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sediment of verbs. Is not this the Reich desired by
Hitler, who planned to make mincemeat of Europe”
(95). Granted that she may hit on something here,
those statements do not recommend her as a respectful
translator of German literature, even less so of Kafka.
Even if his verb-controlled sentences could reflect
subjugation, his writing attacks it. Moreover, the
above-quoted first sentence of “The Metamorphosis”
shows how waiting for the verb keeps the reader on
tenterhooks. The all-revealing verb transformed,
containing the full terror of the whole sentence, is its
very last word. Only after reaching it can readers
really know the entire message.
Strangely enough, Willa Muir’s own last words
reveal exactly the wish to subjugate. She concludes
her essay by stating that “to turn classical German into
sound democratic English — there is the difficulty”
(96). Those words suggest precisely the ethnocentric
and domineering attitude Schleiermacher and
Humboldt condemned. Muir’s goal is to deliver an
English story, which then can find its English critics.
One of them, Stanley Corngold, titles an essay
“Metamorphosis of the Metaphor” and expounds on
Kafka’s use of “images from ordinary speech … [as] a
second metaphorization — one that concludes in the
metamorphosis of the metaphor” (40). Here, theory
banks on conclusions drawn from the translation
instead of from the original. Better shun the pun
metaphor/metamorphosis, because the German
original offers only Verwandlung transformation]
/Verwandtschaft [relation]. Corngold notes that “only
the alien cleaning woman gives Gregor Samsa the
factual, entomological identity of the ‘dung beetle’ …
She does not know that a metamorphosis has
occurred, that in this insect shape there is a human
consciousness” (43). Heinz Politzer, a German Kafka
expert, disagrees with both theories. He clarifies that
the charwoman’s “dung beetle” is not at all an
entomological classification but a common insult in
colloquial German. What is far more important is how
Politzer deals with the story’s title. He does not talk
about Gregor’s metamorphosis but about the
Verwandlung, the transformation that occurs, and
detects an interesting connection with Gregor’s
Verwandtschaft. “The title of the story might apply to
Grete with greater justification than to Gregor. … She
has become a turncoat … has changed into her
father’s daughter. By taking over his gestures and
glances, she has visibly joined forces with him. …
More and more she plays herself into the foreground:
the end will show her transformation completed”
(277–278). The English translation of Verwandlung as
metamorphosis kindles images from classical
mythology like Daphne turned into a laurel tree and
thus instigates the questionable search for the
transformed person’s new entomological identity. It
misses the fact that transformations can very well
happen without visual signs and thus cheats the text of
its purport.
Theory aside, it is time to look at the text. To
elaborate on some differences, I have selected the
eight translations published in the United States. I will
refer to them by number, identifying them in the
appendix, where the first two paragraphs of each are
given.
“Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus
unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in
seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren
Ungeziefer verwandelt” (Kafka 56).
The syntactical problems of this sentence have
already been mentioned. Beyond this, it is interesting
to note that no translation renders the verb in the title
as to metamorphose but as to change or to transform.
Kafka used the same word in both cases, as both title
and first main verb; doing so is not likely a
coincidence, because repetitions are one of the
predominant literary devices used in this story.
Admittedly, the verb to metamorphose sounds
pretentious, but then so might the title. Beyond the
loss of title/verb duplication, naming the story “The
Metamorphosis” bears strange fruit indeed. One critic,
Douglas Angus, scrutinizes the story for traces of
folklore and myth and finds parallels between Kafka
and fairy tales like “The Beauty and the Beast” (264).
The introductory sentence holds a further problem
for its English translation. The repetition of the
negating prefix un- in unruhig, ungeheuer, and
Ungeziefer cannot be reproduced. This sequence is,
however, an important instance of Kafka’s deliberate
wording. Annulment, the negation of his humanity,
and his being turned into a “not” is exactly what
happens to Gregor. Later, his sister will call him a
mis-creant, and the charwoman will treat him as discard.
This nullification of Gregor’s humanity is
suggested by Kafka’s careful word choice.
Throughout the story, it is also implicit in a
certain phrasing, overlooked or neglected by all
translations. Kafka strictly referred to the members of
Gregor’s family as “der Vater” or “die Schwester”
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