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Thanks for the feedback, Doug. I was expecting the objection - I had it myself. But "boy" is too familiar to me, lacking in the right connotations, and during my youth "lad" was not unusual, especially among those who weren't originally from the south of England. Rilke of course was from Prague (Habsburg empire) & grew up there in the 80s/90s; when he went to Munich in 96 he was a bit like a kind of rather foreign provincial (meeting Lou Andreas-Salome there in 97 was his initiation into sophistication - psychoanalysis & whatever...). As for "yonder" - well, they still use it in country music, I think, and - seriously - "over there" does not get the Rilkean frisson of "drüben", which has something otherworldly about it - the rhythm is also wrong, an amphimacer instead of a trochee. I dare say my priorities themselves are weird! Martin ________________________________ From bier to pit And be shut in it Then lies my house upon my nose And all my care for this world goes. Anon. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 5:07 PM Subject: Re: rilke translation Fascinating, Martin, & some of it wonderfully weird. I was bothered by 'yonder' & 'lad' (for example) which struck a Victorian note in the midst of the weird. Doug On 5-Mar-09, at 11:28 AM, Martin Walker wrote: > I am ambivalent about translation & have not well received most > Englishings of Rilke that I've seen - but today I was re-reading > (couldn't remember a thing!) Jean Gebser's book *Rilke und Spanien* in > which he shows how Rilke began to emancipate the adjective from its > ornamental and perspectival functions after experiencing El Greco in > Toledo & quotes this poem, which I had forgotten, to be honest, with its > "an gestern begonnenem Fenster". So I had a go at it, trying to capture > the rhythms and the sheer weirdness of this meditation. It's not > coincidental that this version sort of alludes to a famous poem by > Ungaretti, or that the poem itself should remind one of the beginning of > Hölderlin's "Brod und Wein". See what you think. > mj > > The immense night > > R.M.Rilke Douglas Barbour [log in to unmask] http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ Latest books: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy) http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664 Wednesdays' http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html It's always night or we wouldn't need light. Thelonious Monk