Ulrich Flemming's website > KrautBlog > Christian Morgenstern, Humorist
Note that what the Germans call a Nachdichtung
takes liberties with the original to preserve its meter and rhyme scheme, or deviates in other ways from a literal translation to stay closer to the tone or spirit of the original.
© 2015 Ulrich Flemming for the translations
German Original (1905) |
Nachdichtung |
Literal Translation |
|
Ein Hecht, vom heiligen Anton |
Converted by St. Anthony |
A pike, converted by St. Anthony, |
|
_______________ |
_______________ |
As I said in the post on my blog, one source of inspiration for Morgenstern were figures of speech that he took literally. A translation of a poem created this way would make sense only if there were a similar phrase in the target language—otherwise, the whole point would be lost. I found such a rare coincidence in the present poem: A dummer Esel in German is literally and figuratively the same as a "dumb ass" in English. And so, here's my attempt to translate Morgenstern's Die beiden Esel.
German Original (1905) |
Nachdichtung |
Literal Translation |
|
Ein finstrer Esel sprach einmal |
Not too enchanted with his life, |
A gloomy ass once said |
|
_______________ |
_______________ |
German Original (1905) |
Nachdichtung |
Literal Translation |
|
Es war einmal ein Lattenzaun, |
A picket fence once could be seen |
There once was a picket fence, |
|
_______________ |
_______________ |
German Original (1905) |
Nachdichtung |
Literal Translation |
|
Ein Wiesel |
A weasel |
A weasel |
|
_______________ |
_______________ |
Comments:
1. The first three lines of the German original describe an animal that has put itself in an implausible situation "for rhyme's sake".
I don't see any great significance, per se, in it being a weasel:
Wiesel simply rhymes with two words in German that allowed Morgenstern to achieve his purpose.
In English, "weasel" also rhymes with two words that can be used for the opening three-liner, but to me, the resulting situation is much more forced—how many people know what teasel actually is?
I could not come up with any other rhymes involving a weasel and would have preferred to use a different animal altogether, for example, "A rat/sat on a mat/wearing a hat".
But I did not have the nerve to do that—it would have required changing the title to "The Aesthetic Rat",
which would have gotten me farther away from the original than I'm prepared to tolerate right now.
2. In the original, lines 4, 7, 9, and 10 all end in the same rhyme (without sharing an apparent meter).
I could not find any satisfactory way of mirroring this in my translation.
All I could manage was to have lines 4 and 7 rhyme and, separately, lines 9 and 10.
Believe me, this was difficult enough, given that these lines had to be very short (you would lose the cheekiness of the German original otherwise)—if you ever try your hand at a rhyming poem,
you will notice that it becomes the more difficult the shorter the lines are because you are given less and less slack.
3. I thought initially that the moon calf was another one of Morgenstern's invented animals, only to learn, after a little research, that the term "moon calf" has existed both in German and English long before Morgenstern's time.
In the narrow sense, it used to refer to a calf with birth defects, which were attributed to the influence of the moon.
In the broader sense, it could refer to any misshapen creature (see, for example, The Tempest III.2, where the deformed Caliban
is called "moon calf"). Which is not to say that Morgenstern's moon calf is of the traditional kind.
It may well be that he found the name intriguing and treated the animal as yet another mythical creature in his invented bestiarium.
His use of the definite article suggests as much:
There is only one moon calf, and it apparently has access to privileged knowledge about the aesthetic impulses of forest animals.
Last change made to this page: Dec. 16, 2015