Mozart’s letters

Faber have just published a new edition, translated and edited by Robert Spaethling. Nick Lezard’s lovely review has persuaded me to buy it. Here’s an excerpt:

“Robert Spaethling’s approach has been, above all, to preserve the tone of the originals. I cannot quite believe this hasn’t been done before. Then again, I can. Here he is, 16 years old, in Bozen (now Bolzano), writing to his sister: ‘We are now already in Botzen [sic]. already? only! I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I’m sleepy, I’m lazy, but I am well. At Hall we visited the convent; I played the organ there. Botzen is a shit hole. Here is a poem by someone who was totally fed up with Botzen, and angry: Before I come back to this Botzen place, / I’d rather smack myself in the face.’ Spaethling kindly explains that he has translated the word ‘fozen’ as ‘face’, but that it also means ‘female genitals’. Spaethling says ‘face’ is ‘definitely the meaning here’, but I’m not so sure. The important thing, though, is that we are told about the alternative.”