Translated from German by Gregory Divers:   The End of the World by Jakob van Hoddis The Dreaming Man by Jakob van Hoddis natura morta by Yaak Karsunke dazzling deception by Yaak Karsunk

Divers, Gregory

English

ScholarWorks at WMU

Transference Volume 6 Issue 1 | Fall 2018 Article 4 2018 The End of the World and other poems Gregory Divers Saint Louis University, gregory.divers@slu.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/transference  Part of the German Language and Literature Commons, Language Interpretation and Translation Commons, Modern Languages Commons, and the Poetry Commons Recommended Citation Divers, Gregory (2018) "The End of the World and other poems," Transference: Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/transference/vol6/iss1/4 8     TransferenceGregory Divers  Jakob van HoddisThe End of the World                                     WeltendeFrom the pointy head of the burgher flies his hat. The air everywhere resounds with shrieks and cries.Steeplejacks plunge from rooftops and go splat.And on the coasts − one reads − floodwaters rise.The storm rages on, wild seas hurl vesselsOnto land, waves threaten through dams to rip. Most everyone has a post-nasal drip.And trains are toppling from the trestles. The Dreaming Man                                        Der Träumende   to Kay Heinrich NebelBlue-green night, the softly muted color glows.Is he threatened by crude armor and a stream of spears?Is it Satan’s advancing minions that he fears?Those yellow flecks swimming in the shadows Are the eyes of gigantic illusory steeds. His pale body is naked, it’s protection he needs. An insipid pink pus oozes from the furrows.  fall 2018     9Gregory Divers Yaak Karsunkenatura morta                                                        natura mortafor Ingridthree peaches & a nutmeg melonon a white platewith pale green trimbetween the stones the grasstraces the old groundplan: where the tower oncestood the wind nowfans a fig treethe old end rhymes flash through my mind“the meadow is a treasure troveon the fringes of the olive grove”& you break white bread for hearty red wine10     TransferenceGregory Divers Yaak Karsunkedazzling deception                                               blendwerkin the glamour of the enlightenmentdragons fairies & water nymphs grew palea tiny tallow candle blew out their lifelightin the presence of sootypetroleum lampsmiracles lost their colorin the ever-brightening darknessnighttime was conqueredby gaslight & incandescent mantles         & the glistening arc lamps progress raisedits two-faced head& began to speakwith forked tonguesthe light of the enlightenment shinedbrighter than a thousand sunsin the alamogordo desert & thenover two japanese citieslater fish screamed in the market of osakaand the fishing boat “lucky dragon number eight” hadrun out of luck. fall 2018     11CommentaryJakob van Hoddis: Weltende / The End of the WorldGerman poetry was never the same after the publication of “Weltende” in 1911, and its opening line—Dem	Bürger	 fliegt	vom spitzen Kopf der Hut—is etched in the mind of countless readers. Jakob van Hoddis stands as one of the earliest German expressionist poets. The significance of this poem is reflected in the fact that it opens Menschheitsdämmerung [The Dawn of Humanity], the seminal anthology edited and published by Kurt Pinthus in 1919. “The End of the World” is marked by a startling clash between form and content. Its formal structure followed a long tradition in German poetry, but its ominous yet magical and at times even utterly banal tone ushered in some-thing startling new. The title suggests an undeniable zeitgeist triggered not just by the approach of Halley’s Comet which, for many, meant the end of life on earth, but also by newspaper re-ports of other catastrophes including both storms on the coast of the North Sea and a train crash in North Carolina.  