I’ve always loved this famous sentence from the Communist Manifesto, translated by Samuel Moore (under Engels’s supervision) for the 1888 English edition: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” The first seven words were used by Marshall Berman for the title of his superb book All That Is Solid Melts into Air
Richard J. Evans’s comment on Jonathan Sperber’s attempt to find a better translation of Marx’s phrase ‘Alles ständische und stehende verdampft,’ usually rendered ‘All that is solid melts into air,’ pinpoints a particular difficulty in translating the German term Stand (LRB, 23 May). Sperber’s preferred version – ‘Everything that firmly exists and all the elements of the society of orders evaporate’ – is, well, frankly hideous. On the other hand it is a lot more accurate than the elegant version it seeks to replace. The words Stand and its adjective ständisch have been variously translated as ‘status’, ‘estate’, ‘estate-type’ and now here as ‘a society of orders’. None of these captures what Marx is talking about here, which is inequality organised on a basis other than class or market. For Marx the problem of the emancipation of the Jews was that it would ‘free’ them only to enter an unequal, class-based world and, in so doing, would dissolve what was distinctive in a Jewish way of life, whatever value you might place on that. Even more than Marx, Max Weber contrasted status-based (ständisch) inequality with market-based divisions. A status group (Stand) has a distinctive way of life, which is regarded in a particular way, and is reflected in legal provisions and even in clothes or diet. An example in our contemporary world might be children: we think of them as fully human yet somehow as a different order of beings from adults, with a different legal position and different preoccupations. To some degree, gender divisions too are ständische differences. For both Marx and Weber what mattered was that the sweeping away of the old order – the ancien regime of, er, ‘social orders’ – is at first experienced as emancipation, only for the reality to dawn that what replaces it are different forms of exploitation and oppression and new social identities grounded solely in market position: in buying or selling labour-power. The German term Stand is first cousin to the English word ‘standing’, and both Marx’s and Weber’s point was that modernity erodes all identities, honour and relationships in the acid of commercial exchange, leaving few of us really happy with where we stand.
Jem Thomas
Bristol
Russian is not only lucky enough to have a corresponding adjective сословный [soslovnyi] meaning ‘of or pertaining to сословие [soslovie],” where сословие is ‘estate’ in the old-fashioned sense of Stand (nobility, clergy, etc.), but lucky enough to have a phrase сословное и застойное [soslovnoe i zastoinoe] that chimes almost as nicely as the German “Ständische und Stehende” which it translates; the full sentence is “Все сословное и застойное исчезает, все священное оскверняется, и люди приходят, наконец, к необходимости взглянуть трезвыми глазами на свое жизненное положение и свои взаимные отношения.” But since English cannot provide a literal translation that is not hideous, I’m grateful we have the option of the lovely and suggestive “All that is solid melts into air.”
Yet it would be nice to keep the alliteration and the industrial allusion.
“Status and statue/guilds and graven images dissolve in steam”?
The solid sublimes, the holy is profaned, and man faces cold reality.
Very nice! The estates have gone bye-bye, but nobody will miss them.
what Marx is talking about here, which is inequality organised on a basis other than class or market.
Would that the bleating-hearted letter writer from Bristol had better explained the lurid machinations of the “organizers” of said inequality? What a joy that helpless women and children can nowadays rely upon the staunch support of equality organizers to further their lot in life’s less but equalesque sweepstakes. Much simpler would have been to take the Jewish tack, overcome the status inferiority and beat then at their own unequal, class-based rules.
Not to get too pop-Whorfian, but is the lack of any obvious English idiom to convey “staendische” itself a consequence of the Anglophone societies having become sufficiently post-feudal several centuries earlier than no one could understand what these weird-beard foreign radicals were banging on about? (Not that there wasn’t rather a lot of class distinction in the U.K., but it may not have been conceptualized in a fashion that made it easy to talk about in this sort of analysis.)
Yes, I don’t think that’s pop-Whorfian at all—it makes perfect sense that the lack of feudal relationships would make the vocabulary of such relationships hard to understand. I remember wrinkling my brow over the “estates” for quite a while in college (presumably while studying the French Revolution) before I started sorting it out.
Much simpler would have been to take the Jewish tack, overcome the status inferiority and beat then at their own unequal, class-based rules.
That worked so very well in 1939-45, eh?
DNFTT.
I’m curious how this term has been translated into other languages (even closely-related languages like Dutch). If English has trouble, I’m sure it’s next to impossible for others.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a Chinese translation of the Communist Manifesto on the web.
How are helpless women and children, living stressful lives below the poverty line, supposed to be able to overcome the status inferiority and beat then at their own unequal, class-based rules ?
