Has anyone read Joachim Fernau? There are audiobooks available for Rosen für Apoll, and I thought I’d make that my next German listening project.
Are there other suggestions for Greek and Roman themed German books/novels that I should listen to?
Christa Wolf’s Kassandra?
Der Tod des Vergil by Hermann Broch. Good luck!
Prometheus by Goethe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAFmidV0hUk
Hölderlin: his poems are steeped in classical culture but rather difficult
Does it have to be an audiobook? Anything by Joachim Latacz would be of interest to you, but I don’t know if his books are available as audio.
Thank you for the suggestions. I especially enjoyed the Goethe, but it will take a few more listens for me to get everything.
I think that my plan will be to listen to a translation of the Iliad in German, which will dovetail with reading it in Greek. Raoul Schrott’s translation is the easiest German, judging from samples, but he’s not really serious with “Homers Heimat” is he?
This seems to be the next easiest Iliad translation (and as mentioned in the comments, the translator appears to be Wolfgang Schadewaldt, despite the picture): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnNAdbxoJZY
A couple of years ago I was looking for German translations of Homer, and I remember reading an Amazon.de review of Schrott. I looked it up again: according to one reviewer, he has Homer say things like “dem hat Zeus doch ins Hirn geschissen” and “was bist du doch für ein arrongates arschloch”. It is a pretty poem, Herr Schrott, but you must not call him Homer.
I don’t know about Schadewaldt’s Iliad, but his Odyssey is, as far as I can tell (my German is very bad), is very literal, like a Loeb. I remember reading some Amazon review by a native German who got fed up with Schadewaldt’s translationese and ended up reading an English translation.
I don’t think there are any really good prose translations of Homer into German, certainly not as many as in English or even in French. There’s a very old, classic 18th century verse translation by Voss and a newer one by Roland Hampe that are probably worth something.
I can’t help here, never read Homer in German. I found this review of Schrott’s translation however: http://www.welt.de/kultur/article2380038/Jetzt-ist-Homer-ein-vulgaerer-Schriftsteller.html
Apperently in Schrott’s retelling (‘translation’ seems not to be the right word) Helen and Paris so passionately make love “dass die Bettpfosten wackelten”. Ha ha!
According to the review I linked to the translation by Latacz is the best in German, but -alas- only to be found in the ‘Basler Gesammtkommentar’.
NB: Joel, why confine yourself to classical themed German novels? There’s so much great, not too difficult German literature out there, both modern and not so modern. Off the top of my head, “'Der Spaziergang von Rostock nach Syrakus” by Delius, for instance (http://www.amazon.de/Der-Spaziergang-Rostock-nach-Syrakus/dp/3499222787): a story about a man in the DDR who wants to travel all the way to Italy and back -in the footsteps of a 19th century German writer called Johann Seume- , but finds the heavily guarded East-German border in his way. It deals with an important part of German history, is surprisingly funny and written in a clear and beautiful German.
Why not Franz Kafka? Fromthe point of view of the language, it’s surprisingly easy – even I’ve been able to read it.
I don’t mean for anyone to mistake my level of German. My German practice since July has consisted of listening to young adult novels on the train and watching one or two TV shows (Various Brothers Grimm stories, Der Hobbit, Der Herr Der Ringe, Harry Potter, Siddhartha, Der Kleine Vampir, lots of random YouTube videos). I can understand most of what’s going on at this level, but unless what I’m listening to is very visual and concrete, I’m lost. Sheer exposure has been helpful in picking up the language, but I would also like to push myself by tackling texts that are beyond my comfort zone.
Well, I think that there are some texts that you’d consider somewhat difficult if you read them in translation, but are actually hardly more difficult in the original. Franz Kafka is about the only thing I’ve been able to read in German, because it’s easy to read, even if it’s not easy to understand. The difficult is in understanding the message of the author, not the story. Plus most of the stories are very short. In similar vein, for anyone learning French I’d recommend Albert Camus’ L’Etranger. The point being, really, that you don’t have to restrict yourself to children’s books and such.
Freud in Deutsch bringt Freude.