Poem meme

[schneefink]

from leesa_perrie:

If you see this, post a poem in your own LJ today.

I cheated and chose two (because "An Anna Blume" is too much fun.) I added the English translation (in one case by the author himself) but especially the poem by Rilke (my all-time favourite poet, seriously, his poems are beautiful) just doesn´t work as well translated. (My other favourites by Rilke: Der Schwan/The Swan, Der Panther/The Panther, Der Gefangene/The Prisoner, und die Duineser Elegien. The latter are difficult, but soo beautiful.)

On a completely unrelated note, I haven´t yet found English poems that I think are as beautiful as German ones (strictly from the language.) Russian, yes, but not English. My theory is that English is not the ideal language for poems, but easier for prose. Probably nonsense...


Spanische Tänzerin

Wie in der Hand ein Schwefelzündholz, weiß,
eh es zur Flamme kommt, nach allen Seiten
zuckende Zungen streckt -: beginnt im Kreis
naher Beschauer hastig, hell und heiß
ihr runder Tanz sich zuckend auszubreiten.

Und plötzlich ist er Flamme, ganz und gar.

Mit einem Blick entzündet sie ihr Haar
und dreht auf einmal mit gewagter Kunst
ihr ganzes Kleid in diese Feuersbrunst,
aus welcher sich, wie Schlangen die erschrecken,
die nackten Arme wach und klappernd strecken.

Und dann: als würde ihr das Feuer knapp,
nimmt sie es ganz zusamm und wirft es ab
sehr herrisch, mit hochmütiger Gebärde
und schaut: da liegt es rasend auf der Erde
und flammt noch immer und ergiebt sich nicht -.
Doch sieghaft, sicher und mit einem süßen
grüßenden Lächeln hebt sie ihr Gesicht
und stampft es aus mit kleinen Füßen.



Spanish Dancer

As a wooden match held in the hand, white,
on all its sides shoots flickering tongues
before it flashes into flame—: within the inner
circle of onlookers, hurried, hot, bright,
her dance in rounds begins to flicker and spread.

And suddenly, everything is completely fire.

One glance and she ignites her hair,
turning all at once with daring art
her entire dress into a passion of flame,
from which, like startled snakes,
the naked arms awake and reach out, clapping.

And then: as if the fire were growing scarce,
she takes it together and throws it off,
masterfully, with proud, imperious gestures,
and watches: it lies there raging on the ground,
still flaring up, refusing to give in—.
Till triumphantly, self-assured and with a sweet
welcoming smile, she raises her face,
then stamps it out with small, powerful feet.



An Anna Blume

Oh Du, Geliebte meiner 27 Sinne, ich liebe Dir!
Du, Deiner, Dich Dir, ich Dir, Du mir, ---- wir?
Das gehört beiläufig nicht hierher!
Wer bist Du, ungezähltes Frauenzimmer, Du bist, bist Du?
Die Leute sagen, Du wärest.
Laß sie sagen, sie wissen nicht, wie der Kirchturm steht.
Du trägst den Hut auf Deinen Füßen und wanderst auf die Hände,
Auf den Händen wanderst Du.
Halloh, Deine roten Kleider, in weiße Falten zersägt,
Rot liebe ich Anna Blume, rot liebe ich Dir.
Du, Deiner, Dich Dir, ich Dir, Du mir, ----- wir?
Das gehört beiläufig in die kalte Glut!
Anna Blume, rote Anna Blume, wie sagen die Leute?
Preisfrage:
1. Anna Blume hat ein Vogel,
2. Anna Blume ist rot.
3. Welche Farbe hat der Vogel?
Blau ist die Farbe Deines gelben Haares,
Rot ist die Farbe Deines grünen Vogels.
Du schlichtes Mädchen im Alltagskleid,
Du liebes grünes Tier, ich liebe Dir!
Du Deiner Dich Dir, ich Dir, Du mir, ---- wir!
Das gehört beiläufig in die ---- Glutenkiste.
Anna Blume, Anna, A----N----N----A!
Ich träufle Deinen Namen.
Dein Name tropft wie weiches Rindertalg.
Weißt Du es Anna, weißt Du es schon,
Man kann Dich auch von hinten lesen.
Und Du, Du Herrlichste von allen,
Du bist von hinten, wie von vorne:
A------N------N------A.
Rindertalg träufelt STREICHELN über meinen Rücken.
Anna Blume,
Du tropfes Tier,
Ich-------liebe-------Dir!