Translating rhymed, formally structured poetry presents numerous challenges. The first line adds to those challenges by beginning with the dative case; as a result, rules of German word order dictate that the subject first appears at the end of the line. I have adopted this inverted word order in both the first line and the conclusion of the sixth thereby creating fric-tion between the pronounced formal structure and the outra-geous content. The original by van Hoddis employs an abba cdcd rhyme scheme in the two quatrains; I have reversed the pattern with abab cddc. I also took a small liberty in line five. A quick internet search on the train wreck in North Carolina pro-duced the headline “Pullmans Thrown from Trestle into Creek.” Trestles became an obvious choice for a rhyme word, especially because it evokes a scene from bygone days of the early 20th century, just as steeplejacks in line three. Therefore, I created the vessels in line five, believing such is plausible even if not ex-plicitly stated in the original. I have, however, retained the en-jambement employed by van Hoddis in lines five and six. I also chose the cognate “burger” in line one for its association with 12     Transferencebourgeoisie and to accentuate the smug class consciousness of this man with the pointy head who, by losing his hat, loses his middle-class respectability. One further note on vocabulary: “The storm” at the beginning of line five is a subtle reference to Der Sturm, an avant garde literary magazine published in Berlin by Herwarth Walden to which van Hoddis regularly con-tributed between 1911 and 1914.  For me, the charm of this poem lies in pairing the various catastrophes with the “post-nasal drip” in the penultimate line. Once again, I had my rhyme word and then worked backwards to “rip” concluding line six. Jakob van Hoddis packed a great deal into these eight lines of verse. Much of what followed in the next decade of German poetry would have been unthinkable without his “The End of the World.”Jakob van Hoddis: Der Träumende / The Dreaming ManThis poem is based on a painting by the artist Kay Heinrich Neb-el, to whom the poem is dedicated. The title most likely comes from the title of the painting, which the artist had given as a present to his friend the poet. As with the majority of Nebel’s early artwork, this painting has long since gone lost.  The night is a favorite subject matter in the poetry of Jakob van Hoddis. The dark of night offers solace, because for van Hoddis daytime represented hours of harsh sunlight. And even though he sought refuge in the darkness, the night as por-trayed here could likewise be threatening. In “The Dreaming Man” the colors of night are softly muted, yet this blue-green color is eerie. The title suggests a dreamscape, but for van Hod-dis the world of dreams was quite real. His is a world of fear, trepidation and vulnerability where the shadows of night create portentous illusions.    I altered the rhyme scheme slightly, opting for abbacca rather than the original abbacbc. The first two rhyme words—“glows” and “spears”—follow directly from the original. I was able to remain true to the content in the remaining lines while finding suitable phrasing and the necessary rhymes. I chose “steeds” instead of horses in line five, a rhyme word which led to “it’s protection he needs” in line six in place of the original fall 2018     13which literally reads “without weirs”—a low dam or dike across a river.     This poem was first published in the Berlin literary mag-azine Die Aktion in 1911 and is also included in Weltende (1918), the only book-length collection published during the lifetime of Jakob van Hoddis. Perhaps most significantly, “Der Träu-mende” was reprinted in both the original and a French trans-lation by Hans Arp in André Breton’s Anthologie de l’Humeur noir [Anthology of Black Humor] in 1939, a fact which under-scores how even though van Hoddis is primarily seen as an early expressionist poet, he is also considered a forerunner of sur-realism. One can easily imagine how Breton would have been intrigued by the “insipid pink pus” in the final line.  Due to the allusion to Satan’s minions in line three, one could argue that this poem anticipates a fascination with Bibli-cal and especially Christian themes that surfaced later in the poetry of van Hoddis. In fact, during 1912 he even briefly con-verted to Christianity. Born as Hans Davidsohn to Jewish parents in 1887, his pseudonym is an anagram of the family name. In 1942 Jakob van Hoddis was deported to Poland and killed in an extermination camp, most likely Sobibór. Yaak Karsunke: natura morta / natura mortaThe title, from the Italian, means still life, and the opening stan-za reads as a straightforward description of fruit on a plate, a common theme for a still life painting. The second stanza, how-ever, shifts the focus to an outdoor scene and a place with visible traces of where an old, perhaps even ancient edifice once stood; in fact, the allusion to a tower possibly suggests a castle. The third and final stanza introduces both the lyrical persona and the addressee, Ingrid Karsunke, the wife of the poet to whom the poem is dedicated. In its entirety, then, the poem presents a still life within an outdoor scene where a picnic takes place. Hence, with the title and the opening stanza, one could read the entire poem as a still life within a still life. An unmistakable stillness permeates the first two stanzas with movement limited to a light wind fanning the leaves of a fig tree. The only true action is saved until the final line when the poem’s addressee 14     Transferenceliterally breaks bread, an act that serves as a prelude to what is left unstated: the raising of two glasses of robust red wine in a toast.  