Death Fugue

[anselmo_b]

Death Fugue

Black milk of dawn we drink it at evening

Comments

[jackfirecat]

It's got a dancing rhythm, it's got word feeling (ash, mith; gold, grete); I don't know the original but this is scary-feeling, hackles-rising; good poetry.

[anselmo_b]

You can't imagine how proud it makes me that you find music in my version. I tried hard to save some of it. but you should listen to celan reciting it himself. I made some tiny corrections and added a link to a recording.

[crowleycrow]

Only read the first lines on Facebook. Now reading the whole I'm ashamed that YOU weren't given the job of translating CW. This is masterful, really. I hope you do more.

[anselmo_b]

Although you exaggerate grossly I am very proud and grateful that you like it too. I will do more.

[joculum]

Now that I have had the time to read this, I am stunned by its eloquence. I have never been satisfied with previous translations, and this one captures so much of Celan's power that the previous versions simply miss. The only thing that disturbs me a little is the use of the colloquial "lays" for "lies" but of course "there one lies unconstrained" would introduce an ambiguity that is not in the original text.

[anselmo_b]

To be honest I never get those right without checking them. But this time I needed a pedestrian expression to match the German which everybody translates very soberly. They miss the irony that there is not only in the meaning of lying unconstrained but in the way it's said. I wrote a couple of notes on the problems I have with some aspects of the translations I've found -English and Spanish. I will post them here when I put them into English.

[dalaruan]

Yes, Andrés, you expressed the rhythm, the music of its elegy excellenty. I know the poem very well; in Germany we learn it in school and I remember how it hit me and haunted me.

[anselmo_b]

I tried hard. It saddened me to learn that my kids didn't know it. Both made their Abitur here in München.