8 October | Translation Duel at the Winchester Poetry Festival

TRANSLATION DUEL

BIOGRAPHIES

RAOUL SCHROTT is an Austrian poet, novelist and translator.

He has received all the major German literary awards. His poetry collections include Hotels (1995), Tropen: Über das Erhabene (1998), Weissbuch (2004), Die Kunst an nichts zu glauben (2015) and Erste Erde: Epos (2016). The poem ‘Mitad del Mundo’ was published in the collection Weissbuch. © Peter-Andreas Hassiepen

KAREN LEEDER is a prize-winning translator of contemporary German literature. She won the Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation in 2013 with a translation of Durs Grünbein. Her other translations include Evelyn Schlag, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Michael Krüger and Volker Braun and she has written on many aspects of German literary culture. Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German Literature at Oxford University.

IAIN GALBRAITH translates into and out of German. His most recent publication, a translation of a collection of Jan Wagner’s poetry Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees, won the 2015 Popescu Prize. Iain’s book-length poetry translations include Alfred Kolleritsch’s Selected Poems (2007), W.G. Sebald’s Across the

Land and the Water (2011), and (into German) John Burnside’s selected poems, Versuch über das Licht (2011).

MITAD DEL MUNDO RAOUL SCHROTT

also schreib ich dir ... und eine art gestufter pyramide markiert die mitte einer wohl nie fertig werdenden touristenstadt ringsum glasig schwarze berge steinbrüche krater wind voll sand · dafür ist die erde hier aus ihren angeln gehoben und auf den sockel eines monuments gesetzt als wäre sie in diesem mittag mit einem ruck erstarrt · grund für meine gleichgültigkeit kann ich keinen sagen aber es ist als brächte das fehlen jeden schattens alles nun ins lot unscharfe kippbilder auf den postkarten der souvenirläden den umfang der welt · kolorierte drucke einer spanischen fortuna mit ihrem erdball · die erinnerung an das türkisblau von spitzen schuhen in einer auslage die du so blau nicht wolltest · unwillkürlich überhörte sätze wie: pedir la luna und tafeln der himmelsmechanik die alle von etwas reden das schablonen bloß veranschaulichen · ein staubigeres licht loht im leeren auf der hinterlassene himmel hat nichts mehr zu tragen und für deine fragen finde ich keinen ausdruck anders als ... doch dieser stillstand brachte zuletzt selbst unser ewiges im kreis bewegen zumindest von hoch oben auf einen gleicher · es stand man habe am äquator den meter nach der weite bestimmt die der pendelschlag hier hat was weiter war als ich von dir bei jedem meiner abschiede

QUITO, 30.3.01

Mitad del Mundo, the ‘Middle of the World’, is an area of museum parkland near Quito in Ecuador which contains the Monument to the Equator: a tall tower, topped by a globe. A line on the ground at this monument is said to show the Equatorial line.

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATIONS

by Karen Leeder

by Iain Galbraith

This poem comes from Raoul Schrott’s Weissbuch (White Book) of 2004 and is one

The poem’s mingling of registers, exotic setting (a monument to the imaginary line

of the poems in the fourth part, or act, ‘The Triumph of Time I’. The gloss alongside

that gives Equador its name), unsettling perspectives and scientific metaphors, as well

the poem places it in Ecuador and refers to the expedition of Charles Marie de la

as its dialogical structure, are all reminiscent of Raoul Schrott’s work as a whole, and

Condamine to investigate the flattening of the earth at the poles. He also conducted

at first glance I thought this would be relatively easy to translate. I should have known

the pendulum experiment there that gave the dimensions of the metre. The finger-

better: none of Schrott’s poems are easy to translate, but this one seemed more and

style monument at Mitad del Mundo bearing the plaque that sets out the experiment

more difficult with each reading. From the mention of Archimedes’s famous lever

and topped with a globe stands at the centre of a rapidly expanding tourist attraction

in line four things are not always as they seem. It gets going with ‘gleichgültigkeit’

where people go to see the line of the equator and stand with one foot in each hemi-

in line seven – echoed by ‘gleicher’ in line 20, an older German word for equator,

sphere. For all that it seems to celebrate science, the attempt to measure and grasp

literally ‘equaliser’ – which means indifference (as here), also callousness, but looked

the world, the poem in fact points to the places where such an understanding has

at more closely reveals a distinctly equatorial quality, literally ‘equal validity’, the

its limits. Against the celestial machinery there is also the intimate mechanics of a

equi-valence of two hemispheres (however, the primary rather than literal meaning

relationship. The tone is scientific but also slangy. Often it is mysterious. There is

of ‘Gleichgültigkeit’ is neither equivalence nor ambivalence). As for the ‘unscharfe

much I would have asked the poet about in a different situation. In translating I often

