Tuesday, April 5, 2016

This / narrow sign between walls

I don't have any German, but I do have a bilingual edition of Paul Celan's selected poetry checked out from the library, and just now when I read, in "Anabasis", the lines that Michael Hamburger renders as
re-
leased, re-
deemed, ours.
my curious eye traveled across to the facing page and read, in whatever sense one can read a language one knows roughly how to pronounce but not how to decipher, the corresponding lines
aus-
gelöst, ein-
gelöst, unser.
and while I'm not saying anything new by saying that translation is a very peculiar thing, it's just a very peculiar thing that the way Hamburger renders the lines has the effect of making me feel the reness of these words, and of making me think about why it is that to re-lease means to release, why to re-deem means to redeem, where Celan's lines — presumably — would have the effect of making one feel the gelöstness of the words (neither of which (google suggests) possesses any reness)... which, intriguingly, I suspect also would make one feel the changing prefixes with a similar kind of newness and focus as Hamburger's version lends to the unchanging prefixes. (I would bet the German emphasizes the past tense of these verbs more as well, but I feel on even shakier ground there.)

These are, then, of course, as we all know already, different poems. The one in English strikes me as very fine, though (and as) it largely escapes me; I can't speak for the one in German.