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Schreckensseligkeit

English translation: magnificent (sense of) horror

21:47 Oct 3, 2009

German to English translations [PRO]
Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature

German term or phrase: Schreckensseligkeit

novel: original german reads: "...man schreibt: "damals--spater" "weil--obwohl" "war--wurde--wurde nichts" and hofft, dadurch der Schreckensseligkeit Herr zu werden.

norris1999
United States

English translation:magnificent (sense of) horror

Explanation:
that's how it is translated below.

idyllic horror could work too (IMHO)

from Peter Handke's "Wunschloses Unglück"

one could possibly turn it around to "(sense of) horrific idyll -

http://books.google.com/books?id=70e8AAAAIAAJ&printsec=front...
magnificent sense of horror

http://books.google.com/books?id=70e8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA50&lpg=PA...

discussion:
http://books.google.com/books?id=70e8AAAAIAAJ&printsec=front...

illusion of rural idyll

Selected response from:

Bernhard Sulzer
United States
Local time: 20:23

Grading comment

Selected automatically based on peer agreement.

Summary of answers provided

3 +3

magnificent (sense of) horror

Bernhard Sulzer

delightful horror / the delights of horror

Helen Shiner

3 +1

blissfull horror

Susanne Rindlisbacher

terrific terror

Annett Kottek

diabolical contentment

StanleyChr

exquisite dread

misterherrnau

3 -1

mood of fear; anxiousness

xxxword process

Answers

29 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): -1

mood of fear; anxiousness

Explanation:
having or showing anxiety; worried

Reference: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2923843.stm
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear

xxxword process
Tonga
Native speaker of:

Bulgarian

1 hr confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

blissfull horror

Explanation:
But then, the great Ralph Manheim translated it simply as "horror":
That is why I affect the usual biographical pattern and write: “At that time… later”, “Because … although”, “was … became nothing”, hoping in this way to dominate the horror. That, perhaps, is the comical part of my story.
http://performancemarks.blogspot.com/2008/08/notes-from-pete...

Susanne Rindlisbacher
Portugal
Local time: 01:23
Native speaker of:

German
PRO pts in category: 8

2 hrs confidence:

peer agreement (net): +3

magnificent (sense of) horror

Bernhard Sulzer
United States
Local time: 20:23
Works in field
Native speaker of:

German
PRO pts in category: 43

Grading comment

Selected automatically based on peer agreement.

11 hrs confidence:

delightful horror / the delights of horror

Explanation:
I think this would sound more natural to a native speaker's ear

http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/essays/delights/contents....

Atkins and Barker proceeded to work together in avant-garde theatre and independent film for the next five or six years, along with a small group of like-minded friends (including Doug Bradley, later to become famous as Pinhead). Working under the name "The Dog Company," they remained based in Liverpool while Atkins was a literature major at university. "Though I emerged with a BA with honors, my real education was in The Dog Company and the work we all did together. I eventually quit the Company in order to play rock'n'roll but then -- as I guess most people reading this already know -- Clive, Doug, and I re-teamed in the late eighties for the Hellraiser pictures."

But Atkins really discovered the delights of horror through an altogether different -- and somewhat shocking -- route. "Up to about three years ago, though I would have believed I was answering the 'how did I discover horror' question honestly, I wouldn't have been able to answer it accurately. Turns out I'd completely blanked from my mind my first traumatizing experience of the uncanny in fictional form," he confesses.
http://www.darkecho.com/darkecho/horroronline/atkins.html

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Note added at 11 hrs (2009-10-04 09:07:01 GMT)
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http://www.cheathouse.com/essay/essay_view.php?p_essay_id=70...

In contrast to pleasure, the emotion central to the beautiful, terror, he says in the Enquiry (1756), “is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently the ruling principle of the sublime.” For “[n]o passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. For fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain” (53-54). If, nevertheless, pain and terror “are so modified as not to be actually noxious . . . [and] clear the parts . . . of a dangerous and troublesome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight, not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror”
http://forum.llc.ed.ac.uk/issue2/chao.pdf

Helen Shiner
United Kingdom
Local time: 01:23
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 52

11 hrs confidence:

exquisite dread

Explanation:
whereby exquisite is meant to express both "beautiful, lovely" (exquisite lace) as well as "sharply intense, keen" (exquisite pain)

misterherrnau
Austria
Local time: 02:23
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

English

11 hrs confidence:

diabolical contentment

Explanation:
Just a suggestion

StanleyChr
South Africa
Local time: 03:23
Native speaker of:

English

13 hrs confidence:

terrific terror

Explanation:
In the preceding sentences the author speaks of ‘Schreckzustände’, ‘atemstockend’, ‘erstarren’, ‘äußerste Sprachlosigkeit’, and I think that ‘Seligkeit’ might be a reference to such a momentary state of frozen/stunned silence (painfully and horrifically prolonged in his case).

Annett Kottek
United Kingdom
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

German
PRO pts in category: 8