Yesterday in the mail I received a copy of a beautiful book, “Last Living Words: The Ingeborg Bachmann Reader.” The book is from one of our internet/blogger family members with whom I’ve had the great pleasure of sharing a few emails and some phone conversations.
We know her in the blog world as starkravinglunaticradical, many of us call her “stark”. In the real world she is Dr. Lilian M Friedberg, or Lil. I’ve not ever heard her refer to herself as “Dr”, but it is a title she has earned and is worthy of. I hope she won’t mind me using it here.
Now, I will admit to my total unfamiliarity with Ingeborg Bachmann’s work, and from what little I have already read of some of the poetry in the book, my education, indeed my life has been quite incomplete by having missed out on it to this point.
From the book cover I will share with you the barest of sketches of Bachmann’s life:
“Born in Klagenfurt, Austria on June 25, 1926, Ingeborg Bachmann studied law and philosophy at the universities of Insbruck, Graz and Vienna. She received her degree, writing a disertation on Heideger, from the University of Vienna in 1950. After graduating she became a scriptwriter at Radio Rot-WeiB-Rot in Vienna, and in 1953 won the Gruppe 47 Prize for her first collection of poems, “The Mortgage on Borrowed Time.” Over the next many years, she produced numerous collections of poetry, fiction and radio plays and the novel ‘Malina’.”
This book, “Last Living Words,” contains many selections of her work. I have begun at the ending. . .as my intuition suggested, and have loved her from the first words of her poems.
The work that our “stark” or Dr Lil has done is mind boggling. She has translated these works from German into English so that those of us less linguistically inclined might enjoy the scope and beauty of it. Anyone that speaks or is familiar with another language will probably be as impressed by her translation work as I am. Translating anything into English is a very daunting task and to accomplish it in a way that keeps the integrity and meaning of an authors words is really quite stunning.
From the book cover:
“This Ingeborg Bachmann Reader consists of works of poetry and fiction published during the life of the great Austrian writer. Brilliantly tanslated by Lilian M. Friedberg. Friedberg’s Bachmann is no longer the frail and tortured writer presented in so many previous translations, but is a writer who stands as a strong woman and major literary figure.”
Those of you who know me a little, and those who are equally as owned by the words we write, will understand why this poem struck me from the first moment:
YOU WORDS
You words, march, follow me!
and even if we’ve gone further,
gone too far, there’s still a long way to go,
even further, there is no end to it.It’s not getting any lighter.
This word
will only
bring other words in its wake,
sentence for sentence.
That’s how the world
would have its way,
be said and done,
once and for all.
She won’t say.Words, follow me,
that once and for all never comes
-not to this lust for words
and diction to contradiction!For a while now
put emotion to rest, let
the heart muscle
move on.Let it go, I say, let it go.
Not a word in the supreme ear,
nothing, I say, whispered,
let not one word of death in,
let go, and follow me, not gently
nor embittered,
not bursting with consolation,
without consolation,
signifying nothing,
thus not without sign-Just spare me this: the image
spun from the fabric of dust, the empty garble
of syllables, last dying words.Not another word,
you words!
Thank you for this beautiful work, Lil/Stark. I am feeling very blessed today. I think many of you will enjoy the words of Bachmann.
Any of you who might wish to read this work or have this book in your collection, you may order it at: Green Integer, the Publisher’s web site. It is also available at the usual book outlets, but the compensation advantage for Lil is best if ordered from the publisher.
You can visit Lil’s Blog at Historical Footnotes
Hey Stark. . .hope you don’t mind my plugging this book. I am really loving her writing. I am so glad to be introduced to Ms Bachmann and her wonderful way of expressing the things of her life.
I hope the rest of you BooTribers will find it of interest too.
Just to give you a little taste of her prose, here is the beginning paragraph of a piece called Everything:
Just wonderful descriptive writing.
goddammit! Don’t make me cry (like you just did)….a lot of pain went into those lines…into all those lines….all 350 or so pages of them.
You see, as a translator, you have to Re-Live it. Every word of it. And more than once. Again and again.
If you don’t…you will not succeed in allowing the words to “live”…they will be just dead words on the paper.
