Writing “about”literature puts an amateur like me at risk to say things

that will be either too rigidor too shallow – or both.

Translating a piece ofliterature, a task that, if taken seriously, will need

to go beyond what could betermed the “information content” of a text,

is a very strange activity –and some argue one where "success" is

impossible. (Robert Frost isalleged to have been one of them.)

Translators can but offer usa vague equivalent;

their language isnecessarily full of echoes and associations.

What Virginia Woolf writes in“The Common Reader” about Greek will perhaps

hold true as well for anyjourney a text is undertaking when traveling from

German to English. Indeed fromany one language to any other – let alone

from any one language at onepoint in time and place to any other language

at another point in time andplace: The work of the translator won’t be more

than a vague equivalent.

And what can this mean: Onelanguage?

“From German” – butwhich German?

“To English” – butwhich English?

Georg Christoph Lichtenbergnotes in his “Sudelbuecher”, writings that

went across the channel just toarrive as “Waste Books”, of all translations:

Ist es nicht sonderbar, daß eine wörtliche Übersetzung fast immer eine

schlechte ist? und doch läßtsich alles gut übersetzen. Man sieht hieraus,

wie viel es sagen will, eineSprache ganz verstehen; es heißt, das Volk

ganz kennen, das siespricht.

Isn ’t it strange, thata verbatim translation almost always is a bad one?

yet everything can betranslated well. This goes to show what it truly means

to fully understand alanguage: it means to know the people using it.

Certainly, I am in a fairlypoor position to begin with a translation of Sabina

Naef ’s poems. Hence, Imight have thought, no one else could be better suited

to attempt it – regardless. Perhaps I am thus following H.C. Artmann ’s

poetical hero.

Sabina Naef is Swiss.

I am Austrian.

Thus much in answer to thequestion: Which German?

How much do I know the peoplewho use English?

Very little.

Yet these are minor obstaclescompared to a difficulty two lines in one of

Sabina Naef ’s poems hintat:

if the poem would stop

I could go aboard

Poetry – in sharp contrast toprose, I think – does not stop.

It does not allow us to goaboard.

We might be able to wanderthrough novels to meet and join Huck Finn or

Esther Summerson. Yet reading apoem for me seems to bear far greater

resemblance to resonance thanto a walk.

Nikola Tesla perceived theearth as a conductor of acoustical resonance.

Transposing this magnificentline near the end of Jim Jarmusch ́s

“Coffee andCigarettes”, I like the idea that readers of poetry can be

perceived as conductors ofpoetical resonance.

(It is for a reason thatJarmusch chose to use Mahler ’s

I am lost to the world in this scene.)

Translations, particularlythose we have done, can be read in this vein.

The language used is necessarilyfull of echoes and associations.

Translations in this sense cannot be “right”.

It is fairly likely that, byany so called standard, they are mostly “wrong”.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Alicesaid with a puzzled air.

‘I’m not offended,’ saidHumpty Dumpty.

A magnanimity like that is of course much more than we canwish for.

                              leaves fall into my handbag

                              once the ship has withered

                              billows arrive

                              if the poem would stop

                              I could go aboard

                              could fold the lake

                              and pull out

                              the day smells

                              like a new pencil

                              not yet sharpened

                              nonstop

                              even when turning

                              pages

                              death

                              winks at us

                              black and white

                              rouged

                              lavatory of a café

                              on the white washbasin

                              a black walking stick

                              as if somebody all of a sudden

                              had unlearnt going

                              blindly

                              night watchmen

                              for example

                              have eyes for the unseen

                              poets

                              an assay of snow in the crookof the arm