Poems
Several years ago, when I hadn't yet decided to escape from the linguistics program, a friend of mine and I discovered "rescue poetry". "Rescue poetry" was poetry that you read, scream, write on walls, or make illegal copies of and leave around as if it were pamphlets full of subversive exhortations.
At my second (and final) meeting of my qualifying exam committee in linguistics oh so many years ago now, I brought rescue poetry with me. I printed the three copies of my paper introduction and outline on red, orange, and yellow paper, each with a different poem for my three committee members. The poems I chose were The Lobster Quadrille by Lewis Carroll, Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros, and part of Washington Matthews' version of the Navajo Night Chant (from N. Scott Momaday). Quite by random, my former advisor got Cisneros, which was pretty much perfect (ping ping ping).
Today's poem for me is Dei Lorelei by Heinrich Heine. I was thinking of a song called Lorelei (by the pogues) , then looked up the myth, which lead me to this poem, which starts with something roughly translatable as "I don't know why I can't get this story out of my head". It seems an appropriate progression.
I'm putting it in German here because although I read a few English translations (Twain's, this one, and another), I do not speak or read German so I can't assess the quality of any of these translations. And having once read an abomination of a translation from a Rimbaud poem, I know I don't want to be guilty of promoting something like that. So here it is in German. If you're interested, if it gets in your head and won't get out, you can go look her up.
Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin,
Ein Märchen aus uralten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fließt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt,
Im Abendsonnenschein.
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr gold'nes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar,
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme,
Und singt ein Lied dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame,
Gewalt'ge Melodei.
Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe,
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;
Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh'.
Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn,
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen,
Die Loreley getan.
- Heinrich Heine
"Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too" (Heinrich Heine, 1821)
5 comments:
There's a song called Lorelei by the Tom Tom Club too.
That's a haunting poem. I don't read German but I got the gist of it from the translations. I like your final quote (Heine) too.
Curious: which Libra cusp were you born on? I was born on the Virgo/Libra cusp. I'm have Libran sensualist tendencies, but my anal retentiveness is pure Virgo.
I'm September, like you. The year I was born, Libra was late so while the keychains and commercial astrology things will say anyone born after September 22 is indisputably a Libra, my birthchart tells a less certain story. The nice thing about this cusp - when my (several) committed, deep relationships have broken up, I can find at least some small areas of solace doing things like cleaning my apartment, reorganizing papers, and obsessing about my dental hygiene.
'Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
I look forward to reading translations of Dei Lorelei as soon as I can steal a minute or two, but in the meantime...know of a good pronounciation key for Jabberwocky? I've decided to make Dvorah memorize it.
(not really, cause then she'll hate it, but I do want to read it to them a lot)
OK, so the Lorelei is like the Sirens of the Odyssey.
Love the sirens. Excellent poem, thanks! Especially interesting is how different all three of those translations are.
♥
Slithy toves indeed. Yes, I have it memorized. I think it's mandatory if you get an undergraduate degree in linguistics.
The Jabberwocky at Wikipedia
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