Thank you so much for this, Tim. I have gone to great lengths to acquire a complete set of Hesse's writings in English, in addition to the volumes I own in the original German as well as translations in other languages. I was excited when I found "Bequeathed Writings and Poems of Hermann Lauscher" by Hesse in English through Barnes & Noble. Alas! Within the first few pages, I could see something was amiss. On page 7, the translator says: ..."especially through the harsh, self-tormenting love of truth of the "Tagebuch". love of truth in the Diary."" Then on page 9. I read "...I cannot go back further than to my fifth year. back to my fifth year." The repetitions seemed bizarre, so I pulled up the original German, and not surprisingly, the repetitions do not appear there. At that point, I thought I would check the publisher, and it was Newcomb Livraria Press "from the original French and German 1st edition printings using hybrid methods." I am not aware of Hesse publishing anything in French and cannot imagine why a translator would use a French translation in addition to the original German! Like you, I find it inexcusable that reputable distributors would carry material like this without a clear indication of their provenance.
Thank you for this. I was doing research on Hermann Hesse English translations of Peter Camenzind and came across Tim Newcomb. The sparse information I was finding was not making sense, then I found your post and now it does. Thank you. I have a substack on English translations of Dante for collectors and am going to (eventually) add a subsection for Hesse collectors (you know, those three other people besides me). This information will definitely be helpful. FYI the only link that worked was the one for Federico Albanese.
Happy to provide the information! Thanks for letting me know about the links by the way, I’ve updated the post, although only one of them seems to have been archived. It looks like the Livraria Press website has gone down before, however, so they may be back at some point.
(my apologies for referring to you as Tim--my mistake).
Thank you so much for this, Tim. I have gone to great lengths to acquire a complete set of Hesse's writings in English, in addition to the volumes I own in the original German as well as translations in other languages. I was excited when I found "Bequeathed Writings and Poems of Hermann Lauscher" by Hesse in English through Barnes & Noble. Alas! Within the first few pages, I could see something was amiss. On page 7, the translator says: ..."especially through the harsh, self-tormenting love of truth of the "Tagebuch". love of truth in the Diary."" Then on page 9. I read "...I cannot go back further than to my fifth year. back to my fifth year." The repetitions seemed bizarre, so I pulled up the original German, and not surprisingly, the repetitions do not appear there. At that point, I thought I would check the publisher, and it was Newcomb Livraria Press "from the original French and German 1st edition printings using hybrid methods." I am not aware of Hesse publishing anything in French and cannot imagine why a translator would use a French translation in addition to the original German! Like you, I find it inexcusable that reputable distributors would carry material like this without a clear indication of their provenance.
Thank you for this. I was doing research on Hermann Hesse English translations of Peter Camenzind and came across Tim Newcomb. The sparse information I was finding was not making sense, then I found your post and now it does. Thank you. I have a substack on English translations of Dante for collectors and am going to (eventually) add a subsection for Hesse collectors (you know, those three other people besides me). This information will definitely be helpful. FYI the only link that worked was the one for Federico Albanese.
Peace,
Russell
Happy to provide the information! Thanks for letting me know about the links by the way, I’ve updated the post, although only one of them seems to have been archived. It looks like the Livraria Press website has gone down before, however, so they may be back at some point.