Review of A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amoz Oz (2004), translated by Nicholas de Lange
First published in the ITI Bulletin, the journal of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, January-February 2008
It would be hard to come up with a more impressive set of credentials for the job of translating Oz’s 2004 memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, than those of Nicholas de Lange. Born in 1944, he is Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is also a heavyweight in the world of literary translation and an expert on Oz’s works, having translated eleven of Oz’s novels. As if that were not enough, de Lange’s own prose in this translation shows an enviable deftness and agility with his native language.
This is a huge novel in every way and represents a wide variety of challenges to the translator. It encompasses, in great detail, the author’s life from early childhood in the 1930s to his move to a kibbutz as a teenager, set against the backgrounds of Jewish history and the author’s accomplished, complex family. The book is a fascinating insight into an embryonic country in the desert, populated by diverse peoples from the four corners of Europe. Academia, especially Jewish history and literature, is also central in the book, as the author’s family on his father’s side included eminent scholars. It is in this regard that de Lange’s own academic background in Jewish Studies is a huge asset.
The author’s mother died by suicide when the author was aged 12, and the book is largely an exploration of this cataclysmic event in the author’s life. Towards the end of the book, during the war of independence, there is a hugely affecting moment after the author’s pet tortoise is killed by a piece of shrapnel. The author’s mother comforts him, but the child feels that somehow it is more him comforting her than the other way around.
The mode of narration in this book is an amazing blend of exposition, anecdote, and quotation, among others, and present-day perspective intersperses the voice of the author’s child self. The child’s idiolect is beautifully re-created in English by de Lange. The quirks of speech and idiosyncrasies of each of the many characters, too, are fully captured. A sense of humour is present throughout the book, too, albeit mostly of the blacker kind. For example, when Oz and his father make a failed attempt to start a vegetable garden, the Hitler-style scarecrow, complete with moustache, watches over the waning vegetables that “started looking as sickly and weak as Diaspora Jews”.
One of the joys for me personally in this book is that De Lange does not belong to the “invisible” school of translators. For example, the author’s father frequently discusses questions of Hebrew etymology and linguistics. De Lange shows ingenuity and agility in translating these passages. He uses non-translation as a translation technique very effectively; many Hebrew terms, for example, are left intact, with varying degrees of explanation. Therefore, the reader is challenged to engage actively in the process of creating the text in the target language.
There is little to complain about in this book: there is quite a bit of repetition, the exhaustive detail can jar sometimes, and there are one or two awkward sentences and possible continuity errors, but what work does not have those? A Tale of Love and Darkness is an amazing achievement and I, for one, will be awaiting Nicholas de Lange’s next translated work with anticipation.