DIE SCHERE #18 again: How to translate EJ's "Gleichnis"

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DIE SCHERE #18 again: How to translate EJ's "Gleichnis"

Gary's notes on #19 made me revise my notes on #18. Agreed: "Gleichnis" does not mean 
parable here in the sense defined by the OALDCE, "a story told to illustrate a moral or 
spiritual truth". "Simile" is misleading, too, though it might come a little closer. Gary is 
certainly right when he points out that EJ uses "Gleichnis" in the sense the word has in the 
last lines of FAUST II. 

The words Gary lists as possible translations, "metaphor, symbol, likeness, approximation" 
(perhaps "image" might be included) are, as he is aware, mere approximations (and thus must 
keep uneasy any nitpicking translator). But so are the terms that EJ himself uses: 
Gleichnis, Vorweisung, Hinweis, Ausblick, Symbol (1). Since each of these German and English 
words have an everyday materialist meaning in most contexts, none of them will do very well 
for expressing the metaphysical matters that are meant in this particular context. If you 
try to put into words what is at bottom beyond words you have to resort to ever new verbal 
approximations. 

"Gleichnis" in contemporary German means exclusively "parable". Goethe, however, still used 
two different meanings of the word, "exemplary story" and, well, that meaning we are trying 
to come to grips with here. In fact, his "Gleichnis" is mostly quoted from those last lines 
in FAUST II. There are also the memorable lines from his poem, "Prooemion", where he himself 
seems to offer a 'translation' of "Gleichnis" as "image" ("Bild"): 

Deines Geistes höchster Feuerflug
Hat schon am Gleichnis, hat am Bild genug...

In Luther's translation of the Bible, foundation of the modern German language, both 
meanings are extant. There is Matthew 13,3 ("And he spake many things unto them in 
parables"): "Und er redete zu ihnen mancherlei durch Gleichnisse". And there is Genesis 5,1 
("In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him"): "Da Gott den 
Menschen schuf, machet er ihn nach dem Gleichnis Gottes". It is most telling that the modern 
Luther Bible (my edition is from 1912) has here, "Da Gott den Menschen schuf, machte er ihn 
nach dem Bilde Gottes". The editors who revised the venerable text took account of the fact 
that, in spite of Goethe, 20th century Germans, including, before he was set right, the 
hapless undersigned, can only think of "parable" when they encounter the word "Gleichnis".

 
(1) In a phrase in DAS SANDUHRBUCH (1954) he seems to equate Goethe's "Gleichnis" with 
"symbol" when he writes: "Zum Symbol wird uns das Vergängliche, wenn das Sein durchleuchtet. 
Dieses Durchleuchten nennen wir Sinn." (p.182)

Günter Rebing