Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere
Abstract
What Claudio Magris calls his “true translation” begins with the work on German literature texts and in particular on plays by Grillparzer, Büchner, Kleist and Schnitzler. For Magris the theatre reconnects writing to its lifeblood, associates rhythmic and rhetorical figures with the voice and gestures of the interpreters on the scene, facilitating the work of the translator who in his imagination must dissolve the meanings and the mere musicality of the original text in a new sounding board, in a new way of being. This intervention moves on two levels: first of all it takes into consideration Magris’ thoughts on translation which do not arise exclusively on a theoretical level and place the author in the twentieth-century tradition of translating poets. Secondly, we analyze how Magris concretely overcomes in its translations the historical and cultural gap between the source language and the target language and aims to conquer at least ideal simultaneity or synchrony with the classics of German literature.
