I’m reading Michael Hofmann’s NYRB review (Dec. 20, 2018) of The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, translated by Tom Kuhn and David Constantine (it’s not very favorable, first complaining about the book’s length and exclusion of some excellent poems, then proceeding to rubbish the translations), and I thought I’d canvass the German-speaking Hatters about this passage:
Brecht has a knack of writing ordinary German and meaning it that makes him extraordinarily difficult to translate—maybe (surprisingly) the hardest of all the twentieth-century Germans. Of Rilke the similes survive, even if they baffle as they dazzle; of Trakl something gaudy and barbarous; of Celan the twist of an opaque pain; of Benn the human Mutter. In Brecht, simple words (kalt, fahl, früh, böse) and plain statements are asked to bear an awful lot of weight. The great poem “An die Nachgeborenen,” written in 1938, a confession of inadequacy to coming generations, has a stanza that goes:
Die Kräfte waren gering. Das Ziel
Lag in großer Ferne
Es war deutlich sichtbar, wenn auch für mich
Kaum zu erreichen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.Not one word sticks out, sounds pretentious or hollow, even though the plural Erden is archaic. Abstraction and concreteness, the personal and impersonal, are held in exquisite balance. The whole thing has a gravity and stateliness of centuries. The stanza, in Tom Kuhn’s English version, “To those born after,” goes:
Our powers were feeble. The goal
Lay far in the distance
It was clearly visible even if, for me
Hardly attainable.
Thus the days passed
Granted to me on this earth.Here, there’s just one odd- or offsounding word after another: “powers” (what powers be these? magic powers? dark powers? height of his powers?), “feeble,” “goal” (though perhaps the fault is with the article), “thus” (always a little high-smelling in English), “granted.” The poem, which in German sounds universal, sounds in English equivocal, vague, even a little coquettish. […] The Manheim/Willett translation (it’s. unsigned, and hence collaborative) goes:
Our forces were slight. Our goal
Lay far in the distance.
It was clearly visible, though I myself
Was unlikely to reach it
So passed my time
Which had been given to me on earth.This seems preferable to me all over. A lot of translating is the avoiding of weakness, or the needless display of weakness; hence no “the goal” and no “thus”; the active construction in the middle with the emphatic “I myself” followed by the (very English!) understatement of “was unlikely” is cleverly done; and “time” and “given” are better than the more portentous “days” and “Granted.” The last line has altogether more force and purpose.
(I don’t understand his objection to “the goal,” but we all have our idiosyncratic preferences.) I find it odd that he ignores the translation by H.R. Hays, which I have in the ancient but handy (and bilingual) Selected Poems
Men’s strength was little. The goal
Lay far in the distance,
Easy to see if for me
Scarcely attainable.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.
That’s my favorite of the bunch. Incidentally, Hays was a poet himself, and a good one; you can see some of his work in this affectionate reminiscence by Sandy McIntosh (“The Assassins” is particularly Brechtian), and here’s an interview (shortly before his death) by Jonathan Cohen — I was struck by this passage about Dudley Fitts’ 1942 Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Poetry:
Did you work with Fitts on this project?
I never worked with Dudley Fitts. I was hired to do all the biographies in the back of the book, which I did. I took part in some of the translating — I did a poem of Neruda’s — but Fitts was such a schoolmaster: he docked everybody 50¢ for every mistake. Now really, isn’t that childish? It was an “omnibus” anthology all right. Somebody once said that Fitts included everybody in Latin America who had ever written a poem!
Childish indeed! (Incidentally, it saddens me that Hays doesn’t have his own Wikipedia article; he was certainly more notable than some of these people.)
I agree with Hofmann about “the goal”. In English the word has a faint whiff of business language, sportiness and “self-improvement” about it that Ziel does not. Still, not sure what other word to use. “Our aim” sounds unnatural. “Destination” might work, even if too many syllables to fit comfortably.
Yeah, there’s nothing in English that matches the naturalness of Ziel (from which I just realized Russian цель derives).