So as wonderful as it is to see them here, now, it also brings tears to my eyes to see them because for many years, it was not clear whether they would ever see the light of day…there they are. hmmm.
Well, Why should I be the only one with tears in my eyes? LOL. . .
PS. It was “Dr.” Bachmann, lol, she wrote a diss on Heidegger, with the expressed intent of tearing the s.o.b. to shreds!
hehe.
What a spectacular gathering of souls we have here. Thanks for introducing us to both Bachmann and the real stark.
Hi Laura. . .yes, we are quite a collection of interesting and extraordinary individuals here hiding behind our strange or sometimes sily screen names. All of us together make a lovely stew.
This is such a good book, I am really sorry that I was not aware of her writing for all of these years. Of course, I don’t speak, read or understand the German language and if the previous bits of translation were somewhat tepid, then I can see how I easliy missed it.
Can’t recommend this work highly enough. I am really enjoying it.
Thanks for sharing this with us Shirls. And thanks to you too Stark.
Sherm, good to see you about. Don’t know if you have been missing, or our paths just haven’t crossed of late.
I was wondering if you have moved yet, seems you were talking about a move sometime soon the last time we spoke.
Hugs
Shirl
Oh my goodness! <blush>
It’s rather scary to see that image posted on Booman!
Thank you so much, Shirl….today a particularly good day for the “star(k) treatment” as I have been struck with some kind of stomach flu (maybe a bad reaction to antibiotics I’m on in the wake of the 3rd root canal in the course of a coupla weeks!?)….more likely, psychosomatic reaction to a rather severe “punch in the gut” that came on another translation project yesterday. At any rate, fever, chills, the shits…Ugh! And this is a nice surprise.
It is my sincere hope (and has been for many years) that this book will make this incredible author available to the people–that it will take her out of the exclusivist world of academia and bring her down into the real world of real people, which is where I come from and where I live, any and all misperceptions to the contrary.
….Bachmann has been cooped up in the ivory towers and gilded cages for far too long. Even 30 yrs after her death, her insights into fascism and so many many things remain tragically topical today.
So….greetings from my Hobbit Hole in the Hood….(and no, I rarely insist on the “Dr.”–in fact, one of the only reasons I have it is to be able to say to people who push me too far: It’s DR. Friedberg to you! As I once mentioned, it also comes in handy when the drain is plugged in a hotel room: This is Dr. Lil in room XYZ, can you please send someone up here IMMEDIATELY to fix this drain?!;-) Never fails.
In the 13 years I spent on this, always, always, I have taken people just like you and the many other frogs in this pond and others as my inspiration and it is this that gave me the will to proceed, against all odds.
Anyway. Thank you so much for all the attention and praise…Carry on. And praise be, eh!
My little gift to the real world.
Sorry to hear that you are under the weather, Lil. It is my extreme pleasure to have brought your book to the attention of the frogger-family.
I know I sound like a teenager with a crush about this, but it has been a long time since anyone’s poetry and prose have resounded so deeply within. It is like savoring a fine wine and needing to share it with others whom might not know of it.
I’ll have to remember your clogged drain solution when I finish up my alphabet soup. Leverage is a wonderful thing.
Get better soon.
Hugs,
Shirl
Congratulations again on the publication! That’s no mean accomplishment. I’ll look for it next time I’m buying books in Berkeley. I hope this wasn’t orignally scheduled for sun & moon.
Green Integer is a great place to find little known gems of 20th C literature from around the. world.
Have you translated anyone else?
Sun & Moon, I believe, went under, and Green Integer is its successor.
I have been translating for 20 yrs, so, yes, I have done many other authors. (I’d gone to Germany on an exchange scholarship in 1984, when I was actually an English major, with a German minor…I couldn’t write any coherent papers on German lit w/o first translating the lit I was writing about, so it was originally a ‘utilitarian’ thing, but it very quickly turned into a ‘pathology’ of sorts ;-)–today I call myself a “pathological translator” because it’s really the only thing I can do).
Most recently, the staunchly anti-Bush and radically feminist 2004 Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek — some of those translations are available here on Jelinek’s site.
