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Date: | Wed, 6 Sep 2000 08:17:09 -0500 |
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Walter gives us translations from Faust:
>Steve Schwartz seems partial to the Bayard Taylor translation:
>
>All things transitory
>But as symbols are sent:
>Earth's insufficiency
>Here grows to Event:
>The Indescribable,
>Here it is done:
>The Woman-soul leadeth us
>Upward and on!
Actually, not that passage.
>Here's my attempt:
>
>All that is fleeting
>Is but an example.
>What wants completing
>Now becomes ample.
>What speech cannot course
>Has turned into acts.
>Th' all womanly force
>Our striving attracts.
Here's Louis MacNeice:
All that is past of us
Was but reflected;
All that was lost in us
Here is corrected;
All indescribables
Here we descry;
Eternal Womanhead
Leads us on high.
"Eternal Womanhead?" Anyway, Thomas Mann's favorite Faust translator,
George Madison Priest:
All earth comprises
Is symbol alone;
What there ne'er suffices
As fact here is known;
All past the humanly
Wrought here in love;
The Eternal-Womanly
Draws us above.
The variance of meaning among the examples drives me back to the original:
Alles Vergaengliche
ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Unzulaengliche,
hier wird's Ereignis;
das Unbeschreibliche,
hier ist getan;
das Ewig-Weibliche
zieht uns hinan.
Goethe's poetry here is both concentrated and vague, which plays merry hell
with translators. To me the following is a close literal translation:
Everything transitory
is only an image;
that potential (incomplete, yet-to-be-done)
here becomes experience;
the indescribable
is here done;
the Eternal-Feminine
draws us on.
I would take a little something from each translator.
All that is fleeting
is symbol alone;
what wants completing
as fact here is known;
all indescribables
are here done;
the Eternal-Feminine
draws us on.
Steve Schwartz
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