I disagree with the reviewer’s opinion that the Manheim/Willett translation is “preferable .. all over.” Our forces were slight has a military ring to me, which I assume is not what is meant. On that point I prefer Our powers were feeble. And the last two lines, So passed my time/Which had been given to me on earth, do not have the alleged simplicity of the original. What about So passed the time/given to me on earth?
The Hays translation of the first phrase, Men’s strength was little is probably better in meaning, but sounds clunky to me.
If I had a better alternative, I would insert it here. Our strength was low? We were low-energy losers?
Were it the plural, it would not be archaic at all. But it’s not the plural. What’s 400 years out of date is the grammar of the fixed and literary-but-not-archaic phrase auf Erden, which would be auf der Erde today: with the definite article, and with -n reinterpreted as a plural marker and therefore removed from the entire singular.
Men strikes me as really bad. First, it’s way too literary nowadays; second, it implies a contrast (to gods or hobbits) that is nowhere in the original.
Meaning-wise, the best translation of that sentence might be there was little ability to do anything; that gets the somewhat unusual impersonality of the statement across. But it’s not literary enough. …Maybe scarce instead of little would rescue it?
The best translation of Ziel meaning-wise would be objective. But register-wise that’s so far off it’s not even funny.
Destination would be actively misleading, because it suggests “where we’re bound to go” rather than “where we want to go”.
Perfect.
The impersonality of the original is a “mistakes have been made”-type evasion.
My problem with ‘the goal’ standing alone at the end of a line like that is that it leaves me picturing football goalposts. I don’t think that’s the original writer’s objection!
‘Our goal’ is better in that sense.
Football/hockey goals are called “gate”, Tor, for (presumably) some reason.
Yeah, there’s nothing in English that matches the naturalness of Ziel (from which I just realized Russian цель derives).
As, indeed, does the BCMS cilj/циљ.
Do the German and English so in this context map perfectly into each other?
Ziel is cognate with E till, and in Scandinavian til(l) has lost all noun uses and replaced zu/to as preposition. (Infinitives are governed / marked by at, so zu/to is lost there as well).
For general ‘goal,’ including sports, we use mål. (Originally ‘measure’ it split off a sense of a mark to aim for).
What’s unnatural about “Our aim is victory, victory at all costs”?
“always a little high-smelling in English”
High-smelling does not mean pretentious. It means stinking, as in rotten meat.
Jein. 🙂 They do if you render it So passed my time; but in So the time passed away it could be misunderstood as the narrative particle (“so, uh, as I was saying…”) that corresponds to German also.
Thus the days passed is perfect meaning-wise, but limited to a much higher register.
cilj/циљ
I learned this from the ski competitions in the Sarajevo Winter Olympics.
The forces were wanting. The objective
Was a long way off,
Clearly visible, but for me at least
Unobtainable.
So passed the time
That on earth was given me.
Less literally:
Our strength ebbed, the shore was very far
i could clearly see it, though i despaired of reaching it.
This is how my time in this world passed.
@David Marjanović: “Meaning-wise, the best translation of that sentence might be there was little ability to do anything…”
“Сил было мало” would work in Russian. However, the only Russian translation I’m aware of, by Yefim Etkind, has “Силы были ограничены”. It just doesn’t sound good.
Both Ziel and Цель can also mean “target.” In the USSR, “Наша цель – коммунизм” was a ubiquitous slogan. In the barracks of an artillery unit, however, it sounded (unintentionally) subversive.
“Силы были ограничены”. It just doesn’t sound good.
No. Hofmann is right that the first goal has to be utter simplicity. Tyutchev might have done well with Brecht; the young Pasternak, for example, would have made a mess of it.
@PPaddy — your German is far better than mine, I’m sure, but the tone I get from the poem is not despair but uselessness.
Here’s my very loose try at it:
We were spent. Our ambitions
lay far off, in the distance.
There for everyone to see, but for me,
hardly to be reached.
So passed the time
given to me on this earth.
Yes, Brecht was not a despairing man — Hofmann says “he might just be the only undepressed poet there has ever been.”
OK, I’ll have a go too. The power of Brecht’s language of is not exactly its everydayness, but everyday language seemlessly intertwined with archaic literary register or biblical constructions. It’s not so much everyday language as everymans poetic allusions. So we’ll need a “goal” and a “thus”. And the final line must veer into the language of hymns or epitaphs. So:
(One or both of the two “our”‘s might be “the”‘s , And “few” might be “scant”. And…)
Sorry, “precious gift” is right out.