(Sorry I can’t seem to figure out how to get direct links to the pieces, but if you click on “Aktuelles” or “Theater” you should be able to scroll down and find my name–of most interest is probably the excerpt from her anti-Iraq war piece, Bambiland–for which we have yet to find an American publisher, surprise surprise).
I have also translated the flamboyantly polemic German-Jewish journalist and public gadfly Henryk Broder.
At present, and for the past yr and a half or so, I have been at work on a major historical project that includes about 800 [print] pages of original source documents from the Nazi era; “authors” with names like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Ernst Krieck, Carl Schmidt, Heidegger, Speer, Alfred Rosenberg…Every time I do a big Hitler speech, it seems, I end up needing a root canal! (My dentist points out that these incidents also tend to coincide with major B*sh speeches, but since the recent Nazification incident, I suppose I ought to be careful what I say!) It will be published with University of California press (that is, if I manage to stay off this blog long enough to meet my June deadline! ;-).
Here’s another project I worked on last year, Timetables of History; I did 1990-2004 for that volume.
Aside from that, much miscellaneous and sundry, mostly literary, some academic. Small piece by Özdamar for this issue of Chicago Review and several by a relatively obscure, but historically significant Israeli author, Jenny Aloni.
I worked as simultaneous interpretor (into German) for feminist author/philosopher Mary Daly and published one of her major speeches in German translation. I also translated much of her Wickedary into German, but abandoned the project midstream b/c at the time I decided I didn’t want anything to do with books, and took a ca. ten-yr hiatus to play drums instead.
Alas, books, I have found, tend to reproduce like rabbits, so this damn Hobbit Hole is once again infested, truly infested, with them…, books, books. The place is crawling with them. Dammit. Go away, I said. Nope. We’re baaaack.
For doing this diary and stark, all I can say is…it’s an honor to know anyone who labors at works of love like this all the way to delivery. Wherever she is, I imagine Bachmann is aware you have brought her back to life for all of us, and is very well pleased. She has much wisdom an courage, and so do you. Congratulations and well done, sistah!
The book was essentially done already in 2000. For the past 5 years, I have been engaged in struggles over the rights–despite support of the heirs to the estate and the original publisher (very complicated and boring, but also very maddening!).
I finally had to hire an attorney, and when the document arrived signing over the last of the rights….I discovered this song by [the Roches].
It was a pretty amazing synchronicity b/c I am fairly certain that the novelist Mary Gordon who wrote this song from the album Why the Long Face has also translated Bachmann (not the same stuff tho).
Careful readers of the Bachmann translations who are also familiar with the Roches (complete!) will discover many hidden “Rochisms” here. Hehe.
Anyone who’s not familiar w the Roches…definitely worth looking into, listening to. ” Inspirational” music in the finest sense of the word!
Perhaps I had best come to Chicago and be tutored by you, Dr Lil. Great words seem to abide in you, whether they are Bachmann’s, Mary Gordon’s, or your powerful and touching words in the story of THE COAT you shared with us. We all pretty much have access to the same words here. . .it is just so amazing and inspiring what they become when strung together by those of you with the gift and well practiced craftmanship.
These revelations always make me question mightily that I dare to even suggest I stand in the shadows of such footprints. At least I can see clearly what I am striving for, however short of the mark I may arrive. [this is not meant as a fishing expedition, just personal truth]
You don’t need a tutor. I don’t remember which poet it was who said that the way to become a writer is to write. Seriously. And you’re doing that. I thought it was Muriel Rukeyser, but I couldn’t track the quote down; but, as you can see, I found others in my search.
What I can do is offer some “tools/tricks of the trade”–in this case, the translators’ trade, which actually can serve as a very good school for writing. So here just one “trick” I’ve picked up along the way: you might call it “speaking in tongues” or writing in the sentences of others’ you wish you’d have written. I guess you could even call it embedded “hat tipping.” In my dissertation, I call it “thickly descriptive translation” (based on Clifford Geertz’s notion of “thick description”, and Anthony Appiah’s “thick translation”).
What I have learned from translating about writing is perhaps the value of acknowledging and turning to account poets past, present and future and with whom you carry on conversations all the time–these conversations are the collection of sentences you as a writer “wish you had written.”
