week 5

ECHOES OF THE HASKALAH MOVEMENT ON GERMAN DRAMA

It is an indisputable fact that contributions from other disciplines play the major role during the course of an evolution of any given discipline. As far as Translation Studies is concerned, this major role achieves a certain amount of consideration due to the nature of translation which demands for various approaches from other fields of studies, such as sociology, philosophy, theatre studies, cultural studies, and so forth. Even though this aspect of translation was obvious to observe, studies concerned with the said aspect could not be undertaken to a certain extent until the “cultural turn” has taken a heavy toll within the realm of the discipline.

Thanks to the works of some of the leading figures of Translation Studies, say, Itamar Even-Zohar, Gideon Toury, Theo Hermans, and André Lefevere the very word translation acquired the chance to be studied in a broader context. The polysystem theory of Even-Zohar, Toury’s norms, Lefevere’s notion of “rewriting” along with Theo Hermans’ critical approach to the theories of the just mentioned scholars, has contributed to the evolution of Translation Studies under the umbrella of “Descriptive and Systems-Oriented Approaches.” As a consequence of the studies carried out under this branch, translation had the chance to function as a bridgehead between various disciplines to a certain degree.

Gideon Toury’s article entitled, “Translation as a Means of Planning and the Planning of Translation: A Theoretical Framework and an Exemplary Case”, for example, can be shown as a representative example of this kind of study among many other works of Translation Studies concerned with the socio-cultural aspect of translation. Naturally, in Toury’s article, the main focus is on the notion of (culture) planning and the aim of building a bridge between Translation Studies and Planning Studies (cf. 2002: 150), yet, the scholar’s study leaves a room for tracing the trails of his exemplary case within the realm of theatre history, therefore can function as a link that can connect more than one discipline, such as theatre studies and history, sociology, philosophy, and Translation Studies.

Toury’s statement which reads as, “Cultures resort to translating as one possible way of filling in gaps in them – on a variety of levels. A void in a cultural sector may of course be more or less noticeable to the people-in-the-culture. Translation is not the only way of filling a void which has been noticed, however: a gap can also be filled with an alien, untranslated entity, especially in a multilingual group” (ibid: 153, italics original) can be taken as a point of commencement in order to develop an argument which can track down the signs of the scholar’s exemplary case, namely, the Haskalah movement in theatre history. As Toury argues, during the course of building a communal awareness in a society where more than one language are spoken, other methods like planning come into play. Although Toury’s train of thought is chiefly focused on the crucial role that translation played in the Haskalah movement as an instrument solving the issues of language (cf. ibid: 156-159), glancing at the Haskalah movement –precisely speaking, the reflections of the Haskalah movement– from a broader perspective can offer the chance of approaching Toury’s arguments from a different viewpoint.

The Haskalah movement, or in other words, the Jewish Enlightenment, dates back to the Prussia of the eighteenth century and coincides with the German Enlightenment. One thing that Toury does not include in his study in terms of the main reason/s for the need of the Haskalah movement to arouse is the special condition of the Jews of Prussia. Contrary to the fact that the other Jews around Europe –particularly the ones in France– had already gained their social statuses at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it took some time for the Jews of Prussia to reach to that status in the German society (cf. Arendt 1973: 57). Due to the attempts –either in terms of scholarly works or in terms of aesthetic works like drama– coming from a flux of German intellectuals, however, a certain move towards a better understanding of the Jewish society in Prussia started to take place more or less towards the first half of the eighteenth century. One of the prominent figures of the German Enlightenment, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), for instance, can be considered as a key literary agent who depicted Jews in his dramatic works, hence played a major role during the course of bringing the Jews of Prussia to the focus of attention. Prior to his groundbreaking play Nathan der Wise (Nathan the Wise), written in 1779, Lessing himself had already discussed the problems of the Jewish community in one of his earlier plays, entitled Die Jüden (The Jews) dating back to 1749, and argued that a Jew could have nobility as a quality inherent in his or her soul. In Nathan der Wise, which, according to Hannah Arendt, is a play of friendship in the fullest sense of the word (cf. 1983: 25), Lessing strives for bringing into focus a world-view in which a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian can live in a peaceful and a tolerant manner by means of employing the forces of free will, independent thinking which can emancipate a given individual from the limitations deriving from social, ethnic, religious and political differentiations in a given society (cf. Dinçel: 2006 61-64).

