Translations: Take One, Take Two

    The Poem-Pairs blog awakens from a long hibernation to consider what happens when a poem gets translated into another language. In this case, the poem is Rilke’s “Herbsttag” (Autumn Day). Here is the original German:     

                Herbsttag

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer was sehr gross.

Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,

und auf den Fluren lass die Winde los.

Befiehl den letzten Fruechten voll zu sein;

gieb ihnen noch zwei suedlichere Tage,

draenge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage

die letzte Suesse in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.

Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,

wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben

und wird in den Alleen hin und her

unruhig wandern, wenn die Blaetter treiben.

And here is the first of two translations into English:     

                Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The summer was so immense.

Lay your shadow on the sundials,

and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;

give them another two more southerly days,

press them to ripeness, and chase

the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.

Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,

will stay up, read, write long letters,

and wander the avenues, up and down,

restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

         (from The Essential Rilke: selected and translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah

            Liebmann (revised edition), page 4, The Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins

            Publishers, New York ©2000)

Now that we know what the poem is about, we notice that the German version has three stanzas of increasing length (3 then 4 then 5 lines). This structure has been preserved in the English translation. The ever-increasing stanza-length embodies how the outcome of fullness in nature is not necessarily mirrored in the lives of human beings: some will never build a house and some will live alone, restless.

    Yet the poem itself has more to say. It is, after all, a prayer:

Lord: it is time. The summer was so immense.

Lay your shadow on the sundials,

and let loose the wind in the fields.

The speaker is petitioning for a successful harvest because that outcome is not a foregone conclusion.

    It is worth noting that the Kinnell/Liebmann translation closely follows the German original. But what about our second translation, by Jeredith Merrin?

                     Late Harvest

                            after Rilke’s Herbsttag

     Time, it is time.

Summer has been

long-stretched-out, full.

Go ahead, Fall:

shrink down the days

and sugar the grapes

for late-harvest wine.

Anyone still unknown

to herself will stay,

probably, that way.

Anyone unlinked by love

will be love-

left-out now—waking,

mind pacing

up and down

up and down,

restless as leaf-bits

and papers in the street.

         (from the Poetry Daily website “www.poems.com”, October 15^th 2009)

Is it really a translation? And if so, to what extent is it faithful to the German original?  

    One clue is Merrin’s epigraph: “after Rilke’s Herbsttag”. The Merrin version is modeled after the Rilke poem, yet it is a personal re-interpretation or re-imagining which contains some subtle yet striking differences from Rilke’s original. We initially notice that her two skinny stanzas do not reflect the three-stanza structure of Rilke.

    In addition, Merrin’s version selectively summarizes as well as expands on the Rilke text. Rilke’s prayerful first and second stanza get conflated into a single Merrin first stanza in which Time and the Fall season (rather than the Lord) are being addressed:

     Time, it is time.

Summer has been

long-stretched-out, full.

Go ahead, Fall:

shrink down the days

and sugar the grapes

Lay your shadow on the sundials,

and let loose the wind in the fields.

Those hyphenated phrases “long-stretched-out” (ironic in view of Merrin’s skinny stanzas) and

“late-harvest” were perhaps the creative impetus for how Merrin transforms the images of Rilke’s final stanza:

Anyone still unknown

to herself will stay,

probably, that way.

Anyone unlinked by love

will be love-

left-out now—waking,

mind pacing

up and down

up and down,

restless as leaf-bits

and papers in the street.

Instead of Rilke’s “whoever has no hours now will not build one anymore”, we find

Anyone still unknown

to herself [surprise!] will stay,

probably, that way.

And Rilke’s image

Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,

will stay up, read, write long letters,

and wander the avenues, up and down,

while the leaves are blowing.

gets transformed into

Anyone unlinked by love

will be love-

left-out now—waking,

mind pacing

up and down

up and down,

restless as leaf-bits

and papers in the street.

Note how Rilke’s physical image

Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,

will stay up, read, write long letters,

and wander the avenues, up and down . . .

becomes a mental image in Merrin’s rendition:

mind pacing

up and down

up and down

And Rilke’s concluding image of leaves blowing becomes an implied physical image in Merrin’s version:

restless as leaf-bits

and papers in the street.

    Rilke’s original German poem and the two translations above suggest that although we each engage in and interpret common human experiences and emotions, we do so in personal and idiosyncratically meaningful ways.