On the Translation of Hermann Hesse II

The results of the reader poll on the three translations

Here are the results of yesterday’s poll, in which 124 readers participated. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read all three sample chapters and take part in the poll.

1. 52% Translation 1

2. 28% Translation 3

3. 19% Translation 2

TRANSLATION 1: Leila Vennewitz (1992, Pushkin Press 2024) This is the prestige modern translation. Leila Vennewitz (1912–2007) was a Canadian-English translator of German literature best known for her translations of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Heinrich Böll, for whom she served as his principal English voice, and she also translated Martin Walser, Uwe Johnson, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, and Jurek Becker. She was among the most decorated literary translators of her generation, winning the Schlegel-Tieck Prize (1968), the Goethe House/PEN prize (1978), and the American Translators Association’s German Literary Prize (1989), and she was notable within the profession for having pioneered the ability of translators to gain copyright for their own translations. Her Narcissus and Goldmund was the third major English translation after the 1932 Dunlop and 1968 Molinaro translations. While her reputation rests mainly on Böll rather than Hesse, the translation demonstrates her craftsmanship and now has a prestige-press imprint behind it.

TRANSLATION 2: Ursule Molinaro (1968) This is the translation nearly every English-language reader of the novel has encountered. Ursule Molinaro’s version, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1968, restored the direct character-based title Narcissus and Goldmund from the Dunlop edition’s change to Death and the Lover and became the standard version for several decades, kept in print through a mass-market Bantam edition in 1984 and a Picador paperback in 2003. Molinaro herself was not a career translator but a novelist and experimental writer who also introduced Christa Wolf, Claude Ollier, and Philippe Sollers to English readers. Her Narcissus arrived at the height of the American Hesse boom and is the countercultural-era text, the one that shaped how multiple English-speaking generations read the book.

TRANSLATION 3: Castalia House (2026) This is the most literal and precise of the three translations. It tracks several details more closely than the others (“glow of the tiny lamp flame,” “lean,” “covetous sidelong glance,” “without fail,” “mullioned windows,” “by stealth over eaves,” “pleaded, sobbing”). Fidelity is therefore very high. Readability is still strong, but the prose is a shade more formal and deliberate; it does not flow quite as effortlessly as the other two. It is the safest choice if maximum closeness to the German wording is the priority. (from Grok)

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So the Vennewitz translation is the clear winner, which is no surprise as she is arguably the best German-English translator of the 20th century. It would have been both unexpected and remarkable if we could have reached that level already, just as we do not expect to approach the levels of William Weaver translating Italian or Jay Rubin translating Japanese anytime soon.

However, the fact that our translation was reasonably competitive with the Vennewitz translation and was actually preferred to the mainstream Molinaro translation, which I personally found to be a little clumsy back in the days when my German was considerably better, means that we can proceed with confidence in publishing our own edition of Narcissus and Goldmund, whether in ebook, hardcover, or leather.