Today is the last day of the year, and with that, the last day of reading The Evenings. The novel is famous for a number of reasons, but one of them must be one of its last sentences, which, in the Dutch original, goes as follows.
'Alles is voorbij', fluisterde hij, 'het is overgegaan. Het jaar is er niet meer. Konijn, ik ben levend. Ik adem, en ik beweeg, dus ik leef. Is dat duidelijk? Welke beproevingen ook komen, ik leef.' Hij zoog de borst vol adem en stapte in bed. 'Het is gezien', mompelde hij, 'het is niet onopgemerkt gebleven.'
The key sentence here is '"Het is gezien", mompelde hij, "het is niet onopgemerkt gebleven."'
The last sentences in Gerard Reve's De Avonden
How is this famous, quite poetic sentence translated? Let's look at the English translation below.
'Everything is finished,' he whispered, 'it has passed. The year is no more. Rabbit, I am alive. I breathe, and I move, so I live. Is that clear? Whatever ordeals are yet to come, I am alive.' Drawing his lungs full of air, he climbed into bed. 'It has been seen,' he murmured, 'it has not gone unnoticed.' He stretched himself out and fell into a deep sleep.
'It has been seen,' he murmured, 'it has not gone unnoticed' – a quite literal, but very fitting translation. As in the original, it captures, I think, Frits' fear of (his) life being aimless, purposeless, and of leaving no lasting mark on history.
Unfortunatly, we didn't even touch on the debacle of Frits' mother buying wine that turns out to be berry-apple juice, which Frits doesn't seem to be able to let go. Nor did we go into the non-translation of oliebol. Although there are translations like Dutch doughnut available, the translator chose to leave the word as is – 'His mother came in with a plate of oliebollen.' – probably to stress how typically Dutch the snack is. (This is not to say that the oliebol or oliekoek originated in The Nethelands. See this Dutch newspaper article, for instance.)
Let's end this year's reading of The Evenings anyway. I had a lot of fun reading the English translation this year. Now there's 355 days left to decide on next year's version or translation. But first: champagne and oliebollen! Have a very nice New Year's Eve!