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Strange Hobbies
Feb. 23rd, 2001 08:19 pmI'll occasionally drift off into obscure intellectual corners for a while. I don't know why -- it's something inherent in my makeup like the urge to suddenly do something physically obscure (like bungee jumping). I guess I do that in philosophical areas, as well. Does that make me well rounded? Or just scatterbrained?
I'm fooling around with Heinrich Heine. Don't worry, he's been dead for a couple of hundred years. He's a German poet. One might say he's the German poet. One might also say that German is not the language for poetry -- or for anything more beautiful than detailing subatomic interactions, for that matter. Germans tend to trot out Heine when non-Germans slander their language -- Heine is the proof of German liguistic beauty.
Since my father was born and raised in Germany, and I am a German-American, I feel I am qualified to state, with no reservation, that the German language is, indeed, barbaric and ugly, with few redeeming artistic characteristics. Heine is beautiful in German, but only to other Germans who really just don't know any better because they're speaking German for chrissakes...
Ahem.
Anyway, I do like Heine for his irony and twisted sense of loss. Yes, the maiden is gorgeous, and she is everything you've ever wanted in a woman, but...she doesn't like you. Or she is married to someone else. Or she has the nerve to die from some highly infectious disease three days before you were going to propose.
To Germans, nothing can be so beautiful that something can't come along and spoil it. Which, I suppose, is why they try to take over the world every few decades. If the Germans can't be happy, then there's just no reason the rest of the world should be so carefree.
Though my German is so rusty it has nearly seized into one useless mass of oxidation, I translated one of Heine's poems yesterday. Here is another:
Die Welt ist so schön und der Himmel so blau,
Und die Lüfte die wehen so lind und so lau,
Und die Blumen winken auf blühender Au,
Und funkeln und glitzern im Morgentau,
Und die Menschen jubeln, wohin ich schau, -
Und doch möcht ich im Grabe liegen,
Und mich an mein totes Liebchen schmiegen.
-- Heinrich Heine
The World is so beautiful and the sky is so blue
And the air that is blowing, so soothing and so mild
And the flowers beckon on, bloom on,
And glitter and glimmer in the morning dew,
And the people are happy where I am displayed -
And I lay in the grave,
And me, to my dead Beloved, I snuggle.
I'm fooling around with Heinrich Heine. Don't worry, he's been dead for a couple of hundred years. He's a German poet. One might say he's the German poet. One might also say that German is not the language for poetry -- or for anything more beautiful than detailing subatomic interactions, for that matter. Germans tend to trot out Heine when non-Germans slander their language -- Heine is the proof of German liguistic beauty.
Since my father was born and raised in Germany, and I am a German-American, I feel I am qualified to state, with no reservation, that the German language is, indeed, barbaric and ugly, with few redeeming artistic characteristics. Heine is beautiful in German, but only to other Germans who really just don't know any better because they're speaking German for chrissakes...
Ahem.
Anyway, I do like Heine for his irony and twisted sense of loss. Yes, the maiden is gorgeous, and she is everything you've ever wanted in a woman, but...she doesn't like you. Or she is married to someone else. Or she has the nerve to die from some highly infectious disease three days before you were going to propose.
To Germans, nothing can be so beautiful that something can't come along and spoil it. Which, I suppose, is why they try to take over the world every few decades. If the Germans can't be happy, then there's just no reason the rest of the world should be so carefree.
Though my German is so rusty it has nearly seized into one useless mass of oxidation, I translated one of Heine's poems yesterday. Here is another:
Die Welt ist so schön und der Himmel so blau,
Und die Lüfte die wehen so lind und so lau,
Und die Blumen winken auf blühender Au,
Und funkeln und glitzern im Morgentau,
Und die Menschen jubeln, wohin ich schau, -
Und doch möcht ich im Grabe liegen,
Und mich an mein totes Liebchen schmiegen.
-- Heinrich Heine
The World is so beautiful and the sky is so blue
And the air that is blowing, so soothing and so mild
And the flowers beckon on, bloom on,
And glitter and glimmer in the morning dew,
And the people are happy where I am displayed -
And I lay in the grave,
And me, to my dead Beloved, I snuggle.