No doubt you’ve done a post on the origins of “troll” in this context? All the better to know from what prediluvian morass my knuckle-dragging, dim-witted, mouth-breathing, breach-birthed, sloth-toed, albino-hued, pygmy-sized, pin-headed, cross-eyed, chin-less, color-blind, hair-lipped, speech-impaired, knock-kneed, club-footed, forehead-deficient, ring-wormed, cauliflower-eared, hunch-shouldered, sunken-chested, regressed-testicled, brain-dead, Golum-like, hirsute-berserk forebears appeared. By the buy, sounds like a dream grant in waiting for our Equality Organizers short on summer school proselytizing assignments.
I remember wrinkling my brow over the “estates” for quite a while in college (presumably while studying the French Revolution) before I started sorting it out.
But the concept of ‘estates’ isn’t quite as esoteric as all that, even in English. We still speak of the ‘Fourth Estate’ without sounding too old-fashioned.
Golum-like
All that effort spoiled by a spelling mistake…
My Tolkien Companion, a collateral victim of the bookshelf-less, akimbo-angled Troll’s cave.
hair-lipped too, by the buy …
I found this online for the French:
Tout ce qui était stable et établi se volatilise, tout ce qui était sacré se trouve profané et les humains sont enfin forcés de considérer d’un regard sobre leur position dans la vie…
And Swedish:
Allt fast och beständigt förflyktigas, allt heligt profaneras och människorna blir slutligen tvungna att se sin livssituation och sina ömsesidiga förbindelser med nyktra ögon.
Spanish (not sure how ‘standard’ this version is):
Todo lo que era estable y establecido se volatiliza, todo lo que era sagrado se halla profanado y los humanos son finalmente forzados a considerar con una mirada sobria su posición en la vida y sus relaciones mutuas.
Looking at the versions I’ve found, I wonder whether any of them really relay the meaning that the German is supposed to.
I even found a Chinese version:
一切固定的东西都烟消云散了，一切神圣的东西都被亵渎了。人们终于不得不用冷静的眼光来看他们的生活地位，他们的相互关系。
For the phrase in question it says something like “All fixed things shall vanish”.
I have to wonder whether this translation is really from the German or whether it took a shortcut from the English.
Checked the Mongolian version – appears to convey original German meaning quite precisely, though I am not sure that the end result is actually a good Mongolian.
“Alivaa ugsaa yazguuryn ba bainga togtongi ni hiiden shirgej”
Literally “Everything of lineage and aristocracy, everything permanent and stagnant evaporates”
Though perhaps “ugsaa yazguur” could be used to translate “estate” directly.
It’s a composite expression formed from two synonimous words meaning roughly “lineage, origin, race, aristocracy, pedigree”
Thanks, I was able to dig up the whole sentence thanks to that:
Аливаа угсаа язгуурын ба байнга тогтонги нь хийдэн ширгэж, аливаа ариун нь бузардсаар, хүн эцэстээ өөрийн аж төрөх жинхэнэ байдал, хоорондынхоо харилцааг эрэгцүүлэн бодохын чухалд хүрчээ.
There is, of course, a very strong likelihood that the Mongolian was translated from the Russian.
Russian version uses “ischezayet” (disappears) while Mongolian translates “hiiden shirgej” (evaporates) which is a literal translation of German “verdampft”.
I think direct translation from German is more likely
But the concept of ‘estates’ isn’t quite as esoteric as all that, even in English. We still speak of the ‘Fourth Estate’ without sounding too old-fashioned.
Oh, come on. “Fourth Estate” is a fixed phrase used as an occasional highfalutin’ substitute for “the press”; I will give you ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS if you go out on the street and find a single person who can explain why it’s called that and what the other estates are. (No fair going to a university campus, though I’d bet you’d have a hard time even there.) Do you seriously think the concept of “estate” (in this sense) is even vaguely part of the awareness of the average speaker of English?
I think direct translation from German is more likely
Yeah, if they’re translating “verdampft” correctly it can’t be from Russian.
I think that the Spanish version is a word by word translation from the French.
I am puzzled by un regard sobre and similarly una mirada sobria: sobre usually applies to absence of excess (in diet, clothing, decoration, and such), but un regard sobre seems to be a calque of English “a sober look” (cast by a person), not an actual French phrase (although it might be one nowadays that so many calques have been adopted). An online German-French dictionary gives for nüchtern ‘à jeun, objectif, prosaïque, froid’ (‘not having eaten yet, objective, prosaic, cold’). I would translate the German mit nüchternen Augen as “d’un regard objectif”.
I will give you ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS if you go out on the street and find a single person who can explain why it’s called that and what the other estates are.
I doubt I could find anyone in the streets of Beijing. I’m not sure about the streets of Sydney, but I’m willing to admit that a lot of ordinary people wouldn’t know.
