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one has a life. One does not “have” a life

Russian translation: см.

19:00 Oct 12, 2019
English to Russian translations [PRO]
Art/Literary - Philosophy / From a biographcal novel by an American writer
English term or phrase: one has a life. One does not “have” a life
Benjamin began to lecture on Greek metaphysics, reading aloud from Plato (but translating from Jowett’s Victorian English into German by sight).

He was intrigued by Plato’s ‘invention’ of Socrates. ‘He is both real and unreal, both historical and ahistorical,’ Benjamin explained. He noted that any philosophical system began with an attitude, an approach, to history, and that Plato’s understanding of how one could grant eternal life to a figure such as Socrates was utterly ingenious. It was not a question of mere appropriation. ‘We’ve seen what happens when a writer overwhelms his subject, as with Max Brod and Kafka,’ he said. ‘Brod did not respect the aura of the individual genius; he did not proclaim Kafka’s separateness from himself, and so his biography of his friend is horribly flawed.’ He explained to them that the figure of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues was ‘made up’ in the sense that Plato had transposed the man he once knew into intellectual and moral situations he had never, in life, encountered. But Plato knew the spirit of Socrates so intimately he could give him a life ancillary to the one he ‘really’had. Plato could, in other words, be trusted with Socrates; the fiction was real.

Heymann Stein leapt to his feet when Benjamin drew the allusive quotation marks around the term really with fingers in the air. ‘Surely,’ Stein argued, ***‘one has a life. One does not “have” a life.’***

Benjamin said, ‘I am sorry, Herr Stein. I should have made myself clearer. It is our tendency as moderns to cast everything we say in ironic light. This is a mistake, of course.’ He began to pace, as if thinking intensely, trying to work out something fresh. ‘Language brings reality into being; it is, as it were, a bridge between what happens in the mind and what occurs in the world. Perhaps I will try to put this more boldly: Unless one frames reality in words, the reality does not exist. This theory of language plays havoc with conventional notions of time, and that is a problem; on the other hand, I do not believe in time. That is, I can’t believe in unimagined, linear time. To put something between brackets is to expose its linguistic element, its dependency on invented time, its mystery, its final unreality.’
Alexander Alexandrov
Russian Federation
Local time: 18:58
Russian translation:см.
Explanation:
Спасибо за исчерпывающий контекст.

Вам придётся обыграть отсутствующую у нас (хотя уже заимствуемую из американских сериалов) реалию 'air quotes', когда человек в устной речи жестикуляцией передаёт наличие у слова кавычек, то есть противоположного прямому смысла. Я бы предложил иными лексическими методами. Например, "описанного им Сократа в дополнение к - в кавычках - "реально существовашему"".

Соответственно, ответом на это могло бы быть возражение в духе "Сократ мог быть только один - реально существовавший, безо всяких кавычек".
Selected response from:

Boris Shapiro
Russian Federation
Local time: 18:58
Grading comment
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



Summary of answers provided
4 +1см.
Boris Shapiro


  

Answers


1 hr   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
one has a life. one does not “have” a life
см.


Explanation:
Спасибо за исчерпывающий контекст.

Вам придётся обыграть отсутствующую у нас (хотя уже заимствуемую из американских сериалов) реалию 'air quotes', когда человек в устной речи жестикуляцией передаёт наличие у слова кавычек, то есть противоположного прямому смысла. Я бы предложил иными лексическими методами. Например, "описанного им Сократа в дополнение к - в кавычках - "реально существовашему"".

Соответственно, ответом на это могло бы быть возражение в духе "Сократ мог быть только один - реально существовавший, безо всяких кавычек".

Boris Shapiro
Russian Federation
Local time: 18:58
Native speaker of: Native in RussianRussian
PRO pts in category: 4

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Mikhail Kropotov: Полагаю, вопрос Александра касается адекватной передачи идиомы "have a life", в русском эквиваленте которой глагол бы имел отношение к экзистенциальности (быть, иметь и т. п.).
7 hrs
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