While the opening stanza was a straightforward transla-tion from German to English, the second stanza raised a few questions with word choice and line breaks. I chose “ground/ plan” over the alternatives layout or plot not only for its con-notations but also because the line break allowed a more stra-tegic placement of the colon in the third line. The final stanza, however, was quite unique in that the rhymed couplet in the middle of the quatrain presented its own special challenges. In the original, the two lines literally read “a meadow’s edge/ bor-ders the olive grove” with the German verb säumen denoting not only border, but also the hem or seam of an article of cloth-ing. I took the liberty of adding “treasure trove” to rhyme with “olive grove” and changed the verb to the noun “fringes” to en-hance associations with a garment. My changes and additions do not deviate from the sense of the original and create an ap-propriate rhythmic flow to the couplet. Instead of “the old end rhymes occur to me” or “come to mind” I chose “flash through my mind” to create a sudden, lightning-like thought. Further-more, “mind” provides a near rhyme with “wine” and brackets the rhymed couplet. Thus, even though not identical to that of the original, I am able to provide a rhyme scheme for the entire final stanza.  All my translations of the poetry of Yaak Karsunke are done in consultation with the poet. And in this case, Herr Kar-sunke heartily endorsed the liberties I took in the final stanza. Yaak Karsunke: blendwerk / dazzling deceptionThe poem “dazzling deception” is noteworthy for two features commonly found in the poetry of Yaak Karsunke. First and fore-most, this is a political poem and reflects the poet’s opposition to nuclear weapons (as well as nuclear power), a position he has held for well over a half century. Secondly, this poem can be read as a commentary on history, specifically, a wry assessment of what is perceived as progress. The first line notwithstanding, the prevailing theme of this poem is not the Enlightenment, but fall 2018     15instead light itself. Even though the poem in its entirety reads as an historical overview, the text seems to move from quatrain to quatrain making an historical hop, skip and jump from the late seventeenth to the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, we as readers slowly realize a sense of loss for humankind with each level of invasion of light into our lives. Throughout the poem I tried, where possible, to make vocabulary choices that reflect the historical era depicted, for instance the “tiny tallow candle” in the first stanza (with tiny instead of small for the added allit-erative effect). The prepositional phrase “in the presence” opening stanza two adds a spiritual element (see Psalm 16:11) associated with miracles. Likewise, the vocabulary in stanza three signals that we have reached the nineteenth century.   As to the message of this poem, the fourth stanza is the fulcrum, and the word “progress” takes on new meaning with its “two-faced head” and “forked tongues.” Stanza five, then, reads as an explication of the end-effect of progress brought about by the Enlightenment. The italicized “brighter than a thou-sand suns” is, of course, not only a reference to a verse from the Bhagavad Gita (XI, 12) but also a quote of what J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled while witnessing the fireball at the Trin-ity nuclear test in 1945. Although light is the dominant theme through the first three stanzas, Karsunke employs synesthesia in the penultimate stanza as the screaming fish add an acous-tic component with reference to the catch of a Japanese fishing boat contaminated by fallout from the Castle Bravo thermonu-clear test at the Bikini Atoll in March of 1954.   Source texts:Hoddis, Jakob van. “Weltende” and “Der Träumende.” Dichtungen und Briefe, edited by Regina Nörtemann, Arche, 1987, pp. 15, 27.Karsunke, Yaak. “natura morta.” gespräch mit dem stein, Rotbuch, 1992, p. 28.——— “blendwerk.” RHEIN! Zeitschrift für Worte, Bilder, Klang, Nr. 2, Ok-tober 2011, S. 52.  

