Re: 18th Brumaire quote
Eva Ekeblad (eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se)
Fri, 12 Sep 1997 10:21:19 +0100
At 19.00 +0100 97-09-08, Bruce Robinson wrote:
>The original German reads:
>
>'Die Tradition aller toter Geschlechter lastet wie ein Alp auf dem Gehirne
>der Lebenden.'
>
>The German word 'Alp' or 'Alptraum' means a nightmare, which is probably
>where the confusion starts. Thus the translation I gave from MEIA is not
>totally correct (oops). That this is the most likely meaning is implied by
>the next sentence where he writes: 'And just as they seem to be occupied
>with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not
>exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they
>anxiously conjure up the _spirits of the past_ to their service, borrowing
>from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new
>scene in world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed
>language.' (My emphasis.) He is referring to a form of false consciousness
>about history, presumably using the metaphor of the nightmare
>as something which has psychological reality for the individual, but does
>not necessarily come to grips with the real world (hence leading to farce,
>rather than tragedy).
=2E.. I just asked a German colleauge (in language education at our
department) about what an Alptraum has to do with the Alps. And he
answered: "Oh, absolutely nothing! An Alp is a small-" and he placed his
closed fist above his heart, groping for the word in Swedish. And then
agreed when I suggested a goblin, an evil little gnome. Spirits of the
past, indeed!!
Eva