Wanderer tritt still herein
Feb. 3rd, 2021 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
Today is Georg Trakl's 134th birthday. I know Trakl from Heidegger. When Heidegger writes about poetry, his examples are usually from Hölderlin, but it's the one Trakl poem I've seen him talk about, called "Ein Winterabend" (which I've quoted from here before, but maybe only as a subject line or two, I'm not sure), that grabbed me. It goes like this:
Wenn der Schnee ans Fenster fällt,
Lang die Abendglocke läutet,
Vielen ist der Tisch bereitet
Und das Haus ist wohlbestellt.
Mancher auf der Wanderschaft
Kommt ans Tor auf dunklen Pfaden.
Golden blüht der Baum der Gnaden
Aus der Erde kühlem Saft.
Wanderer tritt still herein;
Schmerz versteinert die Schwelle.
Da erglänzt in reiner Helle
Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein.
You only need to know (even roughly) how the German is pronounced to appreciate the poem's musicality. The translation in the English translation, by Albert Hofstadter, of Heidegger's essay "Language" goes like this:
A Winter Evening
Window with falling snow is arrayed,
Long tolls the vesper bell,
The house is provided well,
The table is for many laid.
Wandering ones, more than a few,
Come to the door on darksome courses.
Golden blooms the tree of graces
Drawing up the earth's cool dew.
Wanderer quietly steps within;
Pain has turned the threshold to stone.
There lie, in limpid brightness shown,
Upon the table bread and wine.
It struck me today that this poem (which I have always associated with Babette's Feast) is a good example on one side of a distinction I think about frequently: between poems that use images to describe things (which this poem does once, fairly incidentally, when it says "pain has turned the threshold to stone"), and poems that describe things that are themselves "images" (which the poem does otherwise and which it basically does). I think about this in connection with Galatians 4:22ff, where Paul says that Hagar and Ishmael on one hand and Sarah and Isaac on the other are allegories for the old and the new covenants with God. Paul doesn't mean (I take it) that the stories in Genesis are to be taken as allegories and don't literally describe things that happened; he means that the people themselves and what literally happened to them are allegories, in the world-historical play authored by God. I like for my poems to treat things in the world in something like this way, although not as "images" or allegories in the sense of "standing for" other things which they themselves are not, but to try to show how they speak of other things as well as themselves, rather than using images to speak of them. Another way of looking at this is that "imagery" is my area of weakness as a poet.
--
Currently under my porch: -2.7. Currently at Belmont Lake: -3.3. High there today: 4.7.
Wenn der Schnee ans Fenster fällt,
Lang die Abendglocke läutet,
Vielen ist der Tisch bereitet
Und das Haus ist wohlbestellt.
Mancher auf der Wanderschaft
Kommt ans Tor auf dunklen Pfaden.
Golden blüht der Baum der Gnaden
Aus der Erde kühlem Saft.
Wanderer tritt still herein;
Schmerz versteinert die Schwelle.
Da erglänzt in reiner Helle
Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein.
You only need to know (even roughly) how the German is pronounced to appreciate the poem's musicality. The translation in the English translation, by Albert Hofstadter, of Heidegger's essay "Language" goes like this:
A Winter Evening
Window with falling snow is arrayed,
Long tolls the vesper bell,
The house is provided well,
The table is for many laid.
Wandering ones, more than a few,
Come to the door on darksome courses.
Golden blooms the tree of graces
Drawing up the earth's cool dew.
Wanderer quietly steps within;
Pain has turned the threshold to stone.
There lie, in limpid brightness shown,
Upon the table bread and wine.
It struck me today that this poem (which I have always associated with Babette's Feast) is a good example on one side of a distinction I think about frequently: between poems that use images to describe things (which this poem does once, fairly incidentally, when it says "pain has turned the threshold to stone"), and poems that describe things that are themselves "images" (which the poem does otherwise and which it basically does). I think about this in connection with Galatians 4:22ff, where Paul says that Hagar and Ishmael on one hand and Sarah and Isaac on the other are allegories for the old and the new covenants with God. Paul doesn't mean (I take it) that the stories in Genesis are to be taken as allegories and don't literally describe things that happened; he means that the people themselves and what literally happened to them are allegories, in the world-historical play authored by God. I like for my poems to treat things in the world in something like this way, although not as "images" or allegories in the sense of "standing for" other things which they themselves are not, but to try to show how they speak of other things as well as themselves, rather than using images to speak of them. Another way of looking at this is that "imagery" is my area of weakness as a poet.
--
Currently under my porch: -2.7. Currently at Belmont Lake: -3.3. High there today: 4.7.
