After the GDR: New Perspectives on the Old GDR and the Young Länder ed. by Laurence McFalls, Lothar Probst (review)

Abstract

246 Reviews remain firmlyand stubbornly rooted in the poet's intense German. By that I do not mean an obvious mistranslation such as the title 'Cologne, At the Station' (in 'Koln, Am Hof', 'Am Hof' is the name ofa small street near the cathedral and is not to be confused with 'Bahnhof'; the reference points to biographical information which is only partially clear). Rather, the expression 'one of | their painted lingos' (from 'eine | ihrer bebilderten Sprachen') seems less a product of poetic licence than a misunderstanding of the import of 'bebildert', coming from 'Bild' ('image' or 'metaphor'). Celan was always suspicious of metaphor, fearing it would displace the realities on which he grounded his writing. Felstiner otherwise follows the drift of the line with 'lingos'; Michael Hamburger translates as 'one | of their be-imaged languages'. In another instance, taken from Celan's speech 'The Meridian', the merits of 'choekabloek' (for 'dicht beieinander', i.e. 'close to one another', 'in closest proximity') are not readily apparent. German tolerates making adverbs into nouns, a feature at once elementary and immediate, as in the statement that the poem 'ceaselessly calls and hauls itself from its Now-no-more back into its Ever-yet'. Although the original appears on the surface to say the 'same' thing, its language is more accessible since it 'speaks' to us more directly, or we are naturally more receptive to it. 'Schon-nicht-mehr' and 'Immer-noch', of course, also do not in this form derive from everyday speech, but they do exude immediacy, and that in turn facilitates understanding. One suspects that more than one translator of Celan's German has absorbed his language so thoroughly?the cadences, syntax, ellipses, fissures, indeed the inherent trauma?that they write English as though it were German. Felstiner avoids this mostly, although his language slips into such a meta-English from time to time, es? pecially in the late poetry and in idiosyncraticor obscure sections of 'The Meridian'. In his preface Felstiner asks wisely: 'why not think of translation as the specific art of loss, and begin from there?' One of the strengths of Felstiner's translations lies less in the lexical precision (although he is mostly accurate and always thoughtful about the process) than in the cadences which he emulates where possible or productive for the new text. This is especially true for the short prose piece 'Conversation in the Mountains', which to my mind is the most successful and impressive textual transfer of the whole volume, the one which both captures the cadences, the syntax, and the urgency of the original and works as an English text in its own right. A translation can virtually never be the final word in mediating a text between cultures . The present translation, while no exception, is likely to open up the landscape of this vital poet for larger audiences, begetting reviews and discussions and making readers ofpoetry more curious about what Celan has to say. And that will continue and broaden awareness begun in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s with Michael Hamburger's important renderings. In fact, it is advisable to keep Hamburger's translations, and others, on the shelf next to Felstiner's. Wilhelm von Humboldt recommended that those without knowledge of the language of an original text should read as many dif? ferent translations of the text as possible to gain a sense of the original. The process is ongoing, without closure. Queen Mary, University of London Leonard Olschner After the GDR: New Perspectives on the Old GDR and the Young Ldnder. Ed. by Laurence McFalls and Lothar Probst. (German Monitor, 54) Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. 2001. iv 4-310 pp. $28; ?30. ISBN 90-420-1326-5 (pbk). Like most books based on conference contributions, this collection is a mixed bag, both linguistically (four chapters in German, thirteen in English) and qualitatively. It is divided into four sections dealing with intellectual history, dictatorship and MLRy 98.1, 2003 247 resistance, modes of memory, and politics and political culture. The opening essay by Wolfgang Emmerich provides a very comprehensive overview of the role of East German intellectuals between 1945 and 1998. It is emblematic of the rest of...