Oh, well.
Here’s An die Nachgeborenen ten years ago at Language Hat.
Needless to say, I had entirely forgotten that thread, which is very interesting. And your sending me back to it allowed me to fix the dead link in the post.
@hat
I believe brecht had a weary phase , i.e., commented on having changed country more often than shoes. But you are right, the writings were meant to inspire or teach.
A bit of doggerel:
Our powers were wanting,
The goal was far,
Clear to see
But too far for me.
Thus did I spend
My allotted days on earth.
Perhaps “at least” wouldn’t go astray after the fourth line.
Thanks for introducing this poem to me! I haven’t read it before, and I’m glad to read it for the first time. It seems just as apt for the social justice warrior of today, especially the part about how there is always something more noble to do, and something more horrible to be angry about. The hopes for the future generations to be better people and save the world make me think of Greta Thunberg and her insistence that it should be the adults, not the children, that are responsible for saving the world. I followed the link to the explanation by Scott Horton, and I see quite different things in the poem than what’s described there. I believe that’s the point of a great poem. It tells of something human, something not limited to a certain time and place.
Neither English nor German in my mother tongue, and that’s perhaps why I prefer the first version by Kuhn (Our powers were feeble…) over the other two. Power is a general thing, which is why I prefer it. Force makes me think of the military or physics lessons (or Star Wars, really). As a reader, I feel the military “forces” is too far from everyday life. Perhaps “military force” is closer to the original meaning (there are battles elsewhere in the poem), but it’s not effective for me. I dislike the use of “Men” to mean people in general, so the version by Hays is out. A pity, since what follows is quite nice. As for thus, that part of the German original contrasts with a higher register and so the “thus” is rather well placed. “Which had been given to me on earth” sounds to my ears both clunky and a bit too informal compared to “Die auf Erden mir gegeben war”.
I like Plastic Paddys less literal translation too, it might not be the most faithful translation but it sounds good. 🙂
Alexy K’s “Наша цель – коммунизм” and it’s artillery implications put me in mind for this
We were short of powder. The target
Was far off
I saw it clear, but for me
It was unreachable
And I was marking time
In playing chess.
Indeed, omitting the whole last line would pretty much make it perfect. I don’t think keeping the same number of lines as the original is a requirement of a good translation. (Keeping the same number of clauses in prose definitely isn’t.)
Definitely not. This is about individual abilities.
Also, “spent” implies that they had diminished and used to be stronger, which isn’t in the original.
Pretty much.
(Notably, gering isn’t an everyday word, but not obsolete either.)
Awesome.
We didn’t have it in us.
I’m going to stop there.
The other thread reminds me that there’s nothing that can’t be reduced to a limerick.
Excellent!
Thanks. Though now I wish I’d written
The artist’s life is marred by self-doubt and hindsight. No wonder we all drink, have tumultuous affairs, and traumatize those who love us.
I’ve had a couple of goes at this and there’s always something to criticise (which is the premise, I suppose). There’s a short article in the Observer about Biden and his Seamus Heaney quotations that has a good point or two about poetry.
I sit in awe.
Destination would be actively misleading, because it suggests “where we’re bound to go” rather than “where we want to go”.
Not in my American idiolect.
I offer some Nickel Creek lyrics as an example:
I’ve gotta make a destination
Find where I’ll be loved
This time I’ve got no hesitation
And I’ll be movin’ on
(To where I belong)
And I’ll be movin’ on
If the singer is actively making the destination he presumably wants to go there.
🙂 The poet who is “extraordinarily difficult to translate” is the one whose poems we really care about.
Trond Engen FTW.
I read the Graun article instead, it being easier to find. Of course, it just shows that Heaney was an illiterate bog poet. Hope and history do NOT rhyme. They alliterate.
In fact, I love Heaney’s work. The big baby surely does not, what with being functionally illiterate and all. (This sentiment is due to Robert Fitzroy Foster, historian and literary critic, who has written a book about Heaney.) Truly, what bad things could I say about someone whose pseudonym was Incertus?
