Justin Chen
Literature in Translation
Professor John Felstiner
Due Postmarked 12/13/02

Heine: Uebersetzungen

Heine’s “Belsazar” was quite an enjoyable poem for me to translate because of its composition of rhymed couplets, which presented a difficult but manageable challenge in terms of rhyme and meter. Having translated another work of Heine’s for class, I am probably concerned most of all with preserving the rhythm of the lines—especially since Heine’s poems always manage to read so smoothly, despite dramatic variations in line structure and often amazing density of material. Consider the following couplet: “Und schrieb, und schrieb an weißer Wand / Buchstaben von Feuer, und schrieb und schwand.” These lines, while utilizing such simple vocabulary, contain such a powerful feeling of rhythm and compressed meaning—and it is exactly this compactness that makes the poem such a challenge to replicate in English. Also, while “Belsazar” is not necessarily a long poem, it makes use of a variety of allusions, rhetorical features, repetition, etc. which all add multiple layers to the poem, but which all serve to make its translation that much more exciting and enjoyable.

I should start by noting that I didn’t consult any other translations of the poem for the purposes of this project. For “Die Loreley,” I did consult a number of other English versions, but I ended up feeling as if I might be borrowing other people’s ideas or simply not coming up with my own material, and I thought it would be fun to try tackling this poem completely unaided—with the exception of a German-English dictionary, of course. In order to preserve the meter, I obviously first of all focused on establishing a sense of the strong four-footed line, but I also mimicked as closely as possible both the number and pattern of syllables within the original German. If you read the German line immediately followed by my translation, I think you will see that the correspondences are nearly all there. All in all, I was more adventurous with this translation than I was with “Die Loreley,” and I will do my best throughout the course of this paper to try and justify my choices.

Even beginning with the first stanza, I had trouble coming up with a simple solution for translation. While I am happy with the way my particular couplet sounds in an isolated sense, I wonder if it is strong enough—to me, “stummer Ruh” sounds really like a deafening silence, but I didn’t want to go overboard with hyperbole, either. I translated “Mitternacht,” which is a very common word in German, to “dead of night” precisely in order to strengthen the feel of the couplet without having to resort to a phrase like “deafening silence” in the second line. Also, with this type of poem, which is itself based on a biblical story and its attendant themes, I thought that it would be appropriate to try and weave in figure from later in the poem early on to establish a sense of completeness. Thus, I felt that “dead of night” was a helpful foreshadowing of what was to come, especially in addition to the later use of words like “leichenstill” and “totenblaß,” both of which imply death. Additionally, I felt like “dead of night” accurately portrayed the eerie silence of the town, which clearly needed to stand in sharp opposition to the racket going on in the king’s castle.

Which brings us to stanza two. Here I began to have to deal with the problem of the repeated use of the word “Königs,” as well as the general use of the word “König.” The reason the latter of these was a problem is because its English equivalent, “king,” does not match syllabically—usually not an insurmountable problem, but when the word figures so prominently in the poem, clearly some consistent decisions need to be made. I personally preferred to keep “König” as “king” because I didn’t want to stray too far from the original meaning as well as the simplicity of Heine’s vocabulary. There is one point at which I use “kingship” because it seems to fit, but clearly that would sounds awkward if repeated too many times throughout the poem. So how does one come to a firmer decision on the subject? One way I found to get around this problem was to stick in a throwaway word either before or after “king” to prop up the meter. An example of this would be my translation of “Und der König ergriff mit frevler Hand” as “And the king then reached out with impious grip”—the word “then” effectively functions as the second syllable in “König.”

As for the first problem involving the repetition of “Königs,” such a “meter-propping” strategy was not possible because the word is possessive—so I had to find other ways of expressing myself. One solution I found was to use the word “kingly,” which I did manage to repeat three times out of the four instances in the original. The reason I declined to repeat the word the fourth time (and I easily could have changed “Up there within the king’s great hall” to “Up there within the kingly hall” to get that fourth instance) was because I felt that “kingly” was a little more elevated than “Königs,” which is such a simple word, a possessive pronoun as opposed to an awkward adjective like “kingly.” Also, I thought “king’s great hall” was a more accurate portrayal of “Saal”—but I am already getting ahead of myself. Back to the second stanza.