\u3cem\u3eThe End of the World\u3c/em\u3e and other poems

Transference 
Volume 6 
Issue 1 | Fall 2018 Article 4 
2018 
The End of the World and other poems 
Gregory Divers 
Saint Louis University, gregory.divers@slu.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/transference 
 Part of the German Language and Literature Commons, Language Interpretation and Translation 
Commons, Modern Languages Commons, and the Poetry Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Divers, Gregory (2018) "The End of the World and other poems," Transference: Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 4. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/transference/vol6/iss1/4 
8     Transference
Gregory Divers  Jakob van Hoddis
The End of the World                                     Weltende
From the pointy head of the burgher flies his hat. 
The air everywhere resounds with shrieks and cries.
Steeplejacks plunge from rooftops and go splat.
And on the coasts − one reads − floodwaters rise.
The storm rages on, wild seas hurl vessels
Onto land, waves threaten through dams to rip. 
Most everyone has a post-nasal drip.
And trains are toppling from the trestles. 
The Dreaming Man                                        Der Träumende
   
to Kay Heinrich Nebel
Blue-green night, the softly muted color glows.
Is he threatened by crude armor and a stream of spears?
Is it Satan’s advancing minions that he fears?
Those yellow flecks swimming in the shadows 
Are the eyes of gigantic illusory steeds. 
His pale body is naked, it’s protection he needs. 
An insipid pink pus oozes from the furrows.  
fall 2018     9
Gregory Divers Yaak Karsunke
natura morta                                                        natura morta
for Ingrid
three peaches & a nutmeg melon
on a white plate
with pale green trim
between the stones the grass
traces the old ground
plan: where the tower once
stood the wind now
fans a fig tree
the old end rhymes flash through my mind
“the meadow is a treasure trove
on the fringes of the olive grove”
& you break white bread for hearty red wine
10     Transference
Gregory Divers Yaak Karsunke
dazzling deception                                               blendwerk
in the glamour of the enlightenment
dragons fairies & water nymphs grew pale
a tiny tallow candle blew 
out their lifelight
in the presence of sooty
petroleum lamps
miracles lost their color
in the ever-brightening darkness
nighttime was conquered
by gaslight & incandescent mantles         
& the glistening 
arc lamps 
progress raised
its two-faced head
& began to speak
with forked tongues
the light of the enlightenment shined
brighter than a thousand suns
in the alamogordo desert & then
over two japanese cities
later fish screamed 
in the market of osaka
and the fishing boat “lucky dragon 
number eight” had
run out of luck. 
fall 2018     11
Commentary
Jakob van Hoddis: Weltende / The End of the World
German poetry was never the same after the publication of 
“Weltende” in 1911, and its opening line—Dem	Bürger	 fliegt	
vom spitzen Kopf der Hut—is etched in the mind of countless 
readers. Jakob van Hoddis stands as one of the earliest German 
expressionist poets. The significance of this poem is reflected 
in the fact that it opens Menschheitsdämmerung [The Dawn 
of Humanity], the seminal anthology edited and published by 
Kurt Pinthus in 1919. “The End of the World” is marked by a 
startling clash between form and content. Its formal structure 
followed a long tradition in German poetry, but its ominous yet 
magical and at times even utterly banal tone ushered in some-
thing startling new. The title suggests an undeniable zeitgeist 
triggered not just by the approach of Halley’s Comet which, for 
many, meant the end of life on earth, but also by newspaper re-
ports of other catastrophes including both storms on the coast 
of the North Sea and a train crash in North Carolina. 
 Translating rhymed, formally structured poetry presents 
numerous challenges. The first line adds to those challenges 
by beginning with the dative case; as a result, rules of German 
word order dictate that the subject first appears at the end of 
the line. I have adopted this inverted word order in both the 
first line and the conclusion of the sixth thereby creating fric-
tion between the pronounced formal structure and the outra-
geous content. The original by van Hoddis employs an abba 
cdcd rhyme scheme in the two quatrains; I have reversed the 
pattern with abab cddc. I also took a small liberty in line five. A 
quick internet search on the train wreck in North Carolina pro-
duced the headline “Pullmans Thrown from Trestle into Creek.” 
Trestles became an obvious choice for a rhyme word, especially 
