Wie einer, der auf fremden Meeren fuhr,
so bin ich bei den ewig Einheimischen;
die vollen Tage stehn auf ihren Tischen,
mir aber ist die Ferne voll Figur.
In mein Gesicht reicht eine Welt herein,
die vielleicht unbewohnt ist wie ein Mond,
sie aber lassen kein Gefühl allein,
und alle ihre Worte sind bewohnt.
Die Dinge, die ich weither mit mir nahm,
sehn selten aus, gehalten an das Ihre -:
in ihrer großen Heimat sind sie Tiere,
hier halten sie den Atem an vor Scham.
- Rilke, Der Einsame
Quoting poetry to express one’s feelings really is the last refuge of the laziest of bloggers, but at least in this case I can point out that the very fact that as it’s ‘in foreign’ - and my neighbours, who gave me grief for sitting on my own, reading a ‘Kraut’ book and questioned why I could possibly want to live anywhere other than ‘here’, whilst they downed twelve pints of nasty lager, discussed ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ and then had a bit of a fight, couldn’t understand it - is an allusion to the work itself.
You see; it’s really clever and not just that I like the poem and can’t be arsed to transcribe it.
I’d better drink some glühwine and read it again!
December’s a horrible cold and dark month to have follow the horrible cold and dark month of November. Pity they couldn’t squeeze July in between them.
Another pub? Is there one?
The more hideous it is now, then hopefully the better you’ll remember never to make the mistake of returning in years to come.
Thanks for the beautiful poem A translation (not mine) can be found at www.philipp.uni-hd.de/rilke_files/einsame.html
Haddock: Make it a double!
David: Okay, if that’s a quote, I give up - tell me, if not, put your name to it.
And of course there are other pubs, but they’re ‘a bit’ rougher. And to be honest I didn’t actually go to a pub with a book of Rilke in German - I went to drink a beer and watch a football match, but with a copy of kicker I’d picked up. And everyone else was supporting the team that wasn’t Chelsea, irrespective of which language they spoke.
Florian:Hi, and thanks!
That link is to one of the most literal translations of a poem I’ve ever seen (not that there’s anything wrong with being literal). How about this for a transcription of the first Strophe (which is the one that captured it for me - not my work):
As one who has sailed across an unknown sea,
Among this rooted folk I am alone;
The full days on their tables are their own,
To me the distant is reality.
No quote. Written merely through the empathy of experience!
Do you often read Deutsche Welle in Swahili?
Ok, your translation sounds better, but now some of the depth is missing. If you translate the last line back it reads “aber mir ist die Ferne Realitaet”. Now Rilke would have never used the word “Realitaet” in order to describe the fact that to hime the distant is closer to him than the mundane, ordinary world. Also, I would probably replace the first word “As” by “Like” to emphasise that the first line is a comparison, not a statement.
Have you noticed that Rilke carefully avoids to use the word “lonely” within the body of the poem for the simple reason (my interpretation) that the poem can be seen as a definition of the word “lonely”: It simply describes in a more accurate way the state of mind of a lonely person. So you shoudn’t use it within the body, otherwise the poem becomes self-referential. At least to me this indicates that the second line in your translation is not optimal.
When I wrote this comment I didn’t mean to critisise your translation, I simply like the poem (and both translations) and enjoyed thinking and writing about it.
David:“The Grotley Experience Goes Nationwide”
I typed “Chelsea Bremen” into google and it came up with the Deutsche Welle report in Swahili - I obviously had to use it.
Florian: It’s not my translation/transcription/transposition. Do you really think I’d conjoin sea & reality? Tsk!
Being serious, I think I’ve written before how much I admire those who can translate poetry. It’s well outside my abilities - In this case I love the flow of the original German - the literal translation loses that beauty, whereas trying to keep the shape of the poem, as you say, loses the ‘depth’.
This is the full translation I quoted from, I don’t know who produced it:
As one who has sailed across an unknown sea,
among this rooted folk I am alone;
the full days on their tables are their own,
to me the distant is reality.
A new world reaches to my very eyes,
a place perhaps unpeopled as the moon;
their slightest feelings they must analyze,
and all their words have got the common tune.
The things I brought with me from far away,
compared with theirs, look strangely not the same;
in their great country they were living things,
but here they hold their breath, as if for shame.
Hi guys,
I came across your discussion of poetry translation and found it very helpful. Since I’ve put together the webpage with the Rilke translations from which you were quoting I was very surprised to see my feeble attempts of capturing the spirit of Rilke’s poetry in English (especially since I am not a native speaker). Translating poetry is a kind of a hobby horse of mine and I mounted the poems on the web more less without having them reviewed. I completely agree with you on the aspect of trading off literacy and depth vs flow and beauty, sometimes I wonder whether there exsisted a mode of incorporating both without getting “lost in translation”. If you want to I’d really appreciated it if you had a look on the other translations and let me know what you think. Cheers and greetings from Cambridge (UK), Philipp
Philipp: Well, isn’t it a good job I wasn’t too rude (well, at least I hope so)?
As appreciation of poetry (especially at my level) is so subjective, take everything with a pinch of salt. That said, there’s somethiong about Rilke in the original that I love so much that I generally quote it to people who say, “But German’s such an ugly language, don’t you think?”
I’ll certainly drop you an e-mail about the translations when I’m less busy (not before the weekend).
Thanks, you weren’t rude at all. As I said, I was really surprised that anybody actually cared about the translations I have put on the webpage. Thanks again for your comments, cheers, Phil
Phil: Do I need to register on the guestbook at the uni-hd reserve server to make a comment?
There are two guestbooks, one is specifically for the Rilke translations and can be found at:
http://users2.smartgb.com/g/g.php?a=s&i=g23-00807-e2
This doesn’t require any kind of registration.
The other guestbook, for the website in general is at
http://www.shoppark.de/cgi-bin/abrakadabra.cgi?id=philippos
Where it says “Ihr Eintrag:” followed by a 4 digit number, you have to enter this number in the box after “Code:”. This is to prevent random spam messages to the guestbook.