![]() I agree, for the reasons you state here, that cockroach is too specific. Nabokov was a bug collector, so I guess he'd know.īecause, afterall, part of the danger of what he is is that he (to a certain degree) represents the unknown. He felt that it added to the meaning of the story that Gregor had wings but never used them. Nabokov was adamant (when was he not?) that Samsa was, in fact, a beetle and even went so far as to make sketches. I'd love to hear a "religious" take on this story from someone. It's interesting that early German readers like Thomas Mann and Max Brod thought of Kafka as a religious writer, something I've not heard from modern English readers. ![]() That gives a religious shading to the story, I think. But it also transliterates to something like "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice," and that's certainly a connotation that's missing from any of the English translations. I don't speak German but it's my understanding that "Ungeziefer" was a common way to refer to a bug. How do you feel the connotations of the differing renderings color the story? Do they change your reading at all? In the Muir translation above it's rendered "gigantic insect." Norton Critical translated by Stanley Corngold renders it "monstrous vermin." I've also heard cockroach. ![]() ![]() This has been translated many different ways. ![]() "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an ungeheueren Ungeziefer." Okay, so this seems to be the most famous and questioned translation issue in Kafka's work. ![]()
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