p. 246).
- 6.
Leonard H. Ehrlich, “Erinnerungen eines Jaspersschülers. Begegnungen mit Karl Jaspers,” in Jaspers Jahr 2008, Wahrheit ist, was uns verbindeted, Reinhard Schulz, Oldenburg 2008, translated by S. Kirkbright. [“Er sagte dabei nie, dies sei so und jenes so; was er auch darlegte, galt innerhalb von Grenzen und nichts ruhte in Gewissheit. Vielmehr—weit über die Provokation der Fragestellung hinaus—war das Beunruhigende bei Jaspers, dass—selbst beim Mit- und Nachdenken—nur das Selbst-Denken Geltung hatte.”]
- 7.
George B. Pepper, “The Encompassing, Foundering, and the Tragic Individual in the Philosophy of Karl Jaspers,” in Karl Jaspers’s Philosophy: Exposition and Interpretations, op. cit., pp. 263–287, here p. 265.
- 8.
Cf. Edith Ehrlich’s translation of Jaspers’ autobiographical self-portrait (freely spoken text for German radio, directed by Hannes Reinhardt, 1966/1967) as “Karl Jaspers—Ein Selbstporträt. A Self-Portrait,” in: Karl Jaspers Today. Philosophy at the Threshold of the Future, eds. Richard Wisser and Leonard H. Ehrlich (Washington, DC, 1988), pp. 1–25.
- 9.
The common reader “Reads for His Own Pleasure Rather Than to Impart Knowledge or Correct the Opinion of Others.” See Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (First Series), ed. Andrew McNeillie (San Diego, CA: Harvest, 1984), p. 1.
- 10.
For a description of these activities and commendation of the translations of Edith and Leonard Ehrlich, see also Kurt Salamun, Karl Jaspers (2nd ed., Würzburg, 2006), pp. 131–134, here especially, p. 134.
- 11.
Charles Wallraff, “Jaspers in English: A Failure of Communication,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 (1977), pp. 537–548 (p. 537). [Henceforth cited as JE]
- 12.
Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana Press, 1973), pp. 70–82, here p. 77.
- 13.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer, Donald G. Marshall (London, 2004), p. 307. Adolph Lichtigfeld implicitly considers the question of translation from a Gadamerian viewpoint; see his “Jaspers in English: A Failure not of Communication But Rather of Interpretation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. XLI (1980), pp. 126–222.
- 14.
Cf. also the introduction to Karl Jaspers. Existentialism and Humanism: Three Essays, ed. Hanns E. Fischer, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York, NY: Russel F. Moore, 1952), p. 11.
- 15.
Leonard H. and Edith Ehrlich with George B. Pepper, eds., Karl Jaspers: Basic Philosophical Writings: Selections (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1986). [Henceforth cited as KJ]
- 16.
KJ 55 f. Compare with the earlier translation: Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1957), pp. 159, 161: “Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides. … As freedom he conjures up being as his hidden Transcendence. The significance of this path is Transcendence. Mere life miscarries.”
- 17.
Translations are found respectively in Karl Jaspers. Basic Philosophical Writings, op. cit.; Karl Jaspers, “Philosophy,” Vol. II, Existential Elucidation, trans. E.B. Ashton (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1969–1971); Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom (An Introduction to Philosophy), trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1951), (translation of: Einführung in die Philosophie, 12 radio broadcasts, Basel, 1950). [Henceforth cited as WW]
- 18.
See Harald T. Reiche, “Postscript: Sources of Jaspers’ Style,” in Karl Jaspers, Tragedy is Not Enough, trans. Harald T. Reiche, Harry T. Moore, and Karl W. Deutsch (New York, NY: Archon, 1969). The essay was appended to this translation of the abridged 140-page English excerpt of the final part of Jaspers’ Von der Wahrheit. [Henceforth cited as SJS]
- 19.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, in Shakespeare. The Complete Works, eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 669. [Henceforth cited as H]
- 20.
SJS 36: “This Much Is Certain: It Is an Experience That Touches the Innermost Being of Each Man.”
- 21.
Albert Camus, L’Étranger Gallimard 1957, p. 179, translated by S. Kirkbright. [“Comme ci cette grande colère m’avait purgé du mal, vidé d’espoir, devant cette nuit chargée de signes et d’étoiles, je m’ouvrais pour la première fois à la tendre indifférence du monde.”]
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Kirkbright, S. (2012). Honoring the Messenger. In: Wautischer, H., Olson, A., Walters, G. (eds) Philosophical Faith and the Future of Humanity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2223-1_7
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