Talk:The Tunnel (short story)

Inaccurate translation

I believe the translation of the sentence "Gott ließ uns fallen, und so stürzen wir denn auf ihn zu." is possibly inaccurate because perhaps the author translated the separable verb "zustürzen" as the simple verb stürzen.

In my German-English dictionary:

Stürzen = "to fall" or "to crash"

Zustürzen = "rush up to"

But if Dürrenmatt was writing in a Swiss-German dialect (which I know almost nothing about other than that German-speakers sometimes have difficulty understanding Swiss German-speakers), these words could have different meanings, and I could be completely wrong.

I think a better translation would be:

God lets us fall; and so then we rush back to him.

Dpgie (talk) 02:26, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is years later, but just for the record: In this context, "zustürzen" means falling down on something, not "rushing back". That would only be correct if it was a voluntary, horizontal movement. -- megA (talk) 16:35, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interpretation of "Der Tunnel"

I don't agree with the interpretations mentioned in the article.

I interpreted this story as...

God lets us fall from grace and, when we realize that we have thus fallen, rush back to him.

Dpgie (talk) 02:36, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would also be interested to know if the interpretations listed by the author are his own or from some other source, and if so, what the source is. I get the feeling that the author is paraphrasing (from memory) other commentators and I would be interested to know who they are, because I would be interested in reading them myself.

Dpgie (talk) 02:45, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]