Robert Musil's Flypaper begins . . . .

The flypaper Tangle Foot is about thirty-six centimeters long and twenty-one centimeters wide. It is coated with a poisonous yellow glue and comes from Canada. If a fly were to land on it - not particularly from curiosity, but more from convention because so many others were there - the outer extremities of her bent legs would be the first of her parts to be held fast. A very light and strange sensation, as if you were to walk in the dark and step on something with your naked soles, that was nothing more than a soft, warm, unclear resistance; but then you realized with a gradual and terrible human realization, that something you'd imagine as a hand somehow lay there, and had with five growing evermore distinct fingers held you fast . . .

This above is not a literal translation from the German but merely an exercise I have done because I cannot find what I consider a flowing translation of this first paragraph of Das Fliegenpapier. Translations are new works, as Thomas Bernhard said, and therefore a translator while keeping closely to the original text must be prepared to bring the same poetic quality to bear as he finds in the original, particularly with a great writer like Musil. It's not enough to merely translate. Yesterday, Saturday, I ordered an English copy of Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel, and I'm hoping for the best. I think it's by Vintage Classics so it should be a good translation. It'll be waiting for me in my local bookshop on Tuesday afternoon.


ps: There's more than one way to buy a book. Please support your local bookshops. If you don't you'll sooner or later be stuck with one way.

Choice is important.