Eve Blossom,
Kurt Schwitters' own translation of "An Anna Blume"

Oh thou, beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love thine! Thou thee
thee thine, I thine,
thou mine, we?
That (by the way) is beside the point!
Who art thou, uncounted woman, Thou art, art thou?
People say, thou werst,
Let them say, they don't know what they are talking about.
Thou wearest thine hat on thy feet, and wanderest on thine hands,
On thine hands thou wanderest
Hallo, thy red dress, sawn into white folds,
Red I love Eve Blossom, red I love thine,
Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we?
That (by the way) belongs to the cold glow!
Eve Blossom, red Eve Blossom what do people say?
PRIZE QUESTION: 1. Eve Blossom is red,
2. Eve Blossom has wheels
3. what colour are the wheels?
Blue is the colour of your yellow hair
Red is the whirl of your green wheels,
Thou simple maiden in everyday dress,
Thou small green animal,
I love thine!
Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we?
That (by the way) belongs to the glowing brazier!
Eve Blossom,eve,
E - V - E,
E easy, V victory, E easy,
I trickle your name.
Your name drops like soft tallow.
Do you know it, Eve?
Do you already know it?
One can also read you from the back
And you, you most glorious of all,
You are from the back as from the front,
E-V-E.
Easy victory.
Tallow trickles to stroke over my back
Eve Blossom,
Thou drippy animal,
I
Love
Thine!
I love you!!!!


I got my genre and prompt for sga_genficathon, and (after I panicked for a short while) I already have over a thousand words of notes for my story. And a very very long list of things to research... (including all the episodes I didn´t see. That means I have to figure out how to download them, something I managed not to do for years.) This will be fun!
The first prompt for sga_lfws is there, too. More fun!
...I´m going to write a lot. This is a very good thing! And I want to write more One Piece, too, starting with In Another Life, and maybe other short things.
And I have an Accounting exam on Thursday. It´s a big exam, but I will pass!
Off to study.

Comments

[serrende.livejournal.com]

Cooool.

I wonder why Kurt Schwitter turned Anna's bird into Eve's wheels in English? Maybe he just liked the sound of "green wheels" better.

I was glad for the translations, as my German is so rudimentary that I usually can't understand poems all the way through without having to look words up (which can be tiresome). But German-to-English poetry translations seldom does sound very good in my experience.

tangent which might be utterly uninteresting: I've read somewhere that English is a very iambic language, with its definite article "the" and many monosyllabic words making a pa-DAM pa-DAM rhythm like iambs. Swedish is a trochaic language more apt to go PAM-pa PAM-pa, as we have definite endings instead of articles and common words tend to have at least two syllables. Not sure how it is for German, maybe somewhere in between?

Also read that Greek hexametre work much better in Swedish than in English due to the rhythms of each language, but it was probably a Swedish writer/translator who wrote that, so I dunno./tangent

[schneefink.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, that´s fascinating.

I tried looking for the "most common meter" in German online and then tried experimenting, but without definite results. (I found this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter_%28poetry%29) on wikipedia, but it´s notably lacking a part about German.) From what I remember from school, there wasn´t one single meter that was used all the time, but of course some were more common than others.
And in Latin we learned about the old Latin metres that don´t work in German because of the different way of emphasises (but then, Latin had lots of rules to make it easier for poets, like not saying the first or last letter of a word if it collides with the next one.)

I was thinking in not so scientific terms: in German, (good) poems seem to flow naturally without seeming like prose in verses. (...which doesn´t make any sense, but I hope you get what I mean.) But then, I´ve read a lot more German poems than English ones.

