An Hobad
No anon agus ar ais aris
Edizione di The Hobbit in Gaelico
di J.R.R. Tolkien
Traduzione di Nicholas Williams
Evertype, 2012, pp. 266
Illustrazioni dell’autore
Cartonato con mappe a colori
Note
Questa edizione è l’unica edizione delle opere di
Tolkien tradotta nella lingua gaelica. E’ un volume particolarissimo che
sicuramente avrebbe trovato ampi consensi dallo stesso Tolkien.
“I
BPOLL sa talamh a bhí cónaí ar hobad.” So begins the first chapter of An Hobad,
the latest incarnation of JRR Tolkien’s classic fantasy novel The Hobbit, which
is due to be published in Irish later this month.
The
adventures of Biolbó Baigín as he journeys to reclaim stolen treasure from Smóg
an dragan have been translated by Nicholas Williams, who recently translated
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland , and Through the Looking-glass and What
Alice Found There.
An
accomplished linguist, Tolkien learned over a dozen languages and invented
several more, many of which feature in his tales of Middle-earth, the fictional
setting of the majority of his fantasy books.
Despite
his apparent love of languages, the English author and academic revealed a
dislike of Irish in a selection of letters published posthumously in 1981 (he
also admitted having a dislike for French and preferring Spanish to Italian).
In
a letter to Deborah Webster, dated October 1958, he wrote: “I go frequently to
Ireland (Éire: southern Ireland) being fond of it and of (most of) its people;
but the Irish language I find wholly unattractive.”
In
1979, Prof George Sayer recounted a conversation he had with Tolkien, a devout
Catholic, who described Ireland as “naturally evil”.
He
could “feel”, Sayer said, “evil coming up from the earth, from the peat bogs,
from the clumps of trees, even from the cliffs, and this evil was only held in
check by the great devotion of the southern Irish to their religion.” An Hobad,
nó Anonn agus Ar Ais Arís , is published by Evertype.
