A review by spacestationtrustfund
Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch

3.0

In reading this novel in English I was faced with an unexpected translation conundrum. The ingredients: the word "Himmelsverborgenheiten," clearly invented by Hermann Broch specifically for the occasion of Vergil's looking at the night sky. The translator's recipe: just do whatever. The context:

Oh, Nähe des Urbildes, Nähe der Ur-Wirklichkeit, in deren Vorhof er stand —, wird die kristallene Decke der Himmelsverborgenheiten nun zerreißen? wird die Nacht ihm nun ihr letztes Sinnbild enthüllen, ihm, dessen Auge zum Brechen bestimmt ist, wenn sie das ihre aufschlägt?

Jean Starr Untermeyer, who translated Der Tod des Vergil in 1945, removed from the oven this product:

Oh, nearness of the arch-image, nearness of the arch-reality in the fore-court of which he was standing—, was the crystal cover of the heaven-secret about to be rent? was the night about to unveil its final symbol to him whose eye must falter when the night’s eye opens?

"Himmelsverborgenheiten," which more literally could be translated as heaven's (Himmels-) hidden (verborgen) -ness (-heiten), becomes "the heaven-secret." The original word is plural (the singular would be "Himmelsverborgenheit," meaning "heaven's concealment," i.e., "Himmels Verborgenheit").

Out of curiosity I went to check how the French translation by Albert Kohn had fared. Same recipe; slightly different outcome:

Ô proximité de l’archétype, proximité de la réalité première, dont il foulait le seuil, le revêtement de cristal des arcanes célestes va-t-il maintenant se fendre ? La nuit va-t-elle lui révéler son dernier symbole, à lui dont l’œil devra se voiler, lorsque la nuit ouvrira le sien ?

This time it's "le revêtement de cristal des arcanes célestes." I'd be quite curious to see how different translations into different languages handle this word.