The essential figure on which Lessing has built the protagonist of his dramatic piece was actually one of the most significant names of the Haskalah movement: Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). As a consequence of his endeavours regarding the development of the Jewish consciousness, Moses Mendelssohn also acquired the status which allowed him to become accepted as an individual in a non-Jewish society during the despotic regime of Frederick the Great. During the course of Mendelssohn’s expansion of his ideas through society, Lessing became his one of the biggest supporters in terms of publishing their joint works. There was one main conflict though. Whereas Mendelssohn’s point of departure for his arguments chiefly rested on the grounds of spreading the Jewish world view with the purpose of gaining the social statuses of the Jewish communities in the other countries of Europe, Lessing’s starting point for his ideas was based on the crucial role that the notions of independent thinking and free will would/should/could play during the course of building a national German consciousness. In this respect, the langue issue, that is to say, the use of the Hebrew language and how to melt it in the same pot with the German language suggested itself as one of the biggest problems that the Jewish intelligentsia had to overcome in the eighteenth century.

At this point, as argued by Toury, the proponents (i.e. the rabbis) of the Haskalah movement saw translation as the ultimate way of solving this dilemma. The use of Yiddish language, which was/is originally a language of German dialect, consists of words from Hebrew and several modern languages, became the medium of language to be used in the translations. Furthermore, the text type/s to be selected was one of the other problems of the advocates of the movement which were solved by using the source text/s pertaining to the Hebrew language. As mentioned by Toury, among the text types to be selected, priority was given to the children’s fables rather than the dramatic works and epic poetry as an outcome of the socio-cultural circumstances of the time (cf. Hermans: 1999 88 with Toury 2002: 158). Even though, in his article Toury regards these circumstances together with various (contradictory) decisions of the Jewish intellectuals involved with the Haskalah movement as one of the main reasons for drama so slowly to appear (2002: 158), non-Jewish society has already taken a serious step towards the Jews of Prussia as an outcome of the efforts of Lessing and Mendelssohn. Seen from this perspective, one can see how Toury’s article calls for a detailed study of the translation practices of the Jewish community in terms of dramatic works akin to the ones of Lessing. Since in due time, the reflections of the Haskalah movement started to become observed outside the Jewish community (the most notable example being Lessing’s Nathan der Wise) the role of translations regarding the scarce amount of dramatic pieces like the ones of Lessing would surely hasten the revelation of the Yiddish theatre to a certain degree. However, Toury’s article does not dwell upon the reason/s which might lie behind these above mentioned historical facts in detail and moreover, the scholar mentions the notion of the translation/s of dramatic works in a rather superficial manner.

On the whole, with the exemplary case it offers, Toury’s study proposes the chance for one to approach to the case in question from a different perspective; a perspective that can unite various disciplines with the intention of filling the problematic aspect of Toury’s article. Still, when the questions it poses upon the notion of culture planning within a given society, in a given time period are taken into consideration, Toury’s study can be regarded as an illuminating one which can function as a starting point for an interdisciplinary case study on the translation practices of the dramatic works in the Haskalah movement.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, A Harvest/HBJ Book, New York, 1973

Arendt, Hannah, Men in Dark Times, A Harvest/HBJ Book, New York, 1983

Dinçel, Burç İdem, “Birey, Özgür İrade ve Özgür Düşünce Kavramlarının Lessing’in Oyunlarındaki Yansımaları”, in The Journal of Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy Department of Istanbul University, 8th issue, Istanbul University Press, Istanbul, 2006, pp. 57-66

Hermans, Theo, Translations in Systems, St. Jerome, UK, 1999

Toury, Gideon, “Translation as a Means of Planning and the Planning of Translation: A Theoretical Framework and an Exemplary Case”, in Paker Saliha (ed.) Translations: (Re)shaping of Literature and Culture, Boğaziçi University Press, Istanbul, 2002, pp. 148-163