« Correction: Nobody reads | Home | Translating poetry (again) »

Translating poetry

I was once given a book of translated poems from many different languages. The editor’s primary tenet was that in order to master one’s own language, a writer must diligently practice the art of bringing foreign things into it. It is impossible to focus on rendering something in English, for example, if at every stage of its formation, the thoughts have been in English. To find something already perfect in poetry of another tongue, and to tease that out, reshaping it, breaking parts of it and cringing in embarrassment, then trying to balance politesse and passion until it’s again finished, that’s the goal of the writer.

When I founded this blog (yes, that’s really the best verb to use there), I did it for two reasons. One, I wanted those near to me to be able to remain near to me as I went abroad, to have a connection to my thoughts, during a time when I knew I would be focusing on new social ties, yet not wanting to lose all of my old ones. Two, I wanted to get my thoughts in order before I left, to have something in place where I could chronicle my experiences for my own sake.

Thus the title: Im Voraus, which translates pretty well as “in advance.”

But there was another angle, much more dear to me, and an artist can never choose a name that isn’t complementary to itself. There’s a poem by Rilke commonly known by its first line “Du im Voraus”. It was this poem that I was naming the blog after.

Here is my best translation of it.

You, my lost beloved, who never arrived
I don’t even know which sounds are dear to you.
I don’t try anymore to recognize you
Amid the waves of what comes.
All those grand images in me
That vast traveled landscape,
Cities and towers and bridges and un-
expected turns in the path
And that might of the gods
Pulsating throughout all of this
Rising within me to mean
You, absent.
Oh, you are the gardens
Oh, I saw them with such
Hope. An open window
In the country house—and you almost
Stepped out, thinking of me.
I found streets—
You had just gone down them
And sometimes the windows in the shops
Were still dizzy from you, and gave back, frightened,
My too sudden image. Who knows, whether the same
bird’s call rang through both of us
Yesterday, apart, in the evening?

I am very much in love right now. It hurts, like translating poetry.