Quite a few of the words and concepts discussed on this blog would be a complete mystery to most people you meet in the street, but we discuss them all the same. I’m not sure why the three estates should be singled out as being especially esoteric. I’m familiar with them from high school and I’ve always felt they were a legitimate part of ‘general knowledge’. Of course, the problem is that one person’s general knowledge is likely to be another person’s esoterica. General knowledge also varies from place to place, which you find out very quickly when you watch quizz shows in foreign countries.
All that is true, and of course it depends on what group you choose to study, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that knowledge of feudal estates falls (like the hierarchies of angels or Byzantine historiography) under “esoterica” rather than “general knowledge.”
Quite a few of the words and concepts discussed on this blog would be a complete mystery to most people you meet in the street, but we discuss them all the same.
Yes, esoterica is (or are) a specialty of this blog.
I think that the Spanish version is a word by word translation from the French.
That’s what I thought, too. But I’m still puzzled about the meaning of the French. Does it convey the meaning of the German?
Bathrobe, my German is rather old, has never been great (little contact with actual German speech or writing), so I am not very secure with it. I first read LH’s post, learning new German words as I read, then when coming to the French and Spanish versions I concentrated on the last few words, since the French phrase, and by extension the Spanish one, did not sound right to me. I remembered having seen “nüchtern” years ago but had forgotten the meaning and had to look it up. I did not comment on the Spanish version except for its similarity to French, but I did not want to hazard a better one, leaving that to a more qualified person. (I read and speak Spanish quite fluently but I am not as comfortable with it as with English, especially in writing it).
I think we need Grumbly Stu here.
In this situation I expect Grumbly Stu to sweep in, dressed like Cardinal Fang.
Not to get too pop-Whorfian, but is the lack of any obvious English idiom to convey “staendische” itself a consequence of the Anglophone societies having become sufficiently post-feudal several centuries earlier than no one could understand what these weird-beard foreign radicals were banging on about?
I don’t think so. Marx’s “Stände” are Adam Smith’s “ranks” (“estates” being land rather than people), and the adjective “ständisch”, like “feudalism” itself, is a nineteenth century scholarly term, not a medieval usage.
The Swedish is very close to the English version – and to the quoted French and Spanish versions too – except that they all are closer to the German original in choosing eyes or sight rather than senses in the final clause. Could they all have been translated from an earlier German edition? Or that Engels provided translators with an unpublished, improved version?
The old pre-1707 Parliament in Scotland was sometimes known as the “Thrie Estaitis.”
For what it’s worth, here’s the Georgian:
(if I’ve transcribed it correctly from here.)
“Q’ovelive ts’odebrivi da udzravi hkreba” looks like a pretty close parallel to “Alles Ständische und Stehende verdampft” or “Vse soslovnoye i zastoynoye ischezayet” (Tschenkéli’s Georgisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch gives “წოდებრი|ვი” as “Standes…”) but my knowledge of Georgian is too limited to attempt a translation, let alone compare the nuances.
Here’s the Dutch version.
–
Al het feodale en al het vaststaande verdampt, al het heilige wordt ontwijd, en de mensen zijn eindelijk gedwongen hun plaats in het leven, hun wederzijdse betrekkingen met nuchtere ogen te aanzien.
–
(All things feudal and all things established evaporate…)
–
So the “ständische”, the “stable” and “estable” is being interpreted here as: ‘feudal’. The translation is the one officially used by the pre-war socialist party, made by a famous communist poet of that era (Herman Gorter).
–
I wonder has anyone noticed the strong similarity between Moore’s translation and MacBeth (I.III):
Banquo: Whither are they vanished?
Macbeth: Into the air, and what seemed corporal
Melted, as breath into the wind.
On rereading this post, I have for the first time noticed the phrase “mit nüchternen Augen,” translated by Moore as “with sober senses” and in the Russian version as “трезвыми глазами” [with sober eyes]; nüchtern, however, is a multivalent word — besides ‘sober’ (= ‘not drunk’) it means ‘matter-of-fact, unemotional’ and ‘on an empty stomach’ (the original sense, since it’s from Latin nocturnus ‘nocturnal’ and first meant ‘not having eaten before matins’). I wonder what my German-speaking readers have to say about the phrase and how it should be translated?
Dispassionately.
Unless you insist on reproducing the tallies of nouns, adjectives etc in the German. In that case you’ll have to stilt your prose and take the high road.
“Dispassionately” is itself stilted.
So is Stilton cheese. What register are you aiming for ? I have no idea “how it should be translated”. I merely remarked what it means here, to me. Not undrunk, not on an empty stomach, not a choice between eyes and senses. Nüchtern betrachten eben. Dispassionately.