For context, Seamus Heaney (quoted by Joe Biden in his acceptance speech):
Agip, where amore rhymes with motore!
Looking back through this thread, it seems that our collective process of translating a poem, a short one at least, goes, roughly, like: translate phrases more or less in isolation, aiming for a precise match of meaning; going back and looking at the poem from a greater distance, to see if the pieces fit together; and finally matching the overall voice and sentiment of the poem at large.
Is this the process that professional good translators follow? I imagine that if you are translating an epic poem, or a large collection, the process is more akin to that of an actor getting in character, assuming a voice which would match the author’s, and in that character writing the lines as they come to one’s head, followed by a final revision.
Is there an interesting description of a poetry translator’s process? Has one been mentioned at some point here, at Hat Corner?
Which ones are “good”?
The discussion about how free a good translation should be is centuries old. We’re not going to resolve it here.
I don’t think Y was talking about freedom but about process, and it’s an interesting question. I’ve translated a bunch of poems, but I don’t know that I have a method that could be summed up in those terms.
Looking back through this thread, it seems that our collective process of translating a poem, a short one at least, goes, roughly, like: translate phrases more or less in isolation, aiming for a precise match of meaning; going back and looking at the poem from a greater distance, to see if the pieces fit together; and finally matching the overall voice and sentiment of the poem at large.
For a change (a big change from my usual practice) that’s not how I did mine.
For most translation, yes, I would cobble together a rough, fairly close translation, then go back and polish it to make it sound right. Excruciating process. It would indeed be better if I could get the “voice” right, then go through and translate using that “voice”. It never seems to turn out that way, though. It may depend on how good a writer you are.
I was thinking the same as Y about how we were going about it (surely the method of a good pro varies according to the time, language and poet as well as on the pro’s own opinion of what they want). One problem for any reproduction (translation, building, lithography, large sculpture) is that it’s certainly not the way a piece of art evolves in its creator’s head, which is to often identify what to say and find the easiest path to say it. In translation, the easiest path in German probably isn’t going to be an identical phrase or metaphor in English, and so the problems begin.
It is an interesting question, but this kind of process
is going to create a freer translation than this
almost inevitably.
I translate poems for fun and mental exercise, and more out of than into my own language, so it probably doesn’t count for much. But I think I do all levels simultaneously. Sometimes i identify a key passage that I need to get right in rhythm, sound, tone and meaning — no, not necessarily meaning, but effect in the narration — and build out from there. Often my understanding of the meaning and structure of the poem changes profoundly along the way, and what I thought was important at first turns out to be superficial. This is especially true of “modern” “free” poems, which have the most demanding meter of all. And there’s no formal structure or narrative logic to help you navigate.
Every translator is different, but I approach poetry much as I do prose, in draft after draft working all the way through (the book, if it’s a book) before going back to the top. The first round is focused on simply getting some English to work with, then I tend to put the Italian aside, then I’ll go back and move the English closer to the original again. And with poetry, a close analysis of every aspect of sound becomes an essential part of that attempt to move closer. Of course if I’m trying to reproduce a rhyme scheme everything gets much more complex and a ton of extra drafts are necessary, but from the start I’ll try to nail down a few key rhymes that I’m happy with and then build outward from those.
The more I’ve worked on an author, the longer the text is, and the more times I’ve gone through, the more confident I end up feeling about the voice, no question. (Although voices do change and it’s important not to let yourself get too comfortable.) I find it very disorienting to translate scattered poems, especially if I’m not all that familiar with the person’s work – interesting, sure, but it always feels like I’m groping around.
I agree with Hofmann about the Manheim/Willett version, but I’m not surprised to find myself agreeing with him because I’m in awe of the guy as a translator. I thought his Berlin Alexanderplatz from a couple of years ago was a stunning accomplishment and deserved every bit of the praise it got.
David M: I figured that the “actor” approach is the better one when you have a large body of work to immerse yourself in. I was thinking that in translating an isolated poem here and there, that would be harder (though of course possible for some people). I wonder, again, what the process is of translators who put together anthologies of their own translations of many disparate poets.