because it evokes a scene from bygone days of the early 20th 
century, just as steeplejacks in line three. Therefore, I created 
the vessels in line five, believing such is plausible even if not ex-
plicitly stated in the original. I have, however, retained the en-
jambement employed by van Hoddis in lines five and six. I also 
chose the cognate “burger” in line one for its association with 
12     Transference
bourgeoisie and to accentuate the smug class consciousness of 
this man with the pointy head who, by losing his hat, loses his 
middle-class respectability. One further note on vocabulary: 
“The storm” at the beginning of line five is a subtle reference 
to Der Sturm, an avant garde literary magazine published in 
Berlin by Herwarth Walden to which van Hoddis regularly con-
tributed between 1911 and 1914. 
 For me, the charm of this poem lies in pairing the various 
catastrophes with the “post-nasal drip” in the penultimate line. 
Once again, I had my rhyme word and then worked backwards 
to “rip” concluding line six. Jakob van Hoddis packed a great 
deal into these eight lines of verse. Much of what followed in 
the next decade of German poetry would have been unthinkable 
without his “The End of the World.”
Jakob van Hoddis: Der Träumende / The Dreaming Man
This poem is based on a painting by the artist Kay Heinrich Neb-
el, to whom the poem is dedicated. The title most likely comes 
from the title of the painting, which the artist had given as a 
present to his friend the poet. As with the majority of Nebel’s 
early artwork, this painting has long since gone lost. 
 The night is a favorite subject matter in the poetry of 
Jakob van Hoddis. The dark of night offers solace, because for 
van Hoddis daytime represented hours of harsh sunlight. And 
even though he sought refuge in the darkness, the night as por-
trayed here could likewise be threatening. In “The Dreaming 
Man” the colors of night are softly muted, yet this blue-green 
color is eerie. The title suggests a dreamscape, but for van Hod-
dis the world of dreams was quite real. His is a world of fear, 
trepidation and vulnerability where the shadows of night create 
portentous illusions.   
 I altered the rhyme scheme slightly, opting for abbacca 
rather than the original abbacbc. The first two rhyme words—
“glows” and “spears”—follow directly from the original. I was 
able to remain true to the content in the remaining lines while 
finding suitable phrasing and the necessary rhymes. I chose 
“steeds” instead of horses in line five, a rhyme word which led 
to “it’s protection he needs” in line six in place of the original 
fall 2018     13
which literally reads “without weirs”—a low dam or dike across 
a river.    
 This poem was first published in the Berlin literary mag-
azine Die Aktion in 1911 and is also included in Weltende (1918), 
the only book-length collection published during the lifetime 
of Jakob van Hoddis. Perhaps most significantly, “Der Träu-
mende” was reprinted in both the original and a French trans-
lation by Hans Arp in André Breton’s Anthologie de l’Humeur 
noir [Anthology of Black Humor] in 1939, a fact which under-
scores how even though van Hoddis is primarily seen as an early 
expressionist poet, he is also considered a forerunner of sur-
realism. One can easily imagine how Breton would have been 
intrigued by the “insipid pink pus” in the final line. 
 Due to the allusion to Satan’s minions in line three, one 
could argue that this poem anticipates a fascination with Bibli-
cal and especially Christian themes that surfaced later in the 
poetry of van Hoddis. In fact, during 1912 he even briefly con-
verted to Christianity. Born as Hans Davidsohn to Jewish parents 
in 1887, his pseudonym is an anagram of the family name. In 
1942 Jakob van Hoddis was deported to Poland and killed in an 
extermination camp, most likely Sobibór. 
Yaak Karsunke: natura morta / natura morta
The title, from the Italian, means still life, and the opening stan-
za reads as a straightforward description of fruit on a plate, a 
common theme for a still life painting. The second stanza, how-
ever, shifts the focus to an outdoor scene and a place with visible 
traces of where an old, perhaps even ancient edifice once stood; 
in fact, the allusion to a tower possibly suggests a castle. The 
third and final stanza introduces both the lyrical persona and 
the addressee, Ingrid Karsunke, the wife of the poet to whom 
the poem is dedicated. In its entirety, then, the poem presents 
a still life within an outdoor scene where a picnic takes place. 
Hence, with the title and the opening stanza, one could read 
the entire poem as a still life within a still life. An unmistakable 
