Published on January 12, 2025 at 4:41 p.m. / Modified on January 12, 2025 at 4:46 p.m.
6 mins. reading
The Swiss Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) was inspired by his own biography to invent the story of Henry Lee, known as “Henry the Green”, a young braggart with whom life was not kind. This ambitious novel, considered a major work of German-speaking literature, has had two versions. Keller wrote the first in Berlin in the mid-19th century. Dissatisfied, he revised his book from top to bottom in Zurich and republished it in 1879-1880. It is this second version which reappears today in French by Editions Zoé. It was time to tackle the colossal work of retranslating (nearly 900 pages) of this classic: the two French translations available dated from 1933 and 1946 and were showing their age. A lecturer and researcher at the University of Geneva, Dominik Müller signs the afterword of the novel and sheds light on its scope and issues.
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