I’m not happy with having to translate “Schloss” as “fort.” I’m afraid when lines end with such strong nouns, the translator’s options suddenly become severely limited—adjectives and verbs are often much friendlier. The sparseness of the line (“Nur oben in des Königs Schloss”) makes it difficult to do any rearranging to get an easier word at the end. One benefit of “fort” is that it implies a sense of impregnability, of being set apart—all as metaphors for the king’s arrogance and spiritual isolation. The drawbacks are, however, seemingly stronger. For one, a fort is very different from a castle—the latter possesses a much more regal connotation, while the former sounds like something children build in their bedrooms out of blankets and pillows. Perhaps this is a good connotation—after all, Belsazar is as a child compared to the biblical mysteries to which he is eventually exposed—but if there were any way to preserve the original sense of “castles,” I would definitely prefer that. This is a good example of having to sacrifice part of the essentials for the peripherals—though it might be argued that in Heine’s poetry, at least, the rhyme is much too important to be called a “peripheral.”

My use of the words “glitters” and “clatters” was carefully planned as well—for starters, I needed to convey the full density (for lack of a better word) of the lights and noise being created in the castle. This gaudy behavior needed to stand in contrast to the feelings of soft, absolute silence in the first stanza. Perhaps “chatters” could work equally as well as “clatters” in providing a sense of extraneous and obnoxious noise. I thought the repetition of the “T” sound in the middle of both words would help add to the overall feeling of brightness and racket.

I am pretty unhappy with the next rhyme that was forced upon me—“hall” and “all.” First of all, I had trouble with the translation of “Dort oben,” since we don’t really point out locations or directions in English in quite the same way as in German. I had a similar problem with “Die Loreley” (“Die schoenste Jungfrau sitzet / Dort oben wunderbar”)—but I think that part of the line ended up okay with the addition of the word “within.” However, I really couldn’t find a set of words that meant “hall” and “meal” that would rhyme—once again, the problem of rhyming nouns was upon me, and again, I couldn’t rearrange the line because it was already pretty much set from the “Dort oben” clause. What do you think about all this? Does “Belsazar’s kingly feast is all” even make sense to anyone but me? All I’m really trying to say is that the feast is taking place—but I couldn’t find another way of expressing it.

I am also unsure in stanza four (I have numbered all the stanzas on both handouts) as to whether I have changed the meaning. I knew I wanted the “line / wine” rhyme, partly because I thought it would be nice to have the same word end both the German and English stanzas (Wein / wine) since the concept of wine comes in later in the poem, with Belsazar’s drunken challenges to God. To achieve the same sense of repetition as the word “Reihn” implies (in the sense that the term “rows” conjures up an image of many repeated benches or something like that), I used the phrase “line after line”—though I’m afraid “line” has a much more “vertical” feel than does “rows,” which strikes my ear as very horizontal. In any case, I was also unsure about the use of the word “shining” for “schimmernden”—for one thing, in the German original, the word is used to describe the rows, while in mine it applies directly to the knights. I was simply trying to establish the brightness of the interior of the feast—I picture glinting goblets and plates, fire/torchlight reflecting off of suits of armor against the walls, etc. This brings us to my translation of “Knechte,” which as you can see in the literal translation corresponds roughly to “servants” or “menial farm labor.” This struck me as out of place within the context of the poem—especially with the presence of the deferential servant (“Diener”) in stanza 9, so I chose to translate the word as “knights.” What do you think about this? Also, I translated “Becher” as goblets because I thought that word would lend itself better to the courtly, almost decadent feel of the banquet.

Stanza 5: The main difficulty here was “stoerrigen”—which actually did not exist in any German dictionary I could find—but I took the root, which looks like “stoeren” (to bother), so I guessed that it might mean “disturbed” or something similar. I am actually pleased with how the second line came out because it manages to convey a sense of a pleasant sound without having to actually resort to the word “sounded” (klang) and “right” (recht), which I thought would probably be clumsier.

Stanza 6 was fun to translate—it contains such a density of words and sounds that a number of possibilities existed for me to experiment with. As soon as I saw “Wangen” I knew I wanted to use “jowls” because of that word’s feeling of heaviness, as well as the protracted “ow” vowel sound—this was one way of stretching out the line (i.e. increasing the “thickness” of the words). The second line was more difficult, as I was unable to get the right sense of correspondence between the wine and the king’s growing courage. Right now it sounds like the wine helps the king himself awaken, when in fact it merely awakens his blasphemous nature. I do like the many references to fire that I was able to put in—first of all, I think this does give the proper implication that Balsazar’s arrogance was present the whole time, but just needed to be fanned awake by the proper combination of circumstances—wine, warmth, a feeling of comfort and safety, the approval of his court, etc. Also, it foreshadows the divine fire that will come in stanza 16. One other departure I made from the original was at the end of the second line—Heine’s “Im Wein erwuchs ihm kecker Mut” has a very sharp, quick sound that seems to correspond to the courage that rises swiftly within Belsazar. My “blazed forth brash ire” is slower because of the repeated “B” sounds as well as the thicker “blazed” and “brash” words, but I thought it still conveyed a sense of resolve and sudden courage. Incidentally, I chose not to use the term “courage” as a translation of “Mut” because unlike Susan Sontag, I cannot conceive of it as being a morally neutral term. “Foolhardiness” or “daring” might be appropriate, but courage to me implies something more complimentary, and I in any event did not want to get tangled in such semantics.

