Dear Jochen: I haven’t heard from you in a long time. I hope you are doing okay. I was traveling for 3 weeks in March to California and Arizona. Since, I have been trying to to catch up with my emails. In April and early May, following discovery a Meningioma, I also developed lactose intolerance that had been painful prior to learning what was causing my stomach pains. Then, I suffered many incidents of nausea and dizziness, resulting in days in a hospital. In receiving a pacemaker, the doctor pierced my lung that collapsed. Now I am home again, but not “out of the woods yet” as I continue to have nausea and dizziness. Not fun times. More tests remain to learn what is going on. Aging is not for sissies. How are you doing? Don P.S. Could you please resend your son’s contact information as I unfortunately deleted many emails in error. Regrettably, I had failed to send a message to him so he doesn’t likely know of my existence. Would he be open to a message from me? Don > On Feb 1, 2022, at 8:26 PM, Donald Strauss wrote: > > > > Sent from my iPhone > > Begin forwarded message: > >> From: Donald Strauss >> Date: February 1, 2022 at 9:26:08 PM EST >> To: Ernst Meyer >> Subject: Re: January 31, 2022 >> >> Hello Jochen: your quotes and thoughts are quite interesting. However, the question remains, does Dr. Busch desire you to translate his book, will he provide the material you require, does he have the means via a publishing company to get the book to market, and will he proofread your translation? He must communicate as we are doing. Will you be posing these questions to him directly. Perhaps, a phone call between you two is required. Time is ticking. Don >> P.S. You made such progress with your translation and it would be shame to have it go to waste. >> >> Sent from my iPhone >> >>> On Jan 31, 2022, at 4:40 PM, Ernst Meyer wrote: >>> >>> January 31, 2022 >>> >>> Dear Donald, >>> >>> Thank you for your letter. As a matter of fact, it's not one, but two letters for which I must thank you, an e-mail from yourself and an e-mail in German from Reinhold Busch with the Subject: "Mail from Donald Strauss" but without attachments. It remains unclear whether Reinhold - he and I are now addressing each other by our first names - intended to forward "Mail from Donald Strauss" or merely to inform me that "Mail from Donald Strauss" had precipitated his, Reinhold's, letter. >>> >>> In my reply to Reinhold, of which I would mail you a copy if it weren't in German, and if I weren't too lazy to translate it for you, I offered to resume my translation efforts if he would review them as they evolved, and if he would provide me with the original texts from English speaking contributors which he translated into German for his book. I did not tell Reinhold that unless the original was no longer available, I would consider it irresponsible for me to retranslate into English documents the primary version of which had also been English. >>> >>> If I did resume the translation, I would have to put various other pending projects on hold, perhaps, given my age, scuttling them permanently. But I console myself with the thought that to translate is to wrestle with the angels of language, as in >>> >>> Genesis Chapter 32, Tanakh Verse 27, and King James Version Verse 26 are identical: "And he (the Angel) said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he (Jacob) said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." >>> >>> Luther's translation (1545): "26 Vnd er sprach / Las mich gehen / denn die morgenröte bricht an / Aber er antwortet / Jch las dich nicht /du segenest mich denn." >>> >>> The Septuagint: (LXX 32:27) "καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ἀπόστειλόν με ἀνέβη γὰρ ὁ ὄρθρος ὁ δὲ εἶπεν οὐ μή σε ἀποστείλω ἐὰν μή με εὐλογήσῃς" >>> >>> Vulgata: "[26] dixitque ad eum dimitte me iam enim ascendit aurora respondit non dimittam te nisi benedixeris mihi" >>> >>> and perhaps if I am sufficiently persistent I might extort a blessing from the translating and from the translation. >>> >>> I quoted from Genesis in four languages, not to preen myself with the very thin veneer of my superficial familiarity with Latin and Greek, but as an example with which to explore the subtleties of translation. Even with this short sentence I have problems. >>> >>> Misreading ὄρθρος as ὀρθός, I was surprised by the notion that the sun appears to rise straight up from the horizon at all places on our earth and at all seasons of our year. On inquiring of Google, "At what angle does the sun rise" I received the answers: "90 degrees" "The solar altitude angle is 0 degree at sunrise and usually 90 degrees when the sun is overhead at noon." Oh well, contradictions are everywhere. Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon offers two definitions of ὄρθρος: A. ὄρθρος the time just before or about daybreak, dawn B. Ὄρθρος, ὁ, a mythical dog, son of Typhaon and Echidna, that kept the herds of Geryoneus on the island Erytheia, and was there killed by Heracles. >>> >>> As for the angle at which the sun rises, the Internet provided me with a second answer: "“At which angle the sun rises?” That depends on your latitude and the season. At the equator, on the equinox, the Sun rises straight up, 90 degrees. On the same day, the angle of the Sun will match your latitude all over the Earth. That angle will be shifted north by 23.5 degrees on the July solstice, and 23.5 degrees south on the December solstice. It will be somewhere in between the rest of the time." >>> >>> I satisfy myself with the conclusion (which may be erroneous) that all sunrises and all sunsets which I have ever had occasion to observe beyond an unobstructed horizon have in fact been oblique, and that my memory that they appeared vertical must reflect an optical - or perceptual illusion. >>> >>> For many years now, perhaps since I learned to read, I have lived in an ambiguous and contradictory relationship with translations. On the one hand I am convinced that notwithstanding the tripe of the logical positivists and the mathematical logicians that meaning can be and should be reduced to fixed, immutable, unambiguous words and symbols, meanings are not separable from the words and mathematical-logical symbols that convey these meanings. Therefore in the most profound sense, which Google has yet to discover, words are not susceptible to translation. >>> >>> The English Ghost and the German Geist, however homologous they are, have different, if not indeed opposite connotations: A ghost is the spirit of the dead, aber der Geist ist lebendig - but Geist is alive; it is the spirit of the living. In England spirits make you drunk; and sprit propels your automobile. In Germany Geist is the essence of intellect, the force of life. That, admittedly is oversimplification, but it points to the chasms which separate the feelings engendered by words. It is the explanation I give myself for composing essays, poems and novels in German. I think I could approximate my thoughts and feelings by parallel compositions in English, but these would not be the same as the German texts they seek to represent. >>> >>> I interpret Reinhold's interest in and affection for us Rosenthalers as a reflection of his own need for family. I hesitate to trust my memory when I report to you that Reinhold once wrote to me that he was separated from his father by his step-mother's jealousy. Years ago, when I studied literature in college and graduate school, I was embarrassed and offended by the disdain with which proponents of "realism" and "naturalism" disparaged the "classical" and "romantic" fantasies of which I was then enamored. As the years pass, I become increasingly critical of my own "idealism" and increasingly drawn to interpreting and describing the world in which I live, including our Rosenthal family, including my nuclear family, and of course, especially including myself, with all our imperfections, faults, errors and shortcomings. >>> >>> For this reason I think I should not, and I will not, proceed with my translation without the corrective criticism of a collaborator, perhaps Reinhold or yourself, who is more optimistically and less sceptically disposed than am I, and who is proud of the family tradition which I am documenting and which I can contemplate only with sadness. >>> >>> Thank you for keeping in touch. I send you and Jan my warmest best wishes, especially on this very cold winter day. >>> >>> Jochen