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German for ‘Cool’

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Carl Weissner brought mid-century underground American literature into German, influencing the entire language. He died last week at 71.

Weissner translated J.G. Ballard, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Will Eisner, William S. Burroughs, Diane Arbus, Charles Bukowski “…into a German that had never existed before like that,” according to Matthias Penzel in a really nice piece in the FAZ today called “Transfers from the New World.” The reclusive, technology-shy translator was also a promoter of German underground writers, like Jürgen Ploog, whom you’ve read about here on Readux.

Penzel goes on to say, “He translated and was paid reasonably but not extravagantly and many of his translations are still being printed today. In the beginning he worked ten hours a day. Not the profit, but rather the merit of that labor was that Weissner helped to drive the mustiness of the past decades out of the landscape of our language.”*

Sadly, Weissner’s name doesn’t appear on many of the covers of the (visually and lingually) gorgeous and iconic books he produced. But here’s a collection of images (including a letter to Charles Bukowski, click to enlarge) to enjoy:

*Penzel’s German contains a lovely little not-quite-pun that shouldn’t get lost: “Nicht der, sondern das Vierdienst dabei war…”

Creative Commons License

This text by Amanda DeMarco is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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