As a way of illustrating what I mean by that, I have taken the liberty (uh, audacity?) of “translating” Scribe’s poem, Bye Bye Bachmann much in the same way I would translate a Bachmann poem, a Broder polemic, a Daly speech or a Jelinek play (and for god-and-goethe’s sake, Scribe, if you want to slaughter me for this–well, you’ve got my coordinates! But pls remember that, unless I’m getting paid good money to do it, I don’t bother translating words/ideas that aren’t worth their salt! ;-). Remember, too, that Bachmann has said, (I paraphrase from memory) that writing a poem is not like sitting around waiting for the phone to ring: it’s “hard work” ;-).
Here’s the “translation”–thickly descriptive.
What I have done to this poem is to write in some of those “conversations” I have had/been having with poets over the years–I have, in a sense, “translated” the ideas into a “thicker” poetic environment, beginning with an allusion to Wm. Carlos Williams’ “Red Wheel Barrow” which to me is also ultimately and intimately about what poetry “is” (along the lines of Wallace Stevens’ “The Mind in the act of finding what will suffice”) .
The image I took from Scribe’s words is one of a poet (could just as easily have been a painter standing before Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo packing up and muttering silly baby talk as she rolls away with her red wheel barrow–not worthy of eating the air of other Lady Lazarus’s past, present or future (cf. Plath,); as to the rest–I tried to situate the poem’s speaker in the midst of others, not abandoned by them or left “in the(ir) dust,” nor standing in their shadows; the speaker is instead conversing with these “others”–except during that “but for a while” when the speaker is left “stunned silent” (an allusion to both Bachmann and Akhmatova). During this time, the speaker is silent, “eavesdropping,” but not inactive and by no means passive–she is just collecting “sentences” she’d have gladly written herself (cf. Bachmann). Since I know that Scribe has an ongoing conversation with May Sarton, I have also incorporated some scraps (cf. Marlen Haushofer, The Wall) of Sarton in the “childish hunger” and “starving need” (my more than liberal “Sartonian” interpretation of what Scribe describes as “silly baby talk”).
But I do this only as an example of the way I work as a translator to lend “density of allusion” to poems (i.e. clues about those conversations with poetry): each individual will have had different conversations with different poets, so the allusions will vary. As I said, I have put “clues” to my re-collections of conversations with poets: yours could be, would be, indeed, must be. But for any poet, this is the “collectible value of consonants”–words that are needed “to render one single sentence tenable.”
In the case of translation, it is best to familiarize yourself with the kind of reading your author was doing–identify those known figures with whom the poet has been conversing and read their works: in Bachmann’s case, the poem Shirl first posted here is dedicated to Nelly Sachs (Nobel 1966), so I go to Nelly Sachs and “converse” with her by reading her (in German and English); Bachmann was famously good friends with Paul Celan and in fact it was she who jump-started his career by asking Werner Richter to invite him to the 1952 Group 47 meeting in Niendorf–, so I go to Celan and read him. Akhmatova, Wittgenstein, Sachs, Aichinger, Plath, Simone Weil, Jean Amery, T.E. Lawrence (in that case, I read and compared, line-for-line, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, in German and English, to identify Bachmann’s direct allusions to that work (and alienations (!) thereof–linguistic and ideological). Then I reconstructed those “alienations” and “manipulations” to reflect the degree of change Bachmann made to the German translation of Lawrence in my “alienations” and “manipulations” of the Lawrence original. One example of how this comes out is: In Lawrence’s original: “The fringes of their deserts were strewn with broken faiths … It was significant that this wrack of fallen religions lay about the meeting of the desert and the sown. It pointed to the generation of all these creeds. They were assertions, not arguments; so they required a prophet to set them forth” becomes in Bachmann “the fringe of the Arabian desert is wrapped in a wrack of broken faiths.” A series of additional allusions to Lawrence appear throughout the rest of that text–as they do in Bachmann’s original in pretty much direct allusions to Lawrence, almost verbatim–but that is the key almost.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that reading and being stunned by other writers’ work is not a luxury for any writer, it is the cornerstone; it is a necessity–when you are writing, you will be in conversation with those writers: your readers are eavesdropping (some of them, without warrant! ;-), so they can also converse with you. In some ways then, as a poet, you are indeed a product of the “company you keep”–which is why it pays to build on your own store of “pre-recorded conversations” (see also
A History of Reading) , even if some people will accuse you of being a snob or whatever, and to have these ready at hand when time comes to again converse with the world, i.e. to write.
