McWhorter on Zora Neale Hurston and Shakespeare
John McWhorter
writes on Zora Neale Hurston. McWhorter is always worth reading, even
when one disagrees with him, as I do on this piece where he argues that
Shakespeare
needs to be translated into modern English. Also note this penultimate
paragraph on translations of Shakespeare into foreign languages:
“The irony is
that people in foreign countries often possess Shakespeare to a greater
extent than we do, since they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the language
that they speak. Shakespeare is translated into rich, poetic varieties
of these languages, to be sure, but since it is the rich, poetic modern
varieties of the languages, the typical spectator in Paris or Moscow
can attend a production of Hamlet and enjoy a play rather than an
exercise. A friend of mine has told me that first time he truly
understood more than the gist of what was going on in a Shakespeare
play was when he saw one in French!”
There is some
sense to this. Yet, it must be noted that the best native poets (say of
Hungary) learned enough English just to translate the Bard and the
Hungarian Shakespeare is not modern, but, rather, as my father might
have said, better than the original!
