Gedicht uber die Ubung zu sterben… by Helmut Heissenbuttel and more translation notes
I originally had a dozen or so quotes and references in this text, i cut all of them and instead kept only these ones, the problem was and is that i simply didn’t want to condemn this extraordinary profession of translators simply because of the ideological problems that are becoming clearer by the day. (you think; why do they think like that?) (The smallest unit of ideology we need to be concerned with is the word) Whilst we can understand that they think: “Translating one language into another is not a question of translating the words of one language into the words of another. It means re-telling in the words of one’s own language the realities related by the words of the foreign language. To translate well one has not only to know languages, but above all to know the reality in question…” The laws governing the translation lie within the original, contained in the issue of its translatability.
The human translator said: {In a sense, all translation, all writing is a palimpsest. In finding words and phrases we use, in summoning voices to reflect the music that we hear draws, we draw on all the writers and translators we have read, all the plays and films we have seen, all the chance conversations overheard that left a phonological shard buried in our minds.}. But that’s. a peculiar humanistic proposition/statement, because it suggests once you have recovered from the horrors of reading the phrase ‘phonological shard,’, that the human translator may not be adding value any longer, but adding ideology. Take this from an introductory text written by another translator — - <<…Of the pieces I was unable to translate I especially regret his Gedicht uber die Ubung zu sterben (1962–3) and it may be that I, or the linguistic. resources available to me. have shown some bias towards texts… anchored in recognizable situations…>>. Which is to say that the translator was asking whether <<its nature lend itself to translation and therefore in view of the significance of this form call for it? >>. Now this translator goes on to say he made the translations as. literal as. he could make them, except (perhaps) that the {finding words and phrases} haunts me because of the confession. It is. the underlying ideological principles in their writing/translations that I am interested in here. Not so much to identify them as to refuse it because; literature is a branch of technology, literature as a branch of technology in. the age of technical reproducibility makes us understand that this is the case. Texts in my opinion, which i will not argue about in public, at least not here, texts are abstract and general to a higher degree than people realize, as abstract and general as texts that we associate with science and philosophy rather than say some curious notion of imaginative and creative. art.
it may simply be put differently, that are working out the differences that arrive with the invention of the new toolbox of machine translation. A toolbox that contains the skills of human translators, and in doing so changes the ideological tropes and idealisms of the human translators. Replacing them with others… the word is the ideological unit par excellance as Volshinov put it…
and so here is the text that caused the translator problems, because its technology, translated by machine and reviewed, validated and liked by me… Gedicht uber die Ubung zu sterben… from Textbuch 3
Poem about the exercise to die
wood smoke over Heslach dazzles February sun Gar railroad embankment shouting echo step pattern landscape lattice text transversely considered emphatically thoughtful exquisite and insinuating the appetite is wash’n lead wall glossy track afterrain in the summer caves old German day and forest landscape old Bahr long-term long-suffering slowly allmäblich the face of the father has holes hole field brick brown shutters and perspectives white in the afternoon blue gradations flat-stepped stairs of the plain sea of wind in Sunday afternoons
continuation of conversation hidden and entangled and entangled n IN WHICH RELATIONSHIPS OTHERWISE MY DRIVING TO MUCH OF WHAT OTHERWISE IS AND IS NOT GOING ON AND IS NOT GOING ON AND IS NOT GOING ON AND HOW THIS CONDITION WOULD OTHERWISE BE IN ITSELF probably a lot because our being here has the advantage of being touched by it in its vastness mostly only if you feel like it cross light cross light light bobbin diagonally in the evening old station bobbin pattern station pantomime shadow ball
lattice dark the cone-shaped rear parts of the taleb lattice dark the cone-shaped rear parts of the talab meander skids into the vague and on the stairs the future of after neither it is very sad and I am very sorry but it is so we live in a remarkable knowhow it is not good it is funny it is always it is terribly insanely funny or like the slowly inflated red cloth just redeemed experience direct conversation operations far from the base
