Video Archives: Lunchtime Talk with Ursula Ludz (2010)

Wednesday, December 1, 2010: Lunchtime Talk

Participants: Ursula Ludz, then a visiting scholar at the Hannah Arendt Center, as well as the editor of Letters: 1925-1975 by Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger and Arendt’s Denktagebuch, among other publications.

In 2010, Ursula Ludz gave a lunchtime talk at the Arendt Center. She was at the time engaged in a project of constructing an advanced bibliography of Arendt’s own reading. Her talk is an overview of her findings.

[caption id="attachment_14766" align="alignright" width="300"] Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt's Mektuplar, 1925-1975, by Ursula Ludz (Source: idefix)[/caption]

Readers of the blog may find most interesting Ludz’s comments on the difference between Arendt in English and Arendt in German. Though she translated some of her own works, including The Origins of Totalitarianism, in both languages, Arendt would often incorporate subtle differences between the two translations. Ludz gives the example of the word “artifice” which in its German rendering actually seems to be inspired by an obscure poem. In general, Ludz says, the literary bent to Arendt’s writing comes across much more strongly in the German versions of her works, or at least the ones she translated personally.

There is much that can be gleaned from Arendt’s unpublished corpus, and Ludz is a scholar devoted to exploring it. This talk, which comes unaccompanied by video, is nonetheless worth a listen. For any translators or speakers of German, it may be of special interest.

Analysis by Dan Perlman

(Featured Image: A photograph of Hannah Arendt, from the Vera List Collection; Source: Sternthal Books)

You can listen to Ludz's talk in its entirety below:

Lunchtime Chats: Ursula Ludz from Hannah Arendt Center on Vimeo.