H. T. Lowe-Porter

Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (1877-1963) cite book | last = Robertson | first = Ritchie | title = The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann| publisher = Cambridge University Press| date = 2002| pages = 235-247| url = http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=s2VRTk60m9YC&pg=PA235&dq=Helen+Tracy+Lowe-Porter&as_brr=3&sig=Uwkt-9v5j30qgNZj-6XfNL7GmDo| isbn = 0521653703 ] was born in Pennsylvania, the niece of Charlotte Endymion Porter, a well-known literary figure of the day. Lowe-Porter married the paleographer E.A. Lowe in 1911 and they lived in Oxford, UK. After 1937 their residence was in Princeton, New Jersey.

Lowe-Porter was the translator who for more than twenty years enjoyed the exclusive rights to translate the works of Thomas Mann from German into English. She was appointed in this capacity by Mann's American publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, in 1925.

Lowe-Porter said, in a little autobiography published in the 60s [Name?] , that it is not so important that the translator be a great scholar of the foreign language - few literary practitioners are really and truly bilingual - but that it is very important indeed that he/she be a master of the resources and subtleties of his/her own.

"The violet has to be cast into the crucible," she wrote on another occasion, quoting Shelley's phrase: "The organic work of art must be remoulded in another tongue . . . Since in the creative act word and thought are indivisible, the task is one before which artists shrink and logical minds recoil." [Translator's note to "The Magic Mountain". New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1927]

Thomas Mann translations

H.T. Lowe-Porter translated - among many others - the following Thomas Mann works. (Dates in brackets refer to the German publication, those following to the American translation.)
*Buddenbrooks [1901] 1924
*The Magic Mountain [1924] 1927
*Death in Venice [1913] 1930
*Mario and the Magician [1930] 1931
*Joseph and His Brothers, comprising:- I The Tales of Jacob [1933] 1934

- II Young Joseph [1934] 1935

- III Joseph in Egypt [1936] 1938

- IV Joseph the Provider [1943] 1944

*Stories of Three Decades 1936
*The Beloved Returns [1939] 1940
*The Transposed Heads [1940] 1941
*Essays of Three Decades 1947
*Doctor Faustus [1947] 1948
*The Holy Sinner [1951] 1951
*A Sketch of My Life 1960

Appraisal of Quality

As can be seen from the list above, Lowe-Porter devoted decades of her life to the translation of the great German master, after "Buddenbrooks" generally translating the works as they appeared. And she translated sizable portions of his immense work. ("Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers, Doctor Faustus, The Stories of Three Decades" and "The Essays of Three Decades" alone comprise more than 4000 pages in the sturdy Knopf editions.) For decades her translations were the only ones that existed in the English-speaking world. Thus these renditions were, for long years, and for a whole generation, the portals, so to speak, through which English-language readers entered the stately structure of Thomas Mann's large and complex work. It is legitimate to ask how good her translations are.

"The Lowe-Porter translations of Thomas Mann, despite occasional inaccuracies almost inevitable in works of such length and complexity, convey the ironic and pyrotechnical style of the original with great effectiveness." [William Arrowsmith & Roger Shattuck, eds. "The Craft & Context of Translation, a Symposium." University of Texas Press. Austin, 1961.]

"Despite minor inaccuracies, misreadings, and possible errors of judgment (to which all translators are subject, whatever they may say) Lowe-Porter's translations are widely beloved and have become classics in their own right, to stand beside Constance Garnett's Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Scott-Moncrieff's Proust. She is indisputably, in quantity as in quality, one of the great translators of our time." [Viktor Wakovsky: "Artwork, Artifice, Forgery: The Translator's Craft." Fratelli Verlag, San Francisco, 1983.]

"Thomas Mann and Proust were lucky in their translators," Jean Cocteau remarked, summing up the situation. ["Diary of an Unknown", New York: Paragon House, 1988]

Lowe-Porter too was the exact contemporary of Thomas Mann and worked with him personally at times. It remains to be seen if these masterly renditions will be 'superseded' in years to come.

References