americans in trains galena on the Limmat even distribution of light figure noise water bell people foam snow wind stone face ivy rhombus glossy knot seagull flight ornament above stranded on a bank of evening piled on top of each other conversation that does not fuse and Mussorgsky played by Sviatoslav Richter partners who cheerfully understand each other without ever catching each other’s eye that the tendency to far strangers anyway triumphant over the torso of the female back pale light but pleasant and iN WHICH RELATIONSHIPS OTHERWISE MY DRIVING TO MUCH WHAT ELSE IS AND IS NOT GOING ON HERE
IS AND IS NOT AND IS NOT AND IS NOT ANYTHING AND HOW THIS STATE OTHERWISE CONSIDERS ITSELF WOULD BE MUCH BETTER BECAUSE OUR BEING HERE HAS THE ADVANTAGE OF BEING TOUCHED BY IT IN ITS VERSATILITY MOSTLY ONLY IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT SO DICTATORY. slanting hand smell root hand back and forth horizontal lupine yellow between lattice hand dash strings shady scaly coast inside and a difficulty comes from behind and never goes away border tear white surprise furiously wiped past the silhouette that turned away suddenly
seconds surprise shining water flat roof waves overtaking dark galena on the Alster platform bare strange voice known the inevitable foreseeable never suspected solution of the finally over itself deduction deduction deduction Thesaurus APERTIS THESAURIS PRETIOSA MUNERA OBTULERUNT eternally in this single TWENTY-FOURTH MARCH 6I KUMMERNUS WILL BE HARDER QUALITY ESSENTIALLY GOOD EVEN WITH DEGUSSA ONLY LOW REVALUATION LOSSES WEEKLY TWO COMMA SIX BILLION HOURS OF WORRYING
FROM MOSCOW NOW WITHOUT CENSORSHIP we live in a remarkably hard-hitting, dryly social-erotic or bad-political or bad-cultural environment. that’s funny I always say that’s horrible but I can’t or children’s voices in the rain bad night and the unstoppable step before step rain slant agrees accident car shock in parts quite harmless and
outside of what incessantly white white shadow on a black infinity everything whose passage through the repertoire back into itself voice sometimes from immobile eye sideways the completely perfect DEEP IN THE KIDNEYS KNOWS BITE ON THE SHELF NOTHING BUT A CONFUSION SO MANY LASTERS GIFTS HELLS- AASS BORN IN SUBJECTION TO ONE GREAT IMMUTABLE PREEXISTENT LAW BY WHICH WE ARE KNIT IN THE ETERNAL FRAME OF THE QUIA SIC NOSTRA
COMPLERENT Below deep shallow it is true and it is not true dejected lies lies stands up far back in the evening and still a half to half to half to half not half asleep who yesterday or whenever THE GREAT PAN IS DEAD WITH THESE WORDS A FIERCE VOICE SHOUTED FROM THE EYLANDE PRACTICE BECAUSE THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS WHICH WERE INADEQUATE TO THE NERVOUS SYSTEM CAUSED A KIND OF MASS DELUSION AS OF MADNESS ESPECIALLY SINCE AN IMMENSELY SEA- SILENCE ONCE THE DIRECTION TAKEN
AS A FABULOUS SCREAM OF MANY THOUSAND WEEKLY CHANGING LIGHTS CHAINS OF LIGHTS SHINING IN THE FIRE OR EVEN IN THE SEA CLAMPING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT eight trains hoping to get home and sam shifting against each other single long. boch shadow-legged on a limited empty surface figure bobbing spherical joints rolled around each other WPPieel clapping scurrying ruffling shadow clusters nd bundled clappers and a single flat dratic form screaming deep deep pulsing unpulsing blackness square
the flat plane trees ONE DAY WOULD DIE AND THE WORLD OULD BE BENEFITTED HOWEVER A DESIRE NOT FROM ANY ROMANTIC OF THE ite elevation OR OTHER PARADOXY BUT ONLY . 5 FASTER THERE WHERE EVERYTHING AND THERE WAS ONLY THE QUESTION WHY DID I LIVE AND WHAT COULD BE THE REASON FOR EXISTENCE NONE AT ALL streaks of cold at the edges perforated coasts of white shades this unbearable in it self backward penetrating dreams of father W’haven the last time an unknown neighbor
puts her fingers around my neck in a dream FACE I SEE TWO OF HER BLACK WINGS it’s very and I’m sorry but it’s so or insanely funny or only particularly bad in occasional passing moments in half-sleep in full consciousness HE THOUGHT THE FUTURE AND THE PASSING FULL OF SOUL FEAR IN FRONT OF HIS FACE IN MORROWING DARKNESS IN SCORROROUS PAIN HAVE SEEN QUALES HAPPENING ON QUALES TO ETERNITY HAVE ALREADY COME TO THE MOST EXTREME SKY
THE DEATH ANGELS THEY HID BLACK WEATHER EMPOR AND SANGEN shadow spot wheat-red glossy fur clouds like Tintoretto blackened fence tar smell grass smell shadow hole glare piece cross-light swollen flat frayed apart flat into each other flat mirror-spotted painted with the sound of absorbent cotton in the evening tilted passages it is very and very good to me shadow hole wheat-red shiny edges unique and eternal and still uninhabited balcony of this new building passage black shine to have been hole day hole death shock in the underground February 1961 — February 1962