How wonderful! Thank you, Shirl, and thank you, Stark, for accomplishing this.
I must say, I am hornored by the Dr. in our midst. Fromt he very first time Dr. Lil. said anything all I could say was “WOW, just WOW”. Remember Dr. Lil? I am even more impressed as to your accomplishment here, with this translation. Thanks Shirl for letting us all know about it. Hugs to you both.
Course I remember, I always associate your name with Rahel Varnhagen, and an image with the hand-written lines…”I hate people who are afraid of storms”….and you’ve never yet told me what’s behind that name either, or did I miss that?
Tap.Tap.Tap. ahem.
As far as the translation goes, well, remember the story about the coat?
I’m finally get around unpacking the good stuff! lol.
:o)…hugs don’t ya just know. Well, I am afraid of some storms and some of those are just now reving up. I am glad you are in my area so you can reasure me I am gonna be just fine.
God, how do we even begin?!
Stark or Lil,I am just honored to have you here yelling like the rest of us. We need ya here,…so don’t event think of taking time off for anything any time soon….:o)can’t wait for the othr good stuff either…
stormy weather…well, someday when we have lots of time to share, I will dwell into the deep abyss of it with you. Much meaning here, to say the least. The coat of many colors has lots of meaning with me. :o) and to that I will let you have the glory of reminding us all of the days of being just one of a humanity that will give rather than take.
Our heritage will soon be remembered as to what we all stand for and what we gave instead of what we take from this. The words…are the sight/light to the end of our humanity/tunnel.
Yes, Lil, someday, we will endeavor to dissect my complexity for I, too, am a woman of many ideas and thoughts, such as you and all the others. I am just one who is simple and not full of educated thoughts. I just strive to learn more each day so that I might die with a mind of insight. You teach me this as do others. This is my only strive in life….to learn, possibly sharing along the way, what I have learned.
Besides, don’t you love the tune? I do and love to dance close…well, you got what I mean….:o) Stormyweather… <wink, wink>
Oh and BTW, when there is a day that goes by that I do not learn something new, is a day leaving me in frustration.
I love celebrating the achievments and wisdom of our fellow BooTribbers.
I don’t drink champagne any more so I may just have to toast you Stark/Lil with an extra scoop of ice cream tonight.
And thank you Shirlstars for brining all this into our life here.
Whoa!
Women — what amazing, beautiful & brilliant creatues we are.
Thank you so much, Stark.
Thank you so much, Shirl.
I want to read this book.
And especially don’t ever argue with one. Even if you are right, she will slice you for sandwiches, arrange you artfully on a fine old Limoges platter, and garnish you with fresh mint.
I will have to be careful now not to let stark know when I disagree with her. I’m not fond of mint.
I am not surprised, however, to learn that she would invest so much of herself in bringing someone else’s words to earth residents, despite the fact that she possesses such a spectacular gift for word writing her ownself.
“garnish” you say?
“….and I eat men like air.” —Sylvia Plath
g’ night. 😉
Nor do I need to read the original to know that for all your faithfulness and commitment to expressing her thought, your part is not lost in this work.
Keep surrendering your own words to those cells of sentences, stark, and the hearts of your readers will liberate them, sometimes snicker-snack, some may have to do a bit of fiddling with their own mental hairpin, some will have to burrow a tunnel from their own cell, but your illumination will prevail.
"..fiddling with thEIr own men tal hairpin.."
DAMN. I wish i’d written that.
without depositing something that makes me wish I had just had the thought, let alone written it.
I want you and BrendaStewart to conspire to make that Nurses’ Truth blog. You would get a lot of mental hairpins to fiddling. 🙂
to my burrow I go
hide this puny poet
silly baby talk
not worth sharing air
with real ones
whose work leaves me
stunned silent
(but only for
awhile)
Stunned silent?
Careful there…before you go diminishing yourself….
