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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