AtDtDA(28): Invisible Functionaries
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Sun Mar 23 10:16:24 CDT 2008
Consider "schrecklich" among the untranslatables. Not simply a
terror but the cry, the screamlike terror, most usually unutterable
save in hour of greatest need. . . .
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0807010375/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link
"Why shouldn't the IG go to seances? They ought to be quite at home
with the bureaucracies of the other side." (GR, Pt. III, pp. 410-11)
Pynchon is playing with "Ordnungen" here, the notion of Hirearchical
Ordering being a Govermental conceit.
. . . .as the Princess herself tells it, the voice that dictated
to the poet the opening line of the Elegies came directly
from the "violent north wind.". . .
Think of the Vormance Expedition and the powers of the North. . . .
We usually think of the 'poetic' as that which cannot fully translate,
that which is uniquely embedded in its particular language. The
poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke is a case in point. The opening line
of the Duino Elegies —
Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn
aus den Engel Ordnungen? —
has been translated into English literally dozens of times, but, as
William Gass points out in his recent Reading Rilke: Reflections
on the Problems of Translation, none of the translations seem
satisfactory. Here are a few examples:
J. B. Leishman (1930) —
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the
angelic orders?
A. J. Poulin (1977) —
And if I cried, who’d listen to me in those angelic orders?
Stephen Cohn (1989) —
Who, if I cried out, would hear me — among the ranked Angels?
Gass is very critical of these, but his own is, to my ear, no better:
Who if I cried, would hear me among the Dominions of Angels?
The difficulty, as I have suggested elsewhere, is that
English syntax does not allow for the dramatic suspension
of Wer, wenn ich schriee... and that the noun phrase Engel
Ordnungen, which in German puts the stress, both phonically
and semantically, on the angels themselves rather than their
orders or hierarchies or dominions, defies effective translation.
Moreover, Rilke’s line contains the crucial and heavily stressed
word denn (literally 'then'), which here has the force of 'Well,
then' or, in contemporary idiom, 'So,' as in 'So, who would
hear me if I cried out...?' But the translators cited above seem
not to know what to do with denn and hence lose the immediacy
of the question. Then, too, denn rhymes with wenn as well as
the first two syllables of den Engel, creating a dense sonic
network inevitably lost in translation.
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000710.php
You will want cause and effect. All right. . . .
Gravity's Rainbow page P 676, V 663, B773
A similar construction: Well, you want cause and effect?
Who, though I cry aloud,
would hear me in the angel orders?
And should my plea ascend,
were I gathered to the glory
of some incandescent heart,
my own faint flame of being
would fail for the glare.
Beauty is as close to terror
as we can well endure.
Angels would not condescend
to damn our meagre souls.
That is why they awe
and why they terrify us so.
Every angel is terrible!
And so I constrain myself and
swallow the deep, dark music
of my own impassioned plea.
Oh, to whom can we turn
in the hour of need?
Neither angel nor man.
Even animals know that we
are not at home here.
We see so little of what
is clearly visible to them.
For us there is only
a tree on a hillside,
which we can memorize, or
yesterday's sidewalks, or
a habit which discovered us,
found us comfortable and moved in.
O and night...the night!
Wind of the infinite
blowing away all faces.
Within our solitude appears
a nearly lovely god
or goddess, all the
heart is ever apt to meet.
Lovers fare no better,
concealing, by their love,
each other's destiny.
Do you still not understand?
Pour your emptiness
into the breeze-
the birds may soar
more swiftly for it.
http://www.hunterarchive.com/fileS/Poetry/Elegies/elegy1.html
Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem
stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
Und so verhalt ich mich denn und verschlucke den Lockruf
dunkelen Schluchzens. Ach, wen vermögen
wir denn zu brauchen? Engel nicht, Menschen nicht,
und die findigen Tiere merken es schon,
daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind
in der gedeuteten Welt. Es bleibt uns vielleicht
irgend ein Baum an dem Abhang, daß wir ihn täglich
wiedersähen; es bleibt uns die Straße von gestern
und das verzogene Treusein einer Gewohnheit,
der es bei uns gefiel, und so blieb sie und ging nicht.
O und die Nacht, die Nacht, wenn der Wind voller Weltraum
uns am Angesicht zehrt , wem bliebe sie nicht, die ersehnte,
sanft enttäuschende, welche dem einzelnen Herzen
mühsam bevorsteht. Ist sie den Liebenden leichter?
Ach, sie verdecken sich nur mit einander ihr Los.
Weißt du's noch nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere
zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht daß die Vögel
die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug.
http://art-bin.com/art/oduino1.html
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