Poem of the Day: Song of the Dwarf

Sun Dec 6 02:16:29 CST 2015

Das Lied des Zwerges

Meine Seele ist vielleicht grad und gut;
aber mein Herz, mein verbogenes Blut,
alles das, was mir wehe tut,
kann sie nicht aufrecht tragen.
Sie hat keinen Garten, sie hat kein Bett,
sie hängt an meinem scharfen Skelett
mit entsetztem Flügelschlagen.

Aus meinen Händen wird auch nichts mehr.
Wie verkümmert sie sind: sieh her:
zähe hüpfen sie, feucht und schwer,
wie kleine Kröten nach Regen.
Und das Andre an mir ist
abgetragen und alt und trist;
warum zögert Gott, auf den Mist
alles das hinzulegen.

Ob er mir zürnt für mein Gesicht
mit dem mürrischen Munde?
Es war ja so oft bereit, ganz licht
und klar zu werden im Grunde;
aber nichts kam ihm je so dicht
wie die großen Hunde.
Und die Hunde haben das nicht.

Song of the Dwarf

Maybe my soul is straight and good,
but she's got to lug my heart, my blood,
which all hurts because it's crooked;
its weight sends her staggering.
She has no bed, she has no home,
she merely hangs on my sharp bones,
flapping her terrible wings.

And my hands are completely shot,
shriveled, worn: here, take a look
at how they clammily, clumsily hop
like rain-crazed toads.
As for all the other stuff,
it's all used up and sad and old—
why doesn't God haul me out to the muck
and let me drop.

Is it because of my mug
with its frowning mouth?
So often I would itch
to be luminous and free of fog
but nothing would approach
except big dogs.
And the dogs got zilch.

Translator's notes:
"My poem is more properly a version, rather than a felicitous translation
(I don’t speak a lick of German except what I learned from watching *H**ogan’s
Heroes*). What I wanted to do is bring out the song-nature of the poem, and
the wounded plainspokenness of its speaker (though these may be delusions
of mine), and so my decisions were made on the side of rhyme, meter, and
forthrightness of locution. An obvious problem “The Voices” presents is how
to preserve the strict rhymes of the originals, and in my earlier versions
I ended up drifting into “heigh-ho heigh-ho” territory. In the end, I
sacrificed literal precision for the sonic whole that I was after.

Rilke’s original concludes with a maddening degree of ambiguity, which
means that a translator either preserves it, or picks her poison and chugs,
by making a decision about what exactly the dogs don’t have. I’ve kept some
of the mystery of the ending, while concluding with a word that I think is
very much in keeping with what I imagine is the lexicon of dwarves (again,
a delusion). I’ve also taken the liberty of giving the poem a few of my own
clarifications that aren’t validated by the original, though I’m still up
in the air about those big dogs."

For anybody who wants to look further into it I have put together the two
poems, original and what the translator made of it, her version, as she
calls it, and her notes. Funny I found what she put between brackets. I
could stop here, but will add that the points where she deviates most are
the ending (the dogs got zilch is most definitely not what Rilke wrote
("haben *das* nicht": don't have that, and of course you have to ask to
what that "das" refers) and the simile with the toads which are not
rain-crazed in Rilke's poem but small and wet and heavy.

I hope that helps.

2015-12-05 18:10 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> KAFKA.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Dec 5, 2015, at 9:53 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That is excellent. Where is it from?
>
> Www.innergroovemusic.com <http://www.innergroovemusic.com>
>
> On Dec 5, 2015, at 7:07 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Quote of the day: All language is but a poor translation.
>
> ( NOT a comment on Jochen nor this translation of Rilke)
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Dec 5, 2015, at 2:56 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I need a bit time to elaborate which I don't have at the moment –
> hopefully tomorrow.
>
> Am 5. Dezember 2015 um 04:26 schrieb Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>:
>
>> Have to admit it strikes me as funny in a self deprecating way, but only
>> if it is taken as  metaphoric autobiography, the exaggerated feeling one
>> can have about oneself that is really just pathetic self pity. God won’t
>> even bother to throw me away.
>>
>> Could it be one of those things that only works as funny if it works as
>> not funny?
>> > On Dec 4, 2015, at 8:12 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > How so?  Please explain. The translation is surely morbid, but it has a
>> punchline. It speaks of futility, but also absurdity. Absurdity is sublime
>> humor.
>> >
>> > David Morris
>> >
>> >
>> > On Friday, December 4, 2015, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > That poem isn't funny. In German it aint:
>> >
>> >
>> > Das Lied des Zwerges
>> >
>> > Meine Seele ist vielleicht grad und gut;
>> > aber mein Herz, mein verbogenes Blut,
>> > alles das, was mir wehe tut,
>> > kann sie nicht aufrecht tragen.
>> > Sie hat keinen Garten, sie hat kein Bett,
>> > sie hängt an meinem scharfen Skelett
>> > mit entsetztem Flügelschlagen.
>> > Aus meinen Händen wird auch nichts mehr.
>> > Wie verkümmert sie sind: sieh her:
>> > zähe hüpfen sie, feucht und schwer,
>> > wie kleine Kröten nach Regen.
>> > Und das Andre an mir ist
>> > abgetragen und alt und trist;
>> > warum zögert Gott, auf den Mist
>> > alles das hinzulegen.
>> >
>> > Ob er mir zürnt für mein Gesicht
>> > mit dem mürrischen Munde?
>> > Es war ja so oft bereit, ganz licht
>> > und klar zu werden im Grunde;
>> > aber nichts kam ihm je so dicht
>> > wie die großen Hunde.
>> > Und die Hunde haben das nicht.
>> >
>> > 2015-12-05 1:10 GMT+01:00 David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>:
>> > >
>> > > Who knew Rilke could be funny?
>> > >
>> >
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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