Re: _In Stahlgewittern_ - Origin of Booktitle

[Gary Kern <gkern@ucr.campus.mci.net>]

Bertil Haggman wrote:
> 
> In _Siebzig verweht V_ (1997) EJ writes
> (p. 178) that he choose the title
> "In Stahlgewittern" from the Edda,
> the great Icelandic epic.
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But evidently he did not say in what language he read the EDDA.
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> I decided to do some research
> into the matter, highly
> interesting for a Scandinavian.
> 
> Thought I had solved the riddle
> when in a Swedish translation
> of the Poetic Edda (1964) I found
> the phrase "Storm of Steel".
> The translator had even put
> this kenning in the glossary
> as a synonym for battle, fight,
> struggle.
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Evidently you are speaking of a Swedish-only volume, so that you cannot
see to what word(s) in the original the translator referred?
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 And in Gripe's Prophesy
> used the kenning in Swedish,
> "staalstorm". But further research
> revealed that the translator had
> been rather free in his use of the
> phrase 'storm of steel'.
>**********************************
Again, the original?  Isn't the EDDA written in Old Norse?  Could
Juenger have consulted the original?  I assume that "Gripe's Prophecy"
is part of the EDDA.
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> The phrase 'storm of steel' is a (loose)
> translation of a kenning in Gripe's Prophecy
> that means more literally 'shower of points'
> or 'point-shower'.
> 
> So back to square one. I guess the only way
> to continue the search is by finding a translation
> into German of the Edda from the time when
> EJ could have had access to it. So it would
> have to be an edition published before the
> first edition of "In Stahlgewittern".
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This should have been your first move.  But now at least when you get a
German translation of the proper date, you know where to look for the
word(s).
******************************************************
> Also always wondered why EJ did not
> write 'Stahlsturm'. Why 'Stahlgewitter' ?
> Gewitter is thunderstorm. Could it have
> something to do with a kenning he saw
> in a German translation of Edda in which
> Gewitter not Sturm was used ?
>*************************************
Either that, or he was inspired by "Stahlsturm" to create
"Stahlgewitter," which he preferred.
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> Now in 1997 EJ writes that originally he
> wanted to use the title _Red and Gray_
> inspired by Stendahl's _Rouge et Noir_.
> It would have been better to use _Red and
> Gray_. Stendahl before the Edda ? EJ,
> how could you do this ?
> 
> Greetings
> 
> Bertil Haggman
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Dear Bertil:

I have run into many such problems when translating Russian into
English.  For example, Mikhail Zoshchenko in the first chapters of
BEFORE SUNRISE gave a whole bunch of quotes without always identifying
the source.  Most of them were from Russian translations. When the
original source was English, I wanted to cite it instead of translate
from Russian into my own English version of the great masters (Poe,
Byron, etc.).  This was not always possible, because the Russian
translation might add things.  For example, Vasily Zhukovsky's famous
translation of Lord Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon" contained its own
phrases not found in Byron. So I had to translate after all and make a
footnote.

I suspect that you will not run into this problem, since the German
translation Juenger presumably read will probably be close to the
original Old Norse (closer than Russian is to English), but you might be
prepared for the problem.  Juenger might have read "Stahlsturm" and
changed it to "Stahlgewitter" for his title, or the translator himself
might have created the latter word for metric purposes, even when the
original was closer to "Stahlsturm."  Tracking down exact phrases can be
tedious and time-consuming," but when you find one it's like opening up
King Tut's tomb.

GK