Kippbilder’ mentioned in line 9 (here: ‘grainy reversible images’): ‘unscharf’ can be

found the particles most difficult, as if all causality was being thrown into doubt.

blurred, but ‘Unschärferelation’ is also the word physicist Werner Heisenberg (no

Much is explicitly unknown or unsaid. And the poem in fact turns on the relative

stranger to Schrott) coined to designate what English calls the ‘Uncertainty Principle’.

truths of perspective: the sun so high it casts no shadow; the flicker images familiar

‘Reversible’ or sometimes ‘ambiguous images’ (like the famous duck-rabbit image, or

from puzzles or 3-D postcards that present two different images depending on where

Rubin’s vase) already suggest an ‘uncertain’ fuzziness, however, reflecting much of

you stand. Even the equator line itself. The rhyme structure moving out from the

what is happening here: ‘unwillkürlich überhörte sätze’, for example, (here: ‘carelessly

central axis of the poem like a double image seems to support this. Schrott talks in an

overheard phrases’, line 13), are disconcerting in that ‘überhört’ usually means the

essay in the volume about the use of half-rhymes as a discreet way of suggesting the

opposite of its English false friend ‘overheard’, i.e. to miss hearing or fail to catch

progression of sounds in order to open up and explore an idea, without announcing

(as it once did in Old English), and yet can mean ‘overheard’, too. So ‘unwillkürlich

the poem’s means directly. I hoped that this might give me licence to attempt some-

überhört’ could mean either inadvertently overheard, or its opposite: involuntarily

thing similar in English where full rhyme is so much more difficult, while also giving

ignored. The first word in line 15 is a translation of ‘schablonen’, but the German can

a sense of the dynamics of the poem.

also mean patterns, masks, templates, and, more problematically, stereotypes. The tone of the whole is hard to pin down, as if a hiatus of force fields at the equator had extended its influence to the diction, producing an awkward combination of inertia

Read the two translations on the following poster spread.

and doubleness.

Mitad del Mundo greetings from the middle of the world … where today

so here i am writing to you ... and a kind of stepped stele

a teeming tourist town surrounds a pyramid of stone

marks the centre of a tourist town whose building will never be done

dark glass of mountains all around quarries craters

around it glassy black hills quarries a crater

the wind full of sand · yet this is where the earth

wind full of sand · but here the earth has been levered from its axis

was lifted from its axis at a stroke and placed

and placed on a monument’s pedestal

upon a monument as if the day had

as if today were the day it had suddenly frozen

stopped it in its tracks · why I am unmoved I cannot tell

solid · what my indifference stems from i cannot tell

as if the lack of any shadow might bring things into true

but it’s as if the absence of any shadow brought everything into line

in the tat shops fuzzy 3-D picture-postcards the compass

grainy reversible figures on postcards in the souvenir stores

of the world · colourized prints of a spanish fortuna

the circumference of the earth · coloured prints of a spanish fortuna

with her globe · the memory of the turquoise blue

with her globe · the memory of the turquoise blue

of high heels in a window that were a shade too blue

of pointed shoes in a window their blue too blue

for you · phrases overheard in passing like: pedir la luna

for you · carelessly overheard phrases such as pedir la luna

and plaques with a celestial machinery intended to express

and celestial mechanics on panels all describing matters

what the models merely show · a dusty light glows through

stencils merely depict · in this blankness a dustier light

the emptiness more dusty the heavens left behind a shell

flares up the deserted sky has nothing more to yield

and when you ask I cannot find a word

and for your questions i can find no expression

to offer other than … in the end it was this very stasis

other than ... but in the end this standstill

that fetched down our endless circling through the universe

at least from high up brought the way even we go round in circles

to find its cognate · and it was here at the equator the metre

down to an equation: it was apparently here at the equator

was defined according to the arc described by a pendulum

they determined the metre as the unit of length a pendulum swung

an arc larger than the space between us when I go away

which was further than i from you after any farewell

translation by Karen Leeder

translation by Iain Galbraith

MODERN POETRY IN TR ANSL ATION The best of world poetry

MODERN POETRY IN TR ANSL ATION

Translators Karen Leeder and Iain Galbraith are en garde to fight our first ever Modern Poetry in Translation duel at the Winchester Poetry Festival 2016.

Karen and Iain will be discussing their translations of Austrian poet Raoul Schrott’s poem ‘Mitad del Mundo’, a poem-letter from the very centre of the world.

Open this booklet to compare and contrast their strikingly different approaches to a single text. You’ll discover a beautiful and meditative poem by one of the most eloquent and assured contemporary German-language poets, reflected and refracted in the English of two great translators.

Join us on Saturday 8 October at 12:30pm at the Winchester Poetry Festival to watch Karen and Iain cross verbal swords and join in the conversation: what makes a translated poem sing? Book tickets at www.winchesterpoetryfestival.org Comment on the translations @mptmagazine with the hashtag #translationduel