As for "Eve Blossom", it is an interesting translation because it´s not literal. I also wondered where he got the "easy victory" part from.

(Having to look words up while reading poems is terrible! The only reward is when I finished writing down all the words and grammar and then, when I actually understand it, reading the poem again. It´s only worth it for the really good ones, though.)

[serrende.livejournal.com]

From what I remember from school, there wasn't one single meter that was used all the time, but of course some were more common than others.

Oh, that definitely isn't the case in Swedish poetry either! There are all sorts of verses and metric feet - and of course, nowadays it's mostly free verse (which tends to be what I write - rhyming's so tough!).

But speaking personally, I find it much easier trying to do iambic pentametre (like Shakespearean verse and most sonnets) in English than in Swedish. Doesn't mean it's easy, but easier. And then on the other hand, there are some meters that seem harder to do in English than in Swedish or, possibly, German. English often feels softer to me, tends to flow more, like French - less bounce and resistance to the words, if that makes any sense. Maybe that makes gives English poetry a tendency to be less tensely rhythmic, more edging towards prose... I don't know.

Have you read W.B. Yeats' Easter 1916 (http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/poetry/soundings/easter.htm) (about the Easter Rising in Dublin that year) or Robert Frost's Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening (http://www.ketzle.com/frost/snowyeve.htm)?

The "easy victory" does seem like it comes out of nowhere, but I liked it!

It´s only worth it for the really good ones, though.

I agree, but it's great to learn the really good ones: for me at least, learning song lyrics and poems by heart feels like it helps me get closer to the language. *has exactly three Heine poems memorised*

[schneefink.livejournal.com]

I definitely know what you mean about English being "softer" (and although I don´t know French very well, the poetry must be completely different simply because of the pronounciation. ...which goes for nearly every language, I think...) For me, it´s easier to write prose in English (well, except that it´s not my native language) and I think it´s generally easier to screw up a prose text in German than in English, but maybe because of that a really well-written German text seems more outstanding, has more of an impact.
...I feel silly writing like this as an absolute layman.

Thanks for the recommendations! Easter 1916 is interesting (and needs to be read more than once, I think), Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening mysterious, and both very different: the first "free-er", more prose-like, the second one with a stricter rhythm. So it is possible to do both in English ^^
Normally, I prefer rhymed poems, but probably just because I´m a bit old-fashioned. I like poems when they make me see or feel pictures and atmosphere I didn´t know before or otherwise evoke a response, the rest is just things I happen to notice.

Which Heine poems? :)

(I´m curious: do you think that this poem, Sea horses and flying fish (http://www.literaturwelt.com/werke/ball/seepferdchen.html), can be "translated"? It sounds very funny, to put it nicely, when I try to read it in English... But then, the author probably wouldn´t mind. So, yes, it´s just an excuse to get you to read it because I think it´s funny. Also, despite being made up of nonsense syllables, it does have a rhythm.)

...Now I need to go read poetry.
(When I finished school I bought myself a collection of Rilke´s poems. He´s the only poet I´ve read a lot of poems from, and they´re beautiful.)

[serrende.livejournal.com]

I find it easier to write prose in English, too, but I've always acknowledged that to the fact that when I write English, it doesn't quite feel "real" to me - I'm just playing around. With Swedish, it feels more serious even if the story itself isn't. And since I don't really aim to be a serious prose writer, I tend not to write in Swedish so much anymore. Which I really think is too bad. :(

I often like rhymed poems a lot, but I find them hard to write myself. I guess I like poetry where the rhythm is clear and obvious, but it can be like that in free verse, too.

I like poems when they make me see or feel pictures and atmosphere I didn´t know before or otherwise evoke a response, the rest is just things I happen to notice.

On the one hand, I can fall for nonsense poetry that's about nothing so much as the sheer joy of playing with the language; on the other, I get moved by much more weighty parts. And a lot of the time I have no clear idea why I like one poem much more than another. It just happens...