It is actually around this point in the poem that I think much of Heine’s brilliance comes to the fore. There is a sense of urgency throughout this middle section that is ultimately fanned to a fever pitch by the repeated use of the word “Und” to begin lines—the reader is pushed along while reading, as though enveloped by the same fervor that grips the doomed king himself. I thought it was very important to maintain this sense of urgency in the translation, and I tried to do this by purposely writing quick-sounding lines and choosing strong words such as “absurd,” “curse,” “crazed,” etc.

I tried something new in stanza 8 by translating “Beifall bruellt” as “with goblets raised.” To me, this appropriately conveyed the sense of foolish jocularity and drunken allegiance offered by the knights who are sharing in the king’s revelry. Bearing in mind that it is those very “Knechte” who kill Belsazar at the poem’s end, I thought it would be nice to show this physical gesture of support—as if toasting the king’s arrogance and egging him on—rather than merely describing their vocal approval.

I had a number of problems with stanza 9. For one thing, it exemplifies the bizarre changes in verb tenses that are apparent throughout the poem, which I’m not entirely sure that I understand. The tense-switches certainly slow the poem’s velocity in that they cause the reader to hesitate for a moment and consider what has just been said. The poem does eventually take on a roughly consistent past tense from stanzas 10 onward, which describe Belsazar’s impious act and the consequences thereof—and this strong past-tense makes the ending of the poem sound much more like a biblical story or fairy tale. So perhaps the occasional switches to present tense at the beginning are meant to draw the reader into the poem and make him or her feel more connected to the events at hand than they would given a more distant fairy-tale sense. In any event, I think this stanza sounds clumsy, perhaps because the sense of the original German is obscure and difficult to translate, and the added tense change just makes the English sound off. Perhaps “hurries and” would be better-translated as “hurriedly”—but I was simply unsure as to what Heine meant to convey with this “eilt und kehrt zurueck” phrase—I have the image of a little mouse scampering away in my head.

The “He” at the beginning of stanza 10 seems unclear, but it is also unclear in the original German. The indefinite pronoun actually refers to Belsazar, and not the servant who was the subject of the previous line. Hopefully that is eventually clear (again, it takes some puzzling out in the German as well).

I took advantage of the rather thick word “frevler” in the German to sneak in the three-syllabled “impious,” which I think is the best translation of the word. Also, I experimented in the second line with the concept of a “cup running over,” which is from Psalm 23. In context: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: / thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. / Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: / and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever” (KJV). I liked the thought of a brimming cup as a symbol of God’s promise to provide for His people, and of course the accompanying irony of the fact that Belsazar goes ahead and drains the cup dry—especially since the cup is described as a “heiligen Becher,” and not just any old mug lying around. This results in a rather clumsy line, but I think were I to work on this poem more, I would want to try and preserve this imagery of “my cup runneth over” somehow.

In stanza 12, I converted “bis auf den Grund” to “drained it bone dry,” which was a little bit of a liberty, but I think conveys the sense of completion that accompanies the impious act, and which also contains a subtle hint of the death to come with the word “bone.” I like “foam-flecked” because it almost forces foam onto the mouth of whoever is reading the poem with its clumsy consonance. I admit that “to the sky” was stuck in to rhyme with “dry,” but it also adds to the sense of a direct challenge by Belsazar to God.

I definitely had trouble with stanza 13 and trying to do justice to the gracefully balanced lines. “Dir kuend ich auf ewig Hohn” is much simpler, to my ear, than “I scorn thee; fear have I none.” For one thing, there isn’t that sense of inversion in the German original. However, I definitely wanted to keep the very even flow of the second line—“Ich bin der König von Babylon”—and I felt the best way to do that would be to have a pretty much literal translation, which then required that the first line rhyme with “Babylon.” I’m also not happy about translating “König” as “ruler,” since “king” was used so often throughout the beginning of the poem and I feel like it is important to preserve both the simplicity and the repetition of that word. I considered “I am the great king of Babylon,” but felt that it was probably an imposition to add modifying words like “great” that simply were not present in the German. Again, the question of syllables proved to be difficult to surmount in this instance.