stillness permeates the first two stanzas with movement limited 
to a light wind fanning the leaves of a fig tree. The only true 
action is saved until the final line when the poem’s addressee 
14     Transference
literally breaks bread, an act that serves as a prelude to what is 
left unstated: the raising of two glasses of robust red wine in a 
toast. 
 While the opening stanza was a straightforward transla-
tion from German to English, the second stanza raised a few 
questions with word choice and line breaks. I chose “ground/ 
plan” over the alternatives layout or plot not only for its con-
notations but also because the line break allowed a more stra-
tegic placement of the colon in the third line. The final stanza, 
however, was quite unique in that the rhymed couplet in the 
middle of the quatrain presented its own special challenges. In 
the original, the two lines literally read “a meadow’s edge/ bor-
ders the olive grove” with the German verb säumen denoting 
not only border, but also the hem or seam of an article of cloth-
ing. I took the liberty of adding “treasure trove” to rhyme with 
“olive grove” and changed the verb to the noun “fringes” to en-
hance associations with a garment. My changes and additions 
do not deviate from the sense of the original and create an ap-
propriate rhythmic flow to the couplet. Instead of “the old end 
rhymes occur to me” or “come to mind” I chose “flash through 
my mind” to create a sudden, lightning-like thought. Further-
more, “mind” provides a near rhyme with “wine” and brackets 
the rhymed couplet. Thus, even though not identical to that of 
the original, I am able to provide a rhyme scheme for the entire 
final stanza. 
 All my translations of the poetry of Yaak Karsunke are 
done in consultation with the poet. And in this case, Herr Kar-
sunke heartily endorsed the liberties I took in the final stanza. 
Yaak Karsunke: blendwerk / dazzling deception
The poem “dazzling deception” is noteworthy for two features 
commonly found in the poetry of Yaak Karsunke. First and fore-
most, this is a political poem and reflects the poet’s opposition 
to nuclear weapons (as well as nuclear power), a position he has 
held for well over a half century. Secondly, this poem can be 
read as a commentary on history, specifically, a wry assessment 
of what is perceived as progress. The first line notwithstanding, 
the prevailing theme of this poem is not the Enlightenment, but 
fall 2018     15
instead light itself. Even though the poem in its entirety reads 
as an historical overview, the text seems to move from quatrain 
to quatrain making an historical hop, skip and jump from the 
late seventeenth to the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, we as 
readers slowly realize a sense of loss for humankind with each 
level of invasion of light into our lives. Throughout the poem I 
tried, where possible, to make vocabulary choices that reflect 
the historical era depicted, for instance the “tiny tallow candle” 
in the first stanza (with tiny instead of small for the added allit-
erative effect). The prepositional phrase “in the presence” opening 
stanza two adds a spiritual element (see Psalm 16:11) associated 
with miracles. Likewise, the vocabulary in stanza three signals 
that we have reached the nineteenth century.  
 As to the message of this poem, the fourth stanza is the 
fulcrum, and the word “progress” takes on new meaning with its 
“two-faced head” and “forked tongues.” Stanza five, then, reads 
as an explication of the end-effect of progress brought about 
by the Enlightenment. The italicized “brighter than a thou-
sand suns” is, of course, not only a reference to a verse from 
the Bhagavad Gita (XI, 12) but also a quote of what J. Robert 
Oppenheimer recalled while witnessing the fireball at the Trin-
ity nuclear test in 1945. Although light is the dominant theme 
through the first three stanzas, Karsunke employs synesthesia 
in the penultimate stanza as the screaming fish add an acous-
tic component with reference to the catch of a Japanese fishing 
boat contaminated by fallout from the Castle Bravo thermonu-
clear test at the Bikini Atoll in March of 1954.   
Source texts:
Hoddis, Jakob van. “Weltende” and “Der Träumende.” Dichtungen und 
Briefe, edited by Regina Nörtemann, Arche, 1987, pp. 15, 27.
Karsunke, Yaak. “natura morta.” gespräch mit dem stein, Rotbuch, 1992, 
p. 28.
——— “blendwerk.” RHEIN! Zeitschrift für Worte, Bilder, Klang, Nr. 2, Ok-
tober 2011, S. 52.  


https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1214&amp;context=transference

\u3cem\u3eThe End of the World\u3c/em\u3e and other poems

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

ScholarWorks at WMU

ScholarWorks at WMU