Rilke is heady stuff to me - I've been very impressed by some of his work, but reading a lot of it at the same time is too hard for me, even in translation. He tends to write pretty long verses, and they feel philosophically demanding, like I really need to pay attention when I'm reading them. But if I was good in German, maybe it would feel quite different...

(I´m curious: do you think that this poem, Sea horses and flying fish, can be "translated"? It sounds very funny, to put it nicely, when I try to read it in English... But then, the author probably wouldn´t mind. So, yes, it´s just an excuse to get you to read it because I think it´s funny. Also, despite being made up of nonsense syllables, it does have a rhythm.)

Heh, yeah, trying reading that in a very proper British Oxfordlike English. :D Not sure if it could be translated as much as given an English equivalent. But reading it, I feel my grasp of spoken German isn't good enough for me to be sure what the intended rhythm is - I can guess, but I'm not sure. Nonsense is fun, though, as long as the rhythm is there! Like scat singing in jazz.

Heine poems: Nachtgedanken ("Denk' ich an Deutschland in der Nacht..."), Zum Lazarus, and Die schlesischen Weber. Maybe not the most lyrical of them, but the ones that happened to speak to me most directly (and I think I read all of them in Swedish translation first, though I can't be sure now).

[schneefink.livejournal.com]

Same here with the English/German writing. (When I write in English and can´t find that perfect phrase I have an excuse, in German it´s twice as frustrating.)

I find poetry of any kind extremely difficult to write, as in, I can´t. (Oh, I tried - which teenage girl hasn´t? - but I destroyed all evidence. I like prose better.) Respect that you do!

No, Rilke is just as difficult in German ^^
Although I guess that I wouldn´t have the energy and concentration to read through his longer poems if the language wasn´t so beautiful.

...Now I want to hear this poem as a song. With a saxophone. Or the English equivalent. Madness! ^^

Thank you, these were great. Especially Die schlesischen Weber - really powerful.
Um. Maybe it would be more appropriate to ask you for recommendations of Swedish poets, but as I said, I don´t trust translations, and I don´t want to misuse you as my personal poem reccer (although I could really need someone like that xD)...

[serrende.livejournal.com]

(When I write in English and can´t find that perfect phrase I have an excuse, in German it´s twice as frustrating.)

That's true, too! It's better to have an excuse. ;)

I think poetry is just finding a beat in your head and letting your thoughts run along with it. Often there are specific images and feelings involved as well, but if they can't work with the rhythm, they don't get to come along.

I did write East Blue Sonnets (http://serrende.livejournal.com/14759.html), four poems about Usopp, Zoro, Sanji and Nami before Luffy shows up in their lives. Hardly a masterpiece, but it scans, and is in IC, I think. (Though I still wish I could have made Nami's second half turn out better.)

...now I feel an urge to go look for German translations of good Swedish poems, despite your feeling on translations. ;p But in the meanwhile, I'll throw a couple of more English recs at you!

The Road Not Taken (http://www.flickr.com/photos/musanorazmi/2523053735/), another by Robert Frost, and Ballad of Reading Gaol (http://www.englishverse.com/poems/the_ballad_of_reading_gaol) by Oscar Wilde. The latter is admitedly very long, but each verse is just six lines, and the poem is divided into several sections, each getting its own mini-ending. So you can stop after the first section and still get a good feel for the poem.

And this one is also from the 19th century and I guess a little corny, but I like it because it feels so springlike:

The Throstle by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Summer is coming,summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,
Yes my wild little poet.

(though I just now found out the poem goes on after that, but I think this part is the best.) ^_^

[schneefink.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see, it´s really just a matter of looking for the good ones. :)
When I have time I´ll have to search for some good poetry recs.

It seems to me they get better with re-reading, too. (Especially "The Road Not Taken". Maybe because it´s not my first language, but it took me a while to put rhythm and words together. Something to remember for future poetry reading.)

And yay, summer! ^^