My translation of stanza 15 was somewhat adventurous as well. Literally, the line should read something like, “The shrill laughter fell especially quiet.” But I liked the thought of a lack of sound being louder than the sound itself—I think we’ve all experienced that peculiar ringing sound that accompanies absolute silence—so that’s why I included the phrase, “rang loudest of all.” I’m not sure that I’m happy with “cease” as the noun with which to begin the phrase, though. Perhaps “lack” would have been more appropriate. And again, I thought it was important to preserve the morbid overtones of words like “leichenstill,” which is why I used the translation “deathly still.”

The next two stanzas were, for me, extremely important to get right, both in terms of feeling and cadence. I actually recited this poem at a St. Nicklaus Day festival held by the German Department here at Yale a few years ago, and I remember this part coming as a loud, shocking surprise after the “deathly still” of stanza 15. Certainly the strength of the poetry itself carries the lines—but I found it was also a delicate matter to keep the compactness of Heine’s description of the sudden appearance of writing on the wall intact. To deal with the two-syllable dative feminine adjective “weisser,” I used the English word “whitened,” bearing in mind that we had a very similar discussion several months ago about the cadence of “schwarze Milch” in Celan’s “Todesfuge.” To me, the most important aspect to preserve here was the fluid nature of the verse, and I thought “whitened,” while adding a little bit to the meaning of the original German, was nonetheless the most unassuming or innocent possible choice. I was pleased, however, at the “wall / scrawl” rhyme I was able to come up with.

The next stanza is obviously more problematic. As you can see at the bottom of the “Literary Translation,” I have appended several other possibilities that are all unsatisfying in some way. I have chosen to use the option that I found to be most unlike the original in terms of meaning, but strongest in terms of sound and flow. This is because to my ear, this particular stanza has a wonderfully rapid quality that mirrors the speed with which the writing on the wall comes and goes, and I thought it would be of the utmost importance to preserve that rapidity. One obvious drawback to this strategy was the loss of the repetition of “weisser Wand” at the end of the line. However, I really like the subtle disappearance of the flame-writing with the word “fled.” One alternative, “And wrote, and wrote on walls so white, / Tall letters of fire, and wrote and took flight,” does manage to retain the sense of white walls at the end of the line, if not perfectly—but I find that the second line is too expanded and loses that sense of a sudden snuffing out. The other choice I had come up with, “And wrote, and wrote, words with walls wed, / Tall letters of fire, and wrote and fled,” is extremely clumsy in the first line. To me, the repeated “W” sound is somewhat effective at conveying a sense of the mysticism surrounding fiery letters suddenly appearing on the wall, but it also seems contrived, and the second half is confusing and far too syntactically complex. While the version I’ve chosen strays from the original meaning, I tried to insert the concept of whiteness in the second line at least, and I think it ends on the whole more convincingly.

I’m not necessarily pleased with the way stanza 19 reads, but I couldn’t manage to find a good rhyme between “fear” and “sound.” I think “jeer” is too crass—something like “peep” or “stir” would be better—but again, I had trouble fitting it together with the first line. However, I’m sure that a good solution is possible, but that it’s just evading me at the moment.

I was quite pleased with stanza 20—the second line I think captures the rhythm of the original almost exactly, and I managed to sneak in the word “translate.” I also like the sound of “withal”—it has a sense of futility, which I think is certainly implied here, and it also elevates the language a little and makes it sound more antique, as should be appropriate for an old-testament myth like this one.

I am less pleased with the final stanza, which is unfortunate because I’d like to have a very convincing sendoff. The problem lies in the translation of “umgebracht,” which I don’t think I was able to capture that well. “Killed outright,” while essentially accurate, I think lengthens the deed itself too much. I tried experimenting with “eve” instead of “night” but still made no headway, and decided on this eventually. Also, I translated “Knechte” as “subjects” to preserve cadence and stress patterns, but this then loses the relation to “knights” earlier in the poem, which is potentially unacceptable. I definitely wanted the word “killed” or “murdered” in the final line, though, and this is difficult to sneak in given the need to rhyme with “night” or “eve.”

Overall, this poem was a wonderful opportunity for me to try a few more creative translation experiments and test my capacities as a poet/translator, especially since I am so interested in questions of allusion, rhyme, and meter. While I certainly felt a strong sense of the fact that much of translation is sacrifice and that often one aspect of the poem can only be preserved at the expense of the other, I was also often overwhelmed by the sheer possibilities that might exist were one to simply loosen up from a slavish adherence to the original every once in a while. Also, while the comparison between translation and poetry is pretty trite at this point, I feel that it certainly bears keeping in mind. I found that often the most rewarding or perfect lines would come immediately in a flash of clarity, whereas I could spend an hour laboring over another couplet that just never ended up looking quite right. I think that done correctly, the translation manages to speak with the voice of the poetry itself, and not necessarily that of the translator or even the original poet.