That very phrase, I kid you not, was a candidate for another Bachmann poem I’ve been working on–not for publication, but as a way of goading international authors into joining Harold Pinter and others to sign on to the World Can’t Wait campaign to drive out the Bush regime.
Here’s the story: I wrote to someone who is close to Günter Grass, Nobel 1999, asking to see if he could get Grass on board with World Can’t Wait. His response, “Grass is likely to see it the same way I do: it is the job of the American people to get rid of B*shCo.”
Sigh. I sent him a few “yeah buts” and concluded by reminding him that the German “Volk” also needed international support to get rid of their Führer (not that I would ever compare these two “history shall be my judge”-figures!). Then I remembered a line from Bachmann, who was also a good friend of Grass and who signed an international petition against the Viet Nam War in 1967 (?)….So I decided to translate the poem as a reminder/call from the grave to folks like Grass who are apparently more interested in who’s “responsible” for this mess than how to put an end to it, regardless of whose “job” it is to do so, regardless of who is “at fault” for letting it happen. Of course it’s our job. But do we have the means to do it? I’m beginning to wonder. The question is not whose “fault” or whose “job” it is, the point is: how to stop it, and if not to STOP it then at least to loudly oppose it.
“No one writes that sentence/without testifying” was the line I thought would if not “do the trick,” at least make people like Grass think twice. (Whereby the translation of that line is still up in the air–it’s a tricky thing, the alternative I’m still playing with is: no one writes that sentence/without subscribing to its verdict.” It’s more direct in the German: basically, “no one writes that sentence without SIGNING.”)
“Stunned silent” was one of my first alternatives for the opening line of the poem, which is dedicated to the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova whose work was silenced by Stalin, and who has since been exquisitely translated into English by Judith Hemschmeyer. When Bachmann’s German publisher decided to publish Akhmatova translations by the “former” Nazi Hans Baumann, Bachmann left the publisher, and this is why her only finished novel first appeared not with Piper Verlag, but with Suhrkamp. (Incidentally, if you like Bachmann, you’ll love Akhmatova, and, as I said, she has been EXQUISITELY translated by Hemschmeyer).
Based on conversations with German translators, I’ve since decided to go with “left speechless,” but “stunned silent” was indeed one of the first options for that line–(problem is retaining “speech” for German “Sprache”).
My point, Scribe: allowing oneself to be “stunned silent” (by words, or lack thereof) is a major part of the poetic process. Personally, I would say it is a prerequisite–whoever is no longer capable of being “awestruck” in this way by someone else’s words may as well throw in the towel and go out navel-gazing on Sunday.
My other point: “stunned silent” is de facto very “Bachmann-ish”–so you’re in good company with that line (says the self-described “lousy” poet Lil!)
In fact, being “stunned silent” by my discovery of Bachmann in ’91 was the catalyst for returning to the US. If there is one thing that has always been clear to me, it is that I must write. I have been writing since I was 12. But already in the 80s it was clear to me that, by virtue of my ‘strong’ opinions and highly critical stance w/ re these dis-USofA, I was not likely to succeed as a writer here. So I had hopes of writing in German. Then came Bachmann: I looked at the stuff, said to myself: you will NEVER ever be able to write LIKE THIS in German. Never. And it soon became clear….the thing to do was to go “back home” and translate this author into English–because there were all these sentences I wish I’d written myself (that, too, btw, is a Bachmann quote, so you’ve also quoted Bachmann in your response to DTF!)
Now I know she’s after me. And you. And DT,too.
(furiously digging)
As my better half says about me when I get “uncomfortable” with people.
“Ha ha ha, she’s a pistol, isn’t she?” (smiling jovially)
Me thinks the same can be said of Bachmann….and Akhmatova and anyone who’s worth his or her fucking salt as a writer….
(that means you and Ductape, too).
Ha ha ha…..”don’t delve too deep/ lest your eyes brim over with tears” (IB).
(I will not admit how many times I have said, “If this woman were still alive, I’d be ready to kill her”).
Now, dammit, this stupid mofo Albert Speer is still staring up at me from the left side of this microcosm of a ‘desk’….I must get some work done. Where is the blog filter?
Thanks for sharing some more of these poems with us.
So many accomplished people here! Congrats to Stark! And to Shirl, thanks!