24 The German Times October 2018 ARTS & LIFE Lost in back-translation The rediscovered original manuscript of ’s novel Darkness at Noon allows for a new interpretation of a literary and political classic

Rubashov, who is arrested and The book does not reveal the be resold for up to eight times works were all translated from one of the interrogation scenes, BY LUTZ LICHTENBERGER soon thereafter imprisoned. In country in which it is set. At the retail price. By mid-year, the the English. Scammell notes that Rubashov scoffs that “our lead- captivity he is interrogated to several points in the novel there novel had sold 300,000 copies, German-speaking readers would ership [is] more grotesque than t’s the political novel of the excruciating effect by two exam- are indications it may be Nazi and after two years, two million. have regarded the novel as “testi- that jumping jack’s with the little day, a warning signal, a reck- ining magistrates, Ivanov, an erst- Germany, or perhaps communist With the escalation of the Cold mony of a foreign culture.” This, mustache” – a direct reference to Ioning with all forms of totali- while friend and fellow traveler, . Scammel writes War, however, Koestler’s anti- perhaps, encouraged many of Hitler. However, the phrase in tarianism, a riveting literary dys- and Gletkin, a hostile and ruth- that early on, more astute critics totalitarian – indeed universal – them to overlook the passages Daphne Hardy’s original transla- topia. As a matter of fact, Dark- less inquisitor. The two officials called attention to the generally message passed nearly unnoticed. on totalitarian Germany and to tion reads: “our leader-worship ness at Noon, Arthur Koestler’s use all means of exclusively inter- [is] more Byzantine than that of international classic, is undergo- manipulation to DPA pret the novel as the reactionary dictatorships.” ing its third finest hour in - Ger bring Rubashov criticism of the In this more abstract formula- many, that is, in German. to confess to Soviet state. tion, the commonality Koestler Born in Budapest, raised in crimes he did not The rediscov- so deftly recognized between the Vienna and an artisan of German commit. ery of the origi- Soviet Union and prose, Koestler toiled on his book The book, as nal manuscript remains more-or-less unpro- while exiled in Paris between Scammell calls can thus also be nounced. summer 1938 and spring 1940, it, is an “intel- celebrated as an Matthias Weßel, who found before being forced to flee the lectual political occasion to better the manuscript and was able to French capital ahead of the Nazi thriller,” which understand the research Koestler in the German occupation. The only German simultaneously book’s politi- Historical Institute Moscow as copy was lost as he fled. 75 years became a politi- cal dimension. well as in the Russian State Mili- later, however, the German lit- cal statement, a Daphne Hardy, tary Archive, has vowed to deliver erary scholar Matthias Weßel commercial suc- the translator a complete and systematic evalua- discovered the manuscript in the cess and a novel of the Urtext, tion of the two versions. archive of a publishing house in celebrated by had never before In the afterword to the new Zurich. critics. In 1998, translated a book revised German edition published Daphne Hardy, Koestler’s lover the Modern into English. in 1960, Koestler wrote: “I trans- at the time, penned the English Library selected She was just 21 lated Darkness at Noon back into translation of Darkness at Noon the book as the years old and was German myself, and this distress- and sent it off to London. In the eighth most forced to work ing feeling lingers within me that absence of the original manu- important work of the twentieth overlooked fact that Koestler was As in the time of , under tremendous time pressure. the spontaneity of the original has script, Hardy’s translation was century. one of the first authors to notice whose works were published She was familiar with neither been lost.” considered the Urtext and served Up until his arrest and impris- the growing similarities between between 1908 and 1924, segments the practices of the Soviet and Germans readers are now the as the source for translations into onment in the the Soviet and Nazi regimes. of the literary world and wide National Socialist secret police first to savor this spontaneity in 30 languages, and even back into in 1937, Koestler himself was a Koestler’s message, in general, circles of political intellectuals fix- nor the mechanisms of totalitar- full splendor and to draw what- German. As Koestler’s biogra- communist. He often asked him- can be read less as anti-Soviet ated on anti-communist interpre- ian states, thus she replaced Bol- ever political or historical conclu- pher Michael Scammell would self how the NKVD was success- than anti-totalitarian. tations of literature. Darkness at shevik terminology with British sions they may. In fact, it would note, such a case stands alone in ful in persuading such prominent The book became a bestseller. Noon was broadly perceived as a legal concepts and terms, which be rewarding, and not just from the history of modern literature. party leaders like Nikolai Bukha- In France alone, 70,000 copies document of the Cold War. lent the system a milder and more a literary standpoint, to contem- Darkness at Noon uses pow- rin, Grigory Zinoviev and Karl were sold in its first month of pub- The first German translation civilized manifestation. plate new translations into other erful and disturbing imagery Radek to confess to crimes they lication in 1946. Parisians queued appeared in 1948. Within Ger- Several critical “mistakes” can languages based on the rediscov- to recount the life and death of never committed, thus signing up before the publishing house to many, Koestler was understood now be accounted for. In the first ered manuscript – ideally into all the revolutionary leader Nicolai their own death sentences. secure a copy, which could then to be an English author. His back-translation, for example, in 30 employed previously.

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