So bröckelt auch der schönste Keks;
You win some, lose some – that’s the breaks.
I think sober is better than dispassionate. For me the idea is clear that for marx/Engels in this text man is forcibly awakening from a dream or (drunken/drugged) stupor caused by religious and feudal considerations which are evaporating in a transformed society.
With clear eyes or with open eyes, maybe.
Or “with shorn eyes,” to use Remizov’s striking title. But I agree that “sober eyes” is best here.
With peepers peeled, so as to see,
Let’s peer out on reality.
Martje Flors Trinkspruch (1770, 2):
›Up dat es uns wohl goh up unsre ohlen Tage -!‹
They translate it “Dass es uns wohl ergehe in unseren alten Tagen,” but would the -t- really disappear from alt in Platt?
(Nothing to do with the preceding discussion, but I figure as long as I’ve got the attention of people who know German…)
Yep. In Kölsch ming aal is “my old woman”. The “t” has completely vanished in all forms of the word.
For extra credit: explain the missing feminine ending “-e”, and the fact that “my old man” is minge aal.
Hint: I myself have no idea, it has always puzzled me when I stop to think about it.
Fascinating! Maybe David M can enlighten us.
Standard Aal is “eel”, which in Kölsch is Öl. Hmm.
I mentioned here years ago that a lot of German dialects seem to me to be the same (or similar, viz voiced vs unvoiced) in the consonants, but the vowels vary arbitrarily. The informed phonologist will frown at me for that, but hey !
Sez here that “age” in Kölsch is Alderdum. So there are traces of “t”.
Nothing to add on nüchtern.
You have to start from [d], not from [t], and that disappears in this very word in a big ol’ bunch of Englishes, too. I don’t think it’s regular, but I really have no idea.
Alas, no.
I mean, Kölsch does have regular bizarro velarization (-n > -ng, -t > -k), so that part is explained; but why the endings seem to have switched places instead of both just disappearing, I have no clue.
Well, of course the vowels don’t vary arbitrarily, but the situation is so complex that they might as well! It’s a paradise for the historical linguist who doesn’t go mad from the revelation, as some have.
Designations for females have become neuter in Kölsch (et Sophie, et Marie corresponding to Standard colloquial die Sophie, die Marie). Kölsch -e goes back to older -en (old -e has undergone apocope), so in minge we probably have the oblique (Standard German accusative) ending of the possessive pronouns, which seems to have spread to the nominative.
For translating “mit nüchternen Augen,” I would probably use “with unclouded eyes.” That hits the level of formality about right, and it alludes to drunkenness with, I hope, the same level of specificity, although with a completely different metaphor.
However, “dispassionate eyes” works pretty well also. It’s a bit more stilted, but that does not feel like a problem. On the other hand, overusing dispassionate (or the even much more stilted noun form dispassion), like Stephen R. Donaldson, who treats it as an everyday word, can really interfere with the natural flow of a passage.
And finally, if I wanted to translate the bit about eyes in a certain poetic tone, I might rework it to use “the man whose eyes are open,” alluding to “Ma Tovu” in the King James Version, with the eventual might and numbers prophesied for the Children of Israel instead belonging to the proletariat.
Kölsch does have regular bizarro velarization (-n > -ng, -t > -k)
Hund is Hungk. That’s the spelling used in several online dictionaries. A bit elaborate-seeming, but then I don’t know how to pay attention to such details in the field. Usually sounds like Hung to me. There may well be a mixture.
As I indicated, my practice is to hear through all the variety in order to understand.
Since the situation with d+schwa is similar in Dutch (goede > goeie, oude > ouwe) there is probably a rule operating in Low German. There is even some waffle which would “explain” Alderdum (if this is not an adjusted borrowing from High German) here.
I’m pretty sure here in Berlin this is considered neither Standard nor colloquial – people just don’t use articles with personal names.
I would call it dia- and mesolectal. Articles with personal names are definitely widespread in the west and south (and e.g. obligatory in all Bavarian-Austrian dialects I have any idea of).
Maps of the German name article at the Atlas zur deutschen Alltagssprache (which I just discovered).
Oh, and with surnames too.
Ha! It’s spreading!
Interesting that adding -in to women’s surnames isn’t completely extinct.
@DM: Yes, you’re right, I am living in the West now and had forgotten how unusual using the article with names is up North. Although now I remember that I found it a bit funny when I first encountered it.
Interesting that adding -in to women’s surnames isn’t completely extinct.
Yes, that’s one reason I added that extra link.
I’d like to see a diachronic study of women’s customary surnames in Europe before the codification of inherited family names. My largely unsubstantiated belief is that “Slavic” patterns used to be much more widespread and that elements of that may have survived colloquially until quite recently.