Won in translation

[selenak]

It's poetry month, and since one particular poem of Brecht's has been on my mind recently, I looked it up again. I couldn't find a translation into English, so I tried my hand on one, because it's truly a favourite, for a lot of reasons, not least because it captures the excitement of artistic collaboration so well. And not just any collaboration. It's late in WWII, and Bert Brecht, German playwright, sharp tongued egomaniac, communist and passionate smoker of cigars, currently living in exile and writing withering commentary about it, is doggedly trying to get one of his plays staged in the US. He does this with Charles Laughton, British acting genius with a quick temper and reportedly a thin skin. Laughton doesn't speak German. Brecht speaks English badly. Do they end up hating each other's guts? Au contraire. They end up creating an English version of Life of Galilei, and Brecht writes the following poem:

Letter to the actor Charles Laughton regarding working together on the play "Life of Galilei"


Our people were tearing each other apart still when we
sat with grubby exercise books, looking
for words in dictionaries, and many times
we crossed out text and then
we excavated the original phrase beneath the strike-outs. Slowly -
while the walls of houses were crumbling down in our capitals -
the walls of languages were crashing into each other. Together
we started to follow the dictation of characters and events
with new text.

Again and again, I changed into an actor, demonstrating
by gesture and tone a character, while you
turned into a writer. Yet neither I nor you
leapt out of our calling.

Comments

[kore]

Aw, that's lovely. (Two PRICKLY geniuses there....)

[selenak]

Indeed they were. :)

[sovay]

Yet neither I nor you
leapt out of our calling.

That's lovely.

[selenak]

I was wavering of how to translate "sprangen aus unserem Beruf doch", because "jumped" just sounds wrong in English, and then I remembered there was another English word for the activity which is "springen" and thus I had "leapt". Relatedly, "profession" in English doesn't carry the secondary implication "Beruf" can have in German and which Brecht is playing with here - Beruf/Berufung - and thus I went for that secondary meaning, ergo, "calling".

[moon_custafer]

Brecht wrote another one for Laughton, about his garden: http://rootingforlaughton.blogspot.ca/2009/05/white-rabbit.html

[selenak]

Oh, that is one beautiful elegy!

[trobadora]

♥ ♥ ♥

[selenak]

Well, Thomas Mann didn't call him das talentierte Ungeheuer for nothing. :) (Brecht, not Laughton.)

[msilverstar]

that is so personal, evocative, hopeful

[selenak]

*beams*

[watervole]

I love it.

As simple as that. It speaks volumes about how people from different backgrounds can come together while working hard on a difficult project.

[selenak]

Yes, that‘s how I feel about it, too.

[likeadeuce]

Wow, I love this! (sorry I've been off DW for months now and am skimming back :)

[selenak]

Glad to share at whatever time, believe me. I'm glad you enjoy it.

[lokifan]

That's awesome! (Rediscovering some elderly tabs.)