Plan to buy a nice camera today, which should make it easier to get some nice stuff up here.
Wish I had a pic of the Nazi motorcycle we saw last week, parked in downtown. Sure, it's natural to see swastikas around here, but a) usually not facing that way, b) probably not done up in White Stripes palette, and c) definitely not accompanied by a little Iron Cross. Serious WTF time.
So, anyway, I was thinking last night about a little poem I wrote in German years ago, when we had to do cinquains for class. No grammar to be seen, and not (I believe) even following whatever silly rules tradition or at least foreign language pedagogy applies to the rather silly form. But you know, I consider it a real poem of mine, more satisfying than most. It goes like this, sans nods either to pyramidal cinquain formatting or ugly German spelling reform.
Apfel
Rinde Kern
Strudel Zider Apfelmuß
Samen Baum Geburt Fäule
Apfel
In literal translation:
Apple
Rind Core
Strudel Cider Applesauce
Seed Tree Childbirth Rot
Apple
Really terrible in English, even with lines 1,2,3, and 5 so similar. (Changing "childbirth" to "birth" doesn't help.) What I like so much about the German poem is its alliterative pattern. Line 2 repeats r-n. The first two words of line 3 do a kind of s-t-r-d, t-s-d-r. The last word of line 3 has the right stress pattern to end the line well, but changes consonants with an m-s at the end. Well, that's what gets picked up in line 4: s-m-b-m before the critical word "Geburt", and then there's a new pattern f-l, which returns to "Apfel". A cute little dance that the English translation flubs.
I hope today's lecture was as informative as it was entertaining. :)
Much more to get from brain to blog, plus camera-carrying holidays to come. Stay tuned.
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2 comments:
I disagree. Naturally. While line 4 may indeed be just a little bit loose (but not outrageously so) lines 1,2,3 and 5 are word for word translations and I do not see how they are any less metrical, any less appealing, any less significant (or, for that matter, insignificant) than their German counterparts. This poem loses next to nothing in the translation. What are you talking about?
:)
What I'm talking about, I talked about: patterns of sound to go along with patterns of sense. Did you miss the part where I tediously pointed out the alliterative patterns?
It may not matter to most people that "rind" and "core" share one consonant and have unrelated vowels, whereas "Rinde" and "Kern" share two consonants in their stressed syllables, bookending the line, and have closely related vowels. Most will not find a greater perfection in the /ts/ of "Zider" than the /s/ of "cider" when adjoined to "Strudel". Many may not even mind English line 4, noting that while "tree" and "rot" might work together in another context ("kick a kitten into a rotten nut tree trunk"), the "seed-tree" pair has no business showing up in an alliterative rather than assonant poem, and "childbirth" is a junky clunky word. ("Birth", meanwhile, creating a disastrous line of monosyllables.) But, hey, I don't hear a lot of the shit more musical folks might describe an excellent versus decent opera singer doing, nor typically see superior brush strokes in a painting.
As a small aside: I also enjoy the suggestion of the English cognate for "Samen".
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