TRANSLATIONS of German autumn (or similar) poems into English
ÜBERSETZUNGEN von englischen Herbstgedichten ins Hochdeutsche
(oder, seltener, in die Wiener Mundart)
by / von Walter A. AueGENERAL COMMENTS
(Written at different times from 2003 to 2006)
Yes, I know. True poems are not translatable. Of course there are (a very, very few) exceptions to this rule, for instance Max Knight's superb rendition of Morgenstern's Galgenlieder (1) - but these just go to confirm, not deny, the rule. The Italians, and rightfully so, are having their pun with it. Traduttore-Traditore (Translator: Traitor) they say about the translator's betrayal of the poem. And wasn't it Robert Frost who quipped that "poetry is what gets lost in translation"? George Orwell compared poems even to family jokes, incomprehensible to any outsider (2). And yet, as Erna Bennett pointed out, if we all know that translation is not possible, why are so many of us so intent on doing it?
And yes, I do realize that these little forays into different cultural realms are but musings of a rank amateur - an old prof of chemistry, if you must know - and that, furthermore, they flounder hopelessly in that wide, grey area of quicksand between strictly literal translation (good for some of my graduate students, though) and true poetic transfiguration (of which I wish I were capable).
And finally, yes, I do agree that there are only two types of translations: bad ones and really bad ones. I hope mine sound like the merely bad ones.
But what I really hope is that you will derive the same joy from them that I did. So, unless I hear too many howls of protest, I shall continue to tell you about my poetic perigrinations. Poems are landscapes and experiences - sometimes outer, always inner ones. I would be delighted should you decide to walk along with me.
Just remember the three rules for walking the paths of poems (and also of translations, if I am forced to admit it):
- Poems do NOT have to be understood. Not always, anyway.
- Poems DO have to touch a nerve. Always, in whatever way.
- Poems that do not touch a nerve are NOT poems. Never, no way!
I hope my translations do touch that nerve. So enjoy them - but, please, don't believe them to be the last word! There is rarely ever a last word. Translation is risky business, you know. And there are translators out there whom I admire for their clearly superior work. Well, the Web is risky, too, but I hope my List of Links and URL's stays up and valid for a long time.
There are many other sites, of course, but these would give you a good start on the Web, no matter where you are coming from and where you are going. Or where you want to go. After all, poetry is a path to pursue, not a result to reach. As - I suppose of inner necessity - is life...
One more comment, written much after I saw what had become of my personal and seemingly innocuous little games with language:
The usual translations into English, so typical of German Departments, focus primarily on verbal content. Rhyme and rhythm, if admitted at all, are often relegated to subservient roles. On the other hand, and just to point out their amateurish origin, the translations herein faithfully court Rhythm and Rhyme - those two beautiful sisters that I much prefer to their brainy brat brother Content.
Thus I tried, best I could, to duplicate such prosodic "technicalities" as whether, say, the last syllable of a line be long or short (accented or not accented, stressed or not stressed). To my sense of whisky-flavored beauty, that mattered much. Even if - as happened much too often - I failed miserably and had to settle for worse. Ride, Traduttore!
Which brings me to the reason for writing this additional comment. As is the case in German, a poem in English - whether original or in translation - needs careful scanning. Scanning, according to the dictionary, as "reading or reciting (verse) aloud to demonstrate its rhythmic structure". And doing it quite slowly, I might add, to appreciate its full impact.
Why this should be so? You'll have to ask an expert. In literature, anthropology, neurophysiology, or the history of oral traditions. Or perhaps in brain holography. But there is little doubt about the phenomenon itself. Just listen to how musically authors recite their own poetry, and how resonant flows their chant. (Among the poets I have translated into German, Yeats, Frost and Thomas come to mind, whose voices are available on archival CD's.)
To my simple way of thinking - and this is nothing new - there are two mutually enhancing components to any true poem. One is verbal, the other musical. One is for the head, the other for the heart. Needless to add that, in poems as in life, the heart beats the head any old time. In accord with (I think) Verlaine's dictum, "de la musique avant toute chose" (Music comes first [in a poem]). And with the etymology of "lyric" from the Old Greek "lyre", the small, plucked instrument used to accompany singers and reciters. That is the beat of its heart.
More scientific, if I please? Well, you see, the music of a poem, the resonance of its words and the rhythm of its sequences - that is its all-important carrier wave. Only this kind of medium can carry words to where they were meant to reach. Just like in radio with its transversally and longitudinally resonating waves. Now that one's much simpler, eh?
And, as a wise Canadian once said, it is the medium that is the message. No, that's not exactly what he said or what he meant - but without that carrier wave, without the beat of that primordial drummer to follow, mere poetic words could never reach and much less touch us.
Eine späte, letzte Bemerkung noch. Im vergangenen Jahr hat sich meine Gedichtliste beträchtlich ausgeweitet. Am Anfang waren es ja nur Gedichte deutscher Sprache, die ich meinen englischsprechenden Freunden nahe bringen wollte. Natürlich, Übersetzungen sind weit vom Original entfernt: Sie schwimmen irgendwo im Ärmelkanal oder Atlantik umher. Genau so wie "nos emigrantos".
Dieses Bild/Gleichnis hat mich verfolgt. Was Gedichte anlangt, ist der Atlantik fast so weit und tief von Europa nach Amerika wie von Amerika nach Europa. Und Freunde habe ich auf beiden Kontinenten. Daher verlangt maximale Resonanz Beiträge von beiden Seiten - besonders wenn es Worte sind, die notgedrungen zwischen zwei Welten fallen. Ja, sicher, der Titel "Worte zwischen Welten" kam später und aus dem selben Atlantik (and 'all wet', as one of my editorially-minded friends would say: Hi there, Friedl!). Aber jetzt stimmt er zumindestens.
Bleibt nur noch eines zu erwähnen: die Übertragung in die Wiener Mundart. Ein paar Wiener, emigriert oder nicht, behaupten daß es Dialekt, zumindestens in 'guter' Familie und 'guter' Gesellschaft, überhaupt nicht gäbe. Sie hätten jedenfalls nie und unter keinen Umständen und nicht einmal im Gedanken oder im Traume... u.s.w., u.s.f. [Wenn's wahr ist, ist's schade; wenn nicht, menschlich.]
Ich glaube - um ein berühmt-berüchtigtes Beispiel zu nennen - daß Francois Villons Balladen in H.C. Artmanns Dialektübersetzung(3) weitaus natürlicher und kräftiger wirken, als sie es je auf Hochdeutsch könnten.
Gedichte sind Gespräche von Seele zu Seele. Und Seelen sprechen selten Hochdeutsch. Hören Sie einmal Ihrer eigenen zu. Aber wirklich und ganz in der Stille. Ein Beispiel? Bitte sehr: Thomas Hardys "The Man He Killed" ist ein Aufschrei der gequälten Seele. Er ist aber auch ein (Selbst)gespräch an der Theke. Wie, glauben sie, schwankte und schwappte das wirklich daher: im Hochdeutsch oder im Dialekt?
Lesen Sie sich die Mundartübertragungen einmal durch. Es sind ohnehin viel zu wenige. Und nur, wenn's wirklich sein muß, mit Hilfe eines der Wiener Wörterbuchwälzer, z.B.(4).
Und langsam mitsprechen, ja? Weu nocha, wie die Wiener sagen, weahma kahn Richta nimma brauchn...
Ih soi mi ned soh schdöhn? Sohndan söwa wohs tuan?
Also bitte, wenn's sein muß. Aber dafür müssen Sie mir versprechen, meine Suada (im Text unter meinen Initialen "W.A." oder unter "Wiener Audio" zu finden) in Ihren Kopfhörern zu verstecken. Wer weiß, was passiert, wenn da rechte Pharisäer oder linke Tugendwächter mithören...
(1) Max Knight, Morgenstern's Gallows Songs, 1963, University of California Press.(2) George Orwell, from England Your England :"[Literature is] the only art that cannot cross frontiers. Literature, especially poetry, and lyric poetry most of all, is a kind of family joke, with little or no value outside its own language-group. Except for Shakespeare, the best English poets are barely known in Europe, even as names." (From A Collection of Essays by George Orwell , Doubleday Anchor, 1954.)
(3) Villon / Artmann / Qualtinger / Fatty George / Kölz , Unikum Langspielplatte UN 307, Preiserrecords, Austria, 1964 (mit Dialekttext und Übersetzung ins Hochdeutsche).
(4) Maria Hornung: Wörterbuch der Wiener Mundart, ÖBV Pädagogischer Verlag, Wien, Österreich, 1998 (ein gigantisches Unterfangen von über 15000 Stichwörtern und 740 Seiten, doch leider immer noch nicht vollständig).
"Adieu" to my Readers ( A half-hearted disclaimer ) (Written on New Year's Eve 2009)
Dear Reader:Fall has turned to winter and, as my Austrian compatriots say in their quaint fashion, "Everything has an end, only the sausage has two."
