I’m neutral in the sense that I haven’t been reading along and have no idea what he’s actually talking about, which is probably too neutral but I agree they both sound weird.
I don’t feel great about how Gibeau’s “those people” makes it sound like whoever he complained to would immediately argue him down (does the original really imply his parents are in the “世渡りに強い人” group?), and I kind of hate the phrase “by the excuses of which the world approved” (what’s the “which”? The arguments?? the graces??)
The most interesting part to me is that they both seem to attribute the outcome as like, the 世渡りに強い人 actively making it go away to dodge blame. Especially not having read the book, I certainly don’t want to overrule two different translators, so this is more of an “interesting, I wonder how they got there” than a “I think they’re wrong and I’m right” comment, but I kind of took the sentence to mean like, in the end it would just be a topic for think pieces, basically. Like something for cosmopolitan people to talk and write persuasively about with nothing actually mattering or changing.
My first pass at a translation attempt, for fun:
Even if I had complained - to my father, to my mother, to a policeman, to the government - I should wonder if in the end it would have amounted to anything more than just another topic for the worldly and the powerful to discuss ad nauseum.
(again though, I have no idea what his complaint actually is, so that 100% might be informing their translation and completely invalidate mine)
I think both translations convey the passive sense of 言いまくられる in different ways, but neither one really feels completely satisfying to me. I agree with @rodan about the awkwardness of Keane’s rendition of “by the excuses of which the world approved”. I’d be curious to see a more recent translation.
Reading through and actually knowing what was being talked about and the character’s tone, I got a completely different impression than I did before. Yeesh! I had assumed a much more mild circumstance and was completely wrong, sorry about that! I’d also 100% unconsciously substituted “generic self-centered lit narrator” in for the real one in my head (not having read the book), so it’s really interesting how different my impression of Dazai’s narrator is now after just a chapter (he’s certainly not generic, for one).
But my interpretation now still doesn’t quite gel with the translations.
To me reading it this time, I really don’t think the narrator’s problem is that the assault would be covered up, the way Gibeau makes it kind of sound, and while I think Keene’s framing about the world is a bit better, I don’t think that “arguing” is the right word for what would happen. From the way 葉蔵 tells it after all, if someone chastised him he’d crumble instantly - arguing seems like the last thing he’d do.
Personally I think he literally just means if he brought it up, they’d say a bunch of stuff and he wouldn’t understand any of it because he doesn’t understand them. Like, in the same way he doesn’t get the two-facedness in the later scene.
Here’s some important context I’m drawing on:
This bit just before:
I’m reading the description of the problem (自分は、その父や母をも全部は理解する事が出来なかった) as him not being to understand his parents. So 自分 can’t hope to get anything out of an appeal to 人間 because of that lack of understanding. And that informs the original quoted passage, making me think that 世渡りに強い人 saying 世間に通りのいい言いぶん are just… any 人間.
He’s been saying “It is uniquely difficult for me to traverse the world and society” and so a sentence saying roughly “some people good at getting on in the world saying words that get through society well” isn’t about them like, pulling strings and making crimes disappear, it’s just like, people describing colors to a colorblind person. (who I’m sure would quickly get sick of asking and stop too)
I honestly think that’s even sadder than just not thinking the people around him would protect him from assault, because he seems to me to treat a serious crime against him as no different from any other complaint he might have except in terms of degree. Like when summing up his point at the end of the chapter he talks about how he won’t raise issues with anyone for any reason and uses the phrase あの犯罪をさえ, even that crime.
It’s not that he has no recourse in this bad situation, it’s that he can imagine no recourse from anything ever. at least, not in the form of asking any humans.
I think both the translations (and me without the full context) all fell into the trap of assuming because of the subject matter that it would be about the particular circumstances, the kinds of things that might happen with an accusation like that - a cover-up, an argument, etc.
But to my reading at least, I think it really has nothing to do with the particulars and it’s just a matter of not wanting to go to someone for help if you can’t understand anything they say or do, which to him is… everyone.
Now… as for writing a translation I like better, well… writing’s hard!
I’d be curious to hear if anyone agrees on that broad take or thinks I’m wildly off-base.
By the way, I’m reading the aozora version so there’s certainly nothing like footnotes, but I was super curious about メチャラクチャラ博士 and ナンジャモンジャ博士 and what magazines exactly he was reading.
I found a blog post, that while I certainly don’t full understand it, seems to say that those characters were mascots for (or otherwise related to) the magazines 少年倶楽部 and 少女倶楽部 respectively.
Apparently the character even wrote a book at some point:
Those magazines are long-running enough that it’s hard to find exactly the right date range ballpark, and information seems kind of rare in general (at least to my abilities), but I found a site with some tantalizingly interesting (and heartbreakingly low quality) scans of an issue from 大正8年, when Dazai would have been 10, which seems at least in the ballpark of the time he would have been talking about.
Took me a second to get used to the right-to-left horizontal title!
I’d be happy to hear more information or ogle better sources if anyone happens to have them.
Finally finished week 2, while we’re already in week 6
But as i said, it should always be possible to continue discussing each part past schedule. I’ll be looking out for new replies!
@NicoleIsEnough that passage on right-to-left writing was fascinating! I didn’t know about this at all. This カステラ festival stand was an eye-opener. I was wowed and immediately sent it to some other Japanese aficionados for amusement
I have both translations as well now, often (but not always) comparing each sentence. So far I like Keene (1958) over Gibeau. I just wrote down initial impressions of them, but realized I have too little basis for them yet. So far I prefer Keene, and feel like Gibeau tends to translate more freely.
Gibeau adds “When did I start believing that all people are sinners?” to this sentence, which isn’t in the original:
なんだ、人間への不信を言っているのか？ へえ？ お前はいつクリスチャンになったんだい、
I guess the purpose of this is to explain / expand on the slightly vague “Did you become a Christian?” of the original.
Reading this (as my first book) is starting to get easier, maybe also because many words i didn’t know repeat many times: 所謂, 道化, 下男, etc. (i just didn’t get much time to read lately)
So far the writing in part seems to detail the character’s childhood and how it shaped his personality. And think what you may about Freud (which Dazai was probably familiar with) or modern psychology, you’ll probably admit at least some degree of the influences of childhood. But again, i wouldn’t reduce it completely to psychology or childhood, as this is already a reflection of the narrator.
I haven’t read this in ages, so these are just my current thoughts, which may be way off ^^
Really looking forward to the rest of the book!
but I agree they both sound weird.