This "autumn" website as well. An English and a German one, that is. Yes, I might update this or the other page, and I might even add a poem or two in the future. But for all intents and purposes, my translations have come to an end: I am writing my cyberfinis.
Which means that I need to say a heartfelt "Thank You" to you, my Reader. Your interest has kept up this site and allowed it to last as long as it did.
I also need to add a valedictory "Fare Thee Well" to the students and professors of German and English Departments: I hope not to have caused too much turmoil by translating and, especially, by commenting on your sacrosanct poems and myths.
I have been (and I will be) asked why certain poems appear — or, often more to the point, do not appear — in this collection. Let me reassure you: It all happened haphazardly, as befits my rank amateur rank. After all, I am a chemist by training, with no serious exposure to the discipline.
I started this website owing to circumstances, mainly of requests from students facing German Exams. And, personally, I was required to become proficient in html. I shall likewise end this website due to circumstances, mostly of old age and sloth.
In between, let me assure you, it was a veritable bowl of cherries. Or cherry-picking, if you like.
Which returns me to that very question I am often asked: Why no Shakespeare in my collection; why no Goethe (save a few Schubert songs) and Schiller? The answer is simple: Even for me, there is a limit to sacrilege. And for Shakespeare, particularly, excellent translations have been available for centuries that have seared themselves into the collective German conscience. So let sleeping lions lie.
The rest is, well, circumstance again. Poems that appealed to me. Poems that posed a challenge. Poems I did not "understand". Poems that were forgotten and should not have been. Poems by people I came to know through this Site. Poems of the "folk song" (especially the Viennese) variety. And so on, and so forth. But classifications are for academics. Here it was but fun and games.
At the start of my path into translation, I invited the reader to walk along with me. Now I simply want to say: Thanks for doing just that, and thanks for supporting me along the way. I hope this path has provided as much joy and as much insight to you as it has to me.
The time has come to bid "a dieu". Isn't that what autumnal poetry is all about? Or should be?
Sincerely yours,
Walter A. Aue,
St. Margaret's Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada
"Adieu" an meine Leser ( Ein halbherziges Dementi ) (Geschrieben am Silvester 2009)
Werter allesverstehender Leser!
Liebe allesverzeihende Leserin!Der Herbst ist zu Ende gegangen und mit ihm meine "herbstlichen" Übersetzungen. Ich habe diesen Pegasus sieben Jahre lang geritten, von 2003 bis 2009. Sieben ist eine magische Zahl. Mir bleibt es nur übrig, Ihnen Dank zu sagen, daß Sie mich auf diesem magischen Spazierflug durch die Welt des Gedichtes begleitet haben. Und zu hoffen, daß Sie dabei so viel Schönes wie ich erlebt haben.
Es hat ja alles so unschuldig angefangen. Zuerst waren es nur ein paar Gefälligkeitsübersetzungen, um Studenten aus den Klauen eines "German Department" zu retten. Dann kam die eine oder andere "Erklärung" hinzu. Aber bald darauf segelte ich in ein wahres Bermudadreieck von Literarkommentar, Weltanschauungsblog und Protestmanifest, in das mich der Wirbelstrom der Eitelkeit tiefer und tiefer hineinzog. Mein treuer Pegasus ist mir dabei leider abgesoffen...
So bleibt es mir nur noch übrig um Vergebung zu bitten, falls meine bloggierten Kommentare zartere Seelen als die meine verletzt haben sollten. "Alle bitt' ich um Verzeihung..." sagt François Villon (1431-after1463). Ich darf aber doch glaubhaft versichern, daß alles nicht so bös gemeint war. Es war, wie es mir als Wiener eigentlich — à la EU Bananenkrümmung und Preserlgröße, t'schuldigen schon — gesetzlich zugestanden werden sollte, bloß ein großer Spaß. Oder, wie mein berühmter Landsmann Johann Nestroy (1801-1862) sagt, "S'ist alles Schimäre, aber mich unterhalt's!" Darum bitte, geehrter Leser, charmante Leserin, nur nichts zu ernst nehmen! "Glücklich ist, er vergißt, was doch nicht zu ändern ist!" heißt es in der Fledermaus, die bei uns traditionell zu Silvester gespielt wird...
Und damit muß ich Ihnen nun endgültig "A Dieu" sagen. Aber ist das nicht wohin jeder Pfad der herbstlichen Poesie führt? Oder führen sollte?
Ihr ergebener
Walter A. Aue,
St. Margaret's Bay, Neuschottland